I'm so relieved to have filmed these scenes in Markham Park. It was harder to schedule a time to go there with my brother so I am so happy we got to finish the running scenes. It’s looking great! Today, I’m gonna talk about the process that we did throughout filming and the most important comments.
After having the camera ready (because you must always remember to charge the battery, have the lenses clean, and make sure you have space for filming), my dad drove me and my brother to Markham Park. Here are some pictures that I took of the place while I was in the car looking for a perfect spot to film. I had some ideas already in mind but I had to discard them. For example, I was thinking of using a little bridge because I thought that it would be taller than the regular height and not many trees would be seen around, but it was not enough. I did end up using the other side of the bridge for filming as I saw it had some side metals ( I suppose for marking the way of the road or simply to prevent some people from falling) and they looked sketchy so it would be perfect for my dystopian genre.
While I was in the car I found a perfect spot where although some trees could be seen, it was a big open space where they would be seen far in the background and it would still give end-of-the-world vibes. So we parked there. That’s something that I love about this park. That one can park almost anywhere they want. That made this decision of choosing an area in there easier.
The first thing I needed to film to complete some scenes of the opening and it wouldn’t be notable that they were filmed in 2 different places, was the extreme close-up of Adriel’s eyes to change from the shot of running to remembering his bad memories where he was hurt. For this part, I told my brother to start acting in a way where he is simply running super focused on his workout until his eyes start to fade away and he loses his concentration. Later my brother opened his eyes with a surprised but scared face, even if not the whole face was shown. This is to show that he is remembering a bad time in the past and that it is affecting his decisions and life now. He acted really well now. I think it was because he was kind of blamed for doing the project by my parents. After all, they told him that he compromised to do something and now he must do it so he was a little mad. Yet, I learned from that. I now hope for myself to complete my tasks or promises if I tell someone that I am going to do something. Still, that bad mood helped him not laugh like last time.
The next thing we filmed was more running scenes. I started by trying the circle running which I must say was harder than it seemed. We tried several times but just after editing those videos, we will know if it worked. Yet at one point I think we perfectly got it even though it didn’t look the same as in the YouTube tutorial that was mentioned in one of my posts. But, it perfectly fitted my film.
Later, we did some medium shots of him running towards the camera, from side to side next to the camera, and long shots to show the whole movement of running. He was framed in the middle in almost every shot to demonstrate that although the background is important to convey the genre, he is the most important one in the frame as I wanted to show his hard work of training and now being physically stronger than when he was a kid. Yet I showed that he was not really mentally stronger as those memories still hurt him and annoyed his life. This would foreshadow some scenes coming after this opening by implying that he is going to do something about it as he is mad and annoyed during almost all the running scenes and the flashbacks just keep making it worse.
We filmed this around 5pm as we needed it to be kind of dark. Yet, it was not. But that was not a problem as I was looking through the editing videos and I knew I could fit it with my last running scenes by just sliding some exposure, contrast, and highlight switches. Yet, we did wait for 7:40pm to film the scene where he gets home and as he is kind of walking through the entrance he notices a plant, which lucky me is perfect for the story as the top half is dried and the bottom half is not. This conveys my film so much as it implies that the acid raid fell and the higher leaves were affected by it while they protected the bottom ones. Then, while Adriel is looking at one of the fallen leaves of the plant and is grabbing it, he notices that the one in the plant still has some drops of rain and before it falls and it gets to touch his hand, he quickly moves it away. This is to show how scared he is of this rain and how dangerous it can be. Later, as he gets so scared, his face quickly changes to mad and annoyed about it as he blames humanity for making God send this rain to destroy the world (according to what he believes). I would show his facial expressions with a close-up or extreme close-up. I filmed both just in case. Then, while editing I’ll see which one is better. Yet, I showed his anger in one other way too. Filming a close-up of his hand with the dried fallen leaves and him closing it hardly to symbolize him destroying or doing something bad to humanity. Sometimes plants symbolize life and it could symbolize that he has the world and the life of humans in his hands. This conveys and empathizes that he has a type of power over them that he will use to destroy and kill. One we do not know yet.
What I overall and most importantly learned from this project is that; Family is family. They will always be there for one. Although we were not in the best mood, we did have some fun throughout the process and no matter how many arguments we had, my brother was always there to help me out no matter in the mood he was and now we are good. I think good outcomes have to face some kind of struggle and one learns a bunch of things during the process. And, we are almost done so be sure to be checking my blog to see the future posts. Hope to see you there!!
No comments:
Post a Comment