After several postpones and cancelations we were finally able to recommence shooting on wednesday 24th April. The delays became particularly frustrating after a while as I planned my days around the assumption we'd be shooting only to find out the actors weren't coming in the evening. I appreciate that they have other commitments back home but setting a concrete date and sticking to it would have been much less of an inconvenience than a 'probably sunday if not definitely monday' only to cancel completely. With only a week until presentation I was well aware that every day we didn't shoot would mean less time and more stress for the final job of adding sound which would fall to me. There was a lot of shots to get through as we only had the actors for one more night so had to make sure we obtained everything.
They arrived later than expected which proved troublesome as it would be getting dark soon and we had several daytime shots we needed. First off was the establishing market scene filmed on the moor, as the salesman is introduced flogging DVDs. We set up the stall under one of the existing marquees creating a fake table out of stacked cardboard boxes, with an open box full of mine and Robin's DVDs visible in frame. We were selective with which titles should be visible, including The Prestige (2006) in the foreground as a nod to the magician theme, and having Pamela Anderson thriller Barb Wire (1996) as the film picked up by the customer, as it is the kind of terrible B-movie one would expect to find on a knock-off market stall. This was fairly efficient to shoot bar one or two takes where passers by would look directly at the camera.
Next up was a scene in which the salesmen is walking home and begins sparking the matches he was given, whilst unbeknownst to him magical things begin to happen. The first instance involves a cider bottle appearing next to a homeless man. As a small none speaking role I had offered to do it, and neglected shaving for 6 weeks to look the part, borrowing clothes from friends to complete the guise. We used a location next to the moor for convenience as the light was beginning to retreat, and the use of split screen would require identical lighting to be convincing. The bottle that appears was originally supposed to be a large 2 litre that would be instantly visible but we ended up using a smaller glass, which I hope will still be noticeable when it appears. As the crew was over the road I wasn't quite aware of when they started rolling so I'm not sure how my positioning will match up when split screened. The next match struck was supposed to teleport the salesman into the middle of nowhere, with the subsequent strike materialising a bike which he would painstakingly ride across a wide shot, signifying how far he had been transported, however this had to be completely revised on the night as it would be too dark by the time we got to a remote location as well as too time consuming to travel to and from it. This was instead shot in a car park, which is less effective as it doesn't give the impression of his being far removed and inconvenienced.
We then returned to our original location to get a few pick ups to fix continuity errors we had noticed from the first shoots, as well as the tracking shot following the car vanishing. These went reasonably well bar the usual sonic disruptions, however it did eat into the time remaining for the rest of the shoot leading to some stress. Said stress peaked when reworking the bike scene as it was improvised on the night which led to some producer/director arguments. I can understand Robins frustrations over the frequent rescheduling, especially as the one in charge of making the schedules; and I think the inclusion of shots not previously listed or practiced was the tipping point. Christi is somewhat idealistic and not all that pragmatic as a director and I think he assumes what he envisions in his head will work in practice without undertaking the necessary technical research to pull it off. When Nick teleports he wanted a crash zoom out from a close up of his face to the longest shot possible. He wanted to do this by changed lenses mid zoom which Robin assured him wouldn't work which resulted in a drawn out debate over its possibility. We set up tracks and tried to achieve it through a combination of track and zoom but it was impossible to smoothly operate these functions whilst keeping the focus in the right place as well.
We then filmed the steps conversation in the basement of another car park that several restaurants back onto. With only three camera set ups and satisfactory lighting already available this was a much calmer procedure and allowed for Christi to focus on the performances themselves, which became much improved with each take of this scene. We had already seen flares of brilliance in Jim's magician but here Nick's salesman becomes more relatable with nuanced bravado in the more intimate exchange.
Finally we were off to the underpass to film the climactic showdown. This was the scene everyone had been looking forward to the most but we were also running out of time and darkness at this stage. One particular grievance for me was the tweeting birds in the nearby trees that were constantly audible, as I'm worried it will detract from the dramatic confrontation with no chance to get any ADR from the actors. The acoustics in the tunnel meant that sound would travel round several times which was annoying when every overhead car echoed before silence resumed and we could continue a take. Amy once again starred as the girl I had asked was no longer available following previous cancellations. Her fate was another thing that had to be improvised on the shoot owing to lack of time. In the original script she was supposed to turn back into the tramp once the magician rectifies the situation and makes his own corpse disappear, however there was limited space in the tunnel to accommodate all the split screens, and the actors still had to drive back to leeds and were getting impatient. We instead just added a line ('what happened to that woman?' 'Don't worry about him') and shot a post credits pick-up of me in the tunnel the following day. We had also constructed a squib based on one of the party-popper tutorials from a previous post, however as the magician is shot from a downward trajectory the blood splatter would have to be on the floor, and the projectile didn't work upside down.
It was a relief when we finally wrapped on a night that had its ups and downs but for me on the whole was an enjoyable experience. Although the rejigged scenes will be slightly detrimental to the impact on the narrative I'm also very happy with a lot of the footage and performances obtained. The pressure is on now for me and Jordan in post to fully realise this vision in less than a week. Back to work we go.
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