Beyond the Wall of Sleep
It’s a wrap! The storm is over, sunlight’s crashing through…
It has been an exhausting three-days-shoot, but also very rewarding. Loved every minute of it and our thanks go to our awesome crew and our talented cast for embarking on this ship and trusting her captain. Our short journey to the other side went pretty well considering the fact we haven’t shot anything since “Die Farbe” exactly five years ago and that we had to antedate.
On our first shooting day it didn’t look that well, since we started with a delay of more than three hours due to necessary changes to the production design. Many props came out much too dark in front of the white walls, and since we didn’t expect the contrast to be that strong and unpleasant, we had to re-arrange everything, paint some props and use white cloths to create the mood we were aiming for. In the end our first shooting day took much longer than planned and we couldn’t realize two shots, but since they weren’t that important, we could live with that and were happy to get at least a couple of hours of sleep.
Unfortunately our second shooting day didn’t start much better. Again we had to face a delay, this time over one hour, due to production design issues. Windows with intact glass were discovered in the house and our production design assistants tried to put them into the window frame of the room we shot in. They had to be fitted and it took some time, but again the outcome was worth it. It looked more natural, no additional VFX work was needed and the actor could touch the glass in one particular shot. Despite the delay we managed to shoot all scheduled shots but one, a complex bluescreen shot, though we managed to go back to one of the two shots from the day before. that had to be omitted. It would have even been possible to reach planned target if there wouldn’t have been a special event that very evening… an event called Champion’s League Final…
Thus, we had to get that bluescreen shot on our third and last shooting day and the scheduled rest in the remaining time – and we succeeded! One could see that crew and cast grew stronger together from day to day. It’s a pity that everything had to end just when we started to really get to that level. Hope we can continue to push beyond the Wall of Sleep again someday soon!