CAP Hollywood Reflection

In my media production class right now, we are doing an assignment called CAP Hollywood, in which small groups adapt a short story, written by a group member, into a short film. Our teacher wants us to write a reflection on how the production process has been going. So, that's what this is.

So far, our production process has gone relatively smoothly. Last Sunday we filmed the first half of the footage. We got footage from around Downtown Silver Spring and on the metro. We used a blue tinted filter on the camera which made everything seem darker and drearier. Our current footage is steady and clear. It even has some audio that we can use as background if we bring down the sound levels.

The biggest problem that we ran into was that the red line on the metro going towards DC was shut down for the weekend. We were planning on taking the metro into DC and filming on the metro as we went. Then we were going to film around DC. Instead, we had to take the metro in the other direction to film and we planned to finish filming in DC this weekend.

This didn't happen because one of our actors was sick. Right now, I'm really concerned about how we're going to get our filming finished in time, because our main actor can't film next weekend, and during the week we can't really film because one of my group members babysits, our main actor lives half an hour away, and it's the week before the AP exams. I really don't want to  find a new actor and re-film everything, but we may have to in order to get everything done in time.

Last weekend, I was the cinematographer. I set up angles and shots and filmed. I made sure the footage looked okay. I also directed people to make sure that they were in the right place so that the shots worked. I made sure that the lighting was okay for each shot. In school this week, with the help of my group, I put the some of the shots in the timeline and cut them into a rough cut. I also contributed my input as to what music we should for the first part of the film.

This week, we really need to do our best to finish filming. I'm not sure how realistic that is, but it's a goal. I also plan to help fine tune the editing of the first half of the film. I will help either bring down audio levels or edit out the audio completely. We need to pick the specific music that we want to use. We also need to work on creating a movie poster for our film. Hopefully, we can do that with the footage that we already have. In the long term, we need to put all of our footage in the timeline to make a rough cut  and eventually edit it into the final product.

It looks like we're going to be cutting it pretty close on this project. Hopefully, we get it done in time.

Here's a clip from last weekend's filming session:



In this clip, our main character, Kitty, realizes that a man sitting behind her on the metro is watching her.