Aaron Ross, Harris Palmer and I decided to do our scene recreation on Taika Waititi’s 2016 comedy The Hunt for the Wilderpeople. The view the original scene, click here. We realised that the lighting for this scene would be very ambitious, but I don’t think we quite realised how difficult it would be. However, we gave it our best shot and, while it’s not exactly a perfect recreation, we learned a lot about cinematography from the project.
On our course, we weren’t given enough time for the project, as we were being asked to work on lots of other things all at once. This led to lots of limitations. Firstly, actors. We tried, unsuccessfully, to get other people from our course and, with similar difficulty, outside the course. Eventually this meant we had to act in it ourselves. Initially, this seemed like a fun idea. However, in practice, it meant that our entire crew was also our entire cast, which was a huge issue when all characters were on screen at the same time.
The location was another huge issue. We struggled to find a wooden cabin like the one in the film, but not for a lack of trying. First, we contacted a school which had a similar shed, but were turned down. We even tried contacting a ski centre! Eventually we just had to settle for a room in Aaron’s parents’ house. We were happy enough with this location though, because it had red walls which would provide a similar warmth.
In advance of filming, my sister visited me from Belfast. She is very keen on music, so I work out the exact notes played in the film and recorded her playing them. We were then able to sync with this on set and in the final film.
When filming, it was incredibly difficult to light the scene, because of the birthday candles. We obviously couldn’t leave them burning, because they wouldn’t last very long, so we had to estimate how much light they would cast, film and then redo if the light wasn’t right. We had to keep replacing the candles so they would stay the same length throughout the scene, which was a pain. In fact, we went all Barry Lyndon at one point and the single of Ricky Baker (me) is lit almost entirely by the light of the candles!
Overall, I’m proud of what we did, but I think with a better location and more suitable lenses we could have done a much more accurate job.
In editing, we made sure that each shot was the right length, down to the exact frame. Colour grading made a huge difference and I actually found it to be a very enjoyable process. Below is a comparison of a shot pre and post colour grading.
I think that I learned a lot about lighting and, despite our cameras not being the best, I realised that even they can look alright when the scene is carefully lit.
To view the recreation, click here.
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