Productions: actors not showing up

 Actors not showing up

This will be a short blog as I will only discuss our first obstacle during production. Actors not showing up. 

For our first production day, we planned to film all the talents at Barnes & Noble, call time at 4pm. Our goal today was to totally complete scene 4 in one day; that was just wishful thinking because our expectations were not met. The first downfall was when I received notice from my newly casted talent that she would be unable to make it due to unexpected engagements. This did not sit well with me as she is one of the main characters who claimed she would be free. However, I did not let this ruin the potential of getting most of scene 4 filmed. Me and my cinematographer had to analyze our shot list to see what shots we can achieve with only 3/4 actors present; luckily our shot list was accommodated for that. We ultimately decided to spilt production for scene 4 into 2 days rather than one, the second one calling for all talents to complete scene 4. 

Unexpectedly... only two our of our 4 talents ended up showing. Both showing far later than call time, which caused us to finish production day an hour and 30 minutes later than planned. The 3rd talent that was supposed to be there, ended up not showing due to work, which is at some extent understandable as she did inform me of her working schedule way before, but we still planned for her to squeeze in at minimum 20 minutes to film her singular line. As a type c person, this triggered be a lot, as I heavily depend on organized, structured scheduling for the entire film; that includes pre-production, production, and post-production. It was frustrating trying to move around inconveniences when I myself felt that I was on a limited time crunch, with not much room to spare for absences and accommodating for those absences. At the end of the day, I had to remind myself that scheduling complications is very common and normal in the film industry, and it's something as a director, I should not let intimidate me, we shall find another way around. This also caused me to fix my call sheets.

Nevertheless, I appreciate those who did manage to show up the first day of production. We took advantage of what we had to filmed a good amount of shots for scene 4. This ultimately leaves us with less to do for Scene 4 day 2.

 

Test Audios 

 I want to run some test audios that will be recorded for the narrator scenes in our film. I got a few advice for composing the best quality for voice overs so that the sound gives the audience a good listening experience.

Using a closet:

I've learned from many youtubers who had a rough start before all the good equipment that a closet is the most assessable place to record audio. The enclosed space, when properly treated with sound-absorbing materials like blankets over head, naturally helps to minimize echoes and reverberations. This creates a more controlled and focused sound for my voice over by absorbing sound waves bouncing around the room.

Just to be sure, I went ahead and did some test audios on my own, reading a few lines off my script into a basic recording app. To get peer feedback on it, I will send the audio to my cinematographer and a friend for a second ear. They will use ear covering headphones (which produce better quality than EarPods) to experience the best quality.

If I do not end up receiving good feedback from the closet, this is my alternative:

Sound equipment:

Luckily, our producer (our teacher) mentioned that a good last minute resort would be to go to him a request to borrow proper sound equipment, like a mic, to record said voice overs. It would probably be simpler to just start with this option, but I prefer being creative and really want to experiment with the "closet audio"

I will do the same thing to receive feedback from my peers, ensuring good quality for our film. Especially since half of it is a voice over.

Test audios

Closet: Cannot upload due to complications. But what I have received from it was decently well played audio. As long as we keep the surrounding enclosed, perhaps placing blankets over head to block off more reflective sound, we can create a great environment to record the scenes that require voice over audios.

Cast Test Audios:

Additionally, I personally worked with my main character as she had a few questions about the register and tone she is supposed to have. For more convenience, she study certain pieces and sent me voice memos of her attempts. There are certain parts where I coached her on her tone of voice, her use emphasis, and use punctual pauses where pauses are necessary.

Attempt 1:

Voice recording: Attempt 1 dariah

The biggest issue I picked up was that she sounded very mono-toned all throughout; her sentences sounded to be a bit run-off with a lack of pronunciation for punctual pauses. Additionally, there was a limited ability to switch tone with each sentence since every sentence portrayed a different mood that she was not capturing. I also hear a lack of enthusiasm when stating her family name, which should be said in a more honorable tone. I discussed these issues with her and sent back a voice memo: a clear expectation of what she should attempt to sound like. 

What I sent back:

Voice recording: Director feedback

Attempt 2:

Voice over: Attempt 2 Dariah 

From this attempt, I recognize her attempt for punctual pauses and emphasis. However, more work is needed to portray different tones (because certain sentences have certain moods) and essentially sounding less mono-toned. We will continue to work on this as production day for audio approaches.

Afterwards, I sent the audios to my cinematographer to closely listen to with her noise canceling headphones. There is a drastic difference between listening to audio with headphones versus speakers. Headphones (noise cancelling to be specific) provide a more focused and detailed sound experience by delivering sound directly into your ear, effectively blocking out outside noises; while, speakers  can be affected by room acoustics and sound reflections. We want the most precise listening experience to ensure our viewers are receiving the same thing. After receiving feedback, I can alter how I want to use our audio.

Production: Casting complications 

During our first week of production, I was sent news from my main character that the style of her hair may change during production. I expressed that we must figure out another way, any drastic change with her appearance could distort our footage. At first, we thought of moving our first production date until after her hair changed, but this would have set us back way behind and that is the last thing I wanted. Ultimately, I presented her a deadline to inform me what she is planning on doing by the end of the day. Before the day ended, she informed me that she will attend to her hair situation before our intended production day which is Feb 15th. Hopefully we can stay on track, we cannot afford any more diversions that will guide us off the intended schedule.

Less crucial but similar, our actor for the Old friend 2 informed me that she would not be available for our only day to shoot the montage scene at Boca Mall. Fortunately, her role is very easy to replace as she has no lines. We are currently working on finding someone allegeable to fill in her role. 

More over

Replacing actors:

We came to the point where I have realized that certain characters are just not available and working around that would be extremely inconvenient to our schedule. I may have to face the fact that I would have to replace a few actors. Our main mean girl, will be busy on the only day where everyone is available. Working around a different day or splitting scenes for different days will be extremely complex and may end up not working out. The best thing to do is to find a replacement. Luckily, I had a suitable replacement who was more than eager to join; these are the reasons why I decided on her 

Role- Natalia Harding      Original Actor- Sanika        Replacement actor- Tatiana H.

Tatiana:

• Taller height around 5 foot 6
• Decent acting skills
• Higher availability 
• Suitable appearance for the role 

Downsides: The biggest downside to Tatiana replacing Sanika is that Tatiana and our main girl Shaunae have a difficult history. There is a big chance that conflict can occur; however I ensured to get full informed consent from both of them. Both girls responded with saying that they can put their odds aside for my film. Hopefully they can put personal issues aside but if any conflict does occur during production, I will be sure to resolve it immediately.

Intro to sound designing

 Production: Intro to sound designing

Due to the sudden inconvenience of my sound designer/technical director dropping class, I had to take over the role. This is a lot of my plate because just being the director alone is taking a toll; however, I shall overcome as I already committed so much. Because I am new to this role, I had to do quick research.

Videos I took reference to:

How to SOUND DESIGN- Artlist 

                                                The Power of Sound in Movies- Paul E.T.

After assessing the videos and received assistance from other sound designers , I was able to get a good idea of how I will capture music, dialogue, sound effects, loudness, timbre, pitch and etc. to create the sound design. I discussed more about what I assessed in my sound designer statement document:

A screenshot of my sound designer statement

Test shots featuring cinematographer

 Test Shots feat cinematographer

As we are nearing the end of our foundation portfolio, getting greenlit and starting production, I encouraged my cinematographer to request a few days from our producer to borrow camera equipment for test footage runs. It is extremely effective to get comfortable with the camera and its many settings before production. Learning different camera movements and techniques are all the job of the cinematographer, but if it is one thing I have learned, as a director I should follow along in that journey, hence why I asked to receive all the test footage she attempted.

In this case, I will only use this footage 

Test footage received from cinematographer

What I have assessed from this test footage is that we would have to play around with lighting a lot in this film. For scene 1 & 3, we are filming exterior shots, therefore timing and weather are two major confounding variables in shooting. If it is too close to the afternoon, we can accidentally shoot during sunset, which in this time of the month is during 6-7pm, extremely early. Therefore, it is smarter to film earlier in the day, but weather can also play a role in altering this. Cloudy skies can affect lighting terribly and  random flashes of exposure can disturb mise en scene. A quick solution is to bring a white poster board and manipulate that to use it as a makeshift reflector. This helps bounce sunlight onto the actor, effectively filling in shadows and creating more even out lighting. I feel like natural light may be harsh at noon, so using the board to act as a large, portable light diffuser to brighten up shaded areas improves mise en scene. Other than that, the quality is quite nice and my cinematographer has continued informing me of her accomplishments in getting familiar with the camera. 

Working around a production schedule

The biggest issue we encountering with our cast is availability. As the director, I documented the weekly schedules of all my talents and I am trying to construct a filming schedule that best suits everyone. It will be difficult and messy but I believe the best way to go about it is to carefully look through our shot list, and materialize everything we did during pre-production. To get a proper understanding, I briefly watched a video giving a descriptive tutorial on how to effectively create a production schedule.

How to Make a Production Schedule for Film- Cine Pandemia

Cine Pandemia first explains how to "line" your script into 1/8 of a page by using a ruler. By doing this you can number how many sections each scene takes up. For example, scene 1 on his script took only 7 out of those 8 sections, meaning it takes of 7/8 of the page. This method is very effective to measuring how long things take on set. From there he suggested that I open an excel to create a stripboard. He explains how the entire schedule should be built on locations, actor availability, and complexity of shots. Unfortunately, I can barley work excel so I consulted my cinematographer to create a more simplified version. By the end of this I should be able to properly create my call sheet and send out a proper schedule to my cast to keep production running as smooth as possible.

My attempt at the stripboard method:

                                    A still the stripboard version of my script

From there, I shared these pictures with my cinematographer, who is creating our shot list, and discussed how to integrate this method into our shot list. When making the shot list, we need to make sure to match up each number if each shot description.

Finalize casting: new actors

 Finalizing Cast list: New actors

Finally, we found our main character. As previously states in my past blog post about my actors, I have struggles to find someone to cast as the main character. I had two people in mind and was waying in pros and cons to determine who should win the spot to play the role. I went through with the mini auditions idea as stated in the "Our Cast: Who we've found" blog post, and it actually was pretty effective in deciding who to choose. I went with the person I felt fit her the most, then went through the process and choosing with my cinematographer to get her opinion and she openly agreed. We have now casted Shaunae as Dariah Clemonte, the main lead protagonist. 

We also made another decision to replace the original person casted for the main lead antagonist. The original person was not per say "a bad option"  but she was not enough to fulfil the role; in other words, I was not fully satisfied in my choice. Luckily, I have stumble upon the person actor for the role during class. Sanika, overheard my conversation about looking for a new actor and offered her help. The reason why I believe she is to be the perfect person is her look and her attitude. She is a master at makeup, having someone who is conveniently good at makeup is a huge advantage. She has a very intimidating, domineering look to her that makes you believe she is a mean person. In fact she is very nice and friendly, but just the fact that she looks so intimidating sold it for me. Not only that but I have a extremely good feeling that she will be a good actor and that I will enjoy working with her to create this film. More on appearance, she is 5 foot 9 so she has a lot of height on her compared to the main protagonist which is exactly what I wanted. I have worked availability with her and although she does works on weekends, we have managed to find a way to have her attend the shooting days. 

Planning: New found representation and location

 New Found representation and location

During the creation of our script, my cinematographer and I found a new way to show representation. In our world, teens have access to too much harmful substances; there are many cases of teens abusing harmful substances like alcohol and drugs. According to National Center for Drug Abuse Statistics, a statistic which dates to 2023 states, "25.6% of 8th graders have abused alcohol at least once. 61.5% of teens have abused alcohol by 12th grade. 9.15% of all 12- to 17-year-olds used alcohol in the last month. 2.7% of 12th graders drink daily." It is a real life problem and as a teen, I seen cases of it almost everyday, all around me. We wanted to represent this in our film. As a person with power and wealth, our main character, Dariah, is exposed to a lot of this, due to her unlimited freedom and toxic friendships. We wanted to show her in a terrible position that essentially caused her to switch schools in the first place. This will occur during the montage, while she quickly states that an "incident" the occur which resulted in switching schools and identity. To keep it PG, instead of using obvious substances, we resorted to using a Red Solo cup, which by global standards, indicates that there is alcohol in it. Furthermore, because we decided on an a new representation to add to our film, it has also came with its own location, which leads me to this...

New Location added:

We are currently keeping the Walk Plaza, Barnes & Noble and the Boca Raton mall, this time we are adding one more location; the director's house or my house. We will use this house to film the part where Dariah is seen receiving the immediate consequences of getting drunk. This film will take a lot if creativity, especially since the setting is a "house party". We will have to work with a lot of editing for when she gets "filmed" by other people and sound designing for diegetic music playing in the background. We are also debating between having this part be a still or a short clip. On the day of filming, we will do both options, then commit to whichever one is more effective to the plot and allows us more time.

                                       A stock photo of what we are trying to achieve

                                                    Snippet from Young Royals S1 EP1

A Film we also referenced for not only it's narrative but it's light design is Young Royals(

2021); specifically Season 1 episode 1. 

Narrative:

In this episode the Prince of Sweden gets into a fight at a party, most likely due to intoxicated actions, and as a consequence he was forced to switch to a private schools. Essentially, we are grasping a similar thing here. Dariah is caught filmed in a very drunken state, which is then posting and causes a lot of negative publicity to her family. Part of consequence of her illegal underage drinking being made public was to switch to a different school and fake her identity. 

Lighting:

As you can see in the episode's fight scene, strobes of neon and bright colored lights are presented in the background of the party. Each colored light has a different meaning. Red lighting in films is powerful and conveys emotions, foreshadows events, and shaped the audiences perspective of the character. In this sense, we want to use red lighting the shift the audiences perspective of Dariah. The are set to believe that she is a innocent young teenage girl looking to start a new life; quickly the thought is deceived as the see the real reason onto why she switched schools.  Another main color seen is green which means renewal. We can manipulate this in our film to she the renewal of her life as she starts a different path, with a different mindset and attitude than her last. 

Props needed:

• Red solo cup
• Iphone

Actors needed:

• Dariah 
• Bystander to take a video of Dariah
• Old Friend

                                            A still of the red solo cup, key prop for this scene

A "red solo cup" is widely considered a symbol of a party or casual gathering, particularly in the United States, due to its association with inexpensive, disposable cups often used at college parties and social events where people are likely to be drinking alcohol. We can use this instead of an actually bottle, which would be difficult to access, when filming this scene. To sum it up, movies and TV shows often depict party scenes with red solo cups, further solidifying the association. 

 Loosing half of our crew

In middle of pre-production, I was met with a major inconvenience. I lost my Editor and Sound Designer. Both of them have switch out of our media studies class in extremely short notice, leaving my cinematographer and I to work on this film on our own. I didn't realize how inconvenient this will be for us as now we have to take double roles and pile on more documents for our foundation portfolio. Now I will have to teach myself how to be a sound designer as well as a direct. My cinematographer has took the second role as the editor. It will not be easy juggling both, but it is not impossible. Even though, this immediately set backs our progress as we are reaching production phase; the best thing my cinematographer and I can do is study the new roles and apply it for pre-production research and planning. Fortunately, we are not completely alone. I am still receiving support from a previous student, who is very positive that we can overcome this slight set back. I will keep you updated on my new found journey as a sound designer. 

Sound Designer- A creative professional who creates and integrates audio elements into project. They collect, edit, and create sound effects, ambient effects, and even music for video games, applications, or any other form of interactive media.

What I will be doing from now one:

Step 1- I will create a document on notes app with is accessible. The notes will contain a list of all the documents I have to complete for my portfolio now that I have the role as sound designer. To make it easier for myself, I will create deadlines for each document, which shows the day I should have the document in my portfolio by. 

                                      Screenshot of notes that contained all the documents I had to do

Step 2- During production, take a few days to research sound designing and find how to properly use stock audios.

Sound Design Statement- the part where the sound designer will express the "vision" for the film's sound design. It should have the "sound aesthetic", coverage of speech, music and noise, use of appropriate terms, build sound descriptions and sound diegesis.

Risk assessment/ Location Recce- This is something I have to complete for every filming location. 

Pre-Production Planning: Revising my script

 Revising my script

A lot of changes had to be made since my first draft of the script. I had about 4 different people read my first script and give me feedback on what is good and what I need to improve. Two out the 4 people are ex media-studies students and have a lot of insight and advice that was helpful. First, the main feedback I was receiving was that the story line was good and easy to follow. They loved the voice over "narrator" feature, but suggested that I be very careful when creating the voice overs, making sure that they compose the best quality. My best bet is to create the voice over in my closet. Since it is an enclosed space, if I place sound-absorbing materials like blankets, I can naturally minimize echoes and reverberations. 

Additional feedback was to intergrade my title into my script. They told me that my title was very intriguing but lacked connection to the actual script, which would make people second guess onto why I chose that title. I got suggestions to include the title card into my script, making a creative connection with the title and the narrative. I totally agree, so in order to do that, I need to remove a few parts so that we would have at least 3-10 seconds dedicated to showing the title. Other than that, I got a few basic run downs on how certain things should be achieved. 

                                                        Screenshots of revised script

The highlights show what has been revised. The biggest change that I trying to do was to cut back on a few redundant sentences or unnecessary dialogue, therefore I could save up on time, since I was reaching over the 2 minutes mark. 

Another noticeable change is that I have included a title card. We wanted to do something more creative for the title rather than just placing it on the screen while the main character was being shown. The plan was to present an empty table. The camera movement would be a overhead close up and we would film the main character's hand, placing a masquerade mask on the table. Using editing, we will place the title "Masquerade" either under the mask or besides it. Boom, word play. This way we can foreshadow that the "mask" presented in the title will soon reappear later in the film and play an important role. Although, this is just the opening scene, I wanted to envision how the entire film would look, and I can envision a masquerade ball towards the end of the film playing crucial role to the narration. Other than that, I just fixed up on a few grammar choices. Hopefully no more revisions would be needed, therefore I will do another test run to make sure we are in the safe time limit. 

A big difference! After running 5 different trials, I'm happy to see a big difference on timing. With the entire script, we've reached just under 2 minutes. I feel that a few more grammar fixes can buy us more time, overall we need to be careful on timing. Our final resort could be cutting more from the script, however I hope we won't have to face that problem. 

 Our cast: who we've found

Main lead protagonist:

Unfortunately, we have yet to find someone to play our main character. Because we have someone specific in mind it's been hard to find someone to take the role. This is currently our biggest problem. However, over the course of a few days, I managed to find two people who I think could play the role. Choosing between them two could be done over what I like to call "mini-auditions". 

These are characteristics that lead me to audition these two candidates:

(candidate 1) Sarah:

• Short height (around 5 foot 2)
• Petite physique
• Perky voice
• Limited availability (downside)

(candidate 2) Shaunae:

• Short height (around 5 foot 5, a little taller)
• Petite physique
• High availability
• charismatics 

A simple way to audition them was to send them a snippet of the script, give them both directions on how it should be said, and allow them to send me a voice memo acting out her role. This is all down via messages, just for convenience and comfortability.

Main lead antagonist:

For the main antagonist, we were looking for someone rather intimidating looking, and taller than the main character. We have found a few options:

Jasmine:

• Tall height (around 5 foot 9)
• charismatic

Mackenzie:

• Tall height ( around 5 foot 7)
• Intimidating look 

Supporting lead antagonists:

Koran- Koran was a perfect candidate for many reasons. He's very dramatic, often loud which is the vibe I am going for the Quinton role. He is also experienced since he's been acting in many musicals, which is a benefit for us. Additionally, he has the perfect obnoxious laugh that I need for one of Quinton's lines. He is around 5 foot 7 and is perfect to be left hand of the main antagonist.

Kenzie- Kenzie gives off mean girl vibes, in the nicest way possible. I believe she will do perfect for the third "mean girl" role basing off of certain interactions. Only downside is her availability due to sports, we will work around that however.

A still Mean girls 

While casting, we took a lot of reference from the characters in Mean Girls. A you can see from this still, Regina, being the leader is in fact taller than the rest of the girls. By applying this to our film, we can have the main antagonist appear taller than the other characters to assert power and dominance which she does have in her social role. Our main antagonist is popular, she holds herself of high regard around the school, she is entitled, bossy, and judgmental; reasons why she has so much power in her school.  With certain dialogue, we can easily portray these characteristics. 

The supporting lead antagonists or other two mean girls, are roughly the same height. You can say those two share characteristics that when combined, creates Regina's (lead mean girl) character. That is exactly what I want to show, therefore when picking actors for the two mean girls, I had to find people who's personality would naturally work together. In combination, all three of the mean girls will represent the insecurities of a young teenage girl's mind, what they expect for themselves V.S. what other people expect for them. This all goes back to my main representation.