Filming Blog: Challenges Ahead

Since this is my first time filming anything, I started out feeling pretty intimidated & thoroughly challenged. But as things started to progress, I felt myself getting the hang of everything in my filming process. 

I started to prepare all of my props: the Staedtler eraser, a pencil, and a piece of paper. I get ready with my camera and tripod. Initially, I planned to film by my living room window in order to get some natural lighting in my shots; however, it was starting to get cloudy and dark in this day, so I had to film inside with my desk and use artificial lighting.

I started out filming the third scene (the GIF below) since it was the easiest shot to film. And then I did the first scene: I encountered that I couldn't do a bird's eye view shot similar to the composition I planned initially in my storyboard, since my tripod wasn't suitable to do that kind of angle. I start to get the camera and tripod in different position to see what angle would include all the props into the composition. So I had to film at the side in order to get the paper in the composition. Once that was done, I laid out the paper in different ways into the composition until I found something that looked suitable to display clearly to the audience. I then started to film the second scene of the commercial. I filmed myself drawing the face. I took multiple takes, these takes shown the gradual process in establishing the values of the face. In the fourth scene, I found that it was extremely hard to do camera tracks with just one hand on the camera, and one hand on the eraser. The takes were all shaky and blurry. So, I had to have my brother pretend to be me erasing the drawing, and I did the camera tracks myself. These takes came out better, as they're less shaky and less blurry. In the fifth scene, I wanted to have an extreme close-up of just the eye as planned in my storyboard, but I found that my camera can't zoom in too close. So, I just included the entirety of the face shown and zoomed out the camera.  In the sixth scene, I was able to get the exact same shot as planned in the storyboard.

Throughout the filming process, I did face several challenges ahead. But I was able to improvise and make the best out of my situation.