The animation we were making required the creation of a large model town on which the characters would later perform. Although the vast majority of this was made by the director Martin Burn I pitched in to create the odd tree or chair. After the set was finished it was the job of filming the back plate which we ambitiously planned to shoot in one continuous take, dollying from one side to the other stopping on queues to allow time for the story to progress. This posed many challenges, one of which being the lighting. We set up three dedo lights, two illuminating the set from the front at different angles allowing us to cast shadows into specific areas while leaving others more brightly lit and another behind keeping the doors tight to allow only a small amount of light onto the building windows creating of the illusion of light on in the house.

The main problem we encountered while filming this back plate was keeping the continuous camera movement steady and in time with the script, stopping at certain times to allow scenes to playout. Although things such as camera wobble and small editing problems could be fixed in post-production we wanted to create a back plate that was as close to the script as possible. For this we created a system of markers on the floor writing times for stopping and panning allowing us to get the camera movement as accurate as possible. Although it wasn’t perfect and it took many takes we came out with some really successful footage.