Production Blog: More Recording and A Bit of Re-Shooting

    Welcome back! I am pleased to tell you that my team and I have made great strides since our last filming session! We started off strong today, having all of our necessary props prepped and ready to go, meaning that I was able to start setting up my phone to film right away. Well, that is with the exception of our subject's T-shirt. After speaking to her upon my arrival, I was notified of the fact that it had been unfortunately misplaced. Given that our last go-around with recording only allowed for us to film one of the scenes, of which we had preceding scenes we needed to shoot, that meant we needed to re-record our entire bathroom scene to ensure that all of the clips aligned perfectly costuming-wise. I'm not one for luck or superstition, but given the issues I ran into while editing the last batch of shots, I'd say that the missing shirt was a blessing in disguise. Naturally, having the experience of filming the bathroom scene and now understanding where the problem originated from, we decided to start filming there. One of teammates suggested with use a camera stand and attach my phone to it as securely as possible. Doing so would minimize accidental shifts of the camera due to an unsteady hand, making the transition between our cut less noticeable. As soon as we finished recording the continuous shot, I made sure to take a quick, impromptu trip over to the iMovie app where I spliced the two clips together. This time around the only noticeable difference was with the lighting, so I'd say that's a win in my book! 

    After we got the bathroom scene down-pat, we moved on to the morning sequence. The preparation for that scene was quite the involved process. I began by working with my team to remove any extraneous items from the shot. Aside from what was mentioned in the screenplay, I took the liberate of incorporating a few more items that I felt would establish the tone that we intended to convey. The first of which was the inclusion of pill bottles, which one of groupmates suggested we messily spread out to illustrate how scattered the thoughts and actions of our subject are. In my teammates room, I also found there to be two books of interest. Their titles were intriguing and I felt they were relevant to the storyline of the film, which are important for their foreshadowing of later events, allowing perceptive viewers to extrapolate information and come to such conclusions before it all unfolds on-screen, just as thrillers are intended to be. As such, I chose to place them within view of the close-up shot that captured the alarm clock. Speaking of the alarm clock, it was my job to set and reset it every time we reshot the scene, which was a good handful considering that we needed to get the timing just right between our subject waking up, the alarm going off, and the time changing on the clock to be our film's title. I also readjusted the props any time they were moved, putting them back into their standard state or original location. Additionally, I figured out how to work the voice recorder and am even featured as the voice that says "Sunday" to denote when the message had originally been recorded. 

    Prior to filming today, I had spoken over the phone with one of my other groupmates to determine what details on the primary subject's life we should include on the sheet of paper that they read every morning. Said sheet of paper is also visible to our audience in the shot, and as such should include information that they may find useful in establishing more context for the subject given the limited time we have to give them a fully fleshed background in our five-minute short film. We ultimately decided that the name of the subject's affliction as well as a short description of it should be included, as well as their date of birth, full legal name, home address, social security number (no I did not my, or my teammates', actual numbers), phone number, parents and their relationship to the subject, as well as their place of work should be listed.

    Getting to back my actual filming experience, once we had wrapped up the morning sequence, we moved on to filming the office scene. My team and I ensured to leave the room we were shooting in in the exact same condition while we filmed the office scene because we were later going to film one more scene in said location. To jump forward a bit here, that scene was of the primary subject listening back to part of another voice recording in which the audience becomes aware of their date later that same night. The reason why we had chosen not to film that scene while we filmed the rest of our scenes in that same location was because we wanted to establish a parallel between the office scene and the morning after with regards to the subject's expression and posture. When it came to the office scene, the setup was relatively easy. Now before I get into that, you may recall that I had previously mentioned in an earlier blog that one of our teammates' fathers has a personal office at his place of work. Whilst it would have been amazing if we had been able to utilize said location to film, recent safety restrictions were put in place at his job that have prevented us from doing so. Being the resourceful young ladies that we are, we turned a dining room table into an office space with some clever placement of a laptop, desk chair, pens, stress ball (or brain rather), and sticky notes, you know, the works! Having our subject use the laptop, she was able to time herself before queuing a sound effect to play, which would be the ringing of the desk phone. It proved to be a good decision given that it reduced the strain of having either myself our my other teammates struggle with getting the timing just right. Once we had finished filming that scene, we cleaned everything up, called it a day and went our separate ways. Now here I am finishing this blog for you! I have decided to attach a few filming stills below, so be sure to check those out!

In the photograph above, I am shown working with our lead actress to record a message on the voice recorder.

Here you are able to catch of glimpse of my perfectionism taking over as I ensure to perfectly place the sticky note back onto the correct position where they were originally found on the primary subject's glasses before we refilm a shot.

In the preceding photo, I am pictured with both of my teammates after we grabbed a quick bite to eat and took a well-deserved break.

    My team and I will be convening again tomorrow to continue filming and I'll be sure to post another blog and keep you in the loop. As our subject would say, I hope you enjoy the rest of your day, and have a nice twenty-four, but in the words of The Smashing Pumpkins, I hope you make sure that "Today is the greatest (!)" (1993).