The narrative scenes were pretty hard to shoot and took a lot of time than the performance scenes. The actual scenes weren't as difficult to shoot as accessing the required props, location, and setting up the environment, especially the lighting.
The beginning shots took a lot more time than I had thought. It was pretty hard to get this shot right. I wanted a one-take shot capturing each prop scattered around the bed, with a hand-held camera. I had to take a bunch of shaky unpleasant shots until I finally shot a satisfactory one.
I shot these shots from a bunch of different angles and decided to choose whichever I find appropriate to use in the final mv. Here I focused on taking both CUs and WS to show both the girl engrossed in sketching and herself in terms of the environment of the room i.e not caring about how messy her room is. I also took a POV shot of sketching to add realism to the scenes.
These shots were also taken from a bunch of different angles, including both MCU and WS, as there were no dialogues or any context for the narrative other than the girl herself and showing that she is actually in the room alone and she's just laughing to herself.
For the running scene, I first decided to shoot an LMS, with a pan towards the direction she's running, but it didn't give a satisfactory effect. It was also hard to match the speed of the girl and the movement of the camera. So then I decided to go for an easy shot and took a WS, LS of her running towards the camera, as the camera dollies out. This time it was much easier to match the pace of her running and it felt more real.
This shot was supposed to be a crash-cut, to show two stories side by side, so I didn't alter the lighting as I didn't want to make it look like a typical flashback scene. It was a MS, OTH with a dolly in camera movement.
I wanted to give this shot a more dark-memory kinda vibes so I kept the lighting low-key in contrast with the previous shot. I used a floodlight for this effect. I creatively positioned it in a way that it gave out scant light from only one side. I did not have any strobes to use so had to go with whatever lighting equipment was available to me.
I wanted to show the little girl being locked in darkness, so I had to work very carefully with the lighting in these shots. I wanted just enough light to focus on the subject of the shot (the little girl) and enough darkness to keep in line with the narrative. I used the floodlight again in the former shot. However, I felt like it was still too bright for a dark-bathroom effect, so I left the floodlight out and used a normal flashlight. I guess this gave me the darkness I needed. I liked the grainy look as well.
While playing around with the lighting and shadows I got the idea of taking these shots of the shadows of the characters. I placed the light on the opposite side of the characters to get a suitable shadow on the wall. It took me some time to arrange the light at a perfect angle to get the perfect shadows. I had not planned to take such a shot but it was fun getting creative along the way.
I had planned to take a shot for the climax of the narrative, where it would be disclosed that both the girls are the same person and the teenage girl is actually hallucinating. I wanted to make this shot really impactful so I planned to use low-key lighting and a canted angle for this shot using a hand-held camera. It turned out more than satisfactory, especially because of how smoothly the camera moved. Though it was a little long, with a tilt-up pan and dolly used all together, it was an important narrative shot so I hope it didn't end up becoming boring. I was, however, still concerned about the lighting, I think it turned out pretty dark, probably more than it should be.
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