Uno Nights: Using What You Got
By: Chris Collins
Here at Wide Open Camera we stress the importance of the community that HDSLRs have helped create. These cameras have opened the doors for small, inexpensive (if not free), and sometimes spontaneous shoots. I got a call one Friday afternoon not too long ago from my friend, Luke Hanlein, who needed an extra hand on a short film he was shooting that night. Long story short, by the end of the night we had convinced the director/producer to let us borrow the lighting package on Sunday before it had to be returned on Monday.
With a small but workable lighting package we hustled to place all the other elements needed for a successful shoot on such short notice. I called my good friend and director, Ilya Polyakov, to quickly develop an idea that we had recently come up with: a serious game of Uno played by eccentric characters. We quickly decided that it would open some doors for humor if we made it a game of strip Uno. That’s when Ilya started working on character descriptions and I started thinking about light. Here’s what Ilya had to say about development:
The idea for Uno Nights came about when my friends and I were playing a game of Uno together. Smoking, drinking, talking smack–just generally taking what is normally a family game, and making it outrageous. We were playing it like a game of poker. So we thought, this would make a great show!
The idea to incorporate improv was as organic as it was lazy. I’m not a great writer, at least not for dialogue, so I figured “what the hell, let them write their own dialogue.” But at the same time it made sense: our original game of Uno was only as funny as it was because it was so random. Shouldn’t the show feel the same way?
However, my job was cut out when it came to recreating the environment. There had been drinking, there had been smoking, and I saw no reason why my set should be any different. It was super convenient, because our location was my old apartment that I had just moved out of, so we basically had this big open room with a table in the middle, noir-ish lighting, and a bunch of beer, cigars, and who knows what else. This definitely helped everyone get into character.
Just because I didn’t write dialogue doesn’t mean that I didn’t want certain things from my actors. I basically came up with 4 different characters, each with their own nuances and schticks, and told each actor their own personality traits and feelings towards the other players, without revealing this information to anyone else. So they all went in their with these very strong characters, and really played well off one another. It was a pleasure to see how their dynamics unfolded and developed as time went on.
I am excited to see how these characters will continue to get more layered and complex with the progress of the show. I am also looking forward to infusing more narrative plots into the episodes. The teaser was fun, but it will be nice to see something actually happen. For that, stay tuned to Episode 1.
As for lighting, I had my work cut out for me. Ilya wanted a grungy basement bar feel to the environment, but the location we had was an empty apartment on the 8th floor of a Park La Brea tower. He initially wanted to black out the background, but upon seeing the Los Angeles city lights in the background through the Zeiss 100mm macro he changed his mind. The characters had to adapt to the new environment, but I had a much prettier frame.
I am a big believer that a beautiful eyelight is the cinematographer’s greatest priority in most cases. A pretty eyelight is difficult to achieve in a small space when the goal is a high contrast with soft sidelight. To create a nice eyelight without flattening the scene I decided to use the white walls to our advantage. We bounced a 300w fresnel off the wall away from the subjects so that we could see the reflection of the wall in their eyes while the light bounced off to another area in the room. This helped keep the fill low on their faces. We used a booklight as our side key and we were good to go.
If I could have changed anything about what I did I would have found a way to shoot a second camera. We were covering improv with one camera, and while it looked great we needed more coverage. The story of this shoot was that we needed to work with what we got. I think we did a pretty good job, and I know that we will do better when we gear up for episode 1!
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