"Me, Myself and I": Day 2 of Shooting

"Me, Myself and I": Day 2 of Shooting

Follwing shooting of "Me, Myself and I"

AB
10/02/13
 

On the second day of shooting, we filmed:

1. Scott's Scene
2. Sammy's Scene

 Scott's Scene

The makeup and costume for this scene needed to transform our main actress Vita (May) into a relatively believable man. The costume was fairly straight forward. In order to flatten her chest we used a sports bra and then she simply wore a man’s suit and coat which bulked out her shoulders. She wore smart ladies shoes as she needed the correct fit in order to successfully run in them. For her props she has a fake gun in a shoulder holster and a fake FBI badge which my brother made when he was younger made from an old football medal.
The hair and makeup took the longest as her hair needed to be completely covered in wax and gel. The first style we tried, we kept her hair down and just simply slicked it back, although she did look very boyish it did not provide enough of a transformation.


At this point she looked kind of like Sam Winchester out of supernatural:

The second hair style we tried was inspired by the more iconic image of Agent Mulder from The X-Files:

We achieved this look by taking the bottom half of the hair and scraping it up towards the crown, tucking the ends of the hair under before pinning flat to the head. This made the back of the hair mimic the shape of man’s short haircut. With the front half of hair we scraped it back towards the crown, pinned it, and then flipped the ends of the hair back towards the forehead to create a fringe. The one fault of this style was when she run at high speeds the fringe would stick up, but it was ok because our genre allows for elements of comedy.

For Scott`s makeup we used a lot of shading around the jaw, chin, nose, eyebrows and eyes as well as thickening the eyebrows with eyebrow pencil and adding a faint moustache and goatee.

The Mistaken business man had no makeup added as he already has a great character full face. His costume was simply a smart suit and his prop was a black brief case.

The Scott scene is shot outside; we therefore found that we only needed to use the natural light, with a few adjustments to the white balance on the camera to define the clouds.

We looked at several locations for the Scott chase Scene including outside the Said business school, behind the shop Maplin and the science and engineering buildings on St. Giles street. However these were all too public and if we shot there we would be in danger of being moved on before we had the footage. The final location that we used was Rodger Dudman Way which is a street that runs directly parallel to the train tracks of the train station. 

This location not only looked right but provided a clear road for us to do tracking shots using the car. We tried various mid side shots of the chase, filming both Scott and the mistaken business man running alongside the car which we shot out the window.

The difficulty with these shots was the coordination between the actor and the cars speed. Every time we did not get it right, the actors became more tired and colder. However once we got in the swing of things we became better at judging the speeds.

As well as the various side shots we also tried some long shots from the boot of the car, similar to that used in the cycling to the therapist. As the boot was open, the car could only go up to a certain speed as we were in danger of falling out, to prevent this we were tied on to the seats of the car and my shoulders were held by Karl and Emma to keep me and the camera steady and inside the vehicle.
 


 

Throughout the tracking shots with the car, we used hand held camera work as there was no room or support for a tripod or even for a steady cam. We did however then use steady cam for the end of the chase as we were no longer in the car. We used this camera technique as it provided the correct panicked feel for the scene. Our steady cam is home made. It consists of a pole attached to a horizontal piece of wood which has weights gaffer taped on to each side. The camera is then attached to the top of the pole.
Emma was in charge of the sound for this scene. The sound was difficult to record due to the wind. The gate of which the mistaken business man is thrown at also made a lot of sound which meant the timing of the speech needed to be exact otherwise it would be muffled under other sounds.  We weren’t sure what we wanted Scott to say once he had caught the man, in the end we stole the famous quote from the Dark Night Trilogy: “WHERE IS IT!” as it seemed to fit.  Just before we left we also took a wild track, just in case we needed it for any of the shots.

The great thing about filming where we did was that there was a frequent flow of trains going in and out of the station which we were able to capture. This really added to the momentum of the chase. As well as the area being quiet, the few passer-by’s we did have gave us some great reactions that were caught on camera. A few helicopters flew by which we got Scott to communicate with, and the colour of the natural light was just the right kind of coldness.

 

Sammy's scene

The location for this scene took part in the same house in which we shot the therapist scene. The room was originally bare with white walls, a wardrobe and a bed. In order to create the right Mise en scene for a sleepover, the room need to be filled with classic teenage items, generally bulked out and look lived in. We added large items such as pillows, feather bowers and dresses hung on the door of the wardrobe to get rid of the big white spaces. Along with various photo`s, cards and posters stuck to the walls. Shoes were scattered across the floor and small trinkets, perfumes and hair products placed on shelves.

For the lighting we used one light with a pink filter reflected off the ceiling to alter the general colour of the room, as well as a wide white light with a clear filter directed at Vita (May). We then placed another white light by the feet of Jasmine and Daisy (Girl 1 and 2) which we reflected off of the white bed cover in order to light their faces. Having completed the main lighting we then added fairy lights to the room as it fits with the Mise en scene and they generally look great on camera as they add interest to the background. We also added lamps in both corners of the room as they appeared too dark on camera; at first they were too bright so we used black tin foil to dull and direct the light. Although we filmed this scene at night we taped card board to the windows to block out any street light. The main problem that occurred when lighting the set were shadows, we overcame this with patients.

The costume and makeup for this seen was fairly basic. May had very light makeup with just a bit of concealer under the eyes as this makes a person look younger, and mascara to bring out the eyes and emphasise the crying. Her hair was back combed and then we experimented with various different variations of plats and pigtails, in the end we used two high side pigtails as this made her look the youngest. For the costumes it was very important that Sammy`s  PJ`s  presented her as different from the other girls. We therefore made sure that the colour of the 2 girls costumes had the same pinks and whites of the room, whilst Sammy`s costume was a more boyish Blue, as well as being less fitted and less revealing.

The prop used in this scene is a scarf that Sammy waves about whist jumping on the bed. The idea to use this only occurred when we were filming. The scarf not only adds interest to the scene with its movement but also connects the characters in this scene as Sammy waves the scarf in front of the 2 girls faces.

The camera work used in this scene was varied. Originally we only planned on using static wide shots of her on the bed, but once everything was set up we also experimented with point of view shots of each character and mimicked the action of jumping with the camera. For the crying we used extreme close ups and over the shoulder shots to create a more intense at atmosphere. For the crying the lighting had to be changed and we used white boards to light her face.

We needed to record sound for this scene of both the laughing and crying. We therefore had Emma lying just out of shot at the foot of the bed manning the sound.