Production Blog: A Part of the Action

    Well hello there reader! As you might have been expecting, I am back again with another filming blog today! I will say that since we last spoke things have gotten interesting regarding my role in the project. When we filmed today, my group mates and I focused in on the final scene. While filming just one scene may not seem like much of an achievement, I will say that given the volume of work my team and I needed to put forth it was quite the feat. To begin, we needed to create a fake news report to show on the television screen which our subject would watch, doubling as the big reveal for our audience. That's where I came in! Since both of my other teammates are central subjects of our short film, someone needed to fill in the gap for the additional individual we would be showing on-screen, so I stepped up to the plate. Now, because we lack direct access to an actual news recording studio, I decided to make the most of what we had, rolling up an office chair against a blank wall in my groupmate's bedroom, grabbing a cute mug from her cupboard, flipping over her black laundry bin, and then setting up shop. To avoid giving the impression that a random, poor-quality video was playing on-screen, I knew it had finally become time to put my PowerPoint skills back to the test. Using the animation feature, I was able to have the latest headline slide across the bottom of the clip as they do in real life. Additionally, I was also able to have the photo of the victim and an adoption related image fade in. It did take more effort than I had expected because I was unfamiliar with the laptop I was using (it was not my own), but it was a success. Once we had finalized the news segment, we tidied up the living room and cleared away any items that conflicted with the subject's personality or their constructed background. In the case that we were told not to touch or remove any of the items, I planned ahead on removing them with the help of a blurring tool when I get into the editing phase. We also added in an alcohol bottle, ensuring it was visible in the shot each time it needed to be shown. After we sorted that out, we got straight to recording! Staying true to our screenplay, we began with our use of an overhead medium shot to show our subject as they woke up on their couch and turned on their television. The process of filming that particular shot was no overly difficult, although we did need to reshoot a couple of times due to external interruptions. 

    Now I’ve experienced enlightened to say that sometimes technology fails us in contemporary society (DaVinci Resolve 17, don't think I forgot about you), but other times it absolutely saves the day. Today was the latter because with the laptop's screen-sharing capability I was able to directly connect the desktop's contents to the television screen, which is going to save me a great deal of time when I begin editing this batch of clips. That is because I will not need to worry about aligning a superimposed video over the scene and having to account for minor shifts in the camera's framing or angle. Despite our screenplay outlining our incorporation of a close-up shot on the television, I ultimately opted not to use one because I felt that the cut between the facing the subject and looking at the television was too jarring. It felt more natural to have employ a point of view shot and capture the television screen that way. As I had learned from shooting the bathroom scene, it is better to shoot one particular sequence in one go and edit the clips together than it is to try and cut back and forth and maintain the same framing, lighting, and positioning.

    After that was complete, I had the opportunity to take on more active role in the film once more, being the person who knocks on the subject’s door at the very end. Although the window is frosted over, I tried my very best to adopt an authoritative stance likened to that of a police officer. With all of that now out of the way, my team and I are just about done with only three scenes left to go!

    Just so you can get in on some behind-the-scenes action, I've included a couple of filming stills below!

Here's a photo of my groupmates and I moving a prop to a different location on set.

Although I am not pictured in this photo, this is the PowerPoint slide I had been working on in an effort to simulate a real news report.

As we get ever-closer to concluding our production phase, my sole words of motivation are sang loud and proud by Kate Bush and Peter Gabriel “Don’t give up (!)” (1986).