We started the creation of our movie opening by filming, and I made this post in order to document problems, solutions and just to generally explain our process. I decided to split this post in order for our process to be more clear and in order to explain any difficulties we encountered:
- Problems and solutions
- Preparing
- Arriving
- Set up
- Filming
- Breaks
- Conclusion
Problems and solutions
In our call sheet, we were supposed to film our scenes chronologically, however, for the first scene we encountered some organisation difficulties regarding our extras and location.
Therefore, since we wanted to start our filming process as soon as possible, we started with the last scene since it was the fastest and only required 3 scenes.
We thought of filming the second scene first, however, the weather was not on our side, even though we checked the weather app constantly. It was mostly cloudy and there was little to no sun (and the sun was up only for a short period of time), and this scene required good weather conditions.
Also, after filming the scene, we found it a bit static, since there was only one scene using a tripod. Therefore we decided to add 2 more short scenes in order to make our viewers more engaged and to see our props more clearly:
- A slow motion CU of Ivy dropping the knife
- A slow motion CU of the knife falling on the floor
Preparing
We filmed on a monday so i woke up around 9 am in order to get everything ready for the shoot and get to school in time. I packed a separate bag with spare clothes, the fake blood, all of my makeup and additional hair products in order to be fully prepared for filming. I also texted the rest of my teammates in order to make sure they had everything ready. Stela packed some spare tops for me since I wasn’t sure of my outfit choice which we finally ended up using and luca prepared all of the equipment by charging everything and making sure they were all working in the morning. When we all met up at school, we discussed our plans so the filming part would not take so long and for us to be perfectly organised, and Luca’s mom helped by offering us transport to his house.
This was the easiest scene to film and therefore our preparation for this was not as extensive and hard so it was very convenient considering this was a school day.
Arriving
We arrived around 4 pm and spent a short amount of time talking to each other and figuring our if we brought everything that we needed. We also checked our equipment and decided the filming location in Lucas’ bedroom. We also spent some time talking to his family and drinking coffee.
After we finished settling in the space, we decided to check our outfits (me and Lucas since we were the actors) and see which white shirt luca picked for this scene since we were supposed to make a large wound on the back.
Set up
We started by Stela helping me do my hair and makeup.
For the makeup part i did my usual routine and stela helped me by putting some black eyeshadow and some grey in the part needed as well as help me create a more smokey effect since she was familiar with the technique, and for the hair, i just sprayed some fixing spray and messed it up in order for me to look a bit on the rougher side.
Then we went on to start painting wound on Lucas’ white shirt with fake blood. However, after finishing it it still looked a bit 2d and non realistic, so we added a focal point of black for depth until we reached our desired colour and look. For the fake blood we also added it to his neck, my face, and the knife which we did with gloves and very carefully in order for us to not get cut.
For the room, we started by setting up some led lights coloured in order to get our desired colouring and lighting for the scene, settling on dark blue. We also set up the additional lighting equipment and the angle and position of our camera on a tripod.
Filming
We started by checking our some different angles and test shots in order to see which fit best with what we had in mind and once we set up the camera we began with some practice shots of me dropping luca down. We found it easiest and safest to drop him onto the bed and to crop the bed out of the shot in order to give realism to the shot.
For the filming part it was pretty easy since it required only one static shot and 2 CU. We finished the big scene in about 3 takes and the CU in 2 takes each. We were met with 0 problems and everything ran smoothly, due to our extensive preparation. In the end we made sure to check all of the recordings and we decided to download all of them to rewatch during editing.
Breaks
We finished the whole day by having a barbeque with Lucas’ family which was the perfect reward for our hard work. Here we discussed our progress and talked about our following filming days.
Conclusion
WWW:
- We overcame all of our problems and found effective solutions in time
- We came fully prepared which helped us be more organised and on time
- During the day we took free time to discuss our plans so we were effective with our time management
- Overall filmed pretty quickly and smoothly
EBI:
- We could have picked a day of the weekend in order to not be as tired
- Could have prepared our costumes ahead of time
- Take the time to take more photos of the behind the scenes 🙁