[Day 5] Production day 3 - Home section

Day 3: Home Section

📆 Date: Sunday, February 4th, 2024

⏰ Time: 9:30 - 10:30 (1 hour)

📍 Location: Vinhomes Central Park, Central 3, Home, Bedroom, Living room

👤 Personnel: Anna, Jennie (Actor)

🎥 Equipment:

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

💄 Costumes & Props:

• Pijama (Jennie)
• Letter (Anna)
• Phone (Jennie)

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 maintain all the equipment borrowed from the school.

Personnel

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

Challenge

• Match the diegetic sound of the breaking news with the action of the character to ensure that the scene comes out smoothly
• Focus on the message that was on Nadine's phone

I was fully confident when it came to production day 3 and very excited as it was the last day of filming. There weren't any big challenges on day 3 since the time limit was no longer present as we were shooting at my house. I have also told my parents beforehand about filming so there were no background noises. On that day, it really felt like it was just us in the house and we could do whatever we planned to do while not being interrupted by external factors. However, the only technical issue that I encountered was quite a serious one. For all the scenes shot in the living room, there was a diegetic sound of breaking news was heard throughout the shot. Since it is a diegetic sound and I wanted to create a realistic effect, I decided to film the sound and the shot simultaneously. This decision leads to a challenge which is that I need to make sure all the shots are in the correct order, with the breaking news flowing smoothly through all the shots. This is extremely difficult to do as there will be some shots where I didn't move the breaking news to the correct timeline, resulting in the sound of the 2 back to back shots having a break in between. In the end, I filmed all the shots with the background sound of the breaking news but in post-production, I had to remove all the sound and replace it with the audio, which meant that all my effort during filming was just for fun. Next time, I will only record the action and the background noises, then add in the breaking news during editing since all my effort in trying to match the scene and the sound went to waste anyway and wasted a lot of time. 

Another minor challenge that occurs during the filming is to get the focus on the text messages that Nadine receives about a murder case for her to solve. The problem is that the text is very small and the screen of the phone reflects some of the light, so it was hard to capture and get the focus to the text. Jennie also needs to make sure that when she takes her phone out to look at the text, it is at the exact same spot that she had when I was taking the focus. The shot was also in a POV shot with handheld movement, so I found it difficult to get the shot that I wanted. Fortunately, it only took a few shots before finally working out in the end, which I am very happy about. However, next time I might leave the camera filming for a few more seconds before stopping, to ensure that not only the text is seen, but the viewers have the time to read the text message. 

Lessons learned

• Do not record anything more than 2 sounds together, especially when a specific sound needs to be heard throughout the scene. Film the scene normally and add in the sound in post-production.
• Always leave a few seconds before pressing stop to ensure that there will always be some spare time for adjustment during the post-production. 

Storyboards

The storyboards for production day 3 were a lot more simple than the other 2 production days. However, during filming, Jennie got some really good ideas for additional shots that will help my film turn out better, therefore there are a few shots that are not included in the storyboards.

Sample shots

Scene 3 Shot *

Scene 3 Shot 1

Scene 3 Shot 2

Scene 4 Shot *

Scene 4 Shot 1

Additional scenes

These are 3 additional scenes that were Jennie's idea to add, to create a more realistic scenario when someone receives a letter. At first, there was no scene of opening the door to look for the sender but Jennie suggested that it doesn't make sense how you don't check who sent a letter to you, therefore these 3 additional scenes happen. The idea of filming 3 different angles of 1 action of opening the door is also her idea, and I liked it a lot. 

Scene 4 Shot 4

Scene 4 Shot 3

Scene 4 Shot 2

Scene 4 Shot *

Scene 4 Shot 5

Behind the Scenes

This is the behind the scenes footage of production day 3. It captures everything that happens during the shooting at the living room, however I forgot to film it during the bedroom session. 🥲