I'm exhausted. What a crazy and busy day - things changed and we altered but, actually, I'm really proud of the result.
We started early, knowing we had face make-up and a lot of cast members to gather. As soon as the costumes and make-up were on, everything seemed to be falling into place. Our make-up artist Kika was truly awesome, she worked some Tim Burton magic - as well as the makeup and costumes, the lighting and set just seemed to be perfect. Everything was pastel and surreal, the lighting was a soft blue, purple and pink mixture that was simultaneously psychedelic and dreamy. We used the studio to start, this was our largest set up. We decorated a long dining table in a white cloth and placed about a dozen different decorations on it. These large decorations consisted of candy-filled vases and pyramids of food assortments. We found that we had to make everything bigger in order to fill the frame of the camera. The table though looked spectacular in the end and from there we shot our final sequence: The Tea Party Scene.
Next, we fell into a little bit of trouble, after the Tea Party Scene, we wanted to record the band sequence. The performance element of the music video. But our actors had previous engagements that they could not miss and we were running out of time. So we had to be quick on our feet and decide what to do - so, rummaging through our props department very quickly, we came across a large grandfather clock and four white pillars. In a quick change over, over the period of lunch, my crew and I created a new set, tables covered in candy and a central grandfather clock (reinforcing the physchodelic feel). The set actually looked fantastic, for a quick fix, it was surprisingly effective. For this set, we recorded our main singer (thank goodness we still had him) lip-syncing to the track a few times. And boy was he good! I underestimated our actor - originally, the replacement of the replacement of the replacement. He was fantastic. And when he was performing the lip-sync he really got into it and committed to the role of the Mad Hatter.
By the time the lip-sync was done we had to pack up the studio, clean up and move the rest of our actors to the buses to be transported to the location shoot. It was about 3:30pm, when we finally got to the location shoot and luckily I had already set up the main rooms that were going to be shot in - this saved us a lot of time. We started with "the reveal", the opening seen that glimpsed into the chaos and disorder of the fairytale world. The first shot we took was the tracking shot that snaked around the staircase. This was by far our most dynamic shot, shot on the Sony NX5 camera, we did a few takes - choreographing the movement of each character poignantly so that the movement of each character was fluid. Next we focused on recording each scenario within the staircase scene - using wide shots then close ups to focus on each characters corruptness and uniqueness.
The last few scenes to be shot were The Bedroom and The Bathroom scene as well as Alice's Retreat. These scenes were shot in real locations and lit with bright blue or pink lighting. We used wavering reflectors to manipulate candlelight for the bedroom scene and the gold side of a reflector to brighten the bathroom light. Alice's retreat is shot on a candid angle, an almost birds eye view to add to the feeling that she is being watched and analysised - like all women are when coming into society.
We wrapped at about 7:30pm and were shooting for a full 12 hours - it was exhausted, thrilling and taxing work all at the same time. I loved working on both sets and seeing our visions come to life through the frame of the camera. We had a large say in what camera angles were used, how the actors composed themselves and what sequences were shot in what order - a large step up from our AS thrillers, taking on more responibilty and control than ever before.
