Our first day in Margam. It’s so nice to be indoors again. I wear only 4 layers of clothing instead of the 7 I’ve been accustomed to. Ben and his crew are relieved not to be moving 6Ks and 4Ks around all day. It takes them some time to distro and rig the new sets, but at least things can stay rigged then, for the next time we come back to each room.
Most of the day’s scenes are in a windowless corridor. The lighting gets very dark and moody by necessity. We screw baby plates to the ceiling and rig 650W tungsten fresnels to them to beef up the candles underneath. Keeping them out of the top of frame becomes a bit of an issue, but you’re always going to have this problem with corridors and backlight. Whichever way I’m looking along the corridor, I turn off the lamps behind me and turn on the ones shining at me. Paul loves this backlight-only look. Meanwhile, 2.5K HMIs simulate the daylight coming in from adjoining rooms.
At lunchtime I watch the latest edits. The exterior Tretower stuff with the horrendous weather doesn’t look too bad.
Here in Margam, the art department have built an awesome set which will be redressed several times to serve as the bedrooms of several different characters. There is a fretwork grill in the ceiling which Ben rigs a 575W HMI above. It throws nice patterns onto the back wall, but for a nighttime scene we decide that just a shaft of light from the window (a 2.5K HMI, wrapped gently onto the actor’s face with a silver bounce board) does the job nicely. Sometimes less is more.
We return to our cottage, stopping for a pub dinner on the way, and light the open log fire. Today was a good day.