Echoes of Silence - Beach Shoot (03/05/18) PT1

Today we had our beach shoot at Seaton Carew. From the very early days this was one of the most important scenes in the film for me. To get it right we had to establish the dynamic between the two characters in the scene, Julian and Grace. This scene is in place to show the different ways that the two characters have dealt with the death of a member of their family. Grace is passive and distant, whilst Julian is frantic and animalistic in his movements. The context of the scene is that Julian has a nightmarish fever dream where he is placed on a beach. On that beach is Grace and in the distance, a closed casket and beside it an axe. Both Julian and Grace are wearing fully black attire, to give us the idea that they are in mourning. Once Julian sees the casket, he hacks it open with the axe and finds the body of his granddaughter inside. With this scene, I am paying direct homage to one of my favourite films from one of my favourite filmmakers. With all my films, a lot of what I do is about exploring influence through visuals and themes. Below is a scene from Akira Kurosawa's 'Drunken Angel' which was the inspiration for the beach scene in Echoes of Silence. 

From a producing point of view, this scene was planned months in advance. I co-ordinated this with our co-producer, who was working on getting permissions from the council to shoot on the beach. This was an elongated process due to the fact that weapons were involved. Secondly, I worked with our production designer to create the props which would contribute to the scene. One of those was the casket that Julian would hack open. This had to be planned and crafted weeks in advance of the shoot. On top of both these points we had to work around the availability of our cast and crew with their involvement in other projects. Due to all of these reasons, this was a difficult part of the production to organise and manage. It required meticulous planning in pre-production, which obviously meant our focus must follow on the day of the shoot. 

Below are some BTS shots from the shoot. 

The shoot was a success, but right now I am not looking at it and forming any sort of opinion because this was only one part of what was required. Due to our actress being unavailable today, we were forced to shoot without her. This meant that we had to get the shots that were planned by shooting around where our actress would be. This proved to be quite difficult, but we conjured up some decent ideas on set to get around the issues. This is an example, the shot below shows a member of crew standing in front of camera (foreground) and the actor in front of them (background). We managed to achieve a balanced shot by using the member of the crew who was wearing black to dirty the right of frame. Our actress is going to be wearing black in the scene anyway, so we were able to trick the shot to make it seem as though she is actually there. I think from watching the footage back this actually works. We also had to take into consideration the wider environment, especially within the shots. The black magic cameras have a massive depth of field so we had to take care to ensure certain elements of the surrounding landscapes were out of shot - e.g. the nearby down of Seaton Carew. We managed this by using the reverse shots to show the sand dunes behind the subject - which were established at the beginning of the scene. 

Once again despite the obvious issue of our actress not being present, we worked around it and achieved what is essentially a big chunk of the scene. We have planned to return next Tuesday when our actress is available to shoot her part of the scene that is currently missing from sequence. I looked into this a little further to make sure we are getting the same weather so that our shots match up. Today was mostly cloudy, and Tuesday is set to be the same. I've also taken into consideration getting permission for a separate day, which our co-producer confirmed today. We will therefore be shooting the second part of this scene on 08/05/18 between 11AM - 4PM.