Day Six and Seven On Vanishing Act

Day six

This was one of our longest and most difficult filming days, taking place on a busy Saturday night by the river that runs through Lincoln High Street- looking back, we should have really chosen a different evening as it proved to be very difficult to get clean sound takes with no people in the background. Another issue we faced was the rain. We had an umbrella covering the camera for almost the whole shoot which caused issues due to the drops being audible so we had to shoot multiple takes of each shot, which was very uncomfortable for both cast and crew. We tried to keep the actors as dry as possible when resetting shots so that the continuity was not affected which was a bit of a scramble. In hindsight, I think the rain worked in our favour as it added more of a dramatic atmosphere, contrasting the comedic dialogue nicely and I gradually leaned into it and used the lighting to illuminate the drops on the actor's costumes.

This scene is the ending that brings everything together and so it's arguably one of the most significant scenes in the film. Due to this, I went in with a clear idea of what exactly both myself and Finlay Dodd wanted this scene to look like and how it should flow. As we were in another tighter space, I had to rethink some of my shots and angles as the camera took up a larger space than I had anticipated when we initially recced this location. The lighting was also a bit squeezed in but I believe we made some really good creative choices with it, for example, I was struggling as to how to light our hitman walking under a staircase but Finlay had the idea of hiding a Newer LED atop the staircase so it was lighting him from the top which created an intimidating shot.

For this film, I wanted to incorporate silhouettes as that is a staple technique used in noir and on this shoot, I was able to achieve this using another LED at the top of the stone steps that the Hitman was standing on. I am really happy with how this shot turned out as he was also smoking which is well highlighted by the backlight.

This day had its struggles and I think we were all feeling it by the end, especially with the set back of one of the magician's hats being stolen by a passerby, nut we got through it as a team and I am personally very excited to see this scene edited together.

Day seven

We had a wonderful backstage dressing room at The Baths Hall, Scunthorpe for shooting day seven. This was one of the smoothest days we've had and everyone on set was in high spirits which made it stress-free and enjoyable.

One of the only issues I had technically was that the ceiling lights were automatic so they would only turn off if there was no movement in the room, this threw me off slightly as I like to have complete control over the lighting, particularly because this is a noir where the lighting is specific. I tried to work with it the best I could and used some minimal but strong dedo lights on the actors' faces to still achieve that chiaroscuro lighting, Evan Day helped out as he was acting as gaffer on set for the last few days. Luckily though, the lights in the room were warm-toned so it won't look out of place in the rest of the film. I have tried to use a warmer temperature even though the film is black and white I found that this worked better with the actors' skin tones.

One of my highlights from this day was simply getting extreme close-up shots of all the set dressing that our talented production designer, Casie-marie Tyler had set up on the dressing table. I did this during our lunch break for the day and so I was just freely getting shots so that Jack Kinch had a lot of options to use in the final edit. I enjoyed not having much of a plan and just being able to adjust the lighting and angles as I went along.

This shoot was really successful and it was just such a joy to work on set this day.