The events of the past week
Monday 24th
We shot most of the scenes to be projected today with two great actors Christopher Whitlow and Stephen Moriaty. I also shot 2 of my Kaja scenes. I had asked the actors last week to have a really good grasp of their lines, and also the lines of the actor who would be interacting with their filmed scenes – this was so they could look like they are reacting to what is being said and not just standing there until they say their lines. Christopher handled this particularly well and had a real grasp of what was needed to make the scene work. He has no formal (3 year) acting training, and so his scenes had a very natural and genuine feel. He has film experience but has not done much theatre work. It seemed to take Stephen, formally trained and with more theatre experience, longer to get a naturalistic take. Also he wasn’t off book, so we had to settle for holding up the script directly behind the camera. At times, enlarged, this appears to be a mistake, for his eyes glance left to right.
For scenes where Christopher was alone we stood behind the camera and made arm movements to represent when we thought the live actor would have finished.
It was very difficult to judge how an actor would want to deliver the live lines before we have even started rehearsals. Both Lars and I had different takes in this – often Lars saying I was too quick with my arm delivery. We settled for having several takes of the same scene with different speed infills so that the live actors can have a choice of 2 or 3 variations. However, this still potentially limits the versatility of the live performance considerably.
We started shooting at around 11am and finished by 4:30. I left some Kaja scenes to shoot later during rehearsals so I could at least read through them several times with the actor, if not have him silently on set behind camera during filming.
It wasn’t possible to have the live actors present at the filming because 1/ we need to keep costs minimal and 2/ we still had not found our actor!
In the evening, alongside re-casting Solness necessities, I chopped up some of the days footage into a very rough edit and sent it to the actors to see prior to rehearsals beginning.
Looking back it may have been nice for the film actors to record some personal introductions for the live actors to see and interact with during rehearsals.
Tuesday 25th
Got a phone call from an actor I previously auditioned saying he can now be Solness! Fantastic news
Wednesday 26th
Got an email from same actor saying actually not available. Frantically trying to cast in the morning
Nanouche, James and I went to The New Wimbledon to discuss tech and set arrangements. We will need to get some projector cable longer then anticipated for the projector. We are also planning to use DVD players instead of laptops as it seems more practical and cost effective.
Need to do risk assessments and get production insurance
Set up 2 auditions with actors for Solness tomorrow.
Thursday 27th
Both actors turned up to the audition, they were very different and it was difficult to make a decision. One was late 30s the other early 60s. We decided to go with the older actor as it just seemed more credible.
Friday 28th
Nanouche, James and I spent 2 hours on experiments with a projector that we intend to use. It took us an hour to set up the projector with footage because the laptop we had did not have the right cable for the type of projector. In the end we plugged my Lumix GH1 with unedited footage directly into the projector so therefore we have no filmed examples of the investigation. We investigated the projection in relation to the cardboard colour, the cardboard hanging angles, the distance between the cardboard pieces, the quantity of the cardboard pieces and the use of transparent plastic and white paper. We discovered it gave good effect to angle at least one piece of cardboard and to keep at least 3 inches between them. We discovered nice effects with scale also when the cardboard pieces were separated further from each other.
For the back projection on the set window we thought that it was more successful using white paper as it gave a better quality image, however we will experiment with this further during rehearsals.
