Shooting

(The Week of March 18th, 2010) This has been a busy and stressful week for our group. We spent a lot of time last week trying to figure out good times to get together to shoot our movie. Also, it took multiple attempts to get a cast for our movie. We simply needed a main character that was fit to play our action star. We wanted someone that looked like a normal student, but we didn’t want to cast anyone that was in honors to keep the audience (the class) to have preconceived notions, ideas about the actor. We tried three or four people that agreed to do the movie then had conflicts with shooting. We got lucky when we stumbled onto Justin Philips. He seemed to be very comfortable with the idea of shooting a movie and the role. As it turns out, Justin was easy to work with, took direction well, and enthusiastic about the film. The second role we had to cast was that of the antagonist professor. We had Doug Corbit as our first choice but due to time and our limited access to the camera before spring break, we used Brian, who settled into the role with ease. Finally, we were able to cast Stefani for the girlfriend role. If you’ve ever seen Stefani act, then you know she is very talented, so we were all excited to start shooting and see how the shooting process would turn out.
We shot practice shots Tuesday evening to get a feel for type of shots we would like and to get a better feel for the actual shooting process. Our first day of shooting was rough, but everything smoothed out quickly. Throughout the week, we got together whenever possible (8 am on Monday, X Period on Tuesday and Thursday, and Friday afternoon before spring break) to get all the shots we planned for. What I wanted for the movie was to have plenty of varying shots of the same sequence, and to have quick, coherent cutting of the shots to invoke the feeling of stress that Justin was feeling. The shooting was tough on everyone throughout the week; however, when we met to shoot, we were very productive. Moreover, fun wasn’t sacrificed to get the movie done; we had a lot of laughs and blooper while filming. I enjoyed every part of this process.

We finally finished filming Friday afternoon. The group was productive, easy to work with, and enthused about the project which made things immensely easier. Group 2 is the best!