Day 3: Wednesday April 1, 2015

Today, I put in a painful amount of work on this film.


Last night, I decided to take a late night nap so that I could wake up in the wee hours of the morn and film my video. That was a very bad idea. But, I did get all of my filming done, so that's a good thing. Let me take you through what happened.


At midnight, my alarm sounded. For the next hour, I struggled to wake myself up enough to start filming, and I finally did it. At 12:57, I began filming my short film, with a very tricky and precariously placed camera on an old, broken tripod. It was tough to focus the camera correctly, keep my face in frame, and do the actions required by the script, but it turned out alright (I think).


Then I did medium and wide shots of my bed, which is where the film takes place. These were more difficult, because I had to focus the camera on something that wasn't me or a person. So I balled up a blanket, and used that as a replacement for my face. This worked somewhat, which is okay with me. It's tricky being the director, the director of photography, writer, consistency supervisor, actor, and lighting expert. It's a big challenge.


This is when I realize something terrible. This whole time, I wasn't recording sound. The microphone that James let me borrow needed to be turned on separately, and I completely forgot to do it. Later, I told James and Cole, and they said that they had both done that numerous times. That made me feel a tad bit better.


But alas, I had to reshoot the shots I worked so hard on. Now, I knew how my system worked, and so it was a lot faster the second go around.


Once I was done with that, then I had to get shots of me in the bathroom, which was a little awkward. I will probably cut out most of the shots in post, but it's better to have the shots anyway.


I finished up with two more shots, then I went to bed for a couple hours. I actually woke up feeling pretty refreshed, but that quickly fell down the drain as the day went on.


Fast forward to the editing process.


My God I hate the editing process.


Something that I realized rather quickly while editing, is that I hate looking at myself for long amounts of time. I hated every second of it. It's so hard not to hate every second of it. But alas, I edited for a long time, and I had to give up and go do something else. I can tell editing will be the hardest part of this process. That does not make me excited about it.


So now, I'm physically, emotionally, and mentally exhausted. I'm going to fall asleep and stay asleep for as long as possible. Thanks for reading.


-Griffin