Filmmaking is Pretty Complicated...

While out filming a few weeks ago, getting hold of the camera and finding the perfect times for everyone to meet proved stressful. Yet, it was exciting and exhilarating to finally be out on set. We worked together to make the script come to life and our actors were very cooperative in giving us exactly the mood and personality we needed from them. I personally enjoyed getting the camera angles just right and submitting my ideas to the director so we could include all of our shots in the raw footage to work in later. We had a good group dynamic, and definitely got the job done. One thing we lacked was planning, but somehow we made it work and randomly got together some of our friends to stand around and be extras in our crowds. We somehow worked in our props: the mime, the skull, and the cheese grater; our ideas were pretty creative, in my opinion. It was a long week, but worth getting the good shots we needed.

I was surprised that some of the risks we heard about could really come true, and I felt a bit of a daredevil with some of the shots we had to get. We scared the police into thinking that Wilson was lying on the ground and hurt, who then promptly came over to check on things and informed us that they almost called the paramedics and that we should inform them that we are filming next time. Another time, in the same location, we sort of "blocked traffic" for a minute or so to get some more shots of that scene, and were told nicely that we should "get out of the way" by a patrolling policeman. We weren't really official with our permissions, but we did ask to film in our locations directly before filming there, and the whole thing had such a "student film" vibe when we mostly just decided to wing it.

Filming went pretty smoothly overall, after scheduling conflicts finally worked out and we got all the footage. We had to get it digitized, like all the other groups, since the file transfers are challenging to many of us in the class. Things are starting to get busy with finals week, and I hope we'll all have successful films and semesters. Now I can almost see that lovely one-word horizon: summer.