Another Successful Filming Day

           Today in class, I proposed the idea of filming after school. Alex and I had practice at 7p.m. and Jack had an award ceremony at 6:00 p.m. Besides these events, all of us were available the rest of the after noon to film. Since we all agreed to film, I made Alex check out the camera. Once we had the camera we decided to meet in the student parking lot to go to Jack's house. We went to Jack's house to film because that was the chosen location in our planning. We arrived at Jack's house and began to set up the equipment and film. We all agreed to have Alex film, and Jack and I be the main actors. I was selected to be the burglar in our heist movie. Once the roles were assigned we began to film.
          To start off, we shot the scenes where the burglar was scouting the neighborhood to choose the house he'll rob. For these scenes, although I was the robber, jack drove his car because he obviously wouldn't let someone else drive his car. This is not a big deal because the burglar has a hood on and the camera doesn't really pickup the face of whose driving the vehicle. These scene were a little hard to film because of the distractions and obstacles proposed. For example, for one of the driving scenes I had to be on the road. Before we began filming I had to wait to make sure no cars were passing and no cars would interfere with our shots. After we filmed the shots of Jack driving, I switched into the hoodie the burglar was wearing, and I acted for all of the scenes, where it was the close ups of the burglar getting ready to invade the house. After getting a majority of the shots which I'm in, the camera died. This caused us to go inside and find something else to do, while we let the camera charge for 30 minutes.  After the 30 minutes passed, we continued filming the shots of me entering the house. Once we filmed the entrance we ended our filming session with filming the shots where, I am peering on around the house making sure the coast is clear. This concluded our filming session, which allowed us to get majority of our film done.

       

We Finally Filmed

          On Friday, I checked out a camera and tripod so that our group could film. We all agreed to film on Saturday for at least an hour. On Saturday morning, I woke up extremely late. This caused our whole schedule to be ruined. Our schedule was ruined because once I woke up, Jack had to go to work. Not only did jack have to go to work but Alex was also not available for the rest of the day.  With this being a problem that I started I decided to fix the problem and not let the weekend go to waste. I texted Jack and Alex that I will film the establishing shots that we needed. The establishing shots consisted of shots were there were no actors involved. Once I filmed all of the establishing shots, I contacted my group members and told them they'll be receiving the clips soon. I sent them the videos I took so that they can review it, to make sure they are up to the films standard. they reviewed the clips and told me they were perfect for now. So once I got home I dumped the footage onto my computer. After I dumped the footage, I organized it into a folder. This folder was going to be for all of the footage for this project. Once all of the footage was organized I shared the folder with Alex and Jack. After about 30 minutes both of them informed me they received the footage. The next day both of them were available to film but I wasn't. This meant they couldn't film because I had the camera and I wasn't home. So there was no way they could get the camera.

First Scheduled Filming Session Was A Failure

          At the beginning of last week we were assigned to begin filming for our final project. To start off, we began planning out what locations, equipment, and people would be involved in our film. After we decided what the specifications of our film would be, we started to talk about the days we could film on. We decided that our ride to the different locations would be Jack. I asked my parents if that was fine and they said yes. Not only did they agree on jack being the designated driver but they also informed me that if I needed to get somewhere quickly to film in the exact moment. That I would be able to drive to the filming locations so that Jack wouldn't have to pick all of us up.  But that option was only for certain circumstances. After, further discussion Jack, Alex and I agreed to film at the park on Sunday. When the day came we were already and still on to film. After a while I got a text from Jack and he informed awe that we couldn't film. After hearing this news I responded with "why  can't we film." He further explained that there was a sewage spill near the park. I was a little confused because the sewage spill wasn't at the park but it was close. So I thought we could still film since the spill wasn't at the park. Because he lives closer to the park he told me that the workers were not letting anyone in. I was kind of bummed that we couldn't film because I was actually looking toward to film.  We then asked to film at Alex's house but we didn't end up getting approval. His mom told us that she didn't want us to film at his house because his sister was studying and she needed to be completely focused. After this we accepted our defeat and decided we weren't going to film on Sunday. We rescheduled to Monday but unfortunately we weren't going to be able to film with our whole group. On Monday Jack got his wisdom teeth out and I wasn't able to drive anywhere with Alex so we couldn't really go anywhere. With this being the case we decided that this weekend was a failure and we will have to film some other day.

Planning: Storyboarding

          This slideshow contains our storyboarding for our final project: the opening sequence of a film. We had a debate on how we wanted to do things because we all saw different visions. These were solved quickly as we were able to settle our differences. We did this my dividing up who got what slides. This allowed us to divide them based on who wanted what. This meant we could have different visions and for them still to work. I think this will really help in the long run as we now are not disagreeing on what we want. The hardest thing was probably having to cut things out that were not important enough. We only had so many slots for scenes, and this meant much of our ideas wouldn't make it. We ended up voting many off and decided we liked what we had, and if we end up changing things this is ok too as we have planned many backup plans in case of failure.

Planning: Title Design

          Attached is our plan of our title design. We wanted to keep it simple, yet still useful. We wanted to not do too much as this would take the attention off the actual film. We are going to use only one font, spectral. Our hope for only using one is to keep it simple, so that not too much is going on. This will also allow the viewer to take in the titles while still watching the film. We also plan on keeping the movie simple by fading in and out the titles. All of this will allow for a simple title display that will show all the information. We also only plan on using contrasting colors like black back rounds and white letters. This is easy and good because it allows simplicity which is not a bad thing in films.

    

Planning: Location, Heath & Safety, Participants, Schedule

          For the planning blog, we were assigned to plan out the specifications of our filming process. In this blog it talks about our filming locations and the participants. Along with the participants and the locations, we also had to plan out what out health and safety resources will be. With this being planned, we also had to plan out what our filming process will look like until the date we will turn in the final product. To compose the schedule we began by listing the pre-production dates and task. The pre production consisted of planning, storyboarding, and finalizing ideas. After this we listed the production dates and task. During the production we will be primarily filming.To end off, we listed how we will finalize our film. The post production consisted of the editing that all go into finalizing the film.

       

Planning: Sound Script

          Attached is our presentation on the sounds going on in the movie clip. We felt presenting it scene by scene would be best, as it very logically shows the progression of our sounds. We wanted to start off not diving into action, so we have little to no sound. As we progress in the presentation you will see there is more and more dialogue and diegetic sound. We thought this would be best as we want to build suspense. Another reason this presentation is important is because of the fact that it will be used as a check list for us. We can compare it to the scenes we have and make sure we hit everything we want. We did not include it in the slideshow, but we have multiple plan-b's if one of these sounds doesn't work out and we cannot create it correctly. The biggest thing in the presentation we liked to see is the continuation of the music. This will allow for a clean flowing 2 minutes as making it choppy with too much sound and music may not be best for the movie as a whole.

Planning: Shooting Script

           Attached is our planned out shooting script. We wanted to incorporate a chase scene as it was something we all grew up watching. We went from scene to scene and tried to portray each of the major plot points of the first two minutes. The hardest part of making this script is going to be keeping to it. During the writing, we had many disagreements of what we wanted, and had to cut out many good ideas. We knew we wanted to use many unique shots like trunk shots, but still wanted to keep the plot normal through use of things like wide shots. We really like how we have developed the movie so far, I just do not know if everything we have in mind like the crane shots will work. We also have a few extra backup plans if things fall through. However, I don't think we will need to go to these extremes as none of out locations are changing and we have minimalistic props. These such locations are houses, public parks, and docks, all of which are public access and never close.