Why I am not filming today or tomorrow

 I still have a lot of work to do left with my film. I just worked on my social media so I know I’ve done some progress. There is a lot of filming and editing to do and the clock is ticking. I know it is crucial that I film. Even more so since my last film day ended up so horrible. It is currently December 24, 8 pm. I did not film today nor will I film tomorrow and here is why. It is Christmas Eve, and with the horrible year 2020 has been, I need this holiday. I am at my grandparents house, with my dad, grandparents and brother from college. We just had a dinner that we spent all day preparing. Tomorrow I will wake up, come back here to spend time time with my cousins. After that I’ll go to my mom’s house and spend time with my brother and how excited he is about all his new toys. Once we get out of the Santa age, the school system has always assigned packets of work or projects to work on. To this I say, forget that. Why should I have to give up my holiday time, my family traditions and my mental break to keep up with something like school. I am not going to film today or tomorrow because there are more important things in life. Maybe on the 26th or maybe on the the 31st. But i know that while i am with my very old grandparents, i’m going to appreciate the time I have with them and give myself a break. I will have time to film, but filming on a holiday is something I won’t do to myself. Cambridge, if you are reading this for any reason, happy holidays!

Filming Again

           So now i need to film again. In case you haven’t read the last filming blog, my first filming attempt went rather rough. So now I have to re-film the first couple of scenes. I would say today was better. Because my failure, today I used my mistakes to learn and perform better. I started off by filming the bed scenes. I used my phone to check if the camera was positioned right. This was such a smart moment in my mind. I had an issue so I hacked my way around it. This helped me tremendously. It prevented me from making my previous mistake because my camera was centered the way I wanted it to be. Although that was a positive, i did make a reoccurring mistake. It is extremely hard to film in my house. I have two parents taht work from home, a 5 year old brother and an extremely loud grandmother all in a small house. This made me frustrated. I was constantly trying to find a quiet time but it was never quiet enough. There were many interruptions and random sounds. This annoyed me because I had to refilm and refilm. Finally, I got the take I needed. I would say that today was a more successful film day.

Reviewing

 So now that i have filmed one day, I need to review my film. This is important now so I know to refilm. When I looked at my footage I was very dissatisfied to see it. All my time went to waste as the footage is now useless. I am filming and producing this movie by myself. But I am also in it as well. This causes problems because I don’t have someone to help me. If i had a partner to record correctly, it would’ve saved me this misstep. Most clips were out of focus. This makes the clip irrelevant because I can’t use it in any way. Some clips were not angled correctly or centered. My camera does not have a reversible viewfinder. Therefore I have to get physically behind the camera and set it before running back into the frame. I feel like I have wasted my time because I have no footage and a day wasted. It has made me learn though. I learned my camera was set to manual focus and not automatic. This meant, the way I set it would not stay focused once I stepped in the frame. On my next film day I will took what I learned and put it into use. I will leave my camera on automatic and check each clip after being taken to see how it looks. But that can all wait because my next step is some social media marketing.

Filming Day

         Today I began filming. I wanted to start with the alone scenes because they are easiest to do. I put myself into some new clothes and i started filming. I filmed half of the morning routine. Because I am filming myself, it is very hard. I had to reshoot multiple clips. My camera doesn’t have a reversible viewfinder, so i cannot see what I am filming. That challenged my filming process because I had to spend more time refilming. I also am having problems shooting a specific angle. Some clips are top view of me laying down. I couldn’t figure out today how to film it. After filming I looked it up and got the idea to put my tripod on my bed and flip the camera as low as I can. Another difficulty I ran into was noise. I live in a house with three adults and a 5 year old kid. This means there’s constantly a lot of noise. Many clips got interrupted by a shout or an interruption. This is something I couldn’t really control and began to aggravate me. Overall it wasn’t a good filming day. My next step is to review the footage I have.

Social Media

 In the past weeks I have created social media accounts. I have created an Instagram for sharing photos and videos. The Twitter is for teaser and dates. The YouTube is for trailers, behind the scenes, and any other clips. Finally, the Facebook is for media of all sorts. Today I worked on two things. These things, balding a following and developing a theme, are important to me so I can have a strong, cohesive front. I am currently focusing on building a following for these accounts. They all have 20-40 followers. I want them to have more so I will follow accounts that are random, in hopes they will follow back. I want an engaged audience to build hype around the film. I also want all my social medias to seem consistent. In doing this, I have developed certain aesthetics for my social media. For example, certain colors, tone, etc. All of my advertisements are rather ambiguous and mysterious. I am doing this because until the film is released, I don't want to give too much of the story. This leaves things up to the audience's imagination and keeps them wondering what my film is about. Today I worked on developing some graphic designs for the Instagram. All the aesthetics I mentioned above are represented below. I also updated my website to match better. The overall goal I am trying to accomplish with my social media is a cohesive aesthetic that makes audience put it all together.

Advertising Plan

 When it comes to any business or project, marketing it is key. Advertising to the right audience can make or break your success. I am marketing my film to 13-20 year old viewers. I know they spend a lot of time on social media so properly advertising it to them on social media would be effective. I want to make this film feel like a brand. What makes something a brand is consistency. This means using a color scheme, a consistent vision, and an overall look and feel to the film and all promotions around it. Whether this be trailers or movie posters, they all need to match so people associate the brand to the movie. Therefore, I decided to take some initiative today. I knew I wanted a platform to make these advertisements so I bought myself Adobe Creative Cloud. In this package I receive multiple programs I can apply towards different aspects of advertisements. Photoshop for designing posters, Premiere for video editing, InDesign for infographics, Illustrator for logos, etc. Although this is completely unnecessary and excessive, I find joy in these things. Promoting the film sounded far more exciting than actually producing it, so I want to make it right. I have uploaded a couple of posts to Instagram but until I film, Youtube promotions will have to wait. I also need to start uploading on Twitter as well. The overall look of my brand is darks and cool tones and I want to promote it like a teenager would because the point of view as well as the demographic is to teenagers. I think this step is really important to the film. I know I am not actually selling this movie or making a strong "fanbase" but it shows the dedication. I plan to edit a couple of things to promote and tease the film.

Why I did not film over Thanksgiving Break.

You would think that if a student has over a week to get an assignment done, they would at least begin. Well that wasn’t my ideal break. Overall school drains me out but the week leading up to Thanksgiving break had me aggravated at any and every assignment. Also my family from out of town that I haven’t seen since quarantine started we’re in town. I just felt like with school and my job, I had felt exhausted and was looking forward to break. Any responsible person might think i’m irrational but I really needed the break. I took the vacation to avoid school-work, spend time with my family, and just overall relax for the sake of my mental health. I can film during the week when I am in a productive state of well-being but this break was not that time. With seeming two different sides of my family, Thanksgiving day, my brothers birthday, and my job, I didn’t even have time to film. But to every issue there is a solution. I have decided to film during the week. This is when I am the most productive and motivated. The “creative juices” of mine are flying so it would be great for me. I now have a sense of urgency to catch up and that pressure usually makes me work better. This coming week I will now film the bedroom scenes. Also, unrelated yet totally related, I have bought myself a new computer. This is helpful because the advanced version of iMovie will allow more accessibility to advanced editing. Also the SD port will allow me to be able to film on my camera, which is better for the overall production of my film. So yes, I didn’t film, but for the sake of the film and my mental health, I think its a win-win.