Go Team Elysian! 

We began the day by collecting the equipment from Mollie's house at 8:30am - an early start! We got there for about 9am and began setting up. We had a few changes with the lighting set up which held us back from the production schedule. We realised that having the lights directly behind was not a good idea as the we couldn't get a soft enough depth of field to blur them out. We obviously didn't want the lights to be obviously studio lights! This resulted in us putting one light and the back corner and another in the same position on the back corner opposite. We made the lights go as high as they could in order to make them shine downwards on the dancers - almost like the sun at the water's surface. A lot of blue gels were placed on the lights to give them a blue tint and make them give off a more water vibe. 

Setting up equipment

The original lighting set up before alterations

While we were altering the light positions, we asked the dancers to do rehearsals to practise their dance to get more in the swing of things and warm up before the shoot began. I found it really exciting seeing the dance in it's final stage on set rather than just in the SU, and it felt like everything had just come together. 

Tom focusing on getting the shot

Here are some photos I took of the dance / dancers throughout the day : 

Reflection

Even though it was a bit of a shaky start I feel the shoot went pretty well. It was so nice seeing our vision that we've put so much of our efforts into over the past few months come to life - there's been times when we doubted it was ever going to happen so getting it done was a big relief and accomplishment for us! I'm so proud of us for overcoming all the obstacles and making it happen in the end. I think this goes to show you that if you work hard enough, most likely good things will happen. We're all exhausted at the moment, it's been a very long day. However saying that I feel like I can speak for everyone when I say we had a lot of fun on set. Emma and Harry are amazing and very fun performers and it was an absolute joy to work with them on this. We were all laughing in between takes at various conversations we were having or general banter!  I feel so lucky to have worked with such a motivated crew, not even just as a crew but also as my friends. Of course there were various problems throughout as there is on any shoot, but we overcame these and got on with the job, and as a result I really hope that we've made something that reflects all of our work and passion for the project.