Hello again readers, and welcome back to another blog. Today we got super close to finishing filming. We started off on the couch scenes where Marissa and Riley are talking to each other after coming inside. Before this, I had made sure to bring my tiny backpack with me again to shoot part of scene thirteen which I had forgotten to do last time. I had Riley and Marissa place their backpacks down on the table that was a straight shot from the door. I filmed the table straight down and had Riley hesitate a little bit before setting down her bag so It would look like they were still walking to the table. I also had her wait a little bit so I could put a title on the table, and then it would disappear when she laid the bag down on it. When Marissa put down her bag, the plan wasn't for it to fall over, but we kept it anyway. We did this because it fell in such a way that I would be able to put a second title on the bottom of the bag, which we all agreed would look pretty cool!
We then moved on to the couch scenes which is also where we had to do some tweaking to the script.
As we were going over their lines right before the scene, we collectively agreed that their conversation did not sound very natural, so we wanted to make a few changes to fix that. We had it so Riley would start the interaction by sighing, and Marissa would ask what's wrong so this way the conversation topic wouldn't be so abrupt like in our original script. Next, we had Riley talk more about her feelings so that the audience would get a brief glimpse into the main cause of the problem of our plot.
The next scene was an over-the-shoulder shot from Riley’s side. Marissa moved on to the part in the script saying “Well, it's honestly for the best. She was never that good to you. I always had a bad feeling about her.” Here, the script had to be tweaked again. I told Marissa not to say the part about always having a bad feeling about Mackena, since that's her sister and no one would really say that about their own sister to anyone, it just wasn't very natural.
This scene was also a bit tricky to film. Trying to get the right angle where it was seamless from the previous scene and had room to put a title card proved challenging. However, in the moment, I was really liking the lighting in their living room. The color of their walls with the overhead light was doing the eerie feeling justice.
Next, I switched to a medium close up of just Riley from the front. For this, I had to ask Marissa to move off of the couch so I could get the shot without being all in her space. I took Marissa’s spot on the couch so it would look like from her point of view, and Riley said her line. Riley improved a bit, but it sounded more natural this way, so we kept it. A quick scene is done!
For the last scene of their conversation, I re-positioned myself back to the original two-shot from the beginning. It took a few tries for the two to get their lines right without laughing, but the main challenge for me was definitely trying to get into the exact position I was originally in. I had purposely included a bit of the candles they had on the table in the shot the first time because I thought it would give it a homier feel than just a couch and blank walls. Getting the same amount of candle in the frame again was a bit difficult, maybe I should have had them film the two start and end scenes back-to-back so I wouldn't have had to move. The two of them finished the scene which had a bit longer lines than anything previous. Here, both of them did a bit of improv, but at this point we were all liking the flow of their improv better than the actual script, so we kept it.
I started thinking forward to when I would have to edit, and realized that it would be a bit of a weird jump from that scene to Marissa looking for Riley, so I had the idea to add these next three short scenes. I had Marissa start the game by announcing that she's going to count to thirty and putting her head down on the couch.
For this next shot, I was actually inspired by a recent commercial I had seen on TV where the actor walks over top of the camera. To film this, I laid down on the ground to the side, about to film Riley walking over my phone and up the stairs. Here, Marissa took over to show me how to do it in a way she imagined, so she took the phone, laid with her head down, and Riley walked over her the phone and up the stairs. I really liked this shot!
I then had Marissa travel back to the couch to make a transition to the end of her counting, and the start of the search. Here, Marissa announces she is done with the counting, and from a medium shot, I film and track her as she walks to the left to start her search.
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