Filming Blog: A Whole New Film(Don’t You Dare Close Your Eyes!)

 So, 3/5/23 was the day we began to execute our new film plan. I was honestly excited to film and didn’t expect us to be done so quickly either. As I stated before, I would be the dog trainer and so I was going to be speaking a lot in the film. My lines included things like “Oh no, there’s bears in here” and constantly yelling for Chico to come. I honestly really enjoyed the experience of acting and I think the shots came out great. I’m not used to being on camera, so it was an odd experience at first, but I eventually got the hang of it. 

Additionally, I’m hoping that the lines I said will bring the irony aspect of our film to fruition, but in a subtle way. I had a lot of hope in the original idea of our film being a horror comedy, with irony and a slight parody of many horror tropes being present, and I’m hoping that these aspects can be seen. I was honestly in love with the idea when it was first brought to my attention and I still have full hope in it. 

I will say that our change in film did upset one of our actors. They weren’t made aware until they actually arrived on set and I believe they really wanted to have a big part in our film. I tried my best to explain that it would be impractical to try to gather so many actors and that it would be best to revise our storyline and they eventually understood. 


Our filming day started with meeting up at Easterlin Park and picking the appropriate places for film. We were working slightly on the fly, but I created a bullet point list of the shots that would be good for us to film. The first thing we filmed was an establishing shot of the woods, as I recalled Naliah saying we needed an establishing shot to have a proper film. Then we proceeded to film the necessary shots to build the storyline for the dog trainer. These included shots that had me running away and shouting very often. Those who know me know that voice projection is something that can be hard for me, so that became something that I had to overcome quite quickly while acting. Another thing that I needed to do better was to emote more. We needed to film a close up shot and Naliah commented that I had emotion in my voice, but not my face. I tend to not emote much in my day to day life, so that became a hindrance, but I improved quickly. We eventually finished all the shots we needed to do at the forest and called it a wrap. 

The next steps for me are to film an individual scene, compile shots into a folder, and begin to piece the film together. Color correcting and day-to-night will have to be done at a later point, once I feel happy with how the film looks without all the fancy editing to be done. Overall, I’m excited for the next steps of this project(including our short film package). 


Pictured- A set for a film that has a much higher production value than ours


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