DELUSIONS PRODUCTION

Delusions Production Diary

In production

Shooting day 1

Cast

Ally Goodman

Caitlin Walsh

Location

Exterior detached house

Interior: kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, kid’s room.

Unfortunately I had a very tight timeline to do filming, as one of my actors didn’t finish his work until 18:30 so I had to start shooting after 18:45. First day I have planned to shoot my exterior scene as the weather was lovely. I shot my whole film with Canon 5D Mark III with f1.4 24 – 105 mm lens. Also I have used Go pro hero 3+ black edition to do my time-lapse and some other shots. Because we started filming late evening, I had a bit of problem with lighting. Interior scenes I used ARRI light kit and set up three-point lighting. For the sound and sound effects I used microphone and Tascam sound recorder to record all the sounds.  Locations I picked for time lapses were Hope Mountain and World’s end.  I managed to finish shooting all the scenes I planned to film which were exterior detached house, breakfast, dinner, bedroom scene.

Shooting day 2

Cast

Ally Goodman

Caitlin Walsh

Ethan Barry

Margaret Barry

Emin Atilgan

Location

Exterior care house

Exterior playground

Interior kitchen, kid’s room, living room.

I had to make a last minute cast change, as my female child actor’s wasn’t able to come and I had to change the character’s sex. Instead of using a girl actor I used a little boy. As I knew it would be dark to shoot after 18:30 I started my shoot with exterior care house scene. This was a good shoot as I got to work with different range of ages. Next stop was playground scene. We have just managed to get the filming dark before it went completely dark.  As soon as we are finished exterior shots the last filming of the day was interior house. I felt very stressed during filming, as I didn’t have long time to shoot as the child actor had to go home early. Although I didn’t manage to get all the filming done with him, I filmed the essential scenes.

Shooting Day 3

Cast

Ally Goodman

Caitlin Walsh

Emin Atilgan

Andreas Wanner

Runner

Tom Barry

Location

Gresford Pond

Gresford All Saints Church

Glyndwr University, Plas Coch Campus

Third day was the last day of shooting. It was all about filming the flashbacks and the final scene of the film. I was lucky that the weather was gorgeous so everybody in the cast and crew enjoyed the shoots outside. First shoot was the wedding shoot. Luckily there is a beautiful church by the main location where detached house is; we shot the wedding scene outside of the church as the gates were locked. Secondly, we shot the purpose scene, which was again near the main location. The next shoot we had in university corridor to as a hospital corridor, which I was very happy with the results. And last shoot was in the house, filming final and the most important scene in the film.

Postproduction

I used Adobe Premier pro CS6 and Adobe After Effects CS6 in postproduction. I transferred the footage day by day and categorized them scene-by-scene to match the sounds and I didn’t start editing until I finished all the filming. I used Go pro editing software for time lapse.  In the final scene of the film I had a problem as I didn’t have enough footage to edit. As James puts the ring, Ella fades away. But the camera was on the floor in the middle of them, looking up. To make her fade away I need footage of Ally in same shot without Caitlin. My solution for that was to take a still image from footage and edit in Photoshop. ( I will supply breakdown with images).  After photoshopping I had to rotoscope Ally, Caitlin and the ring and this was the most time consuming part of editing. ( I will supply breakdown with images.) While I was editing I went and got more sound recordings for sound effects such as, door, gate, bedroom, bathroom, and kitchen ambiances. Also for breakfast scene I had to color grade to make it lighter as we shot the scene at nighttime with three-point lighting.  In flashback scene I use different color grading to make it stand out.

This project helped me to understand time managing more. It was good to be by myself but struggling.