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Showing posts from March, 2023

Wrapping Things Up

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  Yesterday was the last day of filming. It all went very smoothly and there's not much left to do. Today I just need to edit. I need to put those new scenes into the project on iMovie. However, I have school today. I must take 2 tests and complete 4 classwork assignments. I spent my morning studying for psychology and calculus. I took the tests and feel like I did well. Then, in my last period of the day I completed my 4 classwork assignments. Now that I was able to get home, I could start editing. I had Lily send me the rest of the footage. Once I got it, I downloaded it to my camera roll. I imported it into the project and then it was fairly easy from there. I just had to move it to where I wanted it to fit into the film. Then, I had to adjust the background music to play during the clip. Next, I needed to adjust the volume lower because it was extremely loud at first. After this, I edited the credits into the film. I made sure the font fit the aura surrounding the film. Lastly,

Last Filming Day

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  I had a slow start to today because of yesterday. I got up at around 11 AM. Which is extremely unusual for me. I typically get up around 8 AM, but I was just exhausted. Anyways, I got up and then texted Lily and my friend Logan. I told them to be at my house for 1 PM. I just needed to re-shoot some scenes and it was fairly quick. Lily got here first, so I got her a drink and we chatted about what exactly we needed to touch up. I got the gist and immediately knew that it was gonna go smoothly. I told Logan to bring his drone so that we could have a really good establishing shot. He got here and I gave him a drink. Then, I had him fly his drone out to get the shot. He did so and we all looked at it. It was amazing and felt that was the best that we were going to get. So, then it was time for me and Lily to re-shoot a scene where her dad(me) yells at her and she runs into her room. So, we were shooting and she SLIPPED! She was okay and we were all laughing so hard. I'm glad we got i

Full Day of Work

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 It is now the weekend again. Doesn't feel like it though, I had to do so much today. I woke up at 6 AM to get ready for a long day. By the end of the day, I had to complete a 5-hour test, 7 hour shift, and 2 hours of chores. First, I had to do the test. So, I got up and ate something nutritional. I then took a shower to wake myself up. Then, I had to grab my testing ticket and calculator. I left out the door and started driving when I realized I forgot my ID. I need my ID to prove my identity for the test. Once I got it, I drove to the school and took the test. I felt pretty good about everything, I felt like I performed well. Once that was over it was around noon. I went home and had to do the dishes and all my laundry. I did the dishes first. Then I washed, dried, and folded all my laundry within two hours. I had to get dressed for work extremely quickly, but I did it. I also made it on time which I was not expecting. I ended up having an easier work shift than I thought I was g

Super Busy

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  Today I really wanted to wrap up filming. I want to just have it done so that I can feel less of a weight on my shoulders. However, things didn't go as planned. I ended up getting tons of busy work from my other classes. I got 3 physics assignments because I had been absent a couple days. Then, I learned that I have a calculus test next period. Which means I am going to be spending a long day and night studying for that. Then, in English I am required to have a 4 page research paper done within a week. It is about a famous author James Patterson. I thoroughly enjoy his books and life story. So, the paper shouldn't be super difficult considering I enjoy the topic. It will just be time consuming and limiting the amount of time I have to film and edit. Especially since Lily has work of her own. She must study for the same calculus test that I am taking. In addition, she has a massive biology study guide that she must complete by the end of the night. She also does many extracurr

Poor Weather Again

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Today was a planned filming day to re-shoot some scenes. We already have all the scenes we need. Some just need to be touched up. I had Lily drive over to my house. That way we could discuss what the film needed. Plus, we needed to prepare ourselves for filming. Then, of course there was a hurricane warning on the news. So, that immediately cut off any plans that we had. There was gonna be no filming, only editing. But, we didn't have very much to edit. I ended up realizing I needed to finish inserting some audio into the clips. I ended up doing that while Lily was just relaxing. Once I finished I told Lily that we could edit some transitions. She said we should save it for another day and enjoy the "day off" that we're provided with. I agreed, so I decided to go play billiards with her and we listened to some music. She beat me all 5 times but we don't talk about that. I was sick of losing, so I told her we should play some board games. I fancy chess, it's my

Using Imovie

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                                                     At this point, we have nearly finished all filming. I would say we're 90% done with that. The only scenes we have left are the ones we want to perfect. However, I have decided to start the editing process. I am going to use Imovie as my editing platform. I find that we do not need many effects in our film. If it is necessary then I will use another editing software. Like I said, I don't feel as though I would need to. I uploaded some of the film files to Imovie and started adding the text for the credits opening/closing sequences and such. This was fairly straightforward. I just needed to type in the text and then add the green screen effect. This allowed the text to fall right onto the screen. The next step was to add the background music. I couldn't figure it out so I let it up to Lily to teach me. It was actually pretty straightforward. I needed to screen record the video of the audio and then insert the file into the

Chill Day

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 As a director I feel like it's important that your crew also gets rewarded for the great work they've done. I had the idea for all of us to spend a day together doing fun things. Sort of like a large group of friends. So I reserved a dinner table for us at a restaurant on the water. As for before that, I told them to all meet at the beach at 12. Once we were at the beach it was so fun. I played volleyball with them. Next we played beach soccer. Beach soccer is my personal favorite. I hate when we play volleyball because sand gets everywhere when you dive. I love the beach but hate the sand. Anyways, it was about 2 hours before our reservation. I told everyone to go home and get ready and meet us at the restaurant. Fast forward to us all being there, everyone sat with their closer friends. It was still fun though, everyone was chipping into conversation and cracking jokes. I had a delicious meal. It was steak, potatoes, and mac & cheese. I'm not a huge fan of seafood bu

Super Acting

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I thought that today was going to be one of the hardest days. The plan was to film the last couple scenes which require the most from the actors. There is going to have to be deep, intense emotion portrayed considering the storyline. So, I text the people that are coming over to start heading my way. I also let them know to wear excess makeup. I do this because when they cry I want it to seem way more dramatic that it really is. I want the makeup running down the face. While they're on their way, I start preparing the car and body bag. I dressed up as the dad and got the fake alcohol set. Finally, they got here after all the traffic. Then, we had to wait for the sun to set to start filming. Once we got started, I knew it was gonna be easy sailing. The actors seemed on point. My camerawork was flowing perfectly. Everything was just setting into place. We wrapped it up pretty quickly and then just sent everybody home.  I looked over the film for a little bit. I felt personally touche

Technological Troubles

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 There were so many problems today I can't even begin. I was trying to send messages for an hour to Lily. She is the editor that's why I was sending the film to her. However, my service was acting up all day and the files weren't sending. Then, once they did, it took forever for Lily's service to load the files onto her phone. I met up with her after school to help her edit. I told her to bring her laptop to make it easier. Of course she forgot it, so I had to drive her to her house to get the laptop. Once I got us back to the house, we opened up the laptop and it was dead. So we had to wait for the computer to charge. Two hours later we finally started editing. It was going smoothly for a while but then something happened. The laptop would not save our data/file and we were too scared to shut the laptop. I ended up figuring it out but it was a pain. It felt like the problems were never ending. What happened next was terrible, the file crashed. I had to edit the clip al

Successful Filming

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Today was an extremely productive day for our crew. I told Lily and everyone else to be at my house for 3 PM. It was still about an hour until everyone would get here. So, I took the time to shower and get dressed into my costume. Lily was the first to get here. I had her make sure that all the cameras were set that needed to be propped up. Everyone arrived a little late but it didn't matter too much. The first scene we shot was Lily and Kaya walking home together. Then, we filmed all scenes where Lily and Kaya were alone except for the ending. There was a lot of trouble in the scene that Kaya and Lily engage in dialogue for a long period of time. The difficulty was when the actors had to remember the vast amount of lines. I took a total of 26 takes! It took about an hour in total just to get that scene right. Other than that, filming went fairly smoothly. The other 2 scenes only required tracking shots with minimal need for remembering lines. I was reviewing the content and realiz

Came Down With A Sickness

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  I was with Lily today and I was helping her understand exactly when we were gonna meet to film. She agreed that the dates were good and I moved on with my day. In fact, I went to go take a standardized test and there were many people sniffling and sneezing. All of a sudden I get a scratchy feeling in my throat. I know that I am starting to get sick. So, I let the crew know and they were pretty annoyed. Mainly, because of the timing and how unfortunate it was. I told them that they could film without me. The only issue with that would be that I'm the only one who really knows how to direct properly. The extras don't necessarily understand which camera angles and shots are best for portraying certain emotions. Therefore, I told Lily to record the basic scenes that don't need complex camerawork. After that, they sent me the film and it was surprisingly extremely well produced. I told them they could all head home early because I know they have their own lives with their own

Rainy Day

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 Today was supposed to be my planned first day of there filming process. My goal was to not necessarily film, but just get a lay of the land. I wanted to make sure me and Lily had the right costumes, makeup, etc. I also was looking to make sure that the police lights and uniform that I ordered had arrived. They hadn’t, so I knew I couldn’t film the scenes that required them today. Other than that everything was set and ready to film. Therefore, i texted the extras and other actors to let them know to head over. While me and Lily were waiting we grabbed some extra bits and pieces we saw at a store. We also grabbed food for everyone since we figured it could be a long day. Then, right as they arrived, the clouds were almost black. Before I knew it, there was torrential downpour. There was no chance of being able to film outside for the rest of the day. It took us a while to realize that we could’ve filmed the inside scenes in the meantime. So, by the time we realized, everybody was alrea