Production Blog: Wrapping Up

  Hey, welcome back!

    We shot the last few sequences we needed yesterday! The main filming is finished, however, we might go back once others have looked over our work to see what extra we need for a good title sequence.

    As we would be employing Sara's parents, performing any scenes with more graphic violence would be uncomfortable, so we sought to keep the scenes as straightforward as possible during the preparation stage. Furthermore, if we asked them to act out serious events, the acts could come out as forced and unrealistic because they are not professional actors. We had a lot better time filming, though, because we toned down everything.

    We started with the conflict between the couple because it seemed to be the most straightforward. While we tried to film this, we ran into a few problems. Finding a way to make the voices through the microphone sound less clear and less like the performers were speaking to the microphone was a major challenge. We made the decision to move the actors' distance from the microphone in order to counter this. This gives the impression that the pair are arguing into the microphone rather than being heard via the microphone.

    We took a brief break after finishing that scene to chat and plan how we would execute the following scene. It was challenging to film because we had to capture sound while filming through a thick curtain. We immediately thought of my room because it has a huge curtain that completely covers the entire wall and a sliding door that leads out to my backyard. We quickly discovered that we could open the sliding door while leaving the curtains drawn, allowing us to obtain the shot while still hearing the noises.

    But things hadn't turned out the way we had hoped. To make the action simpler for ourselves and our actors, we planned to have the audio muted. The camera could clearly hear the sound made as we opened the sliding door. We chose to try closing the door to test whether the sound would be muffled, but the actors were completely unheard. As we instructed the actors to shout their lines rather than merely speak to them, the actors' voices became hardly audible.

   This was our final day of original filming! Sara will start to edit the clips so we can get them to a prototype audience to review. Once that is finished, we will re-film some more and re-edit the clips. I am glad to move on, and grateful that Sara is doing the editing as she is much better at it!

 Thank you!