Filming - 14th March

For the video based installation, we are considering to exhibit it with projection mapping discussed in another post. After developing an approach to portraying Nano Nagle's life, we needed to source actors, costumes, props, locations and the equipment. We got in contact with CIT Drama Society but were unsuccessful in sourcing actors. I met with four students of drama and theatre studies in The School of Music. Even though there were excellent contenders to play the part of Nano, our schedules clashed. As our schedule is strict we had to get the shooting done that week so we transformed Anne into Nano Nagle. I asked a neighbour if two of her children would like to help us out and play the roles of Nano's students, they were delighted to and agreed to a payment of Haribo sweets. We wrote a release form and went through it with the mother who signed it. The final actress was an extra, a patient that Nano nursed.

Costume Design

Nano Nagle

For all costumes we tried to recycle and keep costs at a minimum, Anne very successfully made the white bonnets that both Nano and the students wore, with white crepe paper. For her dress and cloak I used a long black skirt over a long black dress (both of which i had in my wardrobe and never wore) and made a cloak using a black bed sheet. She wore a plain black pair of boots. We had a lot of fun with this, here she is in a strange juxtaposition with the bright orange wall. 

Nano's Students

 

For the girl's outfits we bought pillow cases and cut holes for the head and arms. I dragged the material around the mud and gravel to make them look more like worn. They wore these with the bonnets and plain white t-shirts and leggings. 

Props

We sourced blackboards, chalk, straw, a dictionary(which we used as a bible), the lantern, rosary beads and an old table for shooting

Locations

Initially we wanted to shoot the school scene in an old run down barn shed, the darkness prohibited this as we were shooting from 6pm. We had availability of a photographic studio so decided to create the sets there. We were aware that this was a big task and setting the scene would be very difficult but it turned out very well in the end.

 

The set for the school scene was created with a brown background and a floor of hessian. 

Lighting was a huge part of making a convincing scene, we placed 2 low level lights in the darkness. We later bounced the light of white surfaces to make a softer glow.

This scene was again shot in the studio. The lighting we created for Nano nursing the sick scene was much more dramatic. We went for a low but sharp lighting, with strong shadows. The actress lay on the table and we covered her in a hessian blanket. We set up a high chest of drawers beside the bed where Nano places the lantern.




















Final scene was to see Nano with her lantern walking through the streets of cork in the night.
We debated shooting this during the day and creating the darkness in post production. We had some fun with the content of that video.(Which on reflection is pretty embarrassing) Here is testing of that..

And we also did some testing of various possible filters for the end result.

We shot this at night on a small street back from Sullivan's Quay. It was a gorilla style shoot, we had to move traffic cones and wheely bins out of the scene. And shot the footage in between passing cars and groups of people passing by. 

Post Production

Once filming had been completed it was time to edit the footage. We wanted each scene to be less than 30 seconds, just giving the visitor a quick snap shot into the past. The video was edited using Final Cut Pro. The filters we used were Bed Film with a vignette. Maeve storyboards provided a basis for editing. The video has now been edited and the next step is to text this on an audience as well as seeing what it looks like with projection mapping. Below are the edited video clips: