Thursday, April 25, 2013

Journal #6: Too Exhausted to Come Up with a Title

This week of filming was...exhausting, stressful, and challenging in multiple ways. At the beginning of the week, we had decided to film Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. However, this carefully organized plan soon fell apart due to flaky actors. On Monday, Marlin showed up to the shoot late. Piero also forgot we were shooting that day, so he did not bring his camera. Because Amber thought Piero was going to bring his camera, she did not bother to charge her own. While we were trying to get everything done on Amber's camera, it died. Therefore, we did not finish the scene and had to postpone it to the next day. However, on Tuesday, 20 minutes before the end of 6th period, RJ, one of our actors, texted me and told me he could not make it due to "deadlines." This ruined our plan for finishing the shoot and we had to push back the scene until Thursday. On Wednesday, Bryan, our other male actor, told us after school he could not film at Petit Park until the next day (Thursday), so we had to push together the Menchie's scene from Monday and the Petit Park scenes from Wednesday on Thursday. On Wednesday, we reshot scene 3 and filmed our fight scene. On Thursday, nothing went horribly awry. We filmed at Menchie's first, then we drove to Petit and filmed there. After we were done, Piero brought the footage to Laura Macias, our editor, so that she could start putting the pieces together. Tomorrow (Friday), we will need to reshoot some scenes at Laura Macias' home in Sylmar. I hope that these will go well. I am excited beyond belief that we are done with all of RJ's scenes. Out of all our 4 actors, he was by far the flakiest. Also, Friday at lunch, we will need to ADR some dialogue from the first scene. I will be in charge of helping Laura Menchaca and Jeanette. Hopefully, we will be all done with filming on Friday (we better be done), and all the stress I feel while writing this post will evaporate into nothingness.

Thursday, April 18, 2013

Journal #5: Things Have Gotten...Complicated

This week of filming was rather shaky. While I could not be there on Saturday due to my plans out of town, I was told as soon as I got to school on Monday that we had to reshoot. I immediately scheduled this for the 27th of April. On Tuesday, our shoot went well despite the fact that Piero forgot his tripod. Laura Menchaca and I were "human tripods" so Piero could film. On Wednesday, however, I was severely disappointed. We were supposed to shoot our fight scene that day. Our main actors were there along with our main crew members. However, Laura Menchaca and her boyfriend, who was playing the bully, did not show. We tried to contact her, but she did not answer phone calls or texts. She never apologized for not showing up, which bothers me even more. I know now not to rely on her. The bright side is that I've found that Laura Macias is a very trustworthy person. I am happy she is our editor. I'm excited to continue shooting and to see the final product when Laura is done with it!

Thursday, April 11, 2013

Journal #4: The Joy of Organization

Never have I been happier to be cursed with OCD. As producer, I feel extremely proud of my work on my group's project, Head Games. Even though I went to the SkillsUSA trip in San Diego last weekend, I still got my breakdowns and schedule done while the other producers failed. I also helped organize a group of extras together for our first shoot on Thursday and kept the shoot on schedule. Our group successfully finished our first day of shooting with only small hitches along the way. I feel everyone is working to the best of their ability, and I am extremely confident that our movie will soon be ready to be screened at numerous film festivals. Piero is an amazing cinematographer, Laura Macias is on top of continuity, Jeanette and Laura Menchaca are focused on their sound design project, and Amber is guiding everyone (including myself) to greatness. I cannot wait to continue filming next week and weekend. This film is going to be incredible!