Filming Blog (Commercial)

The first day of filming was more hectic than I presumed. First, I had gotten all of my equipment and signed it out of the classroom and walked towards my first destination. I went over to the big mural and started checking all the equipment to make sure I was prepared. Meaning, I checked the camera's battery, the tripod's covers, and I kept my AICE Media badge around my neck. I inserted the SD card into the correct area and checked the camera, once again, and its lens. Then, I had to place and balance the tripod. At first, it was relatively difficult due to multiple factors. One factor was that the tripod was very gigantic and took a long time to set up so, the situational settings would change (such as more shading was available earlier.) Another factor was the stability of the ground, as there was no foundation I had to situate the tripod in the grass where it was relatively unstable and imbalance, allowing the camera's film to tilt. I took my camera and the top small piece of the tripod and fused them together to keep the camera in place. Finally, I got to film the big mural, I created it as an establishing shot so I set up my tripod relatively far to show the whole mural and got a take without any people in it.
I packed up all of my equipment and went on to film a new location. I went to the adjacent area, the senior patio. It's a relatively big area as an extension of the cafeteria but, only for upperclassmen. There, under the metal covering, I had set up my tripod in the shade to prevent any glaring with the Sunlight or blurriness. Next, I repeated the same procedure from the first location. I had seen myself performing the tasks faster meaning, I was getting used to the steps and was producing a routine. I laid the camera on the table to get an eye-level shot and then I started to use a pan movement to present the whole surrounding environment. Next, I placed the camera on the tripod and got a higher view of the area, however, this time it was pointed straight in one direction. Then, I moved over to our high school logo (which is the Flying L) with my equipment packed and I started setting up my tripod again in front of the logo to capture it and the academic spirit. For this take, I used tilt to present the presence and power of that logo.
However, the bell rang for B lunch (we were told not to film in those mentioned areas during B lunch) so, I folded away my equipment and asked people around whether or not they wanted to participate in my project (only if they were in B lunch, though.) It did not take long before I gathered people to film for the commercial. We created a rough script on their lines and what to say however, I told them that it does not need to be presented verbatim. As long as it still elaborated on the point of the commercial, it was fine. I had to get multiple takes of the people featured in it as there would be errors such as stumbling, loud background noises, and forgetting the foundation of their script. The people who were presented in my film were told by me that I would only film them for a few minutes and they will have the rest of their lunch to themselves. As I said, the takes only stretched about 10-20 seconds. Plus, it would be soon to leave the area I was filming. We were told that we had to be back in the classroom no later than 12:45PM EST to conclude toward our next class. When I got back, I would return all of my equipment with the required sheet of paper in the appropriate folder. However, I was allowed to keep the SD card until the end of class as I had to dump my raw footage onto my computer. Once I was finished dumping into my folder, I returned everything back to my teacher and proceeded to my next class.