Production diary 2: Office scene

The first scenes which I filmed for my trailer, where the psychiatrist scenes. This is because my trailer opened with these shots and I wanted to do the filming (mostly) in order so as to avoid confusion.
I used the office at the end of my garden as a makeshift doctor's office.

In my original plan, the psychiatrist building was shown from the front. But I had to adjust that to a side angle, because 1) the reflection on the windows showed the camera and 2) the office was too small to look like a real hospital.

Of course, the grass and garden fence were a giveaway, so they had to be edited out. I edited in a picture of a car to look a car park. I also added a sign on the wall which let the audience know what the setting was.
I adjusted the colour of the picture to create a morbid effect and added some splotchy clouds to fit with the rain. The rain is a PNG video from YouTube (this will be explained more in my editing diary).


I used eye shadow to give the actor dark circles under his eyes. I wanted to make him look sleep deprived and crazy. Later on in this scene, I originally planned to have the character bleed from the nose, but I decided against this.

Here's the shot of him scratching his hands manically. I experimented with a lot of different angles and camera movements. This one slowly panned to the left from behind the arm of the sofa. I thought it would look more professional if the foreground of the picture was in focus and the background was blurred.
The lighting of this scene was meant to be white, to make the setting look clinical and cold. But during filming, I found that the white actually looked too bright and uplifting. So I added a grey filter to better create the depressing atmosphere.

The shooting of these scenes went well. It got a bit hot in the office and there was lots of rearranging to make the place look more professional. I had to film the scenes again and again because we both that they could have been better. Eventually we were satisfied with the footage. Overall, it didn't take more than an hour.