Issues/Obstacles in My Film Opening Process

Throughout my project, I faced many obstacles, so in this blog post, I will explain each one in order.

(Me during these issues)

One of the first obstacles that I faced was deciding which genre I was going to do for about a week or two I was not sure whether I was going to do a romantic, Dracula, or gangster film. As I was deciding, I narrowed it down to either a romantic movie, which would be a romantic drama, or a gangster film which would be an Italian mafia film. After some close consideration, and after meeting with a few people from my class, I was able to decide on doing the romantic drama film. This decision ended up being the best choice because the shots and the possibility of making the film look good was greater than if I did a gangster film. Now more than I thought about it, and after my teacher explained about the project, I realized that doing a gangster film would have been very hard or impossible to achieve at the level that I am currently at. This doesn’t mean that I won’t try to do this type of film one day, but currently, my best option is to not do it.

(Romance film I watched recently) (One of the best movies I've ever watched tbh)

My next obstacle was deciding whether to use my camera or my iPhone camera. I first wanted to use my camera and check out equipment from the TV room or from Beacon. The main deciding factor on which camera I would use was because of the fact that CBTV would be at STN so most of the equipment that I needed would be taken and Beacon would have not been able to answer on time because Jim would have been at STN as well. So at this time, my best option was to use my phone, but later I realized that using my phone would have been a little bit more practical than using my camera because it is a bit easier to use than the camera without much equipment. I also got third-party advice from people who are also doing the film opening and people who have already done it. These people told me that they all shot it or going to shoot it with their iPhones. Filming with my phone was a good idea because I did not have to use much equipment and the video and quality turned out very nice. The only issue that may come later will be the HDR from the phone video. Edit editing with HDR, especially for color grading is a bit hard but I’ve done it in the past so hopefully, I can move past this issue.

(Camera I ended up using)

The next issue also is related to equipment. After deciding on what camera I would use I was also deciding on what equipment I was going to use for the video. At first, I was thinking about audio, but while filling in the phone, there were not many options for audio. If I were to use a camera, I would have most likely used a Rode Mic since it can capture whatever is in front of it. But since I don’t have a type of Rode Mic that is compatible with the phone and my teacher doesn’t either my only other option was to use phone LAUVS, but while thinking, I realized that the use of those types of mics would not really work well for the scenes that I am shooting so instead, I decided to use the audio that comes from taking the video on the iPhone. The last piece of equipment that I was debating on was getting a tripod or a stabilizer. I did not know that I was only able to check out one piece of equipment from my teacher so I had to decide on whether to get a stabilizer or a tripod. I knew that my sister had a tripod for an iPhone, but it wasn’t that stable and I knew that my teacher had tripods that were stable and good quality. I also felt like a stabilizer would be good, especially for the shots where my character is running. But I ended up, deciding on getting a tripod which later I realized was a mistake because the tripod that I was given was not able to even reach the level of my actors. Since the tripod was not able to reach the high level I did not use my teacher's tripod and I ended up using my sisters for most of the shots I had to hold the tripod or put it in a certain position so that it was stable. Using my sister‘s tripod was a good idea in the end and I ended up not using my teacher's tripod. Now that I think about it, I should’ve got the stabilizer so that I could’ve had a different variety of shots and had another piece of equipment that could’ve been useful for other things. Even though I did not get the stabilizer and I had to use an unstable tripod it still worked out pretty well.

(Type of tripod I wish I had and used)

Now comes the last issue, which is time management and editing. Editing takes up a lot of time and is something that you have to sit down and pay a lot of attention to. This week is going to be a bit hard to edit because I have lots of tests, events, and other life-related things that I have to do so managing my time will be a bit difficult since I have to take up some of it to edit. Another struggle is that I am currently going through sickness/allergies and I’ve been going like this for two or three weeks. These things are hindrances to my progress and starting the editing process hopefully, I will have some time to start it or at least get most of it done before the weekend starts if anything on Sunday, I will most likely be able to finish it. Let’s hope that I will not run into any more problems and that it is smooth sailing from here.

(Praying for the issues to pass)