Production Blog - Surmounting Challenges But Making Success
I’m back! It has been a couple of days into filming and let me give you the rundown on these days.
Now, originally we had planned to film on Tuesday, October 17th. Janiah and I talked to each other and ultimately decided to change the filming date to Wednesday, October 18th. The reason was on Tuesday I had an afterschool club that lasted till 17:00 and then I would have to drive an hour or so to get to North Regional Broward College Library at 18:00 earliest. We had blocked off filming till 20:00 so after driving back it would be 21:00. This concerned me since I had a test for one of my major classes and no time to study properly. I brought up my circumstances to Janiah and she was understanding as she also has a lot of schoolwork to complete. After devising Tuesday wouldn’t work we compared available days with Janiah’s work schedule. Our next available date was Wednesday, October 18th, the following day. Thus we decided to film this day. At first, we weren’t going to stick to North Regional Broward College Library but we quickly realized it would be easier for both of us to go to Broward Main Library.
On Wednesday we had pre-planned to film a scene using coins, and biking, and film the opening sequence in a library and a car. To start we filmed in the Broward Main Library around 15:00. This was perfect since we had our school materials with us already so then we didn’t have to go back for props. Preliminary to filming we wanted the opening scene to center around a friend group but given our friends’ busy schedules we had to work with just our duo. I took charge of filming because I felt comfortable maneuvering the camera and Janiah was our main subject. Despite this, we did film a few two-shots and sole shots of just me in case we need to expand the video we have clips easily accessible. As we filmed a lot of ideas came up. Since we wanted to stick to the original storyboard as much as possible we filmed all the original shots while also adding in our new ideas. After the filming in the library was done we walked down Las Olas and sat down to eat and debrief in The Cheesecake Factory. Here’s a further breakdown of our process:
Arrival at Broward Main Library
Explore the 8-story library.
I am slightly familiar with the layout but not totally so we took some time to scour the scene. This way we could both determine which areas we wanted to film.
Filming in library
We added a few new shots. Janiah especially had ideas surrounding types of shots. She related them back to shows I knew so I was able to maneuver the camera correctly. I found a lot of potential in different locations of the library which allowed us to alter the scenery of certain scenes. One thing that was difficult to navigate was the influx of people in the library that day. This led us to having to change locations a lot because we didn’t want to include any background characters yet.
Here are some of the shots we got:
Any shot that was discussed in the original version of our storyboard was taken.
However, Janiah filmed me doing the scene of running out of the library. Since we are using Janiah as a main character this scene will not work in the final video. Thus we have to make a different transition from ambient sound to non-diegetic. This is why we will be still doing the headphones scene. After this part a close up shot of the phone will be used to show Janiah increasing the volume of the song, then a fade in and out will occur and the “fun” scenes will play.
The lack of incorporation general movement shots was apparent so taking time to do a couple tracking, pans, and tilts was vital.
We wanted to use only ambient sound in these scenes but we often were directing as we shot specific scenes so the auditory elements may be altered.
Some new shots include”
A shot where a book is being pulled out from a shelf and then the face of a character is revealed.
A shot that starts off behind a page of a book, then Janiah flips the page of a book as her face is shown as she is “reading”.
A tracking shot going up a staircase of me.
Walk down Las Olas and arrive at The Cheesecake Factory
Important note: There is no particular reason we picked The Cheesecake Factory; it was simply the best food option that best suited us.
Debrief at The Cheesecake Factory
We reviewed the scenes we wanted to film. Though we had planned to film the “coin” scene part of the storyboard in box 9-10 we forgot to film this part. This just means we need to make sure to do it on another filming day, since it is an “easily” filmed scene I have no worries about this.
We also wanted to film the “bike” scene today. Quickly, we realized that this scene was supposed to take place on another day. Both Janiah and I lacked an alternative costume choice so we decided against filming this scene for now.
The debrief we had included some questions like: What went well? What was bad? What can we improve? The hope of chatting about these questions we are able to alter our method for the next day of filming.
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