On Wednesday of last week, my group decided to film. I came with a very doubtful disposition— I tend to be soft spoken and dreaded that my ideas would not be shared or considered my group mates. I was also quite discouraged after our last blog, which although it was a success, had many flaws. Additionally, my arrival had already delayed our intentions for the blog as I ended up arriving late due to issues with the GPS. As a result of this, we couldn’t get the two contrasting time periods as we had conversed about in previous meetings. However, my group was incredibly understanding and worked around the inconvenience. We filmed the first part upon my arrival (after I changed into our street clothes). Already we were seeing a difference in quality— we projected our voices and had the music in the background at the perfect volume. The first scene was taken from a high angle, but it wouldn’t be a simple wide shot. We filmed the same scene three times: one as a wide shot, one as a two shot between Lauren and Jahrvia, and one as a three shot between Aaliyah, Lauren and I. This way we could combine the shots to our liking in order to create something creative and different. This is already different from our first film, which didn’t have a lot of variety in the shots.
The genius behind our filming was that Lauren had planned the specific parts of the film to the second so that they could properly align with the song. Because of this, while we were at the house (where the majority of these timed segments were) we had to make sure that every scene was perfectly timed for each segment. I liked this very much because this allowed us to be more organized and stick closer to the storyboard. All of this paved the way for a smoother recording process. Because the other three members of my group are members of the FLHS Thee Sound auxiliary, they made sure to include their dancing capabilities which was extremely entertaining to watch. This was not the only entertaining part of the filming process. I found that, contrary to the previous project, there was a lot less stress. This is likely because the idea we went with was much more free and creative— we were weren’t confined to a script and were allowed to develop and record new ideas as we went along. Some of these ideas sparked out of inspiration, and others sparked out of inconvenience. For example, we found out that we arrived at the mall at an hour that was too late to request consent from the people at the front office and were thus not permitted to record the scene of us walking across the street from the wide shot angle that we had desired. Because of this, we resorted to using the elevator to shoot the shot in order to show all of us heading to the mall. However, this paved the way for us to utilize more camera movements, allowing us to do a pan. Another example was when we used the Christmas decorations as a walk through.
Entering the mall was also a fantastically successful experience. In order to compensate for Lauren’s handicap, we purchased a cart for her to travel on in the mall. We took various shots inside of the mall of just us riding the carts, and some additional shots (pan) of the kiosks and stands in the mall. We did face one issue in the mall— quite a few stores were not comfortable with us recording in their outlets. As a result of this, we had to resort to merely recording the opening. This was not a major hindrance however, as we were able to get more establishing shots. I feel like we have increased our variety since last time— more diversity in shots, including high angles, low angles, pans, and transitions such as jump cuts. This project has been a major improvement and a lot of fun. When we get to the class on Tuesday, we will dump the shots to Lauren’s laptop so that we can use iMovie. I’m very excited for our project!!! My only concern is that we will potentially have too many shots and not know what to do with them. I’m not fretting over it— I’d prefer too much than too little!
