Filming Day 1 Overview

 Hey! Posting this a day late but thats because I got home super tired after yesterday's filming. Thankfully, today was a little less tiring. 

More than anything else, day 1 was spent breaking a part of my partner's, Marcello, house and setting up, as well as figuring out what we would have to rethink based on the space we were working with. We could not do the original pan that we had planned simply due to the set we were working with.

I wish I had a better photo, detailing how taken apart this room was but this was all I could find.

Dont worry! After filming today we put everything back lol. 

This day was a little frustrating but because we were filming the scenes with other people on Thursday, we spent a lot of time on the close-up shots and perfected those.

LIGHTNING!

 Hey, blog!! The final days of this project are super exciting. 

While planning to film I had the idea to use a harsh red light. One for the look of the casino, but also because I thought it would portray a feeling of stress and intensity. This was what called for the decision for an RGB light kit rather than just a regular one. 

Now, unfortunately, this equipment is used by tons of people, meaning a lot of it is getting old. The kit only had one actual RGB light, and only one working wire meaning we could only use one light. However, we made it work with a very specific and weird position of the light haha and I LOVED how it turned out.

Picture of the setup in one scene. Also wanted to say, we owe a huge thank you to our friend Ceph for taking a ton of these behind-the-scenes pictures for us during filming.

Lightning is not something I have really played with before and it was definitely. a learning experience and opened by eyes to something I want to explore much further. Looking back, I would have had it be much more subtly, but for what I was working with and not really knowing how to use coloring, I'm still proud of how it came out.

Character Planning

 Okay so another blog on stuff that we talked about, but that I never made a post on. Our characters. We only really focus in our opening on one character, so we only really planned out him. 

My partner is starring in the film, so we based our designs around him. 

This is the outfit we had him in. 

While in the casino he wore a suit and tie, but in many scenes, he is shown in a disheveled version of this outfit. This was to represent that he not going home, not changing, not showering and essentially breaking apart. 

Logisitcs of filming

To our advantage, I am in the tv production program at our school, meaning we have access to tons of camera equipment. I am going to check out a Canon DSLR T8I camera, with a 50mm lens and also a zoom lens, along with a tripod, Rhode mic, LOV mic, and  hopefully an RGB lighting kit if my teacher is okay with me taking it out (we have a limited amount of these so sometimes its an issue.) In case we can not get the lighting kit, our media studies teacher has a mini one that we will make do with I'm really hoping we can check out the fancy one, but we should be able to. 

We have also been asking around this past week for people who had props we needed. We are filming at my partner's house. I am bringing a table that we need for the poker scenes, unfortunately, we couldn't find anything better suited so we are just using one of those generic folding tables but we're gonna dress it up and make it work. We also are borrowing a vintage poker set from one of my partner's friends, which is super cool. Anddddd we are going to use some furniture at the house and basically rearrange his entire house. 

I am so relieved that everything is finally coming together and I can't wait to film today!!

We are also going to film tomorrow, as for some shots we need extras and thats when our friends our available.  However, we are going to get most stuff done today.  I will keep you guys updated!!

Full Storyboard!!

 We had this finished over break, but to be quite honest it's
the blogs that I've been falling behind with more than the actual work so Im just putting it up here now. I used a template from online and drew it up on my iPad, oh yea, by the way, please ignore my terrible drawing skills haha. 

Anyways, part of it I included in an earlier blog post, but this is it all together, some of it makes more sense in my head than on the paper but I'm confident that these shots are gonna turn out well.  The only part that is still a little blurry is the last few shots because I feel like it needs a little more. If we do this successfully and the way I am imagining it will really effectively show what's going through the main character's head. We are filming today FINALLY! And I am so excited about it. I honestly didn't love our idea at first but after planning it out it has grown on me so much. 

Group meeting!

Hey, blog! Short break in all the talk about the actual project, just to talk about the Creative Critical Reflections. Last class we had group meetings, and obviously, most people are farther along than I am so that's what we were talking about. Although I've been pretty busy getting caught up on the actual project, I have been thinking about what I'll do for my CCR and what I have to say. 

I definitely want to do a Directors' Commentary for one of them, I did something similar in the past and I think it's one the best ways for me that I can share what I've learned.  For the second one, I wasn't really sure yet what I would do but I was listening to some ideas other people had and I really liked them. Some people from my class are doing those google most asked questions videos with the peel-off board and I think that's so cute and such a fun way to answer these questions. I kinda wanted to do something like that, but as we know I'm short on time so I think for my other video I am probably going to do, some sort of interview which I'm hoping I can convince my brother to act in haha. 

I have also been thinking a lot about how to answer the questions. Of course for how my production skills have developed, I definitely want to talk about the huge lesson this project has given me on time management with long-term projects like this, a lesson I am definitely going to remember if I take A-level next year. 

For the representation, we are representing our character's addiction in an abnormal way. Usually, movies like these show gamblers as cunning, professional, or low lives and wasting away. The approach we are taking forever represents the actual impulse control disorder that is gambling addiction. I really think that we will be able to shed light on the psychological side of this issue and enlighten people on the emotional impact this has on a person. Our film is aiming to show the inner workings of our character's mind and how he is affected. Once we film it that is... 

Back to that!  

Editing Techniques

As I have mentioned, my partner and I really want to include a lot of cool, and post-modernist style techniques. One thing we really liked was the opening credits in the movie Enter the Void. You can watch it here.

Enter the Void Intro on Youtube

Now, in our project we aren't going to have an opening credit sequence, however, I like how the flashing, done in editing along with the music creates a certain tension and almost anxiety. This is definitely something I could learn to do if I want to use it exactly but I'm, not 100% sure yet. 

I kinda pulled on this for one scene I want to include in our film opening. To show the overwhelming stress the main character is going through, I had an idea where we see an extreme close-up of his eyes, and as he blinks there are mini flashbacks showing kind of the "consequences" he faces due to this addiction, and this happens while he is debating playing another hand in the casino. I roughly storyboarded some of this but please excuse my terrible drawing skills haha. 

I kinda tried to show how it would be a similar type of very flashy scene to build tension in the moment.

In case I do decide to use this exact effect, shown in Enter to the void, I found this youtube tutorial, and it's actually a fairly easy thing to do so I can definitely play around with it and see what looks better in post. 

Youtube Tutorial