Wednesday, 22nd of January, 2014. This day will go down the history as the day when Archie, Kate and Holly filmed their first opening sequence for a random thriller movie which you will probably never see in the cinema. And this is quite dissappointing, but this is the life and we need to accept it as it is. Some will remember this day as simply on of many, but for the three of us this will be one of the most significant landmarks in the life... Or not...
Anyway, the day before the actual shoot was pretty busy, because we didn't prepare enough before and had many things to do, such as deciding upon a shooting schedule, props etc. As it usually happens we didn't manage to do all of them. But we should have thought about it before (me especially since I usually leave things till the last moment). However, nothing could disturb us from utterly devoting ourselves to the work on the actual day of shooting, so we got some nice material at the of it.
I woke up early that day, did some excersice to be prepared for what was going to happen. And, to be honest, I was pretty nervous since we were not completely prepared and there were several issues about the shots. But somewhere deep inside me there was a feeling which may be pretty accurately described as the hope in the bright future.
No, no, no! Not that kind of hope. It's more likely to be this...
Whatever the type of my hope was, the main thing is that I believed "in Harvey Dent"! In other words I was sure we'll get something nice. So after taking a shower and doing some exersice I was full of energy, confident and ready to do stuff which was beyond my abilities.
However, when I came into studio my confidence had already been reduced for some unknown reasons. Anyway, we were not going to use the studio, so I decided to wait until we arrive on the actual place of shoot of the girl's part, namely, Kate's house...
...Yes, this is it. I'm not going to conceal anything, so it will be fair to say that we were pretty amazed by her house and I suddenly realized that I want one as well. We discussed it for a little while until we were finally able to start the work. I know it's not relevant, but you didn't see the interior.
And at this stage we had some problems since we realized that the rope Kate had was too thick. So she searched another one in her house and found it (which seems quite impossible considering the size of her house). And before we started shooting we needed to decide upon the tree we should use, which took quite a while as we altered our choice several times. Then we dragged a bench underneath the appropriate tree and were ready to set up the camera for the first shot. We didn't do any additional adjustment since we already had all necessary components: the tree, the rope and the natural light in order to give the audience a distinct sense of reality. Ha-ha-ha!!
The roles on the set were quite uncertain, since everyone did everything. But as I was the most keen on doing stuff (well, I assume so) I tried to do more than others which probably was quite selfish. But this was compensated in the second half of the day.
Still what I can say about cinema is that I'm absolutely obsessed with it. I adore all the process of making a movie... I guess I may say many things about it... So yeah, I did pretty much...
I especially liked several shots we made when filming a girl such following one. I assume the camera was pretty stable in those moments despite the fact that we didn't use neither steadycam nor tracks. We managed to do really good static shots as well. So I have a little reason to be proud of myself.
The part with the girl I consider to be much more successful than the businessman one. We could have done many more shots which describe him as a character that was the initial idea, but we failed to do it, which was my fault since I was not persuasive enough... Still the girl part may turn out to be very picturesque. We closely followed the storey-bord and covered every shot we wanted. This was the part of the day I enjoyed most.
The businessman part, on the other hand, was very unsuccessful to my mind. We almost didn't do any of the shots we wanted and faced one problem. I printed only one copy of the contract where the businessman was meant to sign and we had several shots where he should have signed. Unluckily, I lost my memory stick where the contract was and we had to resolve this problem by putting some paper over the original paper. Anyway, it looked fine in the shot. So the basic problem with the businessman is that we didn't get what we (I) wanted at all. And we had to rearrange some of the shots because of the shadows and because of the time. So we were in a rush, tired and as a consequence didn't do a really good job.
In the edit I think we'll try to follow our original storey-board, however, I've got a feeling that we'll need to change very much. But we can only check this when it comes to the actual editing which will be soon.
Anyway, I think it was a good experience and there is much to learn from this day. I think next time the shooting will be organized in a completely different way and I hope we'll be much more prepared for it. I know what I have to do now and how I have to do. So if you count it as an experience, it was useful. Although I don't think it will be a great piece of work, I consider we did pretty everything our group could do together.
At the actual shoot day we worked good as a team, to my mind. But I suppose there will be many battles during the last stage of the process.
I'm sure we should try to work with all kinds of people in order to explore something new... Looking forward to seeing our final product! With the Help of God!!
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