Tuesday, June 30, 2009
{ 10:46 PM }
However, despite how accomplished we felt about our first round of filming, it was not up to the standard we wanted. We were only allowed a handycam for our first round, as the teachers did not trust us with the professional video cameras. This caused our footage to be of considerably poor quality, and the audio was also lacking in sharpness, resulting in a poorly made film. Our actors were also comprised mainly of our team members, with teenagers of 15/16 years of age taking up the roles of adults. The only team member whom did not act in the first round was the director himself. This was also extremely problematic, as the film turned out to be like a kid project, instead of a quality film that we wanted.
This led to our second round of filming, but this time, we were allowed access to the professional video cameras and the boom mike, which significantly enhanced our footage and audio quality. It also allowed us acces to changing the 'high-tech' options during the process of capturing the footage, thus making it easier to create more sophisticated filming effects. This time, we were also able to get our teachers to take up the adult roles in the film, making the film far more authentic than before. I would say that this is an extremely positive change from the first round of filming.
Labels: first filming session, Problems, standard
Thursday, June 25, 2009
{ 12:00 AM }
The first filming round had been a tiring process. We had a schedule planned out for our filming, but, like most plans, it is not easy to follow. We had hoped to start filming at 7pm at Lingfeng's house, but distractions after distractions came towards us and we only started after 8pm. Being set at night, our story only makes our film even easier to be pushed later into the night, especially when we are tired after a day of school.
Being the first time doing a film for many members of the team(which is four out of five members), we did encounter many problems with the filming. The angles for the shots planned in the storyboard were not as easy to be done as we thought. The first night of our filming presented us with many flaws in our plans, as we completely underestimated the amount of time required for each scene to be shot. We even had a scene which took 26 takes, a total 2 hours worth of hard work for a mere one minute in real time. This also taught us to cut our scenes shorter to make it much easier for the actors, as longer scenes only make it far more difficult for the actors to recite the lines and act it out at the same time. This 2 hours of exhausting work soured our moods as we took take after take, reciting the same lines over and over again while at the same time trying to act the best we could.
To sum up the first round of filming, i would say that it may be the most educational process of all. I doubt any of the teammates had expected filming to be so difficult and tiring, but when we really went down to the set to start our filming, we really tasted the hardship that all filmmakers face all the time. Furthermore, we also gained essential experiences about film and acting techniques, and we did try out the different shots to create different effects for our film.
Labels: first round of filming
