Sets and fittings

SETS AND TRIMMINGS

Martin our production designer was working on a few last minute things that he was creating solutions for. One was the basement of Victoria baths, which was great but the door at the bottom wasn’t too hot. Martin instead designed a new door and frame designed to look like an old rusted metal thing with locks and latches giving the impression of something horrific hiding behind it. He also designed a faux door for the bathroom, this door would actually open the wrong way – out instead of in but I wanted as much space as possible within the bathroom and that seemed the wiser choice. Getting a hold of the kind of brass fittings we were after was proving really difficult but Martin just headed off to find spares and built his own, specifically the towel holders and the legs of the sink.

Most of the bedroom furniture was in place but we wanted to keep it minimalist as possible to reflect Masons repetitive and militaryesque lifestyle.
I also suggested getting a small piece of bannister we could use in the front door set to place in front of the camera to if we set it up high and shot through the piece of bannister we could give the illusion of a flight of stairs that wasn’t there making the hall and front door out of scraps gave us the illusion of far more than we actually had.

IT’S MENTAL!

We did our last tech recce of Victoria Baths, taking the last measurements and coming up with a few solutions to problems we hadn’t as yet dealt with.
Following that we headed to Media Dog Manchester who had a testing room they allowed us to use, there we met with with Rick our monster actor, Rebecca Chubsey, Melanie Doyle and her assistant Michelle, Mike Staniforth and 1st AC Lewis with his ace motorbike.

We got Rick into full costume complete with hands and clothing and realized it looked amazing, we did a combination lighting test with the hallway set practicals and the monster and realised less was more, too much fill showed it off way too much ad we wanted a hint of him not the full thing

I found myself pulling away from the project today at the time when it felt at its most real. I felt my monster was no good, the film itself sucked and I had no reason to think this. Matter of fact I’d woken up feeling like shit and it had nothing to do with the brandy triggered hangover, I just suddenly had no love for anything I was working on and felt I had wasted my money and set myself up with a lemon.

After chatting with some close friends and getting some wisdom it seemed to be I was intentionally pulling away from the project on purpose as away of avoiding failure. Stay at home in bed, don’t do it! That way you’ll be fine…

It’s strange though how identifying a mental problem gives you the strength to overcome it.

After tinkering with some Tiffs we had shot sent over by Mike Staniforth I felt far better and back in the game….