Film Opening Reshoots

When we reshot our principal photography, there were a couple of big changes that we had to be aware of;

Firstly, Marcus, our lead actor, wasn't available much and at the time we wanted to reshoot, had to go to Scotland. Bearing this in mind, we decided I should act in it as we couldn't find anyone else in time and I just wanted to get it done. So with all the new footage, comes me!

Secondly, the lighting that we used changed drastically, because of the lighting being so poor in our first load of footage, after converting it to black and white. After getting in the editing suite again, we'll be able to tell how different the lighting is in black and white

Lastly, we decided that we didn't want any diegetic sound for the opening; everything is put in during post-production. This includes the telephone ringing and the conversation, which we tried differently to begin with, but which slowed the scene down drastically. The use of non diegetic voiceover manages to keep the opening within the time frame also, not allowing much footage without non diegetic sound.

We managed to get the reshoots done over the course of two evenings, both spent in Charlie's converted garage. As it had the atmosphere and aesthetic appeal that we were looking for, we confined it to the one room, not wishing to broaden our choice of locations within such a small scene of a film. The opening two minutes is, after all, not the resolution but the exposition. Using Joe Heath as our dead body, we corrected a few of the mistakes that we made during our first shoot; covered the radiator with a blanket, hid the crates of Carlsberg in the fridge and kept a lamp constantly behind the camera to spread much more light in the direction the camera is facing. This helped with some of the more trivial, but annoying, prblems of the piece.