Being a gaffer in "Maria" & Filming “Maria”
Being a gaffer in “Maria”
by Tommi Vihko
Working as a gaffer in “Maria” (working title) was a first for me. My experience in lighting relies mostly on two previous internships. Consequently, I was already familiar with the way the lighting department operates in feature productions. I had been eagerly expecting a chance to be head of the lighting department in a short film for a chance to apply some of the techniques I’ve come across as an electrician trainee.
During preproduction, I tried to focus on interpreting the general mood of the script and listening to the visual ideas of the DP and director. I made notes of the basic properties of the scenes, i.e. the time of day, the effects of weather, and practical lights.
An initial concern of mine was the matching of lighting in the shots within a scene as several scenes were to be shot over a period of several days with some dependence on natural light. The mixing of interior and exterior shots and different locations, shooting in various times of day and weather conditions was quite a challenge. To make matters worse, the winter of Finland proved to be a difficult season in this regard, with uneven and sometimes unpredictable changes in light levels and color temperature before sunset. I’m hoping that some of the bad luck we had trying to match shots with all these variables can be recovered in post.
Another lesson I learned had to do with lighting “dark” scenes. I think it’s a common pitfall to think that dark scenes need to be lit with insufficient amounts of light when actually more emphasis should be placed on restricting the light to specific areas and leaving something even in dark areas to work with in post. Shadows don’t need to be as dark as they’re intended to be in the final look of a scene. On some occasions the light levels were just too low for achieving a reasonable T-stop and a good signal-to-noise ratio – although shooting in a pitch black forest might have been asking for it.
All in all, I’m satisfied with the overall imagery we managed to capture and the DP and lighting crew were knowledgeable absolutely great to work with. I’m now looking forward to my next lighting job – I know the results will steadily get better with experience.
Filming “Maria”
by Mikko Peltonen
Filming Maria was probably the most stressful project for me so far. Such a short pre-production time made us work harder than ever. We had to decide what phases of pre-production are the most helpful considering the coming shootings. I spent my days filming the demo. We actually filmed and edited the whole movie before the actual shootings. It was really useful for the whole team. Everyone could see what we are doing. For me the thing was to see how the shots will be cut together and what kind of rhythm we should aim at in different scenes.
Shootings started really smoothly. We were on time and we didn’t have to compromise for anything. Then something happened and we were constantly late on the timetable. We had to tight the phase of taking shots. That’s when the artistic expression starts to leave in the background. It’s the most annoying thing while you are shooting a movie. You start to compromise in things you should not to.
Carefully planned storyboard helped me the whole time. At the fifth and final shooting day, after eleven hours of being in a dark and wet forest we got everything done. Can’t say my feelings for my work was the best. Too much of compromising left me with a bit unsatisfied feeling. But that’s filmmaking.
In the end I learned a lot of new ways to use the pre-production time. At shootings I was really pleased for mine and Tommi’s cooperation. I think we made really good material for post-production.