A biggish day exterior

[Phil Rhodes]

Hello.

 

On Thursday, I have to shoot a scene in the general style of the Bourne movies, a couple of spies walking along having a conversation outside a big glass-and-steel building (notionally their HQ). I've included some photos of the location and the path down which they'll walk. The view looking away from the building is nondescript but the frontage itself is quite nice, especially if there's some clouds to reflect (here's hoping, but this is the UK, so confidence in the weather is likely misplaced).

 

The action is that a woman exits the front of the building, a man arrives by taxi and moves to meet her, and they walk together back the way he came, talking and stopping twice at particular points in the conversation.

 

Needless to say, there is no real money available, certainly not for the enormously upscale lighting devices that would be required to do anything to a day exterior of that size. I do have track, dolly, a 5D, and probably a few bounce fills. That's probably OK; the Bourne stuff is quite naturalistic. My first thought is to use a lot of wide lenses and low angles for the overviews to make the somewhat-nice building seem more impressive, and see how that seems like it might cut with longer stuff on the actors as they talk. I'd like to have it end up being a bit cool, so I'll avoid showing much if any of the buff-coloured brick building.

 

Any thoughts?

[Darrell Ayer]

I would do everything in your power to shoot this scene from the angles from the first 2 pictures and wait for afternoon light (or morning depending on the angle). The location from the angle of the first 2 shots keeps the mood of a spy location, the reverse has very little "spy appeal". Cool location.

[Freya Black]

Probably a bit late to be commenting but you want to avoid the mannhole with the blue paint in shot 2 and shot 3 just looks ghastly so I think you want to avoid it altogether! ;) (Did you just slip it in there to remind us "this is England"?)

 

I reckon you shouldn't be afraid to intercut footage from completely different locations to get the feel you are after.

 

I hope it went well anyway! :)

 

love

 

Freya

Edited April 20, 2012 by Freya Black