Filming Opening

Class today had its second feedback discussion about our foundation projects. It was pretty uneventful to be honest. The group I was in was small, comprised of just three people, myself included. We talked about our projects, how we're going to film the video, when we'll film and edit, etc. It never felt like nugget of previously unknown information had been brought to my attention, however this discussion did help me with one thing at least.  It reaffirmed my belief that I'm on track with the production of my video and that I'm standing on a solid foundation. Same for the other two members of my group. I came to that conclusion that  from  how none of us really had anything to add to the other's plans for production. We mostly just listened to each other's plans and agreed with how they planned their production. Which helped give me some confidence for filming the rest of my video this Saturday.

Today I started filming and unfortunately, I didn't finish like I had originally hoped. I've managed to film plenty of short videos in a single day. I thought it was fairly reasonable that I could do the same for this video. It didn't help that I have been feeling sick for the past two days. Not only was I feeling miserable, audio was a major pain too. The camera mic had a hard time picking up the dialogue clearly, causing an end result of the clips being hard to hear. I'm not proud of many of my static shots either. The entire production was a three-man job being done by a two man crew. If a third crew member had been there the entire production would've improved substantially. That third crew member would've held up a boom mic while my friend and I acted. Or he would've helped with camera movement and framing in the middle of recording. The good news is that I did manage to get a second friend to be that third crew member to assist me on this video. Ou

Markham Park finally gave me a response when I called them again today. Good news is that everything can now go as planned. I can now just confirm things with my friend on filming. My idea is to film during Spring Break on a day that I don't have family plans. After looking at my script a second time I'd say that I should be able to film the entire video in a single day.

The rough draft of my script has finally been finalized. It's not much different than the version I came up with earlier. It just helps give me an idea of how the shots and story will go, without having to recall it from an unreliable memory. And as if the script wouldn't help me visualize the shots enough, I took the opportunity to create a storyboard, which will help guide me in creating shots during production, despite my crude drawings.

My Media Studies class today had a class discussion to help us gauge our progress on our Foundation project/video. The class got split up into groups made up of people that aren't helping us in our projects. Each group being made up of about 5-7 people each. We listened to each other's plans for the project and gave advice and criticisms as to what their project was lacking and what to prepare for during the production phase. I would say that while my project has a solid vision and foundation to build off of, I still did learn a well of useful from the discussion. Like how I should consider a slow pace to build up the suspension for the beginning. Or how I should plan out the lighting since I'll be filming part of the video in the dark. And to record room audio of the outdoor noises to help improve the audio quality of the video. Needless to say, I gained important insight on how the production of the video should go.

The most original and distinctive mask I could realistically make for my villain was that of a plague doctor. It's such an unusual and rather well known part of history, that is surprisingly under utilized in the world of modern horror. I can't think of any horror movie off the top of my head that had a plague doctor as a main or side antagonist. Their entire existence is surrounded by this ominous cloak of death. There's nothing settling about the appearance. Thick clothes made to protect themselves from the outside world never showing an inch of skin, except for their hands and face. Hands which would be covered by rubber gloves and the last piece of humanity showing, the face, would be covered by that surreal, otherworldly mask. It all comes together to make a threatening antagonist. Making a costume like this won't be easy, but it's a challenge that I can overcome.