Day One of Shooting

 IT'S THAT TIME BLOGGERS! WE HAVE STARTED FILMING FORSAKEN! 

From the moment the camera started rolling, it was clear that this project is going to be something special! There were laughs, a few nervous jitters, and even some unexpected moments of brightness that would make it into the final cut! It's only day one and I already can’t wait to see how this film opener will result and become to be! Anyways, now I really want to show you our progress so far and some challenges we can across the way! 

First and foremost, our day started with a bit of a hiccup as we struggled to decide on the perfect music for the opening sequence. We planned to put background music for the majority of the opener, and it felt like every option we played just didn’t quite fit the mood we were going for either too intense or not impactful enough. Time was going by roughly fast and we realized we were wasting a LOT of time trying to make this decision. In the end, we had made the call to leave it for later and figure it out in reshoots in the future. It wasn’t the ideal start but sometimes you have to move forward and trust the process that will guide you later!

The next challenge we faced at the start was creating transitions between shots. We wanted the transitions to feel like what you would see in an Edgar Wright movie. It was mainly a test of timing and positioning requiring multiple takes to get it right especially on my iPhone. At one point, we tried doing a whip pan transition but we attempted doing it so many times that it threw us off guard. In the end though our team came together and we were closer to fixing the flow we imagined!

On the bright side, some of the scenes were refreshingly easy to shoot especially those set in spaces like H&M, Vans, and the arcade Round 1. These locations gave us super dynamic circumstances and at one point while we were filming the staff inside the Vans store thought our filming was pretty cool! It was fun capturing these moments and these scenes had an almost like effortless charm to them. This definitely in the end balanced out the day’s earlier challenges!

We wrapped up the day at my friend Freddy’s house, which was the perfect setting for the final scene we shot for Kendrick’s moment of isolation! With the lights off in his room, the cozy and melancholic atmosphere of his room is exactly what I envisioned for Kendrick’s emotional state perfectly which made me super happy! Watching him recreating what I imagined on my storyboard in that space was powerful, leaving not just me but the rest of my team with a quiet sense of achievement as the day came to a close!

This was just the good parts of the day though. After reviewing the footage from our first day of filming at the end of the day, my team and I realized that all the shots I made didn’t quite meet our expectations. While some scenes worked well, others felt disjointed especially when it came to transitions and the overall flow of the story where some shots really lacked the impact we were aiming for, and the pacing didn’t feel right. 

For this reason, it also gave us the idea that we needed to redo our approach. That’s why we’ve decided to meet up again this Sunday January 19th to reshoot, focusing specifically on improving the transitions and other shots that just felt like were missing.

We finally came to this moment and I'm beyond excited for the future! See you on the flip side!