adieu

TDDUP has officially come to a close! How bittersweet; this project means so much to me and I am happy that this is how I will be closing out my senior year of high school in terms of productions. It has opened my eyes and made me realize that this is what I want to continue doing in the future and I could not be more excited :)

Until next time, thank you for watching!

CCR TDDUP

The Premiere!

Here it is! All my components!!

Short Film:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pem20kBRx1Q

Website: https://andreabriseno.wixsite.com/tildeathdouspart 


Postcard:
front


back

Project Reflection

     My Portfolio Project is pretty much done!! I am so excited to finalize this project and get the chance to view the work that all my peers have created!

     This project and process was definitely different from the portfolio project last year, for starters I was working by myself this time around which proved a bit of a challenge sometimes (oftentimes), I lost access to my actors half way through, then I lost access to my filming locations. Highly unexpected curve balls were being thrown left and right this year which was stressful to say the least, but I think I can safely say that I am happy and proud of the work and the pieces I created with the limited facilities I had available. Do I think there’s a chance that if Covid-19 had not been an obstacle my short film might’ve come out more like I’d envisioned it? Absolutely, but I can honestly say I gave it my greatest effort.

     I learned an abundance of skills and techniques from this creative process. I feel that I went into this project with a pretty low-moderate skill level in terms of production, but I definitely got the chance to hone this craft throughout the process. I can credit that with the fact that this is a completely hands on project and I did PLENTY of googling and researching and learning that I would’ve never done otherwise. Some days I was looking up the smallest things like “how to screenshot on a laptop,” miniscule things that I just didn’t know but now I do that I feel could probably help me at some point in the future whether I decide to continue in this field or not. My editing skills have improved as well, although nowhere near exceptional.

     I’m upset that we didn't have the opportunity to do as many group meetings because I love hearing about everyone’s project and getting feedback for my own project and learning from each other. However, in some way we are all brought together by this shared experience.

     The overall vibe of my project was certainly different from what I’d consider my usual theme and energy, so getting to experiment with new style and going out of my comfort zone is something that I am glad I got the opportunity to do; especially in terms of the website and the postcard.

     My ultimate goal with this project was to create something that I could feel proud in exhibiting to others and I think I achieved that.

EDITING AHH

     On Monday I began doing some editing, I started by changing up some of the colors in the shots; I decided that the afterlife would all be done in cool tones and the “alive shots” would have warmer tones. Then I went through what I already had and took notes as to what I still needed, they looked something like this.

editing notes:
- demonic voices in the first scene make it in garage band ???
- the entire eyeline match of the bible !!!
- add demonic voices to before the video starts
- add somber and suspenseful music to jael making the cake
- missing vo line
- game show music
- neutral working music for making the cake
- figure out that apple scene audio !!
- ding for the timer
- music for the cake eating sequence ???
- credits !!?!??

     I got cracking on those notes by adding the voiceovers I was missing and fixing some audio stuff; unfortunately, I was having trouble with my microphone and my computer was spazzing out so I lost a lot of time restarting and updating my computer three times. Once it was up and running again I decided to stop trying to fix what I was doing and instead moved to the music. I went to one of my favorite platforms, the Youtube audio library and started searching. I found some songs that I liked and wrote them down.

youtube audio library contenders:
- mysteries dan lebowitz (baking)
- etherial choir ascends (eating)
- the evening of departure (eating)
- angus del x - bitter suite (killing)
- jukebox by patrick patrikios(opening/closing credits)
reminder: credit songs in description!!

     Today I picked which songs I was going to use and put them into the film. I went with a mostly choral sound for the music because I wanted the film to feel like a religious ceremony in certain parts. I added some sound effects that I was missing which I got from the audio iMovie offers and then I went back to what was giving me problems the day before. Again I struggled a lot with my microphone, but I was able to get some of the voiceovers that I needed. However, I really wanted to make these layered creepy whispering sounds in Garage Band to put into the film but it was just not happening for me. So, I scrolled through some royalty free sound effect websites and found exactly what I needed, this indiscernible creepy whispering voice, I downloaded it and added it to the movie. I ended up layering this audio a few times in different pitches so that it would sound creepier and like more people were whispering.

I finished the first final edit and showed it to my mom, my best friend and her sister and got their feedback. I was met with some very positive reactions ! They all really enjoyed it which made me so happy! I’m going to revisit editing again later in the week with fresh eyes so that I can take the constructive criticisms my viewers gave me and workshop them. 

Postcard Dilema

     Earlier in the week I made some changes to the postcard; I added a red border and fixed up the bite marks. But, as I was developing the website I couldn’t help but feel like I could do better with the postcard. I completely revamped the back of postcard, I scrapped the photo that was on the back and swapped it with the cake cross icon from the website. I split the card in half so that the left side would contain film festival information and the right side would have contact information.

     I showed the new model to this project's two most trusted advisors, my mom and my best friend. My best friend loved the new model while my mom was more partial to the original. this divide in opinions worried me, I thought it might be because the two of them are different demographics. So, I took to instagram, I created a poll in which I simply asked my followers which version of the postcard they found most appealing. Instagram allows you to see who votes for what, which is highly beneficial in this situation, one postcard may have gotten more votes than the other, but I was more interested in who was voting for which card. If my Instagram followers happened to also qualify for my intended target audience I’d hold their opinion higher. In the end the original design had greater support. After all of that I’m still not sure which one I want to go with and I'll have to revisit the postcard again next week :/ since I’ve already started reworking both versions again maybe my Instagram followers will have to participate in another poll. 

www.ifiguredouthowtomakeawebsite.com

     I hopped back on the website horse with a positive mindset and I think it has really paid off. I figured out what I wanted from my website by looking at projects from previous years and was able to go in with a rough outline of what I needed to do.

     I began by choosing a still from the short film to use as a background; I went with an image I felt was an iconic moment and visual.



     I stuck with my color scheme of black, white, and red for all the pages to further develop the branding I also created a little icon that I think could become part of the brand as well, it is a cake with a cross on top; I feel like these two symbols capture what the film is about well and could work for social media and the postcard which I think will be getting a makeover soon.



     I have yet to finish the last page of the website which is the contact page since I want to actually create a twitter and instagram for the film. Also, I think this page is where the postcard will live on the website, so I need to finish that up and add it to the page. There will probably also be a link to the postcard available on the “screenings” page … for good measure.

The Sloppy Copy

     Today I moved over all the footage I had into my laptop and got to editing. I cut up all the clips and ordered them in their proper sequence. Early on I noticed that a shot that I vividly remember taking, was nowhere to be seen. It’s a small eyeline match, but I believe it’s important to the narrative so I will have to go back and refilm it. Which hopefully won’t be too difficult since it’s a shot of a prop and not one of the characters.

     Other than that shot, the editing process has been going fairly well. I plan to devote the majority of next week to editing. I’m really going to have to work on making all the shot-counter shots in the opening scene flow like a conversation between two different people; I’m worried that it won’t translate well and it’ll end up being confusing as to why the same person is speaking in different costumes. Hopefully I’ll be able to fix it up by tightening the shots as well as with some added sound elements and playing around and adjusting the color grading.

www.idontknowhowtomakeawebsite.com

     I decided to start my week off by delving into the website creation process. My fellow media A level students advised using wix to create the website; I took their advice since I’ve seen some quality websites created there. So, I opened up wix today, created an account, and got to work. I looked up “film” in the template search bar and chose one called, “Film Coming Soon” I didn’t think very much about the template since I knew I could pretty much customize it however I want. I opened up the editor and quickly realized that I have absolutely no idea how to work Wix. I was extremely confused. I ended up watching half the collection of step-by-step help videos that the platform offers to educate myself a little bit; those helped me get a sense of some of the features available and how to navigate the editor. After watching those videos I got to experimenting, I clicked just about every button and icon and to be honest I’m still confused as to how to work most of the features. I didn’t get much done in terms of actually making the website since I began to get a little frustrated and overwhelmed as it kept freezing and logging me out and I was just generally lost in navigation, however I created some if not all of the tabs I want to include in the final product. I plan to come back to the website later in the week once I have finished with the first complete draft of the film itself (which I plan to have by tomorrow) because I want to look for some stills in the film to use on the website. 

     It looks pretty lame right now but, this is the very VERY rough outline of what it'll be in the end.

The Final Film(ing day) !!

     I have finished filming! On friday I turned in some work for school and then got to work on the final scene. I really wanted to finish in one day and I think I succeeded. I began by examining my house to decide on a set; I ended up using the little space between my brother’s bedroom and my bedroom, I figured it was the most enclosed blandish space in the house with drabbish lighting which is what I was going for, and it fit the table and all the rest of the set design products though it was a bit of a squeeze. I will admit I had my brother trapped in his room for a few hours.

     Before putting up the set I did my makeup and highlighted all of the shots I needed to get for each character, organizing them by color so that I wouldn’t miss or forget anything before changing the hair, costume, and makeup. I did all the Jael shots first and then the Demon shots.

     I put up the set which included a table covered in a black table cloth, the baby shower banner, and some balloons (my mom was feeling generous on her Walmart run!). I collected all my props and I got to filming. It took quite a while to get everything done since I was doing everything by myself. Setting up the camera for each angle was a huge pain since most of the time the only spikes I had to go off of were white walls, sometimes I’d put a little piece of duct tape to spike where I though my head would be but that only did so much, so unfortunately, I don't have all the variety of angles that I wanted but I think I have what I need to tell the story.

     I also took the time to take some pictures of each character that I could use for promo or behind the scenes content on the website and such.

     I’ve yet to truly review the footage, I’ll be working on that next week when I get to editing, but filming should be wrapped!

The … Demon

     I needed to come up with a costume for my Demon character who explains to the main character her new situation. Originally I figured I could just order something cheap off of Amazon but I realized later that there was no way I could order it and have it come in time for filming with this pandemic, in addition, I feel morally obligated to be boycotting Amazon in these times so I can be on the right side of history once it’s finally time to eat the rich. Basically, I’d have to work with what I have; I really wanted this character to wear red and lucky for me I hate wearing red clothes so I had almost nothing to choose from. I ended up going with a plaid patterned red skirt that had some red accents on it and a black cropped tank top; I knew I wanted this outfit to be less conservative to contrast the more modest clothes that Jael dons in the short film.



     My favorite part of this character building process was doing the hair/makeup/accessories. I put my hair up into two space buns secured with red scrunchies to mimic sort of devil horns and add a good pop of color. For the makeup I kept the base I had on already for Jael and added some red winged eyeliner and blended some red into my lower lash line, I adorned my brow bone with some little black dots as well as a dot under the center of my eye, I also drew out a little star on my cheek that I debated turning into a pentagram (and then decided against that cuz I don’t mess with demons like that), finally I lightly put on some red lipstick to just slightly tint my lips. I had the most fun filling my ears with different earrings; I have four piercings on my ear, I put a plastic baby on my right ear and on my left ear I had: a red dangly heart, one of Jael’s pearls, and a heart shaped hoop.

Global Pandemic Please Say, April Fools

     Today, after “school” I got to work on filming some of the final shots. The first thing I had to figure out was, where in my house I could stage this to make it appear like I was walking out of the kitchen in my dad’s house. I decided upon utilizing the biggest empty wall in my house, I went with the mindset that the plainer the better; the ambiguity should hopefully aid me in lying to the audience more believably. Today’s set up looked like this.

     I only had three shots for this scene, but for one of them I’d be working with outside talent (my brother) , so I instructed him to put on his costume, black pants and a black shirt and gave him his directions. He’d have to sit there while I cut him a slice of cake. We were done in about 30 seconds.

     And, I was finally done with this prop cake! I’ve never been happier to get rid of a cake. I tried to eat a celebratory slice but honestly the cake was over two weeks old and I’m not even that big of a fan of cake so, unfortunately, I had to dispose of the cake but at least it was over.

Prop Making pt.3 : props to me for playing prop master

     Today marks the start of the seventh week! And, it hopefully also marks the last week of filming. AND, it also marks the start of my first week of virtual school which means I will be having to adjust how and when I work on my project. As of now I am trying to work on the film a little bit each day as something I can use to take my mind off of school for a little.

     This week I plan to get done with the last two scenes I need: the opening scene with the demon and the remainder of the scene where Jael kills her husband. I began my week by making some props! I love making props, it’s like arts and crafts, I get to just put on some cartoons and make things look fun. My supplies are slightly limited since I am really trying not to leave the house so I just have to make do with the things I find in my home. Yesterday I spent an embarrassing amount of time making a baby shower banner which was honestly a lot of fun and kind of relaxing. I think arts and crafts is my true calling. I crossed out the part of the sign that says “girl” and wrote sinner in a red marker for the purposes of the film. This will be hung on the wall behind the demon on the opening scene.

     Today I went ahead and made the rest of the props I needed. I revamped a party hat to read Happy Death day. I made a “laptop case” out of some paper as well. The last thing I need to figure out is how I’m going to get balloons and a party horn, I might be able to find some in my house but, chances are I will make them out of paper as well unless my mom is feeling generous on her Walmart run.

   

Postcard Process

     Since I had to put a slight pause in filming as I regroup and make changes to work around my situation, I took the opportunity to get my postcard done.

     From the beginning I knew I wanted to have a bite taken out of the corner so I built the composition of the postcard around that. I played around using some screenshots from footage I had before actually sitting down and getting some pictures to use.

     I spent part of yesterday taking pictures and editing them for the postcard. I used an Iphone app called “Picsart” to edit the photos and will add the before and after of the photos below. I had one black background and one white to coordinate with Jael’s costumes in the film. The color scheme I want to develop in my branding is black, white, and red. For the front of the postcard I’m using a photo of Jael in the wedding dress holding a bible and a fork since I think those are prominent symbols in the story. For the back of the postcard I’m using a photo of half of Jael holding her cake in the right third so that I could use the center and left thirds to include information for the film festival where this will be distributed. I have chosen the Orlando Film Festival since it is in October and hopefully by that time this pandemic would’ve died down and the festival can carry on as expected. At the bottom of the back I have also added the logo for my production company, “Act Bright Films.”

     While developing the postcard I had been using the name “Let Them Eat Cake” but as I kept working on it I began to dislike this title more and more, so, after consulting a friend the name was changed to “Til Death Do Us Part,” I think this name suits the short film much better.

     Here is my postcard. I will probably rework it some more, as I’m not completely satisfied with the bites taken out of the corners. I also feel like it looks a little bland, it’s not as eye catching as I would like. I’m glad I got working on now, so that I have time to sleep on some ideas and rework it to create something I am truly proud of. I will definitely be poking around other promotional pieces for other films for some inspiration

Shelter at Home

     As of Thursday March 26 the city I live in has been in shelter at home status which means I can no longer film at my dad’s house because he lives a couple cities south of me and it is important to follow the safety precautions being issued right now so that this can all be over soon. So, I will have to adjust my original plans in terms of set. Luckily I got most of the shots I needed from the kitchen at my dad’s and only had to improvise the few of the shots I had left to film in there. Close ups have turned into extreme close ups, and although the shots are not what I had envisioned in the first place, they will have to suffice as I can no longer access my original set. For one of my shots I had my mom stand in as a body double so that I could properly frame the shot in a manner that you couldn’t tell it was taken in a different kitchen, this was made even more difficult since my mom has hair very different to mine.



     Before we were put in shelter at home status I was able to reshoot the shot that was having audio problems which was great! But, the reshoot is having the same problem! I’m so frustrated with it I really don’t know why it’s happening, obviously it’s not the shot itself since I have tried it with two different clips; I think it might just be that section of time?? But that doesn't make much sense. I’m going to try a few more ways to fix it, such as detaching the audio and then trying to put it underneath the clip, my last resort will be to reshoot just the audio and try to attach it to the clip. Hopefully it does not come to that because I have a feeling it won’t look/sound too clean with that method. 

     Beyond that the rest of the editing is still going, whether it is going well is a whole other box to unpack so I will leave you with that for today.

Change and Adapt

     On Tuesday morning my instructor held an online meeting for our A Level Media Class in which we discussed the future of our projects and of our class. Many of my classmates shared their dilemmas and we all tried to come up with ways to continue producing our portfolio projects within the confines of our homes.

     After Tuesday’s meeting I scheduled a private session for Wednesday morning with my instructor to discuss my project and ways that I could “save” it. I spent the rest of the day trying to come up with ideas I could present to her for how to continue the piece.

     This morning we had a quick meeting and I am already feeling much better about the future of my project. We agreed that since half of it has already been filmed it would not make sense to completely start over; I’d need to adapt to my circumstances. It wasn’t too difficult to figure out what to do with the scene of John Sullivan, since he has no lines of dialogue and I could get away with not showing a face, I’d only need a body, I have convinced my older brother to stand in. It took plenty of begging but he is on board now, he has no choice, and it’s not like he’s doing much more than online school right now; unfortunately, I will have to let Lucas know that he is cut from the cast, I’m sure he will be extremely devastated. Beyond that,we decided that I should play the demon character myself. And, by playing both characters it would be symbolic of how you are your own biggest demons. She recommended that I watch the film Us, to help me with the concept of having one person play two characters; I will definitely be looking into that soon.

     I will hopefully be filming the missing scenes from my most recent day of filming tomorrow, and I hope to get the shots with my brother as well as the scene with the demon done next week.

COVID-19 Can Catch These Hands

Hello everyone happy week six! And happy Coronacation week two!! 

     

     These social distancing practices have made my peers and me quickly realize that this project would begin to get quite difficult to carry out in terms of production. I think from my end I got pretty lucky since I only have two other actors aside from myself that I need to rely on for filming. I did this on purpose, when I was developing my short film my original goal was to have only one character/actor and either play that character myself or have someone I really trusted play that character. I wanted to do this because last year in my AS Portfolio Project my lead actress dropped out at the last minute and my partner had to fill in instead; I was not looking to repeat something like that again.

     While I’ve done quite a bit of the filming already I am still missing a few important scenes that require my two actors. In my original schedule from week one I had planned to get all the filming done this week, but that will definitely not be happening.

     On March 10 I contacted my friend Lucas, asking him to play the role of John Sullivan; he was eager to become part of the production and we scheduled to film on a day in the weekend of March 20-22. On Tuesday March 17, at this point school had been cancelled indefinitely, I messaged Lucas again and with the best outlook in mind we rescheduled for the weekend of March 28-29. Now as I am writing this almost a week later it seems like that probably will not be happening.

     The future of filming is uncertain. My priorities right now are safety and health so, for this week I will adjust my production schedule and hope for the best. I have planned to continue editing as well as begin working on the website and postcard. I will probably start getting into branding and marketing on my blog too, I definitely have plenty of time to sit around and research on this my senior year Spring Break.

stay safe

-a

Post Production Day 2 [sort of (it’s also 3 & 4)]

     I had the opportunity to move my footage over from camera to computer on Friday, it took forever! Since my primary laptop doesn’t have a regular USB port and I currently cannot afford an adapter my process has become to transfer all the footage to Google Drive using my old chromebook which luckily does have a USB port and then accessing the drive via my MacBook to then download and import to iMovie. This process works fairly well, it's just time consuming and kind of annoying. However, this time around the footage was giving me some problems, it wasn’t loading on the google drive so I couldn’t download it onto my computer and I began to get a little frustrated so I set it aside and decided to come back to it the next day.



     On Saturday the footage had finally loaded into the drive and I was able to download it which was an incredibly long process since there was so much footage and it would not let me download more than one at a time. Regardless, it got done and I imported everything into iMovie and got to thoroughly reviewing the footage as well as editing. Upon reviewing the footage I have come up with a list of shots that for some reason I forgot to film they are as follows:

• An over the shoulder shot depicting the recipe.
• A close up on Jael’s hand pushing the recipe away in protest.
• A close up on Jael’s injuries as she grabs her necklace before pouring in the poison.
• The ending shot where she’s back in the kitchen after consuming the cake.

     I will be making time soon to go back to my dad’s house to get these few shots so I can close out the editing of these scenes. As I began to edit I quickly came across a problem; one of the clips was having audio problems where halfway through the sound would cut out, and it happened to be the half with dialogue in it. What was strange was that this clip was only having this problem on iMovie, when I played it on the camera and on my laptop’s video player the audio was completely fine. After an extremely frustrating hour of looking for a solution I stopped, got out of iMovie and decided to try again tomorrow.



     On Sunday I got to work, I moved past the clip I was having problems with and decided it would be best to just reshoot it since I had to go back and film the other scenes at my dad’s anyways. As I was editing I could already tell that it was going to be too long and I’d have to cut down my footage an insane amount, I am already nearing the 5 minute mark and I don’t even have half of it done which is frustrating but, I am going to continue how I was going and once I get all my usable clips cut I will decide which parts to sacrifice. An idea I have been considering is turning this into a noir film, honestly it would save me time in post production but I think it could also enhance that creepy undertone I am going for.

FILMING DAY 2

     On Tuesday after going to vote (yay civic duties !!!) and after printing out my fancy Canva made cake recipe, I packed up all of my props, costumes, and supplies and headed over to my dad’s house, which is where the rest of this short film is being filmed, and got to shooting. It was an incredibly long and exhausting day of filming, I didn’t get back home until around 10:30 pm! But, an overall successful day.

     I decided last minute to change the Jael costumes from pants and a blouse to two different dresses. For Jael A.D. she is in a white dress and cardigan and for Jael B.D. she is in a black dress.

 

     I began by clearing out the kitchen; I took everything off the counters, I emptied some of the cabinets, my goal was to make it look cold and uninviting. Originally, the concept of clearing out my dad’s kitchen did not seem at all daunting, he spends most of his time traveling so there’s not usually much in the kitchen to begin with, but with this COVID-19 pandemic happening he is not travelling at all and actually using his kitchen and filling my set can you believe the nerve of this guy, HAHA! After I finished clearing the kitchen I set up my camera to a wide angle shot, I decided I would begin by filming all the wide angle shots first since most of these scenes are composed of wide angle shots and it would be easier on me to keep the same angle for an extended amount of time instead of trying to replicate the same shot each time I move the camera.

     In one of the shots I cut up an apple so I took a bit of a snack break after that to regroup and figure out how I would organize the rest of the shots considering costume changes and such. I realized you learn a lot about someone from their kitchen for instance, while i was raiding my father’s kitchen for my snack break I learned that my own father is a chunky peanut butter kind of man, as a smooth peanut butter connoisseur myself this was incredibly disheartening and eye-opening but I managed to find it in me to forgive him for his nut butter choices because he brought me mango and piña with chile late at night after hours of filming so all was well and balance was restored.



     Filming the parts where Jael pours poison into the cake components was quite possibly the most stressful part of the night. My poison was a bit of water mixed with green food coloring in a tiny mason jar. I apologize to my dad for any dish towels that are now permanently green because that sucker got EVERYWHERE, especially all over my hands. I really hope it’s not visible on camera and it doesn’t look like I’m transforming into an ogre or something.



     Definitely the most intimidating part of the night was when I had to refrost a cake. When I went to my local Publix, now ravaged by pandemic, they didn’t have another vanilla cake with vanilla frosting, but I had close to a thousand tubs of canned vanilla frosting at home from my cake baking fiasco last week so I made the decision to get a vanilla cake with chocolate frosting and strip the cake of its chocolatey coat and give it a new vanilla suit. This ended up going honestly much better than I had anticipated and I ate SO MUCH chocolate frosting it was gross. In the end it all worked out and now I get to review the footage, I already know I am missing some shots that I’ll have to return for, but I was so exhausted from filming that I called it a day and headed back home.

 

Prop Making pt. 2: The Recipe

     In the scenes I am filming today one of the props is a sheet with the cake recipe written on it so I whipped this up on my favorite graphic design platform ever, Canva. Canva is the best, it makes print components so efficiently and elegantly. They have so many different outlines and templates at your disposal. It is so easy to navigate and operate, you can even easily upload your own photos and videos. I will definitely be creating my postcard for this project with the help of Canva.

     To make my recipe I used a blog graphic and searched up “recipe” on the template search engine and opted for one of the premade templates that was spaced to my liking. I ended up not changing the colors in the template since the palette fit for my purpose. I did change the graphics on the side to suit my recipe better and of course I altered what was written in the recipe itself. Attached is a vegan cake recipe I developed myself, it is very tasty when you’re not baking in a time crunch (RIP my homemade four-layer cake) so I definitely recommend trying it, sans the poison of course.

before 

after

Post Production Day 1

     Today I moved the footage from Sunday from my camera over to my laptop and was able to start playing around with some of the clips.

     To edit my short film I will be using iMovie. I’m not extremely proficient in this program on the Mac platform as I have only gotten my macbook fairly recently, however I have been doing a fair share of googling and youtube searching to learn how to create some of the effects I will need in the final product. I’ve learned how to crop the framing of the video clips, how to split the screen into thirds, and how to zoom in on a clip in post production, though I am still working on this technique.

     In addition, I’ve actually gotten started on the editing process. So far I’ve clipped up all the clips I want to include in the final scene that depict the course of consumption of this cake. My short film currently has a run time of 1 minute and 13 seconds, woohoo! I didn't do much today in terms of white balancing and color grading or sound editing which I know I will have to dive into in the near future. But, I am a firm believer in spacing out the editing process since I usually find myself with a fried brain hating everything about a piece when I try to edit it all in one go. So that is all for today’s dose of editing in moderation.

FILMING DAY 1

     I ran out of Melatonin on Thursday night and let me tell you, the amount of hours my days have increased by is remarkable. Insomnia is a pain when you’re responsible for operating a motor vehicle everyday, but with everything I drive to having been cancelled due to COVID-19 I’ve been able to be so productive with all the time I don’t use sleeping. Last night I stayed up prepping for filming in the morning, playing around with the camera, getting costumes ready etc. I managed to force myself to fall asleep for about two hours and then I was up and at ‘em at 4 am. I started my morning by making a crumble I wanted to top my stOrE-BoUght cake with. While it baked I did my makeup, which came out looking super cute. I was lucky enough to enlist my mom’s help this morning, so, we proceeded to pack her car with props and supplies and cake; and we drove down the street to an open plot of grass near my house. When we got there the sun hadn't quite risen yet so we spent the time waiting for the natural light by getting everything set up. From there it went pretty smoothly; I ate cake for breakfast at 7am and we were done before 8am. Overall I’d call that a success.

              

     From what I have reviewed on my camera’s viewfinder, the footage came out acceptable. Now I just have to get my hands on an adapter to get the clips onto my laptop and truly review the footage and make sure it is disposable.

Day 1 Shoot Prep: Making the First Full Cake

     Wow! Today’s prep went so well check out the masterpiece of a cake I made!!

                            

     Just kidding :( unfortunately today I’ve run into my first big obstacle. My day started off early, I went to the grocery store to restock on baking supplies and by 11am I was well into cooking my cake. Everything was looking great; I had four circular cakes and four jars of filling.

     As my contents cooled I began making my frosting; I tried out a new recipe as well as the one I’d made before. Both of them came out too liquidy. Regardless I slapped the cake with frosting, shoved it in the fridge, and prayed.



     The cake was looking terrible and the top layer had ripped down the center. I rushed to the store for some premade frosting and a serrated bread knife. I tried to salvage the cake by shaving off the perimeter and crumb coating with the store bought frosting. Then I chucked it in the fridge, things were starting to look up. I checked on my cake a few minutes later and it had fallen apart, everything was sliding everywhere, and there was a giant sticky sweet mess! Thus, was born the slop trough which is where failed cakes go to die (and become cake pops) sort of ironic I guess.

















(<-before)
(after->)

    

(the slop trough)

     I was upset, but after consulting my mother we came to the conclusion that the cake would have to be store bought. It almost brought me to tears! I rushed to the grocery store for the third time today and got myself a $10 frozen cake from the bakery. It felt like admitting the ultimate defeat, but alas, I had no other choice, I need to film tomorrow.

     The cake I got is a lot smaller and obviously doesn’t have the elements I wanted but it will have to do. As my little foreign mother put it, “is a prop for your video,” that really spoke volumes to me today haha! In complete seriousness they were exactly the words of encouragement I needed.

     Looking back at the day’s events I can’t help but laugh. I felt like one of those contestants on a baking show where everything that can go wrong does. The dramatics sure were high today and I probably would've been eliminated had this been a baking show. Lucky for me there was no elimination at the end of the day and I can carry on tomorrow with a fresh mind for filming. I just hope that the little store bought cake will read well on camera. But, I mean I’m sure it’ll read better than the monster I made today (which has now been repurposed into cake pops).