[Day 4] Production day 2 - Hallway section #2

Day 2: Hallway Section

📆 Date: Thursday, February 1st, 2024

⏰ Time: 15:25 - 17:30 (2 hours 5 minutes)

📍 Location: Vinschool Central Park, Classroom Hallway on the 4th floor

👤 Personnel: Anna, Jennie (Actor), Mary (Actor), Potter (Assistant director & Lighting operator)

🎥 Equipment:

• Camera: Nikon D5600 (School's)
• Tripod (School's)
• Lighting (School's)

💄 Costumes & Props:

• Black jacket (Jenny)
• Vinschool uniform shirt (Jennie)
• Uniform skirt (Jennie)
• Shoes (Jennie)
• Exacto knife (Sofia)
• Fake blood (Anna)
• Book (Mary)

My Responsibility

🤵‍♀️ Director: As the director of my film, I am involved in every stage of production process and is responsible for all the creative decisions.

📽️ Camera Operator + Cinematographer: I am responsible for operating the camera for all the shots, setting up each shot according to the storyboards, and being mindful of the picture and sound recorded. Any technical issues on set will also need to be taken care of. It is also important that I need to maintain all the equipment borrowed from the school.

Personnel

👩‍🎓 Nguyen Vu Khanh Nhu (Jennie): Actor for "Nadine" & "Anne"; Assistant Director

👩‍🎓 Duong Ngoc Bao Chau (Mary: Actor for "Joselyn"

🧑‍💼 Luong Nhat Minh (Potter): Assistant Director & Lighting Operator

Challenges

• The timing is too rushed
• Lights are not turned off completely
• The housekeeper's car got into the frame
• Blood got dried and it was hard to clean

After production day 1, I felt a lot more confident for production day 2 and it turned out a lot smoother, which I am very happy about. However, the timing for day 2 is still very rushed, despite we have fewer scenes compared to day 1, it still took around 2 hours and a half to film. Mary also has to leave for work after 16:30 so I have tried my best to film all the scenes that she appeared before. However, it does take quite a while for her to get dressed into the character Joselyn, hence we lost a bit of time waiting for her. Next time, I think that while waiting, we could have prepared the bottle of blood first and didn't need to waste even more time doing it afterward. 

Moreover, the light in the hallway didn't turn off fully which affected the color scheme of the shot. This is a big problem for me at the time as all the scene happens at the same time so I can't continue filming without all the lights off to replicate the similar atmosphere of day 1. Luckily, Potter was very quick to leave a look for the technician to ask him how the lights in the hallway could be turned off and we had some kind of hope until he said that it is automatic and can't be turned off before 17:00. As this stage, I decided to just film the scene and would try to color grade in post-production. Right after finishing the shot, all the lights turned off and it was Potter who asked the technician to turn it off before 17:00, which I was very grateful for. I then instantly asked Jennie and Mary to reshoot the footage and since we had already done it before, it only took 1 take for the 2 shots and fortunately, it turned out perfectly to what I imagined. For improvements, I would have used the correct white balance for the shot and color grade in the post, as it will be less risky when filming, especially when the external environment such as light could be different.

Another challenge that is not what we could control is that the housekeeper's car that she uses to clean the classroom was left in the hallway and it constantly got into our frame, which frustrated me a lot. I then tried to ask her politely to move her car out of frame for us to continue filming. It was very fortunate that she understood and agreed to do so. Later on, she even lent us her cleaning equipment for us to clean the blood stains which I was very thankful for. 

After filming, we encountered another challenge which was that the blood got dried during the filming process, which started to stain the floor and the locker. This is something that I didn't think too much about during the blood testing experiment and should be more aware that fake blood can dry out which will stain any material that it is on. Despite the that I already dropped some blood on the floor and the locker prior to filming, I did not let it dry and immediately wiped it off, therefore I was unaware that dried blood would stain. When the housekeeper saw us making a mess, she offered to clean it and told us to leave first and don't need to worry about the mess. However we felt like we should have the responsibility for our actions and keep the infrastructure of the school clean before leaving, therefore we asked her for special cleaning equipment and all 3 of us cleaned it ourselves. Next time, I will be more careful when experimenting, so that I can control the situation better. 

Lessons learned

• Should always adjust the white balance to how it looks in real life and not use it to create a color scheme while filming
• Should always be efficient and any waiting time should be used for preparation for the next scene
• Always experiment carefully, and be aware of any circumstances that could unexpectedly happen

Storyboards

Despite having the same location as production day 1, day 2 includes two shots of the 2 characters, since Mary is only free on Thursday, as well as any scene that requires blood. These are the storyboards I came up with for production day 2.

Sample shots

Scene 1 Shot 2

Scene 1 Shot 4

Additional scene

This scene was originally not planned beforehand but Jennie suggested that it might be a bit weird if the victim happens to be lying down when stabbing. Therefore she has an idea to film the stabbing action with the victim on the screen, then it will cut to when the victim is lying down with continuous stabbing movement. I really liked this idea so it was used in the final product. Big thank you to Jennie. 

Scene 1 Shot 10

Scene 1 Shot *

Scene 1 Shot 12

Scene 1 Shot 13

Scene 6 Shot 1

Scene 6 Shot *

Scene 6 Shot 2

Behind the Scenes

Here is the vlog of the behind-the-scenes of production day 2. I have captured all the process of my attempting to create a focus pull, the crew working with fake blood, and how the setting is set up. The video is 8 minutes long so feel free to adjust the speed for a quicker view of the behind-the-scenes.

Besides the 8-minute vlog, here are a few pictures that were captured by Potter during the production process. 

There's also some footage captured on the camera of just Jennie (and me) having fun on set 😊