Re-shooting (it won't be the only one)

     Last weekend had a chance to film. After a week of not editing, I was excited to get these scenes down. It took very little time to actually shoot because all we needed to do was re-shoot a couple of scenes and record some audio. That weekend, Pixie was staying over, so we were just going to have to wait for Camila. The problem, though, was that Pixie and I stayed up really late the night before so we barely had time to get anything cleaned up. I told Camila to be at my house by 11 because I thought I was going to leave with my dad around 2 and I wanted to make sure we got everything down first. This was before we were informed that we all had to go on lock-down and self isolate because of COVID-19. I told Camila the times earlier that week, when I still had the idea that I was going to leave with my dad. When my dad came down Thursday night, he talked with my mum and we realized that I wasn't going to leave, only because it would be too much work to get me back in a week for school and work. Little did we all know, school was going to be shut down for a month.
     My dad ended up leaving early Saturday morning, which meant I had to spend as much time with him Friday night because it was going to be a long time before I got to see him again. Since Pixie was staying over, she joined us. After we got back from dinner and a long drive, it was already really late. We ended up playing some cards games then going to bed really late at night. Pixie and I didn't wake up the next morning until Camila texted me saying she was on her way. We had to rush to get up and ready for the day, then I had to clean up the spots for shooting. By the time Camila got to my house, I was still pulling stuff out of packed boxes (because I'm moving soon, so most of our stuff is in boxes) trying to recreate what the living room looked like in our previous shots. It took us very little time to actually shoot the scenes.
     We knew exactly what we were doing and we just had to do it a couple times on camera to get it perfect. After less than an hour of shooting, we all got together on the couch to record audio. After we got all of that, Camila left and Pixie and I went back to my room to do absolutely nothing, because, I mean, what else do people possibly do at a sleep over? Camila and I both had a feeling of stress released off of our shoulders when she left because we knew that we had everything we needed and just needed to edit and pull it all together.

Editing: The week of silence.

     After the weekend of not filming, we had to stop everything else we were doing, A.K.A, editing. I made sure to edit everything I could the week before the filming weekend that got cancelled last minute because I wanted to make sure we knew what we had to fix. So I spent a long week editing at much as I could and got everything ready. That weekend our Camila couldn't make it, again. We couldn't film. I was starting to get frustrated because I knew the due date for the final project was coming up. I was starting to stress out more. Halfway through Saturday she said she could film. I told pixie and we all got ready. Soon after I realized that we didn't check out a camera. My heart sank, how could this get any worse? We were ready for filming but couldn't. How could my group forget something like this?
     We tried to see if we could record during the week but our schedules didn't allow us to. We had to do nothing for a week. Our editing was done for that weekend of filming which meant we had no more scenes to edit to fix up. I felt like a girl who was left with too long to do her make-up. If a girl has too long, then she will keep adding stuff. As my favourite comedian, Iliza Shlesinger, once said, "There is an apex- a pinnacle of beauty that women reach when they're getting ready. Every minute you're [the date] late is another minute we spend doubting ourselves, digging in our makeup and we get incrementally uglier." Having my movie open to edit with no active changes to make to it, I had to forcefully shut the computer down and make myself not make it worse. That went on for a few classes and it was killing me, not being able to edit.
      I didn't get the chance to get Camila doing nothing, but my friends got pictures of me not editing.

https://www.facebook.com/OfficialLaughTherapy/videos/2006653652977908/

Filming, or are we?

     The weekend of the sixth, I was hoping to edit. But of course, Camila couldn't make it. She had "things to do," which basically meant that she wanted to sleep in and have a lazy day. I mean, to be fair, I also needed a lazy day, with all the running around I normally did on weekends and how crazy my weeks always are. Kind of like an angel in devils skin, I wanted to get mad at her for not showing up to film, but I was secretly happy because that meant I finally got a break. That weekend I was stressing but also relaxing. I was thinking about how it sucked that we didn't get to film as I rolled over and fell back asleep. The other issue was that Pixie didn't show up either. But she had a valid excuse, she was at her dad's house that weekend and he lived far. This made me sad because I was hoping to spend the weekend with her even if we weren't filming.
     But, once again, sleep, relaxing. I spent that weekend writing down everything we should edit when we got to film again. I made a checklist and texted the girls. I also spent time getting stuff down that I couldn't do on other weekends because we were filming. I got a lot done on Saturday and took the day off on Sunday. Unfortunately, I had to wake up around seven a.m so I wouldn't mess up my sleep schedule for Monday. But this gave me all day to write my book or watch T.V shows that I wanted to catch up on or anything else I've been meaning to get done. That weekend was one of the most relaxing weekends I've had since we started filming.

Peer Review Day: Too Early

     This day put so much stress on my group. Mainly me, but for the sake of the project, it was me. The movie that we watched was called "The Hunt" which had the story-line of a kidnapping. It starts off with a mum taking her kids into their house. She tells them to go play while she gets on the computer. The kids get the idea to go play outside. After they go outside to play, the mum realizes that her kids weren't making any sound. She gets up and starts looking for them, calling their names. She goes outside and starts looking. She doesn't find them, but finds one of their shoes. She starts to panic as she realizes what happened. She looks around some more to see if she was mistaken, but only finds a nope. The note says, I have them.
     The film was really good in terms of the plot-line. I would watch the whole movie if I had the chance. I would love to know who had the kids and why they got stolen. The movie leaves us wanted more, wanting to watch the rest of it. One thing that I would have to chance would have to be the time it lasted. We're only allowed a max. of two minutes and it went over that at around 2.11. Even though it left us wanting more, it could be cut down a little bit. There are scenes that go on for a few seconds too long and if those get cut down, the film would fit within the time limit. Other than that, the film is really good. The lighting could be better and the audio could be fixed, but it's good besides those small mistakes.

Editing: The Aggressive Heart

     When we finally got a chance to start editing, we immediately started with the first scene. Switching over our footage took a minute because we had a million clips of the same scene. When we got to start editing our first scene, Camila and I spent forever laughing at the footage. We kept the camera rolling so we could decide what we wanted to keep or delete. While we were watching the footage, I was cutting parts of it so I remembered to delete it after. Camila said she wanted to edit but she was basically on her phone the whole time until I told her to look at something. Watching the footage caused many laughing fits between us. A few times during shooting, I had to leave the camera on because I had to be in the scene or just because I didn't want to have something happen and I didn't get it. This, in turn, made Camila and I have to sit through many minutes of the same, dumb stuff. We got to see a lot of forced laughter, was made us actually laugh, or still footage of us just sitting there or trying to fix the camera while everything was dead silent which made it even more funny because everyone was so serious.
     One part that we were looking forward to was watching me when I was prepping the letter. We left the camera rolling so we could decide on what parts we wanted to keep. I was trying to act very angry so it could show the hate in the film, and I went a little overboard. During one part, I was writing on the envelope, which was eventually cut out of the final, and I drew on a heart that was very, very aggressive. Like I hated hearts, it was so aggressive. The crew said they were trying so hard not to laugh when the camera was rolling so they wouldn't mess up the footage. I didn't even realize how aggressive it was until I watched the footage after. When the camera was rolling, I put myself into a hating mood, to get the feeling right on camera. I guess I did it a little too well. That scene would be in our bloopers but the camera can't see me drawing the heart on because it was facing my back during that part.

 

Filming: We Finished

     It took us about two, maybe three days to film the entire script. Being able to only film for a few hours every day really aggravated me. I wanted to be able to have more time to edit. On the first day of filming, I was mainly focused on getting done as much as we could because I knew we only had a few hours. During the whole process, I had to make sure that somebody was talking pictures during every scene. We had to shoot each scene at least three times so we had a higher chance for no re-shoots. We also had to go over every scene off camera and practice it a few times before shooting. The whole process of actually filming felt like it took forever. I got frustrated a lot during this process for many reasons. One would be that Camila would be late or be leaving early. Another reason was because it would take us so long to get the scene right, or when we actually filmed it, we were good but one thing was off and it ruined the entire shot.
     Even though it took forever, it was still really fun. I got to tell everyone what to do and say. I decided how everything was going to be set up. Even though it wasn't cinema ready, it was still fun to put certain angles in for different scenes and try out different angles for the same scene, like the have in the real movies. Working with Camila, it felt more like she just wanted to be an actor who had authority, not a director. Which was fine because I wanted to be the director anyway, but it always felt like she was getting in the way. I told her that we would follow the storyboard exactly and change it in re-shoots, but she didn't want to do that. I know that she's my partner in this project, but when I want something done right, I want to do it myself.