Helloo!! Welcome back or welcome to my blog!! I know that I have talked about what shooting days were like for my group and I in a previous blog, however, I only spoke about the first day. I think it' very important for you guys to know what the rest of our shooting days were like, so strap in, because we went through quite a lot to reach our finished product. In todays blog, I'm going to be walking you guys through how my group and I organized our shooting days, what we did during these days, and any other external factors we endured.
Day 2:
On day two, our mission was to shoot our present day scenes as well as one flashback scene -the getting ready for party match cut. As we usually do, we met up at Mariana's house along with our driver/ filmer Jason and our primary filmer James. We immediately jumped in to work on the current day scenes which included Vale taking down photos from her walls, her packing boxes, and her moving boxes in her room. On this day, Jason headed over to CVS to pick up pictures we sent to print to hang around Mariana's room as decoration for the film.
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Before we set up the room for filming, we had to film our present-day scenes, which required the room to be empty, as if she was really moving away from home. These shots although simple, did require a good amount of meticulousness.
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For this moving boxes scene, we had planned to do a match cut with this scene and a getting ready scene, therefore, we had to be soo careful with the camera placement. As seen in the picture above, Nahomy was in charge of this task because we discovered that she had the skill of holding a camera incredibly still😉. We captured a full shot of Mariana/ Vale moving a box from her bed to the pile. Lucky for us, the natural lighting in Mariana's room at the time was perfect for this scene. Regardless, we were going to apply a dull/ grey filter during editing, but even with the lighting alone, the room had just the right amount of illumination and realness.
After shooting this, we quickly prepared to film for the flashback getting ready scene. This scene however, was ultimately a fail... I'll get into detail in a later blog😔😔
Then, after that we prepared to film a scene where Vale is solemnly taking down her pictures from her fairy lights. Like I mentioned earlier, we put in the extra effort of making the film feel as real and natural as possible by printing out real-life pictures of our friendgroup!! This was a really fun addition to add because we got to see the parallels of our lives and our characters' lives.
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When shooting this scene however, we did run into a few bumps in the road as well. Trying to maximize the use of our equipment and improve the quality of our film, we attempted to use a piece of lighting equipment provided to us by my mom. We also kept this equipment on standby because by this time, it was already getting late and dark. We messed around with the settings and placement of the light, testing out a warmer filter, then a colder one; Moving the light from the left side of the room to the right... We did in fact get the shot, but we actually ended up refilming it on our next filming day because we weren't satisfied with the result. Unfortunately, the lighting equipment actually ended up leaving unwated shadows and an unnatural feel to the scene. Even after rearranging things and testing new settings out, we still found that the scene looked much better with the simple natural light of Mariana's room.
Honorable mention: After a longg day of hard working and resilience, we rewarded ourselves with dinner at Chili's😛😛 This was a memorable pick-me-up that I'd say, really kept us determined throughout the filming process.🥺🥺
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Day 3:
On day three of filming, we of course, met at our usual filming spot(Mari's house), with the agenda of filming the reshoots for the getting ready scene and the taking down pictures scene, a present day scene of the girls getting a group picture showing off their college merch, and a match cut of Vale packing up the car to leave(present day) and her unloading the trunk for a pool day (flashback).
The first task we immediately knew we needed to attack was the reshoot of our getting ready match cut scene. This scene was sooo important to us because we all absolutely fell in love with the idea. Learning from our mistakes, we focused on camera placement, camera focus, and camera stillness. In addition to this, after rewatching the failed attempt, we also noticed that we should make the scene more clear and comprehensible for our audience, so we added in a few more props and brushed up on our acting skills😉. However, when we started shooting, we quickly realized we didn't need to act much; Like a lot of the candid scenes throughout our film, me and the girls literally just be ourselves and have fun with each other while the camera is rolling- The fun scenes just come natural to us!
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Luckily this time around, we had our OG filmer James back to film for us. The girls and I prepared the set for this scene by putting up a few of our printed pictures all around Mariana's mirror to make the room feel authentic to her character, but to also add an element that will cause that contrasting, dramatic effect in the match cut. We also added a hoodie on the door handle for the same effect. Then, we got dressed in attire fitting for the occasion- Me, Nahomy, and Phi put on cute, party clothes and Mariana put on a robe with a headband to additionally convey the atmosphere of the scene. Prop-wise, we also added a hair dryer, red solo cups, party hats, and glowing flower crowns. To really set the scene, we turned on purple lights in Mariana's room to set in that exciting party vibe. We closed Mariana's drapes as much as we could to also dim the scene a bit. In contrast to the moving boxes scene we would be using for this match cut, this scene needed to have a dimmer, yet more saturated look to it. Next, it was time to film!
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Getting into character, we turned on some party music and genuinely just sang and danced to it. Me and the girls definitely got the easy part for this scene! On the other hand, James and Jason were behind the camera making sure everything was in the proper alignment. To ensure the most accuracy, we took a picture of the camera when we filmed the moving boxes scene, and Jason held it up to James for him to check that the way this scene looked on the camera was the same or similar enough. After trial and error, we finally got the shot!
Next, we jumped to film a present day shot including Mariana's mom, Mrs. Andrea, taking a picture of our characters wearing their college merch. The vision was that we'd get an over the shoulder shot of Mrs. Andera with our camera focused on her phone camera capturing a cute picture of us. Then, our camera would dolly out showing us directly.
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We, again, ran into issues with this vision as well. Given the time of day and the state we live in, the sun was literally blinding!! This caused Mrs. Andrea's phone to have a harsh glare and it caused our camera's exposure to be all out of wack. We even tried to move to different locations with the sun in another direction or in the shade, but we all agreed that we could try to film this scene later on when the sun is less harsh. Spoiler alert: we never refilmed this scene because our filmers had to leave early. So, this specific idea was never used in the film🙁🙁, but, we got creative and figured out another way to utilize this idea on the next filming day!
Moving on, the last thing we shot this day was a graphic match cut of Vale packing her car with her moving boxes and a flashback of her unloading her car for a pool day with the girls. I suggested this idea to have just in case we didn't have enough footage to fill up the two minutes. It was pretty last minute, but it made the cut!
We gathered the boxes we had already used for the moving boxes scene and labeled them as if Mari was really moving. We got a mid-shot of Vale quickly placing a box in the trunk transitioning to an extreme closeup of her hair encapsulating the entire view of the camera. The purpose of this was to then transition to another extreme closeup of her hair in the flashback.
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Next, the girls and I quickly got changed into pool attire and headed to Mariana's neighborhood clubhouse. We used Jason's car as a prop and loaded it with pool-day items such as a cooler, two balls, towels, and a tote bag. This scene took a while to capture because James had a hard time understanding what we wanted the product to look like, so Nahomy took the initiative to film instead, counting her character Yve out of the shot😔 On top of that, the camera DIED mid-filming, so we had to go all the way back to Mariana's house, charge it, then chase the sunlight to still capture the scene. Once everything was re-situated, the golden hour sunlight was shining bright on Mari's hair, but this was actually a setback because we wanted the matchcut to be as seamless as possible. Although it wasn't perfect, we got the best shot we could get and hoped that with editing, we could make the transition a bit more seamless.
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How happy we were when we were FINALLY done
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