Try Not To Laugh (Filming Blog)

Today was the first day of filming. We stuck to my plan of splitting the filming process into two and filmed the second part since our main actors were unavailable. I was surprised we got so much done in one day. Despite sounding like the easiest scene, the scene that took the most time to film was the one where the girl wakes up from a nightmare. There is a big window near the bed where we filmed, so the lighting was perfect. The problem was us. The filming took place at Eden's house, and Eden has three cats. You don't just see cats and not play with them. We spent a solid 10 minutes playing with the cats and admiring Eden's artwork before we began filming. When we did, we couldn't stop laughing. The girl is supposed to bolt up and start panting heavily. The camera is then supposed to zoom in on the face of the actor who looks terrified. When I zoomed in on our actor, she started laughing, which made me laugh. We took a couple of takes before we decided it wouldn't get any better and moved on. The other shots came out well. I filmed most shots from different angles so that we had a variety to choose from when it gets to editing time. Another hard scene to film was the cup dropping with water in it. We were doing test shots first, and when it was time to film the real scene, I thought we were still testing and only caught half of it. I felt bad, but we found a way to work around my mistake. We took separate shots of the cup dropping and the rise from the water on the floor. I can merge them when I start editing. My favorite thing that happened today happened during the zoom-in shot of the doll. The doll plays creepy music if you wind it up. We were filming and the scene was going perfectly until Eden's dad yells out, "what's that creepy music?" There wasn't supposed to be a voiceover for this scene so essentially, he ruined it. Still, it was the funniest thing to happen that day, and Eden's reaction was amazing. I'm looking forward to the next time we film.  

                                          Here's one of our filming fails above.