Filming the Commercial

     On Thursday October 24, 2019, my group , which consist of Charli, Amina, Josh, and I, set out on the journey to film our FLHS commercial. Before leaving out the class,  my job was to handle the camera equipment and directing the filming process. It doesn’t seem like a big role as the actors or even the camera guy, but it’s also not a “walk in the park” either. The director has to instruct everyone of how they need to execute a certain scene or be firm. The director also stops  the take because it isn’t displaying all the important factors as it should. Before we could get to all of that, however, we had issues with the camera. The first camera we received only had 15 minutes left on it which meant that’s how much time we had to record. I thought it could work so I began setting up the camera on the tripod. This took place outside of Building 20 and 21 but also near the media center. During the process the camera’s shooting time rapidly went down. Now it was definitely time to get a new one.
       After going back to the Aicemedia classroom, we told one of the teachers, Ms. Katz, the problem. She handed us another camera which had 15 minutes on there giving us a total of 30 minutes recording time. However, during the recording process we had less than 30 minutes to film because the camera time was running out quicker than normal. Despite all this the film was slowly coming together! As Josh shot Charli and Amina in the beginning of the film, I instructed him on what type of shot was expected for each take. I was also there to help and show the crew what I was seeing and let them know if I had any ideas of what could be added into the scene. After shooting the scene where the monster and innocent cheerleader meet, I disengaged all equipment and packed it back into the bags. The group and I went back to the classroom to get another camera to shoot the ending of our commercial.
        This time for the last camera it had a recording time of 103 minutes. This was a great thing because the film didn’t feel like it was being rushed because of the recording time on the camera. Before leaving the classroom we asked students to volunteer to be apart of our FLHS party. This was needed because one of the scenes in the Fright Night commercial is a party that the lost cheerleader wakes up to. Along the way to the senior patio, we asked more students to join the party scene to show the liveliness of Fort Lauderdale High students. In this scene, I didn’t have much of job besides helping in deciding if the film should be done again and how it should be done. After shooting the scene of Amina waking up, the party scene was the final take. As students gathered with drinks in there hand, I used my phone to play Micheal Jackson’s “Thriller” to make it feel like it was really Halloween night. I also joined the party scene to make it look fuller. After this I watched the take and saw that it was great! Then I took down the camera and walked back to class feeling pleased with the outcome of the filming. In class, the takes were dumped onto the computer. When trying to find them, however, some of them looked missing. In the end everything shot on the SD card was found. Editing is the next journey and I’m ready to embark on it!