Filming Blog: Progress

We haven’t been able to film anymore than we did earlier this week due to schedule constraints. I have to go to work, so does Nyaria and Katie has practice throughout the weekday. We did however, goes over the shots we captured during our initial shoot. After looking through my cameras playback function, I found that we took a lot of takes and most of the shots we had were bloopers. It really shows how much work and refining is needed for a final product. Some of the funniest bloopers were from the murder scene where the “killing” shot took multiple takes due to us laughing. In spite of the craziness, we compiled a shared google drive and file on a USB to save our work. I remember my previous project with Preace, we couldn’t email the footage to each other because it was too large, so we uploaded it to a google drive. We plan to continue filming this weekend. My partners should be free and ready to film this weekend as our deadline is coming fast. One of our peer editing deadlines is due later next week, and we want to finish before that time. Filming may be the most difficult part to plan due to availability, but editing may take up the most of our time. Well, let’s see how filming goes this weekend, until next time.

Filming Blog: Day 1

Today we finally filmed!  After almost a week of delays we finally got some of our initial shots. We had arraigned to meet up at Nyaria's house after school to film. We choose her house because she a dinning table needed for our date scenes. I had driven my other partner, Preace to her house and when we got there, my partner Katie had brought an unexpected guess, Lucas. Lucas was a kid Katie would drop off from school daily and he tagged along to help and watch us film. Previously, the girls had already planned their outfits while I just simple changed into a dress shirt, very simple. Nyaria however, had to go to work at six, an essential time for our body bag dragging scene as it was nearing sundown. To compensate, we decided to do some of the scenes instead like the date scenes. The actual filming was pretty fun as we had a good time, laughed and shared ideas to make the scenes even better than planned. I remember setting up the camera on a tripod at just the right angle so both parties were shown in the two shot. The funny thing its that we never really delved deep into the specific dialogue for our film. We knew the general message we were trying to invoke, but it turns out that precise dialogue is preferred so we know specifically what to say. It turned out great though as the lines seemed to have came out of us smoothly. A shot that was rather well choreographed was an over the shoulder, following shot that I might say, was pretty well shot as it turned out stable.We ended up wrapping up our date scene but we knew we still had much more left to film. It was nearing 5:40pm when we finished filming, just in time for Nyaria to go to work. So, we wrapped up the shoot, gathered our cameras, tripods, and etc and headed home, waiting for the next filming day.

   

Nyaria on the left, Katie in the middle, and Preace slumped over as apart of a scene.

Filming Blog: Bad Weather

Due to bad Floridian weather, we did not end up filming this past week. We had planned to film our initial scenes this weekend but torrential rain ruined our plans. Even though we did not film we had ample time to further plan and gather our resources. The unexpected rain could have been a setback, but actually it gave us valuable time to compile our costumes, props, and finalize our scripts. We will take this time to plan out our project more. Some of the key props we need includes: fake knife, string, fake blood, etc... The customers we have planned consists of everyday outfits and street wear except for one scene where we have to dress like we’re going on a date. An issue that we had talked about dealing with our projects stems from who’s car are we going to use for the interior car scenes. We made sure that we would film the car scenes in the safest way possible and limit moving shots whilst in the car. Eventually, we decided on using Katie’s car since it’s a Benz and would look much more prestige than my Toyota. Sadly we couldn’t film this past weekend, but the setback allowed us to refine our production more. We are excited to film this coming weekend though as the weather seems to be clear and we hope to get as much video content as we can. I will be posting more updates on our project as we go along.

The view of the weather this past weekend, it’s started to pour soon after this photo was taken.

Storyboard for Final Project

Today we finalized our storyboard for our final project. Since nobody is that good of a drawer, Katie did all of the drawings as she drew the best. We did help her with the captioning and ideas though. The storyboard ended up being ten sheets of draft paper and encompassing 56 shots. Uploading those pictures to our blog was difficult since the pictures would format weirdly or be oriented the wrong way in the blog. To elevate that problem, we just placed the scenes into a slideshow and uploaded that; just like our planning blogs from before. The next step in our project is actual filming and we have some filming days scheduled already, let's hope we make the most of our time and get the shots we need. 

Planning Blog: Title Design

This is the second blog I will be uploading tonight. The title design is essential to the whole aesthetic of the film. In every movie I have seen, the opening title sequence is always done in a way that intrigues the audience. The opening scene and the titles associated provide clues into the story or theme of the film. Doing the slides in the blog is a team effort. We all contribute to the slides and the information in the slides. Again, uploading the slide to the blog is always the same, copy link and upload, the process has become quiet repetitive.

Planning Blog: Logistics

The production of a film takes a lot of time and coordination. That is why it is essential that a team must establishes a plan and schedule for pre-production, production, and post-production. Creating a slide to show our logistics as planning is beneficial for our organization and it easily compresses the information for not only us, but the grader as well. Implanting the slide into my blog is quiet easy as I have done it before and it adds an added factor into our blogs.

 

Planning Blog: Sound Script

Below is my groups slideshow for our sound and dialogue script. It turns out that writing dialogue that makes sense and is not cheesy is quiet hard to do. Every line has to have a purpose to the storytelling, as the movie is only 2 minutes long. Matching non-diegetic sound to the actions that are occurring in the scene was also a lengthy process. Never mind the technology and SFX impediments, adding sound that is viable to the storytelling is essential. Finding the right score, or 'soundtrack' to our film was also important. To fit the mood of a murder thriller, we wanted music that had an ominous tone to it, but interlaced that with a peppy, montage-like score for the murder crosscuts.

 

Planning Blog: Shooting Script

Above is the google slide presentation of our shooting script for our final movie project. After we slide was finished, I went over some notes on how to embed the slide into my blog. Since prior attempts to insert slides into Blogger failed, this new approach finally work and was a relief since now we do not have to screenshot every slide card and upload it. Working on the slide was not that hard since it was a collaborative effort.