Creative Critical Reflections

 Here are my creative critical Reflections (Linked)

Directors Commentary

Instagram Live

Film Opening

 Here is my film opening. 

It is linked in google drive 

Film Opening

It is also available on youtube here. 

Youtube Link

Editing!

 I began editing yesterday, and today I added the footage we got today. It was a pretty easy process however I did have a hard time trying to decipher the casino shots that show him winning because personally, I do not know blackjack. Because I am a pretty experienced editor and for time, I did most of the editing for our project, however, I consulted Marcello tons, and he was a huge help in my lack of decision-making. 

The one technique I had been really excited to use, I ended up scrapping. It was the flicker effect that I talked about in an earlier blog. I tried it, spent an hour adding it, and then took it out. I realized that if I put it over the whole sequence, it was a lot and just painful to watch, but if I used it at parts it just looked off. I was a little disappointed, but hey! I still learned a new thing so I am sure I can use it in something upcoming.

I don't really have much else to say about the editing process, it is pretty standard for me and my favorite most relaxing part of a production. I hope to have it finished soon. 

Filming Day 2 plus extra

 So Thursday was way easier because as I mentioned, we had already set everything up and replanned many things. 

However, we were also filming with other people this day which is difficult to coordinate. We also had one person who I guess knew the game of blackjack a little better than us and tried convincing us to refilm an entire scene for it to be more accurate haha. However, we did not, as it was not super important to the purpose of this film.

We had a lot of fun with our friends shooting this, they helped us out tons by being actors and not being too offended by my stressed director comments... oops! 

One big issue we had was still lightning, on Wednesday we had been blessed with gray skies, however on Thursday the sun was gleaming through the windows in an orange glow, and considering we were working with just the red light this made my life so hard Thankfully, our friend Ceph was able to help me figure out the best ISO and aperture settings to make do, and it turned our pretty okay, but it's definitly my least favorite shot.

On this day we also had an epiphany that we needed something leading up to the casino scene, and that we didn't really want to start off with that. And that formed, filming day 3. 

On Friday, we took a lot of sequential shots representing his character while waking up and heading out. we only used a few of the shots we took that day but it made a HUGE difference. I had started editing Thursday night with what we had but once I added the stuff from today I loved it so much more. 

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.