2nd Day of Filming

 Wowowowow! I was so scared of what could happen. There were so many things that could go wrong. Some "actors" could not come with the right clothes. They might not be putting in enough effort. We might not have time enough to film. Some people could cancel last minute. The camera could break. The sound could have not been filmed. But in the end, one learns from each mistake. Yet, I didn't want to have many. Mistakes did occur. There were some that I was able to control, others that we just had to manage to deal with, others that we couldn't do anything about, and others that got me so stressed because I was scared of what I was missing. 

I made a group chat on WhatsApp as I have already communicated with my friends through this medium, and I asked them to help me with the project. I gave several specifications on the chat of time, clothes, and context so that they have an idea of how it is supposed to look so that they can help me even more. The time was at 5 o'clock. Yet no one really came on time, which I was already not expecting so that's why I suggested that time so in any case we could still use the whole day. I might say nothing went according to the plan. I was so thankful with Dani, the small version of my main character. He was the first one to arrive and even helped finish looking at the bullying scenes. I must say that none of them really got to look how I wanted it to look, so I had to force myself to explain each detail so that everyone understood how I wanted it to look. 

Dani had 2 scenes, yet I thought we were just gonna do one today. The bullying scene. Everyone ended up coming half an hour later than expected, but guess who was my lifesaver. Tatan! Or Sebastian, my church friend, and my brother's "gym bro". He came with his brother's girlfriend, Anto. She is the mother of the main character who was gonna fight with her husband, but we were missing her boyfriend, who was gonna act as the husband. The scene was one where we would show Adriel (Dani) listening to his parent's arguments and being heartbroken by their words. Tatan replaced Milo, Anto's boyfriend so that we could get over those scenes as we had the character and they were around the same age, looked like parents, and were good at fighting with each other. They indeed did an amazing job even when everyone was arriving and cutting my perfect lighting. But everyone that arrived was helping me with different little jobs to get the scene to look better. We used so many random things that I found at my house to cover the light, bring light, and make Dani look more childish, such as giving him one of my brother's toys and Romeo, my dog, which acted really well.

Ms. Stoklosa told me we could curse, and at first, I thought we would barely do it but we might need to increase the heartbreaking tone of Adriel's past life. They went deep into the character and I might not be professional but it was great acting. Yet, I still helped them look better by seeing the overall picture and giving some advice, such as moving more with the hand or looking away like they do not care what each one in the argument is saying, accentuating each word, which was stressing me a little as after I realized that if I was filming from different angles, I would have to match the voices, but I knew that the sound was still gonna be like an echo and I have time to ask them to come to my house and just record a voice-over. I know it would be harder so I will discuss it in another post. In this scene, I used different techniques in each shot, such as low angle to increase their power and how scary the situation and the argument are for Adriel. I included a tilt-up with a pan left shot, first focusing on Adriel to then the couple arguing. This shows the context of everything that is happening and where everyone is set. It was important to show that Adriel was behind the armchair as he was hiding and over listening to a conversation that it is obvious that anyone, especially a kid his age should hear, but obviously the couple were too busy fighting to care about their child. I included some close-ups of each person arguing so that it is more focused because it was harder to zoom in and focus at the same time in such a short shot. Besides, it would highlight each character's emotions by showing their facial expressions which they acted with really good angry faces.

The second scene was more fun to film, but harder to control. Tatan left to work, but I had my small version of my main character, Dani, then Naty who helped with the lighting, Trini, my best friend, her cousin, my brother who helped me giving advice too, and Anto who was now going to help me with the high angle of the kids around Adriel, bullying him. My friends now started arriving. Ari, Ampi, Joshua, Sebas, and Vale, all wanted to receive credits so I'm going to talk with my teacher about it and see what I can do. Most of them brought their backpacks to pretend that this was after school and came with a white shirt and jeans, for those who didn't have what was needed I provided them with what I had. The shots were good, but the lighting was a little hard as we filmed in my garage and used 3 people with their phones' flashlights on, from the side to show a scary environment but not that dark as we needed to see what was happening. Yet, the harder part was to control each movement as the idea was to fake a bullying scene but not actually hit Dani. To organize each movement I told Joshi to first push Dani towards Sebas softly so that Dani exaggerates the movement and the Sebas to grab his backpack and push him again to the opposite side. The circle started big until while Dani was going down it started to get closer. I filmed from two perspectives, high angle, and from a side view, I think I might need also a close-up of Dani covering himself and I'm so mad at myself for forgetting, but it is ok, I have time, and I can still ask some people to come and cover the light a bit and around to show the same environment and just the close up of Dani. I want to see that more later though because I might not need many shots as I still need to film my brother's main parts and see how the time limit is going. To end you can see some previews of the back-scene video, including materials used and people on the stage. Hope to see you around for the main character's filming post. I am thankful for everyone's collaboration in these and hope to continue like this for my next scenes.