Filming has officially finished for my partner and I's movie opening. Mirrored Reality Productions has gotten all the footage we needed for the opening scene of our film, Balancing Act. While it has been a few months since we first turned in our first drafts of our script and storyboard, it feels like no time has past since we first envisioned what this film (opening) could be. With our "rough cut" finished, we are very close to completing our final scene opening, and the portfolio section of the AICE Media Studies AS level course.
Filming the scenes went by smoother than I thought that they would be. My partner and I did have some slight disputes while shooting, but the process was mostly peaceful and very interesting. Riley, my partner and brother, portrayed the main character in our opening, while I was behind the camera. While I have taken short videos on my phone before, I found the experience of actually filming a scene for a movie to be riveting, regardless of how big the scene we were shooting actually was. I felt in control of the scene, filming shots at the angles that I thought was best. Of course, I would not have been able to do so without this class since, while I was familiar with a few different shots, I did not know why certain shots worked best for certain actions until I was taking this class. I learned to use wide shots to better convey the environment that a scene takes place in, so I did that when filming scenes of Clark's (the main character of our film) bedroom, allowing for his room to convey the cluttered nature that is also affecting him mentally. I utilized match-on-match action to demonstrate continuity between shots, allowing for the film to blend together in a nice fashion.
That is not to say that every shot that we filmed was perfect, since this is one of our first experiences filming a scene, much less an opening scene. I filmed the sequence with a video recorder, so some shots may not have been one hundred percent stable all the time, but I think that I did a good enough job. The final sequence ended up being over three and a half minutes, which does not even include the scene that we had to initially scrap. During the editing phase, which should commence this weekend, we will thoroughly go over our rough cut to determine which shots are the least essential to the opening scene, as well as trimming down certain scenes to make them faster. We should end that process with a two minute film opening, with added credits and music.
Overall, the filming of the opening sequence was an incredible experience, one that I would not have done so easily if I had not learned about the different shots and techniques I did during this course. I look forward to wrapping up the editing process and producing the final cut to the opening scene of Mirrored Reality Productions' first film, Balancing Act.
Comments