Filming Day 1: Starting

The first day of filming was quite eventful, it all started with setting up which took the longest. The wide establishing shot was def the most difficult during this day as I had to get far away enough that the floor covered with the carpet could be seen but not the actual floor. I ended up on my bed with the camera on the tripod supported by my hands and a cardboard box. This allowed me to get this shot

But as it's seen a lot showed up in the frame, more than it was wanted. So that meant reconfiguring my room again and trying to hide everything away from camera view. Which took quite a while. Another difficulty was the unstable surface, it was very easy for it to become skewed if any movement happened. To fix it, I had to hold down the tripod, not move a muscle or breath, and let the camera roll because moving to stop filming would cause the camera to angle incorrectly.

But once I figured it out, I took the chance to record all the shots that needed that specific angle just because setting it up was such a pain that I didn’t want to do it again.

Palette shot from the side

After this was done, I moved on to the palette shots which was one that I decided to do that deviated from the original plant. The planned shot was one of the side views of the palette at ground level but because of the palette I used which was more like tiny cubes full of paint, I thought that maybe having a top-down view would be better to see the actual paint. I did both versions just in case to figure out if liked it or not later while editing.

palette shot from the top

The first day was light, it was a lot of setting up, getting familiar with the equipment, and learning its limitations. Considering that it was a 4-hour session half of it was taken up by moving furniture around, I'm quite happy with what I was able to accomplish. Being on a time crunch for film is super stressful and sometimes it feels like the plan is just to shoot as much as possible, but taking it slowly makes the process more relaxing. Slow and steady wins the race, that’s the saying. I always have a time limit on my mind, but something can't be rushed because then it will end up badly.