Editing Pt.2

     I am nearing the end of editing so I am still on track with my schedule. I have also, however, like yesterday, ran into issues that could have been avoided. Through the second half of the film opening, the baseball sequence, I am interspersing clips of the mother character preparing food, from earlier in the first sequence. The audio however for those clips are useless so tomorrow right after school, I will have to recreate the sound effects, or the whole shots if aligning the audio seamlessly is too difficult. 

     I have gone through and edited what I could of the film opening without those sound effects, and I am concerned about going over the 2 minute time limit a little. I am currently standing at 2 minutes and 18 seconds. I am not sure what I am able to get rid of in order to lose the storyline. I will try to have some friends or family watch it to get their feedback.

     This is what the timeline of my 95% complete looks like- aside from some audio tracks-

Editing

     This week has been my spring break so I have been keeping it relaxing. I have still been slowly editing the film opening throughout the week. It is a pretty long process, and I have realized some issues I wish I had foreseen earlier. I really wish to I had given the characters more strong dialogue in the second half of my film opening, to really establish who Tomas is, as the main character's best friend. I also wish I had more shots of the playful interactions with the main character and other extras and other smaller characters.

     I do like how the first shot and scene came out, with a single conversation that travels from one area to another and gives clues to the type of person and character Neil is. While editing, I noticed that not all of the clips were as bright as the others. So through the editing software that I am using; Adobe Premiere Pro, I am able to adjust the look of the clips in many different ways. This is a screen recording of how I am correcting the exposure and brightness as well as contrast of the clips:

Second Day of Filming

     My second day of filming took place on Saturday in my home. The only actors needed to be the main character Neil, and my real mother who is playing his mother in the film opening. There is a pretty continuous stream of dialogue between the two characters which only took a little time to nail down after rehearsing with the characters. In order to capture this audio as the camera travels through the house, I had set up two cell phones and used the microphone of the headphones taped to the character's chest to record the audio from both of the characters directly and I had both of the characters clap on camera to sync all of the tracks.

     It also took a couple of days to bring the props over to my house and arrange them throughout my room and the bookshelf in the family room. The longest part was cleaning my room and hiding my stuff to make enough space to clearly see the props. 
     I am downloading the footage to my computer and going over it, to find the clips I can work with. I hopefully have all the shots and clips I need. I do need to capture good sound bites of the mother chopping up vegetables and sounds of the bats and gloves as well as when the ball hits the bat. 

Reflection on the First Day of FIlming.

     The first day of filming was fun, exciting, a little nerve racking, and warm. We thankfully didn't experience any serious issues when filming. Finding an open field was very easy, but one situation did present itself within just hours of filming time. Extra after extra who said they could participate started dropping like flies. However, when it came time to filming, I only had 4 extras other than the main character, and I had someone just take a few pictures of me filming too. 

     When it came time to filming, I was able to use my good friend Tomas' DJI Ronin which is a very fancy stabilizer for a DSLR camera. It is a little heavy but totally worth it for the smooth quality of the shots.  

     Filming took about an hour an a half long, after getting everyone settled from wanting to throw around the baseballs for fun. I also went through everyone's role which I can now just sort of understanding the pressure of a director or choreographer when putting together a full-scale production. 

     In tomorrow's posting, I will discuss the experience when filming the first long scene of my film opening which took place in my house. 

  

Tomorrow is filming day and I was gathering together the last of the necessary props. I purchased a styrofoam ball to pain and look like a real baseball in order to hopefully get some close-up shots of the impact of the ball. Also, tomorrow morning I am going to Party City to look for "scarring Make-up" to have some visual effects with a wound. I also had some downtime to play with three of the lenses I own to look at which I think would work best for the first half of the opening, inside the home and room of the main character. I think I like the look of the 18-55mm lens as opposed to the 50 mm lens. It offers a wider view which is better because I can always get closer to the subject but I am limited in space to get a wide enough view on the 50 mm. I am now just finalizing my thoughts and ideas for the baseball scene that I will be filming TOMORROW! I'm equally excited and nervous as of right now. 

Step By Step

     Last night I picked up the last (at least I think) of the props that I will be using in the room of the main character in the first half of the opening sequence. Last night and this morning I was also searching through Youtube Audio Library looking for more quiet and ambient songs that I can use behind the dialogue.  I found some baseball cards in a closet in my dad's house, to lay across the desk in the room and across the room, and also some decorative baseballs. I also will place cameras and other objects so they are present in the shot to show other traits and hobbies of the main character. I also made sure to have enough baseballs to use while filming so I won't have to chase after each ball following each shot.
     I plan to incorporate more happy music while the friends are playing baseball. After halfway through this second scene, I plan to slowly introduce a rising heart rate sound effect over the happy music, that slowly becomes louder leading up to the suspenseful tension release of the main character being struck. The happy music playing will stop to reveal only the heartbeat to represent that the main character's injuries are serious. Much of today I have also been cleaning my room to make space for all of the props and so they will be easily insight when it is time to film. T-2 days until filming; I can't wait!

Movie Title, Filming Date, and More

So, this upcoming week I am planning on finally filming. Tentitevilly I will be filming on Thursday (In 4 Days!) I'm very excited and a little nervous. Tomorrow I am gathering together all of my props, and organizing them and starting to set them up. After juggling through my friends' schedules, we are hopefully filming Thursday.  As of now after the main character, I have 3 for sure extras and HOPEFULLY a few more.
The theme of "Life throwing you a curveball" has really resonated with me over the past day, and I just think that the name "Curveball" is a fitting title for my film. While filming I plan to incorporate bright lighting hopefully if the weather permits. This should keep a lighter mood at the beginning of this scene and will only get slightly darker after the main character is struck with the baseball. I am still also slowly searching for ambient music to match the tone I am looking for.
Thursday this week is an early release day from school so I will have even more time to shoot during the day, and there is no school the following Friday, so if I need that will be my back-up filming day.