The Blogger Find Out: Starting to Film

When you watch a movie, you don't really think about every second of the film being analyzed and thought about. Every second has to seem right. For this opening, I just have around 2 minutes (I wish I could do more), but the challenge here is not to get to the time, but instead to convey strong feelings about my genre during that time limit, to my audience.

I started filming with the help of my friend, Naty, because I needed an assistant to help me out with the lighting and positioning of things. So before filming, I decided to show her my planning process and explain to her how I want it to look by using imagery so that she has a visualization of it and when helping me, she can even add ideas.

The first thing we noticed was that the letters of the Bible were too small and it was super hard to focus them with the camera, it was going to be even harder to convey the tone of destruction with the fire as the paper could have burned. I wanted to show each phrase separately to let the viewer have more time to read without making the wait seem boring, so we went into PowerPoint and designed each shot that I was going to print out with a background that looked like old paper to highlight the idea of being phrases from the past so that it looks like the main character is stuck in old practices and dreams. Here you can see what one of the original PowerPoint pages looked like. After, we printed them out in a size that was big enough for the camera to capture because it didn't matter that it came directly from the bible as my purpose was to mainly show how he's just dreaming about the phrase not if he reading the bible, to imply that he believes it's coming directly from God. Yet, I knew I had to do something more to let my audience know what is it about as they are not really meant to be religious or faithful as my film is directed more towards teenagers and adults who like watching the bad side of the world with destruction and so on, meaning that they are not meant to know about where does that phrase come from unless its a very common piece of literature and it is stated. So, I searched for "How to state biblical verses?" I found what is in the picture above (Besides already remembering what my catholic catechism taught me.

After doing this and printing them out, the time of filming came. I always knew this was my favorite part. I could feel it. It was. I felt like I was putting all my knowledge into it and actually creating a piece. It's like I was bringing everything into my mind and making it real. I started by using my room as I needed it to be somewhere dark so I closed all the blinds I knew that I needed an orange light that would focus just a part of the text to create that sense of danger and destruction so I used this light moon that I had for a long time, with the use of the lighting from the matches. It was hard to get all in position and make it look good, especially because my camera turns off every time it detects some hot temperature like the match turned on.

We had to use a tripod that I found somewhere there too, because it would have been harder to try to maintain the camera in just one position while turning the lights on and off. Besides I needed the position of each shot to be the same, as there was no change of feeling that I wanted to cause in the audience, so why should there be a change in the movement of the camera? It just doesn't make sense. What I next noticed was the appearance of my hand, which I thought several times if I wanted it to be there or not. I decided to be there so that it looks like someone is lighting the verse to make it seem like he thinks God is the one guiding him. I still make the appearance of my hand seem very little as we know that my main character is misinterpreting the verse so that there is an idea of no one special really lighting the verses other than him.

I don't know what was the most fun part of this project but I clearly remember having laughed so much during it. Especially because we used to make the same error over and over again until we eventually learned. I loved this process because the ideas of how to make it look better just kept coming to my mind. Looking at how one can make a beautiful peace by using one's imagination and noticing of one can achieve is one of the best feelings.
Yet, I am worried about my limit of time for the opening of the film to be. I started researching more about Premiere Rush, as it is given by the school and my teacher suggested that we should use it more as it is a great tool. I was so lost when I started using my computer. I told myself that if I wasn't able to do it after a certain time of researching I was not going to waste more of my time and I would simply do it on my phone. While researching what to use on my phone, I noticed the same name in the App Store and I thought "Why not?" So I logged in, watched some tutorials offered by the app, and started importing my videos. It was way better and easier to edit this time. I also had to open an account in Dropbox, which I've never used before, to import the videos as I already imported them to my computer because the storage of my camera was full. So I now had them on my phone and was able to edit them and add other videos that I could simply film with it. I did indeed. While editing and making some parts shorter to create more tension, I noticed that I used a short transition that would make each part look the same, so I filmed a completely black shot. I will do this at the end but I am certainly thinking of adding the "Produced by", "Directed by", and the "... Presents" in these spaces of black shots. This is perfect because it would exactly fit with the plot. I am glad I started looking at what editing was like with this project on my phone, as I am learning something new and fun. Who knows I might end up loving it. We'll see, so keep yourself updated on my posts. See you next post!!!