Day 1 of Shooting: Mistakes, change of Plans and scenes

 From this very chaotic weekend, I am glad to say that I shot some important material for my film. However, I did not exactly finished all of it, but I do not feel as anxious as I thought i would if i did not finish on the time i set myself (or at least I do not feel it yet). The first day of shooting, as i indicated in the title of this post, brought up a lot of new information about how to shot in the next days and how it was not as overwhelming as I thought. During Friday, as i was laying down all o the props and sets for my short film, i was remembered that my sister's birthday was on Sunday. Because of this, I had little time to film on Saturday, specifically, due to going out with both my sister and Dad to eat, in a safe Covid space, and then spending the time walking around the neighborhood. My sister does not live with us either, she lives around 30 minutes from our house, and we had to return her at the end of the day. I returned to my house very late and returned to rest, so it was not as productive as I would have wanted it to be. 

However, I still got a lot of useful footage that i will edit later, as well as trying different techniques with the limited resources that I have at the moment. For example, to get myself in the character of Mariposa, I went with dressing in the dress that I showed in previous post, as well as using hair gel to keep it "Tidy", something to symbolize how she goes from this mental state to a breakdown later in the film. In a day to day basis, I usually would not use it nor wear this dress, but it was a way to get into character. I did not had any makeup at hand, something that  I notice in retrospective would have given the character to be able to show more how she is a "feminine" person and likes taking care of herself, seeing the descent more dramatically. But I do not own any and most of it is expensive, do not want to be wasteful and use a product that would take me time to learn to apply correctly, not really having anyone that could teach me. Either way, I hope that the lighting and different position of the camera can show my face as less tired in general and more "upbeat" in the initial scenes. 

The same mirror from the pictures above was also use for, what i would like to think, one of the most ambitious shot of the film opening. I say it like that because, I wanted to capture Mariposa getting ready in the bathroom, in the initial scene, showing as she looks at herself in the mirror and then exists the bathroom. The problem is, since I am my own cameraperson, i had to extend my arm as far as i could, that it is why you can only see one of my hands in the shot. I could not put it close to me, since that would mean that it would show in the mirror, something that i did not wanted to happen. I could not ask another person to record me from the outside and then zoom out, and there was nowhere for me to put my camera to be static and then go to grab it myself. After multiple tries that did not convince me at all, at least about 7 or 8, I was able to get one that i was okay with:

It is not perfect, the movement of the camera is somewhat not static, the angle is sideways and it unfocuses out of frame as it is being zoom out. However, I think I will not try to stress myself that much about it, since some of those problems can be solved during editing, and i do not want to feel like there was nothing useful to get out of Saturday's recording session. The crooked angle could be a sign also about how Mariposa may seem well put together on the inside but still has things that are not "correct" that preoccupy her. 

I forgot to mention earlier, but most of these scenes were pure handheld, since I could not find the selfie stick that my Dad has and saw the prices for another one, it being way too expensive for me. I did achieve to complete most of the first scene, except the phone call and Mariposa throwing things away, because I could not get a clean movement or track myself without it being very close to my face only. 

Other scenes that i partially completed were the montage, changing the time to now be at night, since I did not had time to film at the time that I wanted and I decided to change the time to fit my schedule. It is mostly the first part of the montage, with Mariposa in front of the food and her then later throwing it away. I also have footage of the closeups to the meal, as well as it goes to my mouth. These scenes were easier to record, since i only had to use other things that were on the table as stands and just letting it be still, closeups to my mouth can be done in a more stable manner, as well as recording something else that is not me. 

I would like to say that on Sunday I finished all of my shooting, although that would be a lie. However, I did notice it going smoother and faster in terms of recording, and other details would be discussed in my following post. For now, as well as some clips that I did not include, this is all of the material from Saturday.