The Covet – Shoot #4
Well, moving forward is always a good feeling. Getting stuck, which happens from time to time, is frustrating. I thought I was just that before this shoot, STUCK. The hotel owner didn’t like the idea of showing our protagonist breaking into his building. We were doing a blocking walk through with him so he felt comfortable with what would be happening on his property which is the right thing to do.
As we talked through what was happening in the story he told me that we would need to change something. I started to panic in my mind a little since we had already shot much of the short film and this was the climax of the story we couldn’t change.
I could have gotten upset and lost the entire location but I started talking through it with him coming up with alternative coverage that would give him warm feelings. When I mentioned what if we just didn’t show the exterior of the building he was fine with that. It killed our establishing shot planned but didn’t affect the overall story and it was the right thing to do.
This building was a great shoot and most of the scenes were shot with halogens even though it was all supposed to be moon as our motivated lighting source. We overexposed and changed it all in post to simulate moon coming through windows.
The night wasn’t without it’s challenges. We were there from 5pm until 11:30pm and didn’t get all our shot list done for this act. We probably got about 50% done so we will be scheduling one final shoot there.
I asked the owner if we could cut through a chain at the front gate because it was nice and rusty. He wasn’t excited about that idea so I had to make a new chain look old. So I took some acrylic paint and some Rust-Oleum spray paint and made the chain look old. Shot a video recently showing the process and it worked better than expected.
The hotel doesn’t have AC but even in Central Florida at the tail end of summer we caught a break from the heat after a short rain. I used my bug fogger yet again for the haze in the air which causes the flashlight a nice steady beam as well as the shafts of moonlight.
It did catch on fire part way through the night. I allowed the oil to cool down below it’s heat of fusion which becomes a gas. Note to self, wait for the fogger to fog on it’s own before squeezing the trigger. 🙂
In the end our night was fun, safe-ish, and we learned a lot. I couldn’t have done it without my DP, First AC and gaffers that showed up. We even had an electrician this round!
