WEEK 9
This week I worked on ‘Echoes’, both in the art department and as an extra.
As discussed previously, on the first day Claire did the makeup for our two actors, and I took reference pictures so I could recreate the looks. For our lead actress, Angelique, we decided to use one consistent makeup look for her present day scenes and another for the flashback sequences. Present day, Claire wanted her to appear sickly and tired, while in the last she wanted her to have brighter makeup, focusing on pink tones.
Throughout the week, it was also the task of me and the rest of the art department to set the various locations before filming, which often meant fairly early call times. On Monday and Tuesday we had already mostly set the apartment for filming, so except for moving some kit bags out of the way there wasn’t a huge amount to do. On Wednesday, however, we filmed in an empty art studio which required us to set up furniture, an easel and art supplies. On the Friday we were shooting a scene set in a hospital using an empty room in ECA. As we did not have access to a hospital bed we created one using tables and a fitted sheet, as well as a pillow and duvet. All of the shots in this scene were fairly tight so there was no need to transform the rest of the room.
On Wednesday I took on my small role in the film. I played a character named Nadia who had around 3 lines. We filmed this scene in a sushi restaurant before it opened, but travelled to Claire’s flat first to get changed into costume and have our hair and makeup done. Once in the restaurant, the sound team equipped me with a lavalier microphone to record my dialogue and me and the actor playing my boyfriend briefly rehearsed our lines before receiving directions from Claire on how to deliver them. We did a few takes off our dialogue from different angles and discussed with the director what could be changed in terms of delivery and body language between shots.
Over the course of the shooting days I also helped to organise and distribute the costumes which we had pre-planned to the actors. It was important to pay attention to where costumes were being stored after use as many of the items of clothing we were using belonged to crew and had to be returned after their use. It was also important to take proper care as we did not want the clothes to be creased, marked or damaged. We stored the costumes mainly in a suitcase so they could be easily transported when moving locations, but we removed some of the more delicate items and put them on clothes hangers to be kept hanging out of the way.
Once we wrapped on the film, I came to ECA to help the crew return all of the rented equipment from the shoot, and then returned to Hao’s flat to pick uk the personal belongings of me and my flatmates.
