The party scene was what felt like the penultimate scene of the film. The party scene was to be a large choreographed scene which sits in the middle of the acts. I always intended the scene to be a big lively event which has the atmosphere of a real party. The scene picks up where a previous scene leaves off with the main character of Alice feeling a sense of isolation. From that scene we hear the faint sound of a muffled bass vibrating through walls. From that slight shift in momentum we can gather we are heading into a new area and a new scene.
We then transition from that sound into a long tracking shot of the character of Alice approaching a house as the music gradually builds until she enters a room. As she enters the front room we see a range of bright colours illuminating the faces and walls around the scene. At this point I think we really start to feel the party vibe as we hear the sounds of people partying and drunkenly chatting amongst a large crowd in the centre of the room. Practically this scene was very difficult to shoot, as we anticipated. Despite the difficulty we had on set, we would always have faced much more of it if we hadn't continuously prepared for it with numerous tests. The tests for this shoot came in extremely handy as we already knew what we had to do, it was just a case of pulling it off under the pressure of time and with lots of people around us all asking questions etc. I felt as director this was a very challenging shoot but it also feels like it is essential to my growth. By stepping up a notch with these type of lively scenes which require extreme attention to detail and planning, I feel I am growing immensely in confidence and ability as a director.
The shot continues as one interrupted take throughout the full scene. As I previous discussed above, the camera follows the character of Alice as she enters a house party. She then ends up standing alone in the middle of a room before she is greeted by a young woman who appears to be a previous acquaintance of hers. A conversation ensues which helps give us even more of a context as to who Alice is. My primary intention with the script was to have scenes which gradually peeled away at the layers of who Alice is. With each interaction a part of her past is revealed, but more importantly a part of her present self is brought into focus. The images below show the part of the scene I am discussing. The two below images show the green lighting we used to enter the scene with, as it connotes a sense of peaceful tranquility. At this point in the scene Alice is under no threat of danger, she is seen to be conversing albeit cautiously with old friends.
We then transition again into a new area of the scene. As Alice comes under threat from two young men who follow her through the party, she turns and makes her way down a corridor which is illuminated with a deep red light, removing the peaceful connotations of the green lighting with a sense of impending doom. This was strictly difficult for my director of photography and sound operator, who were up until this point on a linear journey into the house from the outside. At this point it all changed, and they had to constantly manoeuvre around a small corridor to change the direction of the shot. This took a lot of precise decision making from myself and the crew as to how to get the best result possible. We figured this all out in test shoots, but it instantly became apparent that with actors there that we hadn't had in the tests shoots, we had to reach another compromise. We used doorways to rooms to manoeuvre the crew around the moving characters. As the scene continues Alice must find a way to escape. As she is walking down a long corridor, there is no immediate way she could escape the men following her without a crafty plan. As she walks she grabs a wandering drunk and kisses him up against a wall. The following men then walk past her unaware. Practically this was very difficult to shoot because we had to switch focal points and follow others as they passed, this was hard primarily because of the width of the corridor. It was often a squeeze for the actors to get past myself, the cinematographer and the sound operator to make their way down the corridor. Despite all of this after around 20 long takes we made it through and got into a rhythm that allowed us to work effectively. At the end of the corridor the camera spins round and begins tracking Alice again as she pushes the character she was kissing off of her.
At this point shown in the above picture the colouring changes again. From the red we transition at the end of the corridor into a deep blue which allows us to see Alice leaving the party. She leaves the danger of the red, passes the cool of the blue and leaves behind the vibrancy of the green. Once we had transitioned from following the characters who were chasing Alice, and back to following Alice, we were on the home straight. This was then the easiest part of the scene as Alice just walks straight ahead, there was no repositioning of the crew to capture dialogue or internally motivated movements like the kiss. We then moved on to the after party scene which we shot at an exterior location.
The shots below are of the after party scene, where we are allowed to follow the events of the party into the street as we see the two characters who were following Alice. The two young men wander out into the street, one holding himself together and one struggling from how drunk he is. Evidently, from the images below, the scene was entirely lacking in lighting. I am disappointed at how this scene looks because we have gone from such a high standard of the party scene into a flat student-looking production within seconds. Without any exterior lighting sources we almost completely fail to light the subjects to a point where they are recognisable. We will learn from our mistakes from this shoot for the next time we work on exterior shoots. The context of the scene is that the young men get in a car and drive away from the party as we hear the faint sounds of music still playing from the party. As they drive away, Alice follows.
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