RYU APISIT TECHAJIRASIN
A2 MEDIA STUDIES BLOG
CREATIVE CRITICAL REFLECTION
FILMING DAY 1
FOOD SEQUENCE
November 2nd 2017
The night before it all begins we appointed to meet each other to meet at the Sixth Form Rayleigh Centre on 7:10AM
I woke up earlier than I usually do in order to pack up everything that I'd need for the day. These were the equipment I brought with me for the day.
I was the first person in the team, I then texted the group where they were at. Whilst waiting for their response, I checked my bag whether I've got everything with me. Richy then arrived at the Rayleigh Centre asking where Toy is. As soon as he said that, Toy then texted the group saying that he had already arrived and that he's downstairs. Richy and I then headed downstairs to the dining hall to proceed on with filming. Once we got down, Toy was already ahead of everyone by starting to order the food which will be used for our mis en scene.
There was one scene where Richy was biting the bread whilst walking; it so happens that he came too close to the camera which resulted in him being out of focused therefore we tried it again. This time the camera did not even attempt at focusing at him. Third times the chance right!? apparently not, Richy want again came too close therefore I requested Toy for a new bread but Richy and Toy were against it and told me to use the same bread (even though it was already bit off by Richy) Therefore in order to remain consistent I'd ran over at the table where all the foods were at and grabbed a new slice of bread. It was a really funny moment that I couldn't resist not mentioning
There was also the scene when Richy was already sat down and about to eat his bread. At first I was thinking to follow the storyboard and replace the phone with the same camera composition and create some effects using Adobe Premiere afterwards. However, i don't really know if I was going to make it work or not therefore I changed my lens from the 10-18mm which was a wide lens to the 18-135 and zoom in a decent amount which resulted in a little light lost but I'm sure it's fixable in post. After I changed lens Richy must remain the same pose and I interchanged his bread to his phone instead. It was a very challenging to make Richy stay at the exact same place but I guess it's easier than actually editing some stuff in post production.
We began filming at 7:15AM and ended around 8:15AM which meant that we took around an hour to film the entire food sequence. This was all based from the last shot we filmed which was the very first shot in the sequence we filmed today which was the establishing high angle shot.
PLEASE CHECK POST PRODUCTION STAGE FOR CONTINUATION
FILMING DAY 2
ENTRANCE SEQUENCE
November 3rd 2017
Our second day filming we filmed the introduction sequence to the film. We were in need of tracking shots and we felt as if my hand wouldn't be able to track Richy properly. Therefore as a team we went to the school's kitchen to ask permission for a trolley in order to act as a dolly. The kitchen staff allowed us to have it with a little hesitant but we told them that we'll only be using it very close by and that if we break it we'll cover the cost for it.
Richy had to keep in Rythm with the song Happy by Turtles therefore whilst filming he had my phone with the song open on YouTube looping on the first 30 seconds because that was all of the song we needed for this particular sequence.
Toy was the person to push me along the pathway
We had several failed attempts at the tracking due to many factors.
For example the camera wouldn't track Richy properly, Toy was moving too fast/slow, Richy was walking to quickly/slowly or his head was in frame.
Every tracking is always going to be hard, especially when you have no dolly or stabilizer and it all comes down to my hand. Out of all the shots we did today this one is probably the hardest one out of them all. I had to start at portrait angle then track Richy's arm whilst twisting my camera to a landscape angle. This took us countless takes until we finally got it.
There is one shot when Richy is finally going to enter the building, we thought of including the GratiFly in it therefore Richy acted like something flew past him and carried on with his daily routine.
Every shot was challenging in its own way. However, the team and I got there in the end and we look forward to editing it in post production!
PLEASE CHECK POST PRODUCTION STAGE FOR CONTINUATION
FILMING DAY 3
BED SEQUENCE
November 10th 2017
Today was our lucky day, i's Pajamas day for Sixth Former therefore we took advantage of this by filming the last sequence in our short film. This meant that we did not end up using my bedroom but instead we used one of the Medical Bay's bedroom. We of course asked the nurse whether we were allowed to film or not and they allowed it without a problem. We did a mini vlog before we started outlining all the rooms and decided upon a room then started filming.
Toy wasn't able to come with us as he had a Media Exam to sit therefore we did blog instead. Richy also took some photos of me in my camera positions.
We were lacking on time during this shoot to only 40 minutes therefore I wasn't able to change lens as often as the other sequences therefore I went for the 10-18mm for three quarters of the shooting since it was a wide angle lens (decently wide) and it helps making working in claustrophobic environment more manipulative than using the 18-135mm (kit lens). I then switch to the 24mm for the mid shot at the end and switch to the 50mm as the last lens for the zoom at the very end. The reasons for changing was that the noise level (grain)
was getting more and more intense and my 10-18mm highest aperture is only to 5.6 whereas the 24mm can do up to 2.8 and the 50mm can go up to 1.8. This was a huge saver as I was at ISO 10000 for some of the shots whilst using the 10-18mm.
PLEASE CHECK POST PRODUCTION STAGE FOR CONTINUATION
FILMING DAY 4
TOILET SEQUENCE
November 21st 2017
After many delays, we were finally going to film the Social Sequence today! I brought every single piece of gear with me for the day and was ready to shoot this particular sequence. However, Richy wore the wrong shirt to school (He's a Prefect so he can wear any color and he came to school in black). WHY!? This resulted in me needing to find a solution to this by the end of school day when we were supposed to film. I came with this absurd idea during Business Studies class whilst fidgeting with a sharpie pen. What if we postpone the Social Sequence for now and film the Toilet Sequence for now.
My idea was that at the end of the Social Scene when Richy is wearing normal school uniform (white), we will have a POV shot to end the sequence in which he is going to get drawn on with various different types of black markers which represents the different type of mass media. This then lead to the Toilet Sequence of the protagonist washing off the black from his face and now noticing that he is turning into part of the mainstream media.
During the filming session and we used a plastic divider that we brought with us from the Media room to use in some shots in order to prevent my camera from getting all wet. Here is a video of us testing it out beforehand.
I created this diagram in Adobe illustrator in order to show how we made it work to make this more clear as in the video I did not show what the divider looks like
Here were the results we got by using this method:
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FILMING DAY 5
SOCIAL SEQUENCE
November 23rd 2017
We were finally ready to film the Social Scene today! We got the props ready but there's one slight problem; there are no actors around... Luck that the other day I revisited the duplicating technique. This means that I had to pitch the last resort to Richy and Toy which was to duplicate Richy himself! "This is going to be hard" says me before the filming session.
During our filming session, I had to count firstly at 15 seconds, 22 seconds then 26 seconds in order to signal Richy to perform the specific action to that scene. I had to repeat this for 4 other times. This wasn't so easy with random people walking into the frame without knowing that we were filming. After we finished the 5 individual ones, we realized that we ran out of time therefore I proceeded on to packing up the gears and transferring the video files to my laptop. Here are the footage before I stitched the footage together.
After we finished filming the 5 scenes, we realized that we were out of time. This lead to us having to film the rest on another time
PLEASE CHECK POST PRODUCTION STAGE FOR CONTINUATION
FILMING DAY 6
SOCIAL SEQUENCE (Again)
December 4th 2017
We were back at it again! Today was a challenge for the whole team! We are duplicating Toy and Richy not once, not twice but SIX TIMES. This created a massive challenge in post production as there were bunch of overlapping that were happening today. I was so fucsued today that I only took one photo before the shoot.
Here is a video of all the raw footage before it was put into Adobe Premiere Pro
Richy and I then proceeded on to film the next scene which was when the protagonist is entering the scene. No image has been taken as nobody was available to take photos for us so...
PLEASE CHECK POST PRODUCTION STAGE FOR CONTINUATION
FILMING DAY 7
SOCIAL SEQUENCE (FINALE)
December 11th 2017
Today was finally the last day of filming yay! We filled in the gaps between the Social Sequence and the Toilet Sequence with the way it's intended to be. I was really pleased with the end result of this. I finally achieved the Dolly Zoom which was one of if not the most challenging camera technique to perform! Even more so than the tracking shots.
In order to bridge the Social and Toilet Sequence together, I came up with this bizarre idea in my head the day we filmed the Toilet Sequence as Richy was wearing the wrong color uniform on the day. The idea was to have somebody assault Richy with a Sharpie pen and colouring him in as if the Media is overwriting him.
Here are videos of us testing the shot, doing the shot and cleaning up the shot!
I decided yo use the 24mm F2.8 lens for this scene as it is one of my highest aperture lens of F2.8 but the other one was a 50mm which means that it is way too zoom for the occasion. Furthermore, the front element of this lens is really small which means that Toy will only need to colour in a tiny area; this means that we can take more than one take rather than having to clean up every take.
We took turns cleaning up the plastic divider by applying the area covered with sharpie ink with regular whiteboard marker ink then use a wet tissue and scrub it gently and it came off really easily.
With this we packed up and we are now finished with filming GratiFly and ready to put the entire film together!
