Jordan began shooting the first basement scene after we were sure both actors were ready and the makeup was correct, with me on sound and Alex improving the lighting with the reflector board where necessary, the only hurdle we came across during this first section was space; there was a scene which required a close-up from the left side of both characters during a confrontation, however this meant Jordan had to do his best to squeeze into a small alcove just in order to get the right shot and this resulted in a few hits to the head and scrapes for him. Next time we should consider alternate shots when it comes to situations like that, perhaps if we had temporarily adjusted the positioning of the lighting equipment we could have shot from the right side instead, where there was ample room. Instead of going straight into the second scene we decided to film my section, the part where the brothers leave the basement to explore the outside world, this was the first time I had operated the camera down in the cramped basement location, as such I found it rather challenging at first. I realised that space wasn't just occasionally an issue it was an issue quite consistently, since this scene was full of emotional one to ones between the brothers I had to get in close in order to capture their faces clearly. What this meant was that I often had to stand at the side of them, with the basement being narrow this meant I was often struggling to get the shot right, or it took much longer than it needed to. A factor that also added additional difficulty was that I needed the fig rig for some shots, particularly when the characters move around the basement, this made the space even tighter but I think in the end the extra stability will benefit the footage greatly.
One part I struggled with was a shot wherein the pair proceed up the stairs and leave, it was very hard to get the lighting correct here and we had to rely mainly on the box lights just to get enough exposure on the characters, the stairs were cut off from the rest of the basement by a wall so there wasn't any other option. We also improvised slightly by wrapping the light at the top of the stairs in an orange filter to make the stairs look like the rest of the basement, this worked fine and I able to complete the scene rather quickly, which meant we could move onto the middle basement scene. We left this for last as it involved a scene where one of the characters vomits in the corner, we wanted this to seem real, so after researching effective vomit substitutes we found one that was ideal, we realised that the vomit on the floor might effect continuity if not cleaned up properly which is why this was shot last. Alex began shooting the scene, with Jordan operating sound and me using the reflector board where necessary, the vomit substitute looked very effective on camera, however the first take we did I suggested that Alex pull back a bit and get more of him being sick in shot the next, the first one barely caught any of it. After trying that we all agreed that the second shot was much more effective. After we'd completed the middle section of the basement scene we thought were finished, however we realised a problem; the box light hadn't been functioning during the first section and it had to be reshot in order for it to look consistent with the rest of the shots.
After that was dealt with we moved onto the scenes in the house that we didn't manage to complete during the first shoot, such as the kitchen argument and the scene where the mother and stepfather leave for a night out. We started in on the kitchen scene where the mother finds a bag of cocaine belonging to Phil's character and confronts him, we immediately made a slight change to one of the shots, in the original shot list the mother comes in and places the drugs down on the counter, we see this from a wide shot. However me and Jordan decided that it would be much better if we got a very low close shot of the counter, then when the drugs are placed on the side we tilt up and pull focus to reveal Phil's face and his reaction. In order to make the focus pull much easier I came up with idea of using little pieces of sticky notes to mark where I needed to pull focus from and where to, in order to have both the bag in focus initially and then move to a perfectly focused shot of Phil afterwards. This worked perfectly and we acquired the shot in one take so we moved onto the rest of the argument, I suggested that we shoot both Heather and Phil from low angles, to create power shots and have the argument seem much more intense. We had a problem though in that during the argument Heather and Phil would move around a lot, so I suggested to Jordan that he should try unlocking the tripod and following them as they move around, this worked perfectly and upon reviewing the footage we decided that all we needed to do was shoot the whole thing from a wide angle, just to cover our backs when it came to editing.
To cap off this shooting day we finished up the hallway scene involving the mother, stepdad and younger brother, which went smoothly and didn't require any reshoots, this meant we could then focus on shooting another scene which we had forgotten to film. The shot we needed was of the initial reaction to the cataclysm, Phil's character would run downstairs grab George's character then rush down to the basement, after we had filmed that scene we wrapped for the day and assessed what still needed to be done and whether we needed a third day of shooting, just for picking up the shots we missed.
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