Filming Reflection

I finished filming my movie opening and I had the role of Director and Cinematographer. I set up the camera to film the entire thing and told my actors what they needed to do. It was frustrating because I had the idea in my head but it was hard to communicate with them. I had filmed on the correct days that I marked off and it mostly went smoothly. I had multiple locations including a garage, store, and a street at night. I worked with a small cast of three people as my actors and it helped with focus. Each scene used different actors which made it easy for behind the scenes work such as camera as I had extra hands available to help set up lights while I filmed. Each scene took a different amount of time. I filmed the garage scene first and this was was the easiest to set up but the hardest to complete. This was due to my actors having a hard time memorizing their lines. I had send the script to them before to prepare but because it was in one take it was hard to do the whole thing at once. After a few fails, I decided to write the script in big letters on pieces of paper and taped them to garbage bins. I put them out of camera and it was mostly effective. I had to ensure they weren't just reading word for word so it still took a while until I found a take that looked natural. I also had another person give visual cues with his fingers to the actors when it was their turn to talk because they had trouble with knowing when the other finished their sentence. This preparation and filming took about four hours in whole as I had to ensure it was as perfect as I could get. The next location was the store. This was for the introduction of the film so it was only going to last for a couple seconds. This went smoothly and only took about 20 minutes to film. The only issue I had was finding isles without people and waiting for the outside of the store to have no one so I could capture multiple establishing shots. The final location was the street at night. This one was a pain to film overall. It was difficult to see so certain parts were hard to film. There was lots of distractions present like bugs or cars that halted production. This time I made sure my actor knew his lines so I had him study a week in advance and it helped. It still took a lot of tries because he was smiling and laughing a lot so I had to do many takes. I used multiple lights and had to make sure the shadows weren't distracting or the lights were too bright that it would be realistic. I used a tri pod for most of the scenes for a steady camera and placed it on top of a trash can as a base. This scene took about 2 hours to film with lots of moving around involved. 

The most challenging part of filming was the unpredictable environment of using the public neighborhood at night. It was hard to find a comfortable spot that would last for a while. What I mean by this is every time a car passed by and I had to move the whole setup to the side of the row the position I was at had to change. Due to this I had to redo certain scenes over and over or the shots wouldn't be cohesive. This was difficult because every time I already had troubles with finding a perfect lighting so it created more frustration. To fix this in the future I would of looked for even more dead streets. I would need it to find like an abandoned neighborhood that nobody would drive by. This would ensure a clean filming environment that limits the amount of interruptions. Another thing I would fix is creating clearer communication with the actors regarding their lines. I built the script and sent it to them early but I could have taken into consideration what they wanted to say when creating it since some lines were difficult to say and memorize. When reviewing the footage as well I realized portions of equipment snuck in screen and partially show in certain shots which isn't ideal so I would also fix that. The most fun thing while filming was the part of the film where I made the crash with the trash can. It was fun making loud noises and incorporating some sort of jump scare that possibly subverted the audiences expectations. The other parts of the process were partly frustrating as things had to be perfect, but the bang of the trash can was fun to tip over. In general, I am really happy about my results. I think a part of it feels incomplete but that is just because pieces are missing since it is just the opening. Compared to my previous attempt my camera and audio quality was way cleaner since I used a mic and focused in on every shot. I shot in horizontal composition this time so it actually looked like a movie instead of a poorly filmed video on a phone. In general, this attempt was a huge success and I took away many skills and lessons I previously didn't have before filming. 

 

Behind the scenes photo of what the set up looked like with the tripod on top on a garbage can and then some of the lights used.