The work on ‘Monroe’ opening sequence. Start of the shooting day. Preparation.

The shooting day began from the preparation of studio territory because we need to transform this place in Detectives office so we covered the walls by Monroe posters, photos and pictures. Then we prepared all monitors to show particular videos, for example one of three monitors played an iconic Monroe performance ‘Happy Birthday, Mr. President’, then the laptop on Detective’s desk played ‘Some like it’s hot’ to show one of the bright examples of Monroe’s career and the final monitor played ‘Diamonds are a girls best friend’ in which we zoom in after and transport directly to 50’s.

Then the area of the studio expanded according to the next scene, office fake walls were removed and transformed studio into one big stage with a special territory with red walls and stairs and Monroe and dancers actors on it to make the exact copy of performance that we saw moments before.
The surrounding environment was exactly what we need from office to 50’s dance scene. We met several difficulties when decorated office walls because the office territory was too big so we changed the position of posters few times to fill the space which camera is going to film by more pictures and less blank spaces in a wall. Regarding a Ball scene, a studio crew made red stairs and painted to the red the floor.

Our film sequence was concentrated more on pan and tracking techniques and less on frames which were shot from different angles. However we used a zoom at once to show the viewer his immediate journey from present day to 50’s and TV monitor which was zoomed had a role of streak between these two times. Tracking was used mostly in Office scene with a similar idea as ‘Sahara’ movie had just by showing pictures and photos in a room to tell a viewer what kind of room it is, what person can live there and what he is doing. So we panned the camera from box full of film magazines of past century to the wall, firstly, with Monroe photos where she is a small girl and photos which show her way to fame, then camera moves further to the iconic image of Monroe in white dress, to the posters of films where Marilyn Monroe starred in a main role, pan continues showing then Monroe’s worst days to suspect board of gangsters who had links with JFK, RFK and lots of public people who might willing to kill Marilyn by someone’s hands. Such shots as a TV monitor in a centre of the frame with Marilyn ‘Happy Birthday’ were very important to show the 50’s superstar not only on pictures but on videos as well. The frame with Monroe ‘Diamonds are a girls best friends’ was a key frame in office scene as middleware link between two sets of the sequence.