COVID Results!!!

 Today all of our team members received their COVID-19 results from the December 23rd scare. Fortunately, the majority of us tested negative for the coronavirus. Unfortunately one of our actors who were not with us earlier, but scheduled for a later scene tested positive for the virus. This news brings us sadness, but we will be sure to keep in touch with her and wish her a speedy recovery. In terms of how to move forward, it seems as if weeks have passed. When in reality it has been about 5 days. As everyone received their results, Jonathon and I started reaching out asking for availability. Unfortunately, a good amount of our team members will be away until the new year. So it seems as if we will have to push back our final film date to the beginning of 2021. This will most definitely push back our entire schedule of events. Luckily, Jonathon and I planned early to have an ambitious start time. This means we should still be able to finish well before needed. As we came to this realization Jonathon and I hopped on a call and made the determination it was safest to not see each other until after break since we were both having heavy interaction with our family members. This is to ensure the absolute safety of everyone on our team as we complete this project. As we move forward with planning we will make sure to add extra safety steps. Likewise, we look forward to finishing filming our one scene in Downtown, Fort Lauderdale, Florida. As previously stated we will not be able to do this until the new year now. Until then we wish you a happy new year and a safe one too. Be sure to read our next blog as we hope will be done filming with no more scare surprises. 

Editing day 1

  It has been roughly two days since we got our COVID test and no one on our team has received their results. So, I hopped on a phone call with Jonathon and we talked how we can make the best use of our time in our session as we await our results. We agreed that no one on our team should meet in person until we receive the results. So after brainstorming we decided to start the editing process as best as we can via zoom to ensure a collaborative effort. We started by dumping all the footage. It surprisingly was around 20 gigabytes of footage. As you can imagine this took a while to transfer to the computer. After we got it all we imported it into iMovie and started reviewing the clips. This did become an issue over zoom just because it was a lot for the computer to handle. But, we kept trying to push through it in order to maximize our time. We were able to review quite a bit of the gulf stream footage. Over the zoom platform the slowness was becoming a barrier we realized we cannot get by. Jonathon still decided to try to edit some of the videos by and wait to finalize anything until the next time we see each other. I know we will still have more than enough time to edit, so at this point in time, I am not worried. As we move forward with planning we have to be very cautious. We will just plan everything in a best scenario situation and hope for the best. But, if we test positive we will plan around how we can still get everything done. Anyway, we hope the results will come back soon and negative. Until then we will wait and hope for the best.

Filming day 3- COVID SCARE

 As we all met up to record scenes the final scenes Jonathon received a phone call. He answered just in case it was an emergency, but he soon found out that a close friend of his just tested positive for COVID-19. Now although we were taking precautions as a group we also all ate lunch together. Additionally, additional members of our team were exposed to the same individual. At this point, we were wondering what steps should we take forward to move. Jonathon and I talked it over and decided the safest option was to postpone all filming to a further date. At this point, Jonathon and I felt extremely bad for putting everyone in this position a day before Christmas Eve. Many of us not sure what to do regarding family and testing. So Jonathon and I asked the whole team who wanted to get tested and drove everyone to a testing site in Miami. As we drove everyone to Miami the constant fear of possibly spreading to COVID was in our minds. The last thing we were thinking about last night was media studies or filming. As we started approaching the location we waited in a line and all the members of our team who wanted to get tested got tested. Unfortunately, the results are not rapid it actually takes upwards from 2 to 4 days. As we wait for the results we will be in a constant fear of not knowing what to do. Right now we are hoping no one on our team has COVID and we can move forward with the project. This will push back our anticipated finish date. Nonetheless, I am happy we made that decision as it was the best one to ensure safety for us, our family, and those around us. As we move forward we will be sure to keep in mind how easy the virus can spread. On this Christmas Eve, we are hoping for the best and wishing everyone negative results. 

Filming day 3

Since I was not able to join my team while they filmed on the second day, I was able to join them today! Today was definitely a roller coaster. We filmed in the afternoon a few scenes and planned to film the rest in the night when the sun went down. This blog will be covering the afternoon scenes. We arrived at the 'Abonded house' around 10am to start filming. As we arrived we realized we forgot to bring the photographs we had of Rece to complete the stalker effect. Even though we ran into this hiccup there was an easy solution. We googled the nearest Office Depot and saw it was roughly two miles away. We then made a google doc with the photos of Rece who is playing Leo and emailed it over to the Office Depot printing kiosk. We then all headed over to Office Depot and retrieved the printouts of Rece. Likewise, we went to the cutting station and cut them out as if they were 8 x 10 photos. Although this was an unfortunate error we were able to create a solution rather easily. We then re-setup the house with pictures of Rece and red yarn to appear a stockerish feel to the building. Once this was done we used a folding chair and towing cable to tie Rece - 'Leo' - into the chair for the kidnapping scenes. This all took roughly an hour. Around 11:40am we started to film! All in all the filming went really well. The scene's dialogue was much longer so it took a few takes to capture everything. But, I think the end product is going to come out really well. We are all now going to take a lunch break and meet up at 6pm to film the final scenes of the film. So excited to dump all of the footage and start editing!

Filming day 1

Filming is definitely such a great feeling. We just completed our first day of filming and it had a few twists, but overall went great. Our goal going into today was to film all the scenes at Gulfstream Park and Giache Creepes. We ended up meeting this goal it just did not go as anticipated. But we couldn't imagine it any better. Going into today's filming session Jonathon and I were nervous that the chemistry between our actors and actress would be noticed. We had them run over their lines with each other a few times before, but we were still very nervous. But to our surprise, when they were acting with each other the footage came out perfectly. We started filming today at Gulfstream Park in Hallandale Beach, Florida. As you remember the park was closed but an official of the park said we would be able to enter to film for our school project.  Unfortunately, after roughly 15 minutes of filming a security officer approached us. We explained why we were there and how we thought we could be here for our school project. After explaining he understood and said we can continue filming. Five minutes after the officer came back and said we could not be there and escorted us outside of the park. Now obviously this was not part of the plan. Jonathon and I game planned and realized we could move to the general area at Gulfstream Park. We moved there and were able to film all of the scenes we originally planned to film there. All in all, it was a blessing in disguise because the background ended up appearing better. After that, we all headed down to Miami to film at Giache Crepes. The filming went smoothly and as anticipated. So excited to have Day 1 of filming in the books and excited to continue filming throughout the week. 

Setting the time and date

 Jonathon and I met up today in in order to discuss the time and dates our team would meet up. The ideal situation would be that we can meet up whenever to film and edit. But sadly it doesn't work that way. Even though we're on break and our film is a big priority, we all have our separate schedules. This is a time for us to relax but this is time has been the busiest I've been. I can't speak on behalf of my team but while making our schedule I could tell that everyone was pretty busy during break. We needed to make sure we were fitting in everyone's schedule. Some of us work and some were going to celebrate the holidays with family. I also think a big factor to making our schedule would try to target our locations at the least amount of foot traffic possible. Due to COVID we want to make sure that everything is as safe as it can be. But in the end, we were able to make a schedule that suited everyone. 

We decided that within three days we would be able to film. Since many of our locations are going to be used for some of the same scenes, travel is not a big factor. Our plan is to change up the Mis en Scene in order for it to look different. We divided the scenes the three days. We made sure that we needed to film scenes that took place near each other. For example, we would film scenes in the southern region of our county one day and then film scenes in the northern region of our county another day. Sunday the 20th we would film scenes 1,2, and 3. We would film from 12pm-3pm in the southern region of our county. Tuesday the 22nd we would film the background scenes with the main character. Wednesday the 23rd is when we would film the majority of our film. Scenes 4,5,6,7 and 8 would be filmed from 11am-to whenever we finish. 

Location scouting

 Today we were able to finally scout out a location for one our scenes. Since we were able to plan everything out, we had some ideas of where we wanted to film our scenes. Of course these are all places that we've visited before so we had an idea of how it would turn out. However, for the scene where the main character gets kidnapped, we didn't have an absolute location where we wanted to film. We asked around to see if any of our friends knew of places that had the description we were looking for. Turns out one of our mutual friends knew of a place that was around 30 minutes away from our houses. We decided that today was a great day to go and see it. Since we need to film at this location, we need to make sure that filming is permitted. We did a little bit of research and found out that it's considered public property so filming was okay. We really wanted this location to work out because it matched the description almost perfectly. 

When we arrived to the location we were disappointed. It turns out that the location no longer exists. Granted, our friend hadn't recently been there so we all expected to see it. This whole time we've been depending on this location because we would be filming the most important scene. The scene would be the climax of the film where the twist of revealing the character's true intentions happens. We didn't think this would happen so we didn't plan to have a second location. We need to think of another location fast. Our deadline is coming up and we want to have as much time as possible to edit our short film. Hopefully in the upcoming days we will have a location to film at. If not, I don't know what we're gonna do. 

Back from break!!

Our Thanksgiving break has officially ended. Sad that it ended but I was able to think about my expectations for the film. I really want all of the aspects to come out as we envision them. The meaning of the scenes, camera angles, and movements. Everything in our film has a purpose. We hope that it can translate towards the audience. During the break we also roughly planned out what the next few weeks will look like. We have an upcoming winter break so we were able to figure out the filming and editing schedule that fits. Even though we don't know exactly when we'd be able to film and edit with our actors but we have a rough idea. 

Throughout the two weeks we plan on filming, editing, and taking care of all the other things. We want to get our filming done within the first week. Of course this all depends on our actors and our crew members but we're aiming for the first week. We don't need to get permission for the rights of any music. We decided that the sound would mostly be diegetic throughout our film. The second week would consist of editing our film. Editing is going to take the most time to finish. With my experience of making media, editing is a very meticulous step. Since our film needs to be five minutes, there is a lot of editing that needs to be done. In the end I know that we'll be able to get our film done the way we want it.