#39 Everything Changes — Production

We decided that the old production was a fail, there were too many issues no matter how many times we tried to convince ourselves that our video was a success… To many things I couldn’t edit out. So…

We made a new one.

We made a unanimous decision to scrap the entirety of the old film opening to make a new one, one following somewhat of the old plot line while still being new. Improved. Better.

The Thought

Looking over the new video, we realized it was really a waste of our time… the deadline was creeping closer, CCRs were going to take up most of our time, so we decided that the very next day, we were going to film a whole new production still following the old idea. Letter “K” walked so that The Survey could run.

Well, maybe that’s too much glaze. I already explained this in the last blog….

Filming

For the first clip, we didn’t want to do much, not much dialogue so that there wasn’t much to edit in, just a simple phone call between a depressed girl—Brittney—and her toxic friend—Chloe. The characters and their personalities changed too. Chloe (in the old video) was the friend who was going to be the main character as the movie progressed, in the new one, she’s the friend who cares little for her friend’s mental state. As for Brittney, she was just an ordinary, dumb teenage girl in the old video; in the new video, Chloe has mental issues as a result to the work from school and her parents. This way there would be more representation in her character and adding a touch of realism that reflects the struggles of teenagers. 

Before we filmed that part though, we wanted to get a scene of Victoria running to the mailbox to put the mail in, but as we recorded, it got darker outside, so it didn’t make sense using a clip with daytime, when our clips from inside you could tell it was dark out. Especially since the clips are assuming to be at the same time.

The Daytime Clip:

The One We Ended Up Using:

We filmed the first daytime mail clip before the daytime call scenes, each that we didn't use because it was getting progressively darker outside. Again, the phone call was the most time consuming part of the film, even though we had a script, there were some parts in which I messed up such as I didn't turn on the speaker on the phone, or that Victoria took too long to call.

Call Took Too Long:

No Speaker:

In the end, we managed to get it right and film everything we needed without issues. Leanette's mom (Anay Morell) also got her parts perfect too, considering since she didn't want to yell since she's not used to it. If it wasn't her, it had to be me, and if I was going to record, yell, and answer the call, then the clip would be very confusing. 

The Clip We Used:

After we did this clip, we had to do the scene of her getting the mail. It was easy doing this part of the video, with three tries max and done. In one, we were just practicing how it would go, the other was a combination of both the call and getting the mail, the final one was the one we used.

Practice:

Call AND Getting the Mail:

Clip we Ended up Using:

After getting the mail, Brittney has to go inside and do some things before she can answer the mail. She first has to drink her pills, an enigma code to show that something is going on with her. It's up to the audience to interpret what she has, seeing as this is simply the film opening. We decided to do a close-up of Brittney swallowing her pill to emphasize how big of a clue that simple action is on Brittney's character, but they didn't like it and said it looked odd, so we didn't use it.

The clip we did end up using was a long shot of Brittney coming in, turning on the light, and drinking her pill. Which then I ended with a cliff-hanger of the survey or mail and what it says.

The reveal of the letter was too long, so I cut it so that it only showed the first two or three seconds.