The Beginning of the End

Pretending the camera was not there was one of the biggest struggles we faced on our first day of filming. Having little to no experience in acting I did my best to both remain in character and not look into the camera despite what was going on around me.

Following our shooting schedule Addie and I shot Thursday morning during class time in the student parking lot. In scheduling this shooting time I did not realize :

• The temperature would be below 50 degrees Fahrenheit (and we would be pretending its summer)
• We would have heightened school security due to supposed threats the day before (two police cars in the parking lot)
• How long it would take us to shoot our closing scenes

As you can imagine we ran into some problems, some of which are documented in the behind the scene footage linked below.

One of our reoccurring issues was camera stability. We did not have a tripod for the iPhone that would sit on my car’s dash board and did not think to purchase one before shooting. So instead, on the day of filming, I leaned my phone, our camera, up against my car manual that we had set on the dash board.

With the camera in selfie mode this method of shooting worked for our first day of filming but a better solution would be ideal for future shooting days. While the camera was supported from behind, there was no support in the front of the camera and many great shots were interrupted by the camera falling forward while I was driving through the parking lot.

We also had an issue with sound effects. In one of our scenes Character one (played by yours truly) calls character two who does not pick up. Our original plan was to have my phone connected to my car and as I am being filmed us it to call Addie, who would not answer, allowing us to record the automated voice and dial tone instructing us to leave a message. A few issues were over looked in this plan:

• If my phone was being used to call Addie, and Addie’s phone was being called, whose phone would be filming?
• Addie’s voicemail inbox was full

Knowing we needed to film this scene in order to create our first rough cut before Monday I improvised by not using the voicemail sound and instead leaving room to have it added in later.

Overall, while there is always room for improvements, our first day of filming went well and I can not wait until the next time we film.

Resource:

“Daryl Hannah Quotes.” BrainyQuote, Xplore, http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/daryl_hannah_202246.