Filming!

     On Monday, I was finally able to film my project. I was supposed to film on Saturday, but I ended up getting really sick. Luckily my friend Nidhi, who's helping me with this project, was available after school on Monday. I was honestly so lucky that I was able to successfully film everything on Monday, because I was scared that I would have to postpone filming once again.

 

    Planning for filming took a lot of thought for me, especially mise-en-scene elements. In my film opening, the protagonist is wearing a plain, baggy, black jumpsuit. I ordered this off of Amazon two weeks ago, when I initially thought I would film. I originally going to order a blue one, but I couldn't find one that would come in time. I still regret not having the blue one, but I think the black jumpsuit still achieved its purpose. 

    Additionally, during the film opening, there are a row of pills, and the character takes one of the pills. Some of them were random over-the-counter pills and others were prescription. Obviously, I wasn't going to have my friend swallow real pills. I filled a pill bottle with white Tic Tacs temporarily and made sure that was the only bottle that was opened during filming. Also, since some of the bottles were real prescriptions, I tried to scribble some personal information out and tried to not to get it in frame, at least not to a degree where it was legible. For makeup, I wanted to use makeup to make Nidhi's character look sick. She said she was able to do it, which I trusted her with because she had done pretty great Halloween makeup. She ended up making her under-eyes look more grey, and other techniques to make herself look less lively. She generally tried to recreate how she looks when she's sick so it would look believable. 

    I was surprised that filming was actually pretty quick. It only took about an hour, and that included preparing the costume and set. It also included going over the script with Nidhi multiple times to make sure she knew exactly what to do so we wouldn't have to do too many takes. I had gone over the script and storyboard with her two weeks ago to make sure it made sense to her and to give her a general understanding of her character and the plot. I had sent the script to her a few days before we filmed to give her a chance to prepare and memorize it. Overall, filming went really well. Though she had no prior acting experience, I think Nidhi did pretty well with the acting. I think I got good footage to work with, and I think everything came together great. I'm pretty excited, since now I feel like my project can finally move forward.