Filming Blog: Indoor Scene

    Originally, I was planning to film at the beach on Wednesday, February 19th. I would only be filming the scenes of me holding the box and coughing. However, because of work schedules that couldn't be changed, I was unable to go to the beach. In hindsight, though, I believe this is a good thing. I think it would be more effective to film all the beach scenes in one day so I can keep better track of what I need to film. The man whose drone I'm borrowing wasn't able to deliver the drone on Wednesday, anyway. While I was initially disappointed that I was unable to film, I've realized that this will ultimately lead to an overall cleaner and more efficient filming experience.

    Because I wasn't able to film at the beach, I decided to film the indoor scene in which a man sits on his couch in front of a TV. The screen goes static and he straightens up. It's an over the shoulder shot. I got my dad to be the actor in the scene and sit down. The first major problem I faced is the layout of my living room, which I have put a picture of below. In the actual recording, the light in the back left corner was off.

   My couch is up against a wall, which makes getting a good over the shoulder shot difficult. To solve this problem, I moved the couch away from the wall enough so that I could stand behind it and film. This did help in being able to get the shot, but the part of the scene where the man straightens up as the screen goes static was still hard to film. No matter which direction or angle I filmed in, the action didn't seem clear and seemed like a mistake. So, I decided that the man would stay still and the focus of the shot would be more on the TV.
 
    An interesting process I had to go through to film this scene was connecting my phone to the TV. I wouldn't be able to make the screen go static normally without pressing a button on the side of the TV and getting in the shot. However, I have an HDMI adapter that allows me to connect my phone to a TV. I took a recording of a recent news report and added a static screen towards the end of the video on my desktop. I emailed it to myself and downloaded it onto my phone. From there, I plugged my phone into the adapter and played the video on the TV. I had to time pressing record on the camera right so I had enough footage of the screen before it went static. This was hard at first, but I was able to get used to the timing after a few takes.

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