Art Department Exercise

Today we filmed the results of our week-long art department exercise. We worked in groups of 4 with the help of John Girdlestone to produce a short film set in a particular period. The script was pretty simple, intentionally so that it can be interpreted in many ways. Since there were 4 groups in the class, we picked 4 random periods - 2030, stone age, china in the 30’s and post-WWII NZ. Then we went location scouting. Since our group had been assigned the stone age, we went looking for caves. Luckily the coastline is full of them, but we also went for an old gold mine in Karori nature reserve. In the end we plumped for an open space in Breaker Bay, where we could light a fire and film without any problems, after getting the ok from Film Wellington. We spent a happy afternoon at the Costume Cave looking for furry bits for costumes. We had done a script breakdown of all the props and set dressing items we needed, but because of our period we had to find a stone age equivalent for them. A clock became a sun dial, the photographs turned into hand prints on rocks, the mirror a rock pool, the paper in the Jayne Eyre book was replaced with the twist in our story, a lighter hidden behind some decorated pebbles: We shot today, with Merryl and Corey acting, Jake directing and me as DoP. It was freezing cold, but the actors still managed to act barefoot and wearing very little. We set up early and shot till 3pm with hardly a break. You can see the end result below or here.