While working on “INT. Elevator – Day”, I was the boom operator and sound recordist while on set and when the film went through the post production process; I was the sound designer. I helped designing and making our set too, which entailed pasting and subsequently removing wallpaper.

When I was working on set, I was responsible for recording sound. I had a LAV microphone set up on each actor and had a boom microphone recording too, I did this because I wanted to make sure I got several dialogue tracks recorded from several different perspectives. This was to ensure I had audio that was crisp and clear at all times, so if one track sounded poor, I could still use other tracks in post that sounded better. We were a small crew, so I had to operate the boom while recording on the 664 mixer. This was a challenge for me as I had never done both jobs at the same time before, it proved difficult for me as it was tiring holding the boom for such long periods during the one-takes while also adjusting the levels on the mixer. However, in the afternoon we had another crew member take on the boom operating so I could focus on recording the sound and adjusting levels. During this shoot I used LAV microphones on set for the first time and I learned a lot about where best to place them on actors to record the best audio and how to attach them to different types of clothing.

I performed the role of sound designer on our film too, once the editing team had a picture lock, I exported the film to ProTools and began work. Firstly, I fixed the dialogue, it was rather quiet so I needed to adjust the volume levels of those tracks so our characters could be heard clearly. I next proceeded to create and adjust Foley tracks, mainly for typing and sounds of the lift; the editing team helped me with these Foley tracks and I mainly put them in the right places, added plugins and effects to them and I adjusted the volume and panning of them too. Once this was completed, I focused on atmosphere and ambience tracks, so it sounded more like a lift. During this process I learned how to use automation for plugins, by watching YouTube tutorials and I think this greatly improved the sound design for the film. I also discovered how to use a high pass filter on a track to remove unwanted boom handling noises, I think this cleaned up the audio for our film very well and I believe the final cut sounds clear.

To conclude, I believe our film is rather good. It took us a long time to decide on our idea for the script but, as a group we finalised it and I feel we created a funny and original story, which looks and sounds rather decent considering our budget and the size of our crew.

Looking back at our first ideas for this experimental film, one could state that 

 it was quite a journey of development we went through over the last couple of months. As I was part of creating the story for the film, I had to realise that some ideas lead to others and that it is fine to sometimes let go of initial thoughts. Finding ourselves in a state where we did not exactly know how to come up with new ideas, we thought of a strategy rather than new ideas that would ultimately lead us to a result: Working and improvising with the actors. 

This technique was a great experience to make, as it forced me to step out of my comfort zone and made me actually explore the possibilities of the story. What I found very interesting about this process was that we only had the initial premise of two people getting stuck in a lift and we then fleshed out the characters together with the actors, which opened our eyes to new perspectives. The actor’s inputs, the different versions and approaches of improvising and finally distilling all this, made the creation of this film more meaningful and also more fun. 

Whilst creating the story together with the actors, we constantly updated everyone else on the crew, who all contributed to different departments. This exchange of our story-thoughts compared to executing it all was an important process that fed into creating the story again. As soon as we had a story in place we finally got to think about the visual and auditory approach of the film. 

The decision for shooting everything from only one angle originally derived from the “elevator-look” we wanted to achieve. However, in hindsight this decision is not purely technical, as it actually also evokes the feeling of the audience being stuck in the lift, and thus in writing, together with Josh and Mrs. Fellini. Additionally, while shooting this simple set-up really helped me to purely focus on the character’s intentions and how they perform. 

At first, I assumed that the whole film would be more or less ready after the shooting and that there would not be much to do during the editing, aside from the graphics, as we planned and rehearsed all the scenes before. Yet, editing all scenes together and seeing it play out we had to realise that the story does not flow as naturally as we intended to. By giving the graphics and sounds more importance and actually almost making it into a third character, we enabled ourselves to trim the scenes, which we first intended to show as if they were shot in one take. Many of the scenes we see playing out only become funny through the contrast of what is written on the screen and how this is supported by various sounds. 

Generally speaking, I am quite happy with the end result. Even though we have changed certain bits about the story and amended it in ways we did not foresee, I think it does get the feeling of being stuck whilst having writer’s block across. 

My role in this experimental film shoot was Gaffer/Spark. The cinematographer and I researched how to create and light a lift scene. From what we researched we knew we needed a top light to recreate lift lights and to film at a low angle on a wide lens. Three flat panels were used as the lift and so we created a lighting plan. During pre-production we knew what we could use in terms of camera equipment and lighting. As a team, we had a day in the studio to do a test shoot. We used a Kino Flow light as the top light and had 300w lights for extra light. The main lighting plan was to have a back light shining down, a top light facing down on the actors and another light shining in for the emergency light.

However, in the end after testing it out we ended up using just the top Kino Flow light and 800w light as the red light. The backlight didn’t work out it was too strong and wouldn’t fit a lift scene. As a Gaffer I needed to ensure that the Kino Flow light needed to be safe, ensuring I used sandbags on the C Stand also a safety wire attached to the light and the C Stand, so if the light fell then it would be caught. However, that was just for extra safety. This is crucial as the light will be above the actor’s, so it needed extra precaution. After the test shoot the Cinematographer and I were confident having the light above.

As the idea was being developed, one thing that was discussed was how to light the emergency light. And how the directors would want it. We have finally decided to have the 800w with diffusion and red gel lifted high and tilted down. We were thinking of having it left on with the subtle red on the actors however the light was too harsh and strong therefore in the end we had it to flicker to indicate the lift has broken down. This worked well however to improve it, a small dedo light would be much better off as the light wouldn’t be as harsh and it would be more subtle to use. The way the lighting worked out looked really well as it only it the characters create a vignette look to it which helps the audience’s main focus which are the characters and premise of being in the lift with them and not being outside but stuck inside with them to make the audience more close to the subject. Within this shoot, sound is something to rely on heavily to make it more convincing of it being a real lift and the shake that’s added in within post really works well and is quite convincing. Overall, this shoot has gone well despite the obstacles we had to face as a team, like creating the lift and the production design that went into it was a challenge.

It was a rollercoaster ride making our film, “Int. Elevator – Day”. In this production, I involved myself in the scriptwriting, producing, directing and editing processes.

After many attempts of writing and rewriting, we decided to change our film idea from being about an actor being lost in character to the one we eventually produced – a writer going through a writer’s block. We could much easily relate to this topic and better understand the frustration of being stuck in that process. With that, we decided on a simple premise – the cliché student-film setting of having characters be stuck in an elevator.

Niklas and I brought in 2 actors for our rehearsals where we developed characters based on the simple premise using what we learned from our directing workshops. I worked closely with our actor, Oliver Seagal. Using Mike Leigh’s methods of building characters with actors, I asked Oliver to tell me about people he knew from real life and from there, we built the character ‘Josh’. Following that, we brought out actors together and did improvisational exercises based on the simple premise of being stuck in the elevator. By seeing the actors go through the scenes in various versions repeatedly, it sparked the idea for our final film. This rehearsal proved to be a useful process creatively as well. We managed to draw inspiration from our actors’ improvisations and used bits of the scenes into our final script.

During the whole process of production, we each brought our own strengths to practice and experiment on. Each of us could contribute to the film in our own specialised areas. However, we were faced with our biggest difficulty of having to design our set. We had little experience in production design thus, struggled with pasting wallpapers onto our set. We did little research and confidently pasted it wrong. Bubbles were caught in-between the wallpaper sheets so we had to remove everything and eventually, settled on using paint instead.

Our experimental film was made through a whole process of experimentation. In the beginning, after many failed scriptwriting attempts, we eventually curated our story based on ideas which were sparked during improvisational exercises in rehearsals. Right before production, our inexperienced team of non-set designers experimented with wallpaper. Although we failed to put it on properly, we persevered to make it work. During post-production, we also went through a series of trial-and-error trying to figure out the flow of our film. We tried reordering scenes and cutting them in ways we had never planned before. We were just figuring out the whole film along the way with just the simple premise and message at the back of our minds.

All in all, I thought we did a commendable job in the final product of our film and managed to overcome our challenges steadily. In our film, we showed our message of being stuck in a writer’s block literally through the restarting of scenes and on-screen graphics. With the characters and their situations, we illustrated the message metaphorically. Despite having many things to look at on screen (video, dialogue graphics, and scene header graphics), I thought it brought a fresher and more dynamic perspective to our film; something we hope our audiences would enjoy as much as we did making it.

When we first thought of the editing process we thought we would only have to throw all the scenes shot into a timeline and put the graphics on. However, we had to realise that the film did not flow as we hoped to when shooting the scenes. The pacing was off at times and did not really get the funny bits properly across. At first, we thought we could not really shorten the scenes, as the whole film was meant to look like a one-shot. This is where the use of graphics came in handy: They help guiding the audiences focus and make the pacing work better. Whilst creating the graphics, it was a constant back and forth between amending the graphics based on the scene and vice versa. Which is why this process was somewhat tedious, yet turned out to be worth the time.

We had planned to paste wallpapers up for our set on our set-up day (10 April). Unfortunately, we learned the hard way that this was no simple task. After spending a majority of our set-up day failing to paste the wallpaper up and having to rip it off, we were left with only a few hours to save our set before we had to leave Prime Studios.

We came in earlier than we planned on our shoot day to continue designing our set. Unfortunately, we were still behind schedule by over an hour. After finally setting everything up, we ran through what we were going to shoot with the actors and finally began rolling. As the day passed, we got into the groove of things and managed to catch up on lost time. The actors were familiar with what we wanted since we had been through 2 days of rehearsals. They were very open to share with us their thoughts of how they could perform or how they could deliver their lines more effectively. This made the whole process of collaborative filmmaking a more effective and creative one.

Overall, the team was happy with the result of our shoot despite the challenges we faced prior to shoot.

Lift breaks down 6 times during the script. 

When it breaks down the shake will be done in post. I will turn the back two banks off on the kino and Rew will turn on the red 800W to simulate the lift shutting down and the emergency light coming on while still keeping them lit. Kino will be set to tungsten .

Every time someone enters the lift Rew will use the dimmer on the LED, turning it up and down to stimulate light outside the lift flooding in as the doors open/close. This will be set to daylight temperature. 

Shoot on a 35mm, low angle, just above the waist. 

Go to a lower shot at the point when they both sit down and Mrs Fellini takes off her heels (ORpan down on fluid when they go to sit down) 

Go to a lower shot at the point when Josh crouches on the floor in a panic, go slightly tighter to show his claustrophobia but allow room to see Mrs Fellini.

X2 takes, one with the standard low angle so we can see Mrs Fellini deliverer her lines before she too crouches.

Cut back to original low angle when he stands up again. 

Finally, there’s the reveal shot of the set. Turn on house lights. 

After a second rehearsal, where we improvised specific scenes with the actors, we distilled a script from the scenes created.

During our tutorials, it was discussed about creating the realism of the elevator through camera and lighting. One of the elements included having subtle changes to the lighting when the elevator breaks down. I went away and further developed the lighting plan. I added a red diffused light which will switch on when the lift breaks down, illuminating one side of the characters faces, replicating some form of emergency light. The key light (Kino) will also be halved as a subtle knock to the elevators original lighting. I have created two plans to input the red into the scene.

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