Shooting

Lights, camera, action!

Tuesday after school I hurried my way down to the hallway where my opening scene took place. 

I brought about 5 bags full of props- from makeup kits, to hair sprays and brushes, to laptops and extra clothes on hangers.

Unfortunately, a few of my actors bailed on me last minute, but luckily I was able to substitute them with others that were willing to help. 

I quickly began the setup- laying out the make up kits, the clothes, and the chairs. 

There was this huge flat board with wheels that I used to my advantage as a prepping stage for the models to stand on before the show began. 

There was also a whole DJ display with buttons and switches for the music and sounds to play from, which I laid the laptops on top and used as a prop.

I then dressed all of the model actors from head to toe with winter fashion and told the other stylists before hand to dress in all black. 

Everything was finally in its place and we began.

I first recorded entering from one of the side doors, (that was right in the middle of the hallway) so, I had to move the camera from the left then to the right view in order to capture the entire hallway. Not only was it shaky, but it also looked choppy, awkward and too much of the blank wall was shown in between the transition. I recorded this same scene a couple of times, but decided it was just no good. 

So, I moved on to the actual beginning entry door of the hallway and went for a long shot of me following a stylist pulling one of the models by the arm into the dressing area. 

Since it was a double door, our first challenge was deciding which side would be best to enter from. We filmed it from the left side at first, but, I kept tripping over and bumping into this big black staircase that came immediately after you stepped into the hallway. So of course, we tried the right side of the double door and it was much better because there were no obstacles in my way. 

BUT, each time the two actors infront of me would open the door to enter the hallway, the door would close and lock me out before I even stepped inside! I then decided that instead of getting a full and long shot of their entire bodies opening and entering into the dressing room area, I would have to stick to a midshot while someone else sat by the bottom of the door and held it open for me while I followed the two actors inside. It worked!

I held my phone camera steady on a tripod as I moved through the hall with one continuous long shot. I had to do this several times because I was so scared that it kept coming out too shaky. Luckily, I was surrounded by wonderful and patient people who didn't mind recreating the same scene over and over and over again. 

Although most of my shots were long and continous, I also displayed close-ups of models faces, mid shots of their clothing, low ground shots of everyone's fast-paced feet in panic, and a high angle shot of Vivi's dead body. 

Overall, shooting was definitely a challenge and many problems I hadn't anticipated occured in the moment but I was able to overcome them. In the end, I had about 15 minutes worth of footage and 35 different clips!