The prior week I bought costumes at Iparty (with a 30 percent discount. Thanks Mike Collins!). Nothing too special because the costumes are supposed to look stupid and ridiculous. It was fun to see everyone get into costume on the first day. The whole first day was pretty hectic. Friends of mine were coming in and out trying to help me all day and I had to plan accordingly. I accomplished less than expected, but that's okay since I am still figuring out how to use some of the equipment. Especially the lighting kit which was something new I had to master. Setting up the lights is a pain since it takes a while. You need a lot of man power to move them around constantly but at the same time you have to be delicate with them to make sure the house doesn't catch on fire. We found one light that hadn't been used yet (no one uses the portable light kit in TV production) that was incredibly useful. We stuck in this tiny little bulb and then BAM the whole room was lit perfectly. It was so good in fact that I went back a shot some of the previous scenes with it. Isn't filmmaking exciting?
The Second Day
We got a lot done today. Filmed a lot of the more complicated dialogue scenes. The acting in general has been pretty difficult since most of us have little to no acting experience. Because of this we have to do multiple takes of everything. In general, I have been pretty pleased with everything we have done despite our limitations (i.e. budget and actors). We also shot one of the montages today. I think it's going to look really cool when I'm editing finished editing it. We needed a pitch black room in order to shoot this. So we went into my garage and covered the light coming from the garage door with towels. Then we put a spotlight on Ivan and it looked exactly like I wanted it to. Isn't cool when things turn out well?
The Third Day
Today was a difficult day to shoot since everyone had to leave around 2. We spent all of our time filming the major fight scene. We decided to go "Washington Park" to film the fight scene because it's always pretty desolate. The weather turned out to be perfect for the fight. It was fun to shoot since I had never filmed a real fight scene before (and I arguably I still haven't). I focused on making the fight as silly and entertaining as possible. It is in no way realistic. I'm really excited to see how it turns out after I edit it.