They Still Haven’t Done it

Just for a recap, my group will be filming without me since they decided that my schedule was one they did not want to work with. Well... a few days have past and yet they have not filmed because one of them flaked, AGAIN. She told them she had homework to do. The other two members in my group were upset with this and believe that they filmed today. However, I am not sure of this because if one person flakes they all like to. I am getting a filming update from them tomorrow, in class. We had planned on using tomorrow as an overflow date incase we needed it. However after the filming argument I decided today that I wasn’t going to count on it, and made plans for tomorrow. My other group members however are going to have to film tomorrow if they want this done by the peer review.
As for me, today is my birthday!!! I turned 16 and got my drivers license, but not a car quite yet. I have decided to mention my birthday since that will be why I can not film tomorrow.My group will most likely get mad at me for saying I’m going to dinner with my family. Then we will have the same argument that we have had for the 20th time in a span of two weeks. Anyways, once my dad gets my mom a car then I will get his, and freedom here I come. When I drove his car today by myself it felt weird and different. I was able to listen to music, roll down all the windows, and not get yelled at. Today I spent the first few hours of my birthday, at the DMV. I was super excited when I passed. Here is a picture of me with my dads truck after I drove it to my dance class. 

My Group Flaked

You might remember how in previous blogs we had decided to film this past weekend. Well, apparently my group forgot, or they just did not care to remember. After I got off work on Saturday I had arranged a ride for me to get to the filming place. However when in asked for a time and address my group decided to ignore me, so i sat around waiting for answer for 45 minutes. Until, I finally had enough, and decided to call each group member. When i had finally reached them i had come to find out that they decided that they would rather put off filming until it was on a night that they didn't have a chance to hang with friends or go to parties. After I became Furious I Reminded them that dates were set two weeks ago and that i had already worked around them and planned around them and i had no other time on my schedule that i could film. So after many, many arguments and yelling. I finally gave in and told them to film whenever they wanted but they would have to film without me. They then told me on Sunday while i was at work that they would be going to a different park and will be filming before i would get off of work, plus this short notice denied me of a chance to arrange a ride, since i am the ONLY one in the group that does not drive. So while my group was filming i was scooping ice cream, making milk shakes, and explaining to tourists what is in vanilla ice cream.
My group plans on filming again sometime this week however i ca not make it due to my previous obligation of having a game and that it is my birthday. However, I am planning on missing practice on Friday so that i can film, even if it causes me to be benched in my Saturday game. Since i wasn't able to film, i have provided a picture of me at work, making an iced latte.

Didn’t Film Yet

We have not filmed yet because our first planned day of filming is on the 22 of March. So to prepare for that what we did was, We planned out our filming place. We had already decided on a place we just did further research to make sure it would be open where within the location we would what scenes we would be filming on what day and we planned out who we would safely get to the location safely.

After we decided almost two weeks ago about when we would film, one of my teammates, Montana, decided now to disagree with the dates we had set and said that we needed to film during the week. When making these dates we all collectively decided on these dates and tried to work around everyone’s schedule, however some people did have to make sacrifices, for example I am going to have to leave work early for one of our filming days. Due to my commitment to softball, I can’t film during the week because of games and practice, along with my birthday being one of the days that she wanted to film. After informing her that I would not be able to film late at night during the week due to previous obligations with my birthday, softball games, and practices, Montana said that I needed to skip class me of my games or practices in order to make her life easier, however our group came to an agreement but voting 3 against 1 that it was unfair for her to want to force me to cancel my previous obligations.

Storyboard for final task

In the past few days, we have worked on our storyboard. Our storyboard consists of 10 different papers, equaling 2 minutes of footage. We did our storyboard so we could turn our ideas and words into pictures to understand them better. This is helpful to our filming process because it is very beneficial to have a clear outline of what we will be doing so we can use our filming time more efficiently. However, we also came across some difficulties while story boarding. We realized that it is difficult to depict our ideas since all of us are not skilled drawers so it took longer than we hoped. We helped overcome this problem by taking turns while drawing, so one person did not get too tired. Additionally, to not over complicate things, instead of coloring our drawings, we shaded them with a pencil since color is not an important aspect of our film. We asked our teachers about this to assure that this was the correct way to storyboard, and they allowed us to do this since it would save time. Overall, the story board came out similar to what we expected it to look like, but unfortunately took a lot of time to complete.

Plaining: Titles

After planning which titles go where in our shooting script, we have now decided on the design of our titles. We decided on the font, point size, entering, and exiting of these titles. We used our previous title research, and examples from the film, “Split” to help us determine these details. We felt that it was best to try and go into depth to limit the amount of work and processing later in the project. We did this by explaining each title individually. In our shooting script we only listed the title’s “title” rather than listing the name/company for each with exception to the first few), we added this in with the title design to easily be reflected back into our film. Despite all of this thorough planning, we do expect some changes and bumps along the course of this project, and we have prepared for that by not making anything set and stone yet, leaving us with back-up options.

Plaining Research: Schedule, Location, Health and safety, and Participants

For this week of planning, we discussed certain elements that will be important when we film. Specifically, we went over health and safety, location, participants, our schedule, and title design. When discussing Health and Safety, we thought it was important to discuss how we will navigate through a wooded area since it will most likely be at sundown when we film. Additionally, as I just mentioned we will be filming in an area that resembles the woods, most likely a large park nearby one of our houses. Then, for our participants, it will only be my group mates and I acting and producing the film. Since there are 4 people in our group, we decided it was best to have a loose schedule since there might be days where something unexpected comes up, but we are also hoping to only film twice at most (2 separate days).

Planning: Dialogue and Sound Script

Since we have prepared our final task we began to plan and make our scripts for the introduction of our two minute movie beginning. In our dialogue script we decided that we will be separating our opening sequence by scene (due to the small amount of time for our actual film, we made the script VERY detailed) and indicate exactly what the audience will be hearing in each scene. In the topic of sound we covered every piece of it, from the Voice overs to non diegetic sounds that will be played through the course of the film. When writing our sound scripts for our film, we stressed the importance of it. Sound scripts allow us to plan and hear what the audience will be hearing, also, it lays down a foundation as to how the movie will move along with the sound alongside it. In the case that the sound script is ignored or isn’t prioritized, the quality of the film would greatly decrease as the movie will be lost. Since sound is the major accompaniment to film, these reasons are why it is so important to have a huge priority over them.

Planning: Shooting Script

The shooting script blog is different from the sound script as the shooting script includes some if not all camera movements and angles. The reason that we included a shooting script is because it is a written form of the storyboard with the same amount of detail. Once again we broke down the film into multiple scenes and described briefly the action that the character is doing as well as the camera movement around that character. Without the shots script, film makers would have a much more difficult time shooting film because they have no plan. Also, as students we do not have film sets so we must film wherever we possibly could and not be able to shoot retakes as we are crunched for time.