The Challenges in Scene 1...

     Ok, so, we just finished the production for the film. It's a wrap!!! It was a lot of fun and much less stress-inducing than I thought! With that said, there were some difficulties in our production that I feel the need to highlight.

P.S.- I am going to be splitting production into two different scenes. Scene 1 will be the scene of Will inside his room, talking with Derek. Scene 2 will be the scene of Derek dropping the letter off at Will's doorstep.

LETS GO

    Before we begin, I think it's good to mention how we produced scene 2 before scene 1. The main reason I did this was due to time and locations. Wesley and I began filming at about 2 in the afternoon. I knew I wanted the plot for the opening to take place during the day. I was worried that I wouldn't have enough time to film the first scene before getting to the second scene, where it would already dark outside. So, I decided to film the second scene first to effectively film during the day without worrying about time (even though it still became an issue). Also, the first scene did not need to take place during a specific climate since it's all inside.

    Anyways, the first challenge arose with the lighting. My room is incredibly dark. The tube light was strong enough to light up my face, but, the shot looked to dramatic. I ended up turning on the light in my room and matching the kelvin from the tube light with the one in my room, so that they had the same kind of light. I shot brighter than what is going to be the final product, just so I could fix any lighting in post-production and editing.

    The second challenge existed with the tube light, which gave rise to a whole other array of problems. Halfway through the production of the first scene, the tube light ran out of battery. Fortunately, we had a charger to charge the light. I thought we were able to film while charging the light, but, I was wrong. We had to wait out the charging until it was charged to a sufficient amount in order to keep filming. "This wasn't going to be a problem", I thought. Wesley and I had nowhere to go. We could wait out the light and finish the filming in no time. 

    That was until my parents came in and reminded me of something, which made me feel like a bad son. My family and I were going out for dinner at 5:30. It was 5:00. I had forgetten of this event. I began stressing. But, I calmed down and found a solution. I still needed to film the still shots of various objects around the room and a shot of both Will and the phone in the frame. So, while waiting for the tube light to charge, I filmed the still shots around the room. 

    How could you do that without the tube light if your room was so dark?, you might ask. Well, I realized something and it's a setting in my camera that I never bothered to touch before filming these stills. It was the shutter speed. Shutter speed is the time the shutter of the camera opens for the sensor to capture light. For my camera, shutter speed is recorded in fractions of a second. Typically, the rule is to always put your shutter speed at twice the frames per second you are shooting at. I was shooting at 30 fps, so, I put my shutter speed at 1/60 and never touched the setting. But, I know shutter speed affects the brightness of the shot. So, by putting the shutter speed down to around 1/8, the shot looked a lot brighter, which fixed my problem with filming in the dark. 

    However, the issue with a low shutter speed is the presence of unnatural movement in the shot, where subjects that move look sludgy and awkward, which is why I could not use the 1/8 shutter speed for the other shots besides the still shots around the room. So, Wesley and I did have to wait until the tube light was charged. Once it was charged, we filmed the final shot quickly and everything turned out fine. On top of that, I had enough time to get ready for my family dinner!

On the Set of Scene 1

    Anyways, that's that for this blog. I will go over the challenges in second scene tommorow, so, I will see you all when I get there. Peace!