Planning the Rest of Our Reshoot

It is getting closer to the end of quarter and spring break. This means we start to get days off from school. Next week we have two and a half days off from school: Tuesday, Thursday (half day), and Friday. I thought it would be a great idea to use next week to our advantage and reshoot on our days off. My group members did not immediately shut down my idea. I guess that is a good sign, given everything that has happened in the past. One of the group members won't be able to film on Friday, but are available, Tuesday and Thursday. We made a flexible decision to film as much as we can on Tuesday. Leaving Thursday as a day we could either use to edit or continue filming. We thought it would be best if we all got together to edit, this way everyone is participating in this process.

I spent today trying to get confirmation from my group about these dates. However, only one out of my three other members was in class today. The other did not come to school today, for unknown reasons. I tried contacting one of my group members that wasn't here today. I have yet to hear from her since yesterday afternoon. I tried texting her to get some kind of confirmation about reshooting. The reason I feel it is important to get confirmation a week in advance is because of our groups track record. They are know for trying to push off dates and deadlines, and flaking last minute. However, this time is different, this is our last chance to get this done before the deadline. I am not sure if my group has processed that yet. I am trying to everything I can to get this done in a timely manor, and to the best of our abilities.

First Try at Reshooting

After our peer review it was clear that we would need to reshoot our entire film. Last Thursday was the day my group planned on re-filming. On the day of, one of my group members had their flight get changed to that day, so of course my "productive" group thought that since one member wasn't going to be there that we would just need to push off filming for even longer. I told my group that we could easily continue to film as planned, without him. One of the group members no longer wanted to drive to the park that we need to film at. So we decided to only film our closing scene, at one of our friend's house by the school. When we got there our group began to procrastinate, by waiting around and deciding what to eat. We finally decided it was time to start filming, so we went to find where the best place to film would be. We felt that our friends bedroom was the best location for filming. This had to do with the accessibility of filming angles, along with good dark lighting.  We also felt that her room fit the setting of a teenagers room. This puts the film in a more "real-life" setting. We then decided on good costumes that we could match when shooting the rest of our film. The wardrobe that we needed to match was the attacker's. Since we are using two different actors to play the same character, we needed to make their costumes compatible. That is why we decided to go with the all black as you can see in the picture below. For the victim (me) we decided to have me wear a big t-shirt and shorts, to fit what a teenager would normally wear to bed. While filming we decided to change a few things from the storyboard as we filmed. We kept the closing scene short and sweet leaving suspense for the rest of the movie. We are currently trying to plan out when we will film the rest of our film, and I will update once we decide.

Peer Review

Yesterday we did the peer review. My group reviewed a film about a love story, kind napping. Their film was extremely better then expected. During their death scene, the lighting could have been darker, somber lighting. The group that we reviewed needed to fix the order of their titles. They also lacked, a low angle, a shot reverse shot, eye line match, and an action match. Their transitions are a little choppy. However, if they spend just a little more time editing, this problem could be fixed. One thing that I really liked about their film, was how clear their storyline was. It was very easy to follow. No one in my group was confused. The music was a little fuzzy so I suggest, finding a cleaner sound. If this group works on these during their reshooting process, they should get more than a passing grade.Looking for all these details in their film made my group rethink our film. It allowed us to look at our film instead of as a film and more as a final exam. It allowed us to replan for our film and let us look deeper into what Cambridge would be looking for. We decided to reshoot tomorrow and we are planning on fixing a few problems that the group we reviewed had.

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.