11.5. ACTING FOR CAMERA

  Today me and Jenny finally got to do our scene from Mike Leigh's movie 'Life is Sweet'. We chose to shoot in the old painting and decorating section of the college, because one of the rooms already had a couch there. The window also gave us excellent lighting, so we only had to use our light when lighting Jenny's face.
   Our scene was fairly simple and pretty short as well. The difficulty in this scene was to get the characters clear and funny. Our pacing was especially important, but I felt we did a good job with it, since both of us were well memorized and we had rehearsed and discussed the scene multiple times. We took over all 5 shots and the largest amount of takes we had to take in one shot was 3, which was pretty good. Most of the shots were done in one take. Since our script was simple, we didn't have any entrance or change in position, it didn't take too long to shoot, but also most of the shots were done so that we got to do the scene from beginning to end, not having any pick ups. This really helped with keeping up in the mood of the scene and helping it to flow better. The important thing when doing a pick up or a shot in the middle of the scene, is to know the progression of the scene and how the emotions and intensity rises. You need to know what part of the scene it is, and what emotions your character is going trough so that you can keep consistent with the progression of the scene.
   I have said before that I don't like being infront of the camera, because I can't really relax in that situation. This time was a bit different, I felt a lot more comfortable acting infront of the camera, even though I felt I could have been smaller in my expressions. I still often think about acting in the theatre point of view, which makes my facial expression more exaggarated  to be seen from far away. I did manage to put some small looks that made a huge impact during the close ups, which I felt pretty proud of. I also tried to have a bit more northern London accent, since that is where the movie is set. Now, it wasn't perfect, but I did think that the timing and pace of it made it seem more realistic.
   On the technical side, what me and Jenny had to do in the shots were to sit closer together, just because on film the distance will look bigger. We also had to move the sofa once we started to film on the other side of room, so that the proportions would stay the same to previous shots.