#18- Filming Day One

 January 1st, 2024

Today I had my first day of filming with Elliana Gorecki. I asked her the questions from my last blog post to allow the audience to get to know more about her. The interview will enlighten the audience not only about her life but her personality as well. I feel like I did an okay job at creating a conversation like interview. 

The set up process:

I got to the filming location (my grandmothers home) and hour before I told Elliana to arrive. This gave me more than enough time to set up the filming set and test it with my grandmother.

1. This item was my second camera I used to film. This camera allowed for a different perspective of the interview. It was a side angled close-up shot. This will allow a break from the constant mid shot and focuses on the facial expressions of Elliana.

2. This item is the main camera for the interview. It allowed for a basic mid shot where Elliana is looking directly at. It will allow the audience to feel that they are sitting right across from her and participating in a conversation with her. Every interview has this type of shot, some lack the close-up shot that I also conducted. 

3. This item is one of the lighting tools I had used. This is specifically a basic studio light, it came in a pack of two. I use both to light up the face of Elliana for the interview because they were used as key lighting. The rest of the lighting used is natural lighting/practical lighting. The backlighting is the natural lighting. The light from outside is being let in by the window behind her. The practical lighting comes from above her, it is the built in lighting for the house. At first I had it off, but the shot was too dark. All of the lighting helped greatly. 

These two shots were the process of me testing the set up with my grandma before Elliana came over. I had my grandma test out some chairs in her house and we decided with a normal dining table chair instead of a stool. The stool was too high for filming. This chair allowed me to get the perfect placement of the subject in the main camera. Then when that was completed I had to adjust the second camera to get a good close-up of the subject (seen in second image). 

Then it was time to film. Elliana arrived 10 minutes late, but that was perfectly fine. I offered her some donuts to thank her for participating in my project. Filming didn't last as long as I thought. A lot of her answers tied questions I had together. She was a charm to work with. I really do believe she is very smart and fun person to work with and the interview will really show. 

Reflecting hours after the interview I believe I could do a better job at the camera work. Some of the shots were blurry and I'll have to work around that during the editing. I also felt like it just looks a little immature filming. However, I have to remind myself that I am just a high school student without a extensive film set.

After filming we conducted a photoshoot (my specialty) to gather some headshots for her and my Instagram. I will discuss that process in my next blog post.