Film Day Part II

It is film day part II. After school, Gordon and I went straight to eat then went back to get his clothes and things. Daan also went back to his to eat and gather his things. I needed everything to be the exact same, so I told them to wear exactly what they were wearing when we filmed the first day. We got Gordons things and drove to the fields. We arrived the same time Daan did and began filming.
   
Luckily it the weather was quite similar to the last time apart from a few clouds in the air. We were also lucky no one was playing in the field we needed to use. I decided to begin with Daans scenes first as he had somewhere to be after. Because we didn't have an extra person to help us, I got Gordon to get in Daan's car so that he could be the person Daan is saying goodbye to. You can't see Gordons face so it was perfect. I wanted to create a shot where Daan is saying goodbye to his friend as the friend is beginning to drive away. I asked Gordon to back out and be at an angle where he could drive away as they say goodbye. I also wanted to create a transition from the montage to Daan's part. I did this by having the camera back out from his shoulder which would create a white blur to then going into focus. I did this and the shot worked well. To make the transition work I would need another shot from the montage to transition to Daan's bit. I did this by getting Gordon roll the ball fast on the ground towards the camera to make it so close that it takes up the whole screen and will be black. Going back to Daan's scene, I recorded a few angles of him walking and I asked him to look towards the field where Gordon would be playing then to the path then back towards the field. I wanted to make it look like he was recognizes Gordon but this took quite a while. Daan isn't the best of actors so we had to go again and again to get it right. It just didn't look natural. I had an idea to make him feel more natural so I asked to do something with his hands as he walked and not be so stiff with them. I told him to itch his head, brush his hands through his hair, wipe sweat off his forehead, just anything. And to my surprise it kind of worked. It wasn't perfect but it definitely looked a lot better. I then recorded him moving towards the fence and looking at Gordon play. I did a few different angles of this so I could use the right ones when I edit them. We finally finished Daan's part and he was free to leave.

When Daan left I only needed to film a bit more of Gordon's part. We started by filming the very beginning of the opening. I did a shot of Gordon getting out the car which would be the first shot of the film. He then opens up the trunk to get his bags and ball. I wanted to record the shot inside of the trunk so I put the back seats down and recorded from inside. I had the camera focus on the ball and got Gordon to reach for it and take it. We then recorded his walk towards the field. I did a medium shot of him putting on his headphones as he walks then I was onto the next shot which would be quite tricky. I wanted to create an establishing shot where it's high angle with the protagonist walking from the left to right. The only problem was I didn't have a crane obviously or a high place I could be. To solve this I used my tripod. I extended the tripod to the most it could possible be and held it from the bottom with the camera on top. The camera would be quite high and would be at a pretty good height for what I envisioned.

At this point we were pretty much done. We still had a lot of light left so I got Gordon to just play around with the ball a bit more so could have more footage. You can never have enough footage. I did a few different angles and asked him to do certain things with the ball. The sun started to go down and we were finally done with filming for good. I had all the shots I wanted and I'm ready to finish editing the final product.