This filming day was to get the last shots I wanted to refilm, plus film the new scene of V looking for the Hanahaki Disease book.
Re-filming the shots in the room and the bathroom weren't hard, because I knew exactly what I wanted to do and I could do it quickly.
The issue was the shot of opening the door in the bathroom. Before, I had started with the inside of the bathroom being pitch black, but I wanted it to start lighter to match the time of the previous shots. However, I didn't account for turning the light on to mess with the lighting in film. I tired to have the auto lighting feature on and off', both looked terrible.
An example of what turning the light on looked like in the bathroom scene.
I decided that using the old take was better, since it didn't blind the viewers from how bright the light became.
As for the flowers in the drawer, I believe that it is so much better than before. The whole drawer look fuller and it shows a how developed the disease has become, as well as, how many times V has coughed up flowers. The audience should have a better idea on how much this disease would affect a person's life (when hiding it from others) and how much V is struggling at that current moment. Plus, they would connect it with the information given in the book scene.
Old version of the drawer.
New version of the drawer.
Something about the book scene just adds something, besides the definition, that was needed. Before I though it might give a fairytale feel, rather than the slice-of-life/modern idea I was going for. If I had more time, I would have decorated the scene a bit more to be old (with spider webs and dust) and florally (vines, weeds, or flowers growing around the area).
For the actual filming, I wanted to get an angle to show the whole character and the drawer, along with having the camera so far back that gives the audience a spectator feel, leading to some suspense about what V is looking for. The tripod I had couldn't go that far, so I improvised with the extremely small tripod and placed some books underneath it.
As for the filming process, I did everything in chronological order and added the books in one take, except for the last shot with the pile of books. The idea was to have V slowly look through books as she gets more stressed the longer it takes for her to find any information and having it in one take let me keep the same sitting position I was in and not accidently disturb anything. Not to mention, I could just split the clips when editing.
I did have to remove the overhead shot of V looking into the drawer because there was a lot of things in there and I didn't want to move many things. It's a little sad that I couldn't do it but having V slowly remove books and having them pile around her gives a similar effect on both how hard and long she has been searching for.
When looking at the shot with the piles of books around me, I noticed that the area was extremely dark and I didn't plan for that. I had moved the lighting circle to right where my head was and left it on auto by mistake. However, I feel that it isn't a bad mistake at all. Having the darkened shot shows how long V has been looking for any information, which is also similar to the swings scene, later in the film. One thing is that I might be a little too dark now and my expressions can barely be seen, but the struggled breathing might let the audience understand how stressed/irritated/sad V is.
The beginning of the book scene, with a much brighter light.
The end of the book scene with a much darker lighting.
Once V finds the book, I decided to angle it for a few reasons: to hide contents in the drawer, having the book be straight is extremely boring to look at and I couldn't physically get a shot with the book straight since there was no space in the area.