Production Blog: Beginning Filming

 Beginning Filming

Shooting for my film began on March 7th, a bit later than expected. Filming went smoothly, however the actor playing the college scout could not make it, so I could only film scenes involving Carl and his friend. Luckily, the scenes the make up majority of the film are the films which include either only Carl, or Carl and his friend. The initial scenes went quite smoothly; all the actions until Carl leaving his friend for the first time went well. However, we had to skip out on shooting the establishing shot of the basketball court that day because we could not get it the shot to look as good as we'd expected. We'll attempt to get that shot at the 2nd filming session (or 3rd if needed). As the primary actor, most of the burden was on me to progress filming along. I am on camera for majority of the film, so many mistakes from my end would lengthen filming by a substantial amount. We had to re-shoot some of the closeup scenes due to inaccurate facial expressions being expressed on my part. Other than those small mistakes, we only had one other trip-up when filming on that day. After Carl leaves his friend for the first time, he is seen practicing for his private workout later in the film. While filming Carl's practice, we noticed that the shots weren't as dynamic as we'd expected. We recorded some footage of those scenes in hopes to create a more explosive effect in post production but, if needed, we will re-shoot those scenes at another filming session. The other obstacles that we faced while filming were external: the weather was not cooperating that day. It was slightly chilly on the 7th, which did not really effect the filming too much, but it was also very windy which did effect the filming quite a lot. The issue with the heavy winds was that the flimsy basketball attire that I was wearing would blow in the wind a lot. However, the more pressing issue was that it made it more difficult for me to shoot the basketball into the net. Also, in terms of aesthetics I want this film to be calmer, overall, and trees, nets, and clothes blowing wildly in the wind does not create this effect. Despite these issues, I consider our filming session on the 7th a success because we did do what we had planned to do, though there were some obstacles to maneuver around.