Most of my experience has been in the comedy or drama genres, with regard to narrative fiction. I do love shooting documentary as well. So when the opportunity to shoot a science fiction short was presented to me a while back, I HAD to jump on it. I liked the concept and the story and I knew i could do it, but I also knew that a part of me wasn’t quite sure if I could do it well. I was heading into uncharted waters and the director, Andrew Marvin, definitely had some specific looks in mind when communicating his vision for the film. After talking with him I knew I was stepping out of my comfort zone. I just didn’t tell anyone that… yet.

Emily Jo Alexander

The story is set in a post apocalyptic world where a scientist is left to pass on humanity’s legacy. The scientist has been alone, locked up in her lab, for a very long time and precious oxygen is running out. She builds an android to assist in her quest, only to find out that the android may not agree that humanity should be worth saving.

So we have our setting, pretty easy enough with one location and basically two rooms that we are mostly shooting in – the main lab area and the android’s room. Andrew and I both agreed that we wanted some more texture in the air and that things shouldn’t look too crisp and “sci-fi clean”. This was the end of humanity, so why would anything be pristine, even the atmosphere in the lab? Andrew is a big fan of Spielberg films from the 80’s as am I, so we had the same aesthetic language. I just wasn’t sure how I was going to execute it, but I started doing some research.

Laura Welsh

I went to YouTube and began looking at some of Spielberg’s stuff of course, but also some of my old favorite sci-fi films from the 80’s. One of which is The Last Starfighter. I also looked at films similar to ours, such as, I Am Legend, The Book Of Eli, and even The Road. I still wanted to bring my own style of how I shoot and how I light to this film, but wanted to really challenge myself while also giving Andrew what he was looking for at the same time. We went to the tech scout on location at Clackamas Community College, near Portland, OR, utilizing their nursing facility.

Once I got to see the layout of the location, more camera and lighting ideas started coming to me. I knew I wanted practicals, something that maybe our main character would use. Maybe some of the lights weren’t working, bulbs blew, no replacements, etc. So maybe she had to use work lights. I wanted to play with this idea and have work lights shooting into the lens as much as we could. I also wanted to use these lights as an excuse to bring in other lights when we did our close up coverage. We also had the use of a great looking desk lamp that I wanted to also hit the lens every now and again. Also we never softened any of the light too much. Andrew and I agreed that this world shouldn’t be pretty or flattering.

Emily Jo Alexander checking her email – IN THE FUTURE

There have been plenty of times where I’ve had to light a scene and only set up for one character, then do a new set up for the next character. THEN, find out that we have to go back to the previous set up for something we missed. OR I would do a set up for every specific shot. I learned quickly that this was NOT the way to go. ONE: it took up a HUGE chunk of time. TWO: many times we couldn’t get each set up to match in camera. And THREE (perhaps the most important): this was forcing the actors to work within the confines of the specific set up. The actors would have to hit their marks pretty much dead on. This can mess with any performance as the actor is now thinking too much about hitting that damn little “T” on the floor perfectly.

On We Were Here, I lit for the space first, doing one major set up based on blocking. I used 3 1′ x 1′ Lite Panel LED lights, 1 KinoFlo Diva, a Lite Panel Sola 6, and  the 2 work lamps and desk lamp as practicals. For the Android room I used a Lowel Pro Light 200W, One 1′ x 1′ Lite Panel LED, and a practical fluorescent gelled with CTB (see above pictures). From there, I was able to shape the light or just bring in the Sola for anything extra I needed. This helped cut down on excessive set up time. We had a pretty small crew, so utilizing this approach helped in that respect as well.

Emily Jo Alexander has android problems

Overall, yes, I was pretty nervous but I get nervous before every project. I was happy with the results and was blessed with a great crew and a director who allowed me to flex some of my cinematography muscles, so-to-speak, and just run with things. I learned A LOT from working on this film and even though I felt out of my comfort zone, it helped boost my confidence a bit as well for future films. We had a huge challenge on this one due to some of the spaces we were shooting in and the lack of equipment we required – that is for another article. In spite of those problems, we pulled off the shots we needed and a few extras also. I’m itching to shoot another one of these. Who is ready?