Stranger was one of two scripts selected for production in my introduction to 16mm class. I was the director of photography.
We did a lot of tests, as this was my first experience shooting film, as opposed to digital video. My general opinion of film: it looks really good, but it's also absurdly expensive, the process is convoluted, the equipment is noisy, and frankly I'm looking forward to better HD cameras.
Production took one full day -- I'm not sure the owners of the house knew what they were in for. After the first couple hours they made themselves scarce, and we had the run of the place until sunset.
We shot the whole thing with Kodak Vision2 250D, which is color balanced for daylight. We wrapped the lights in blue gels so the colors would blend well with spill from the windows. We almost always shot in the part of the house opposite the sun, and put lots of light outdoors so we could control our 3k "sunbeams".
This worked particularly well in the bedroom, the breakfast table, and I'm really happy with the lighting on the clock. The bathroom was too low-key, and the living room too high-key.
We had to improvise a lot of the set in the basement. According to the script Steve was supposed to be in a suspended steel cage in the basement, but the art department didn't come through with a cage. Instead we taped Ben into the lawn chair. Were we to re-shoot I would have suggested handcuffs, and made the steel chains much more visible. And probably moved the whole thing into a garage with a pegboard full of tools...
The scene with the couple fighting about the toaster was interesting -- they're supposed to be across the street, but our director wanted to shoot in our hosts' back yard. The foreground grass is actually in a small tray clamped in place a few inches in front of the camera. For reasons unknown we shot the fight without sound, so we had to add the wind, crashes and voices later. We didn't know what the woman was saying, so it took a loooong time to come up with something that would match her lips.
Chris, who plays Ted, was cast at the last minute -- everyone is very grateful that he agreed to show up at 5:30 am after learning about the shoot 8:00 pm the night before.
An amazing amount of work for something that didn't really come out that well. Anyway, enjoy!
If Necessity is the mother of Invention, then Laziness is his deadbeat father. And Greed is his gold-digging wife.