Film Opening Project: Production Process Part 1

 Production: Part 1 (The Set Up)

    Hey everyone! I am back with some huge updates on me and Natalia's journey towards the Film Opening Project. So, we finally got to shoot the film opening this week, making me feel much more relief for how on time we are for our schedules. The reason why it took us a while before we could film was due to the limited vacancy for our location, being the school's auditorium. For reference, below is a photo we took of a part of the auditorium. 

    While this picture is not a screenshot of the actual film opening, it's just a picture we took to test out which angle would work best for the film opening to really capture the size of the auditorium (even though not all of the auditorium was captured in this photo, it's just for reference!) In the picture is actually Natalia, as she took the role of playing the main character of the film opening (Stella). 

Working with Shots and Angles

    The first step we took was to play around with shots and angles that were outside of the storyboard, just to brainstorm any possible ideas that may be better than the original ones. However, not too many changes were made outside of the storyboard, since we were already satisfied with the storyboard. Unfortunately, we ran into yet another issue, which actually involves the storyboard. Originally, we had plans on including the family members of Stella, to hint more towards their family dynamic before the actual film were to begin. 

    Unfortunately, due to some scheduling conflicts between our filming times and those of the actors that would play the family, we had to reduce the film to being just on Stella. However, we didn't let this break down our plan and moved on to continue planning exactly how these shots would be filmed. One challenge that led us to spend so much time organizing the shits was due to the lighting. Even though we did consider how the lighting in the auditorium would look like during the filming, we expected it to be a lot brighter than it actually was. 

    Even though we were a bit disappointed with the lighting at first, we decided to play around with the shots and angles of each scene to make the lighting look its best. While this isn't the ideal situation for a production, me and Natalia took this as a learning experience to consider every variable of the production process and have our back up plans. So, we continued on testing the shots, which took quite a while to get together. 

    Here's a photo of me and Natalia trying to figure out what shot would be best for a particular scene (we asked Natalia's mom to take some photos of us working, so this was one of them!) 

    So, after playing around with the shots and angles, we had to begin setting up the auditorium itself to fit our needs... 

Setting Up the Auditorium

    After figuring out which type of shots work best for the film opening, we then had to deal with the auditorium itself, and how to operate it. This was probably one of the most challenging aspects of the filming process, since it took a while for both of us to set up the projector and the auditorium lights (there were so many buttons on the control panel!) 

    This is another photo that Natalia's mom took of us trying to figure out how to set up the lights and the projector.

    Luckily, we were able to figure out how to operate the lights, and how to put the film onto the projector. However, for some reason, the volume was not working properly, so the film that we put up onto the projector was shown on mute the whole time, but me and Natalia just decided to do a voice over of the film's audio on top of the scene itself. 

    The last thing that we needed was our main prop, the wheelchair for Stella, which we were able to borrow from the school's nurse. After getting ready for the film by completing the set-up process, we began to film. 

    Anyways, this how we set up everything necessary to be 100% prepared to film. Stay tuned for my next update on our journey with the creation of the film opening project!