Week 8 - Day of the Shoot / Modeling / Major Presentation

This week we had the shoot, It was such a tiring day but it was also such a great experience for us, since we learned a lot about how filming a short film is done.

The day started of us bringing the things over to the set, I first drove to the university to pick up the equipment that we booked for our shoot and also our to film students (Parth and Ralino) to help us with setting up the lights and to teach us how to use these equipment. Then I drove into the set, and dropped all the equipment and the crew as well, I also dropped in the things I personally brought from home which are, the table, covers, toolbox, lantern, storage boxes, and stationary equipment as well. After assembling the table and arranging some of the equipment I headed back out to print out the custom made newspaper I did for one of our scenes, our team lead also asked me to buy an extra pole for the curtains that we have for the set. Once I got back we continued rearranging the things for the shoot. I rearranged the placement of the newspapers and blueprints in the board to make it look better for our scene.

After a while Amit and Helgi arrived, we took around half an hour to complete setting up the set ready for filming and briefing each other on how we will initiate the shoot.

Sadly after a short while of a our briefing Helgi needed to leave because he had an urgent matter to attend to that day, but before he left he gave us all the advice and suggestion that are need during a film shoot, and he also lended us his camera and camera lenses.

Moving on to the shoot, Amit helped us a lot to operate the camera, a taught us on how lights are lights are used, he taught me where the lights should be setted up resembling the light placement we do in 3Ds max which are key lights, fill light, and back light. He also taught me about the camera focus like how he taught us in class during week 3 and also mentioned about the ISO settings because we had a problem with our camera, we only had a 50 mm lense that was suitable for the camera that we had. Amit explained to me again while showing me the ISO settings and how the scene would get brighter and have more noise when we set the ISO higher but when it was too low it looked too dark because of the lense, so we settled with an 200 with ISO settings for the time being and it actually worked with all the scenes we shot. But now that I think about it I don't know why we never used the lenses Helgi provided, I forgot to mention it that day to our team lead I guess it was because I was really exhausted from the move of the equipment and driving back and forth and also the heat was crazy during the shoot.

Moving onto while we were shooting the scenes, we used our refined animatic as reference for our shots, Amit also let us take control of the camera, to do one of the scenes.

While we were doing the first scene as well Amit showed us the first shot he took, and it was a good thing that I noticed that there was no focus on Nicola after the focus on the lantern, because in our animatic the focus shifts from the lantern to Nicola laying in bed. I pointed this out and we were able to re shoot the first scene successfully following the animatic.

In this picture we were all struggling with space, I was holding the makeshift stand we made for the camera while Amit was holding the light in an uncomfortable position because of the lack of space and Jamie was handling the camera it was a really funny situation we were in.

There was also one scenario that happened during the shoot that annoyed me, we had one more shot for the leg that is in the animatic, in total we only have 2 shots of the leg and not even the full leg is shown in these shots, I was actually having problems with my group not acknowledging my suggestions and advice through out the trimester, but I would not bring it up to them because I wanted to be as understanding as much as possible to what they want. Anyways, the 2nd shot for the leg was not yet done and we were half way done with all the scene at the same time we were trying to execute the scenes as fast as we can because the sun was setting and we needed the sun for all our scenes. I reminded my group after one of the scenes were done about the 2nd shot of the leg, and they suddenly just told me "Oh were forgetting about that scene because we're running out of time and we need to finish up quick" I was surprised by this sudden decision because the 2nd scene for that leg would only take like 5 minutes to prepare for and shoot because it's like a 5 second scene, So I just stayed quiet and again followed what they want. We were nearing the 2nd to the last scene of the shoot, again I asked about the 2nd scene for the leg if we could do it because we were about to finish, because I literally only have one scene for the leg and it's not even showing the whole leg only the foot, and of course I want to showcase my work as well in this film, again they disregarded my suggestion and even told me that the hand does not even have a lot of shots even though we have like 3 shots showcasing the robotic hand and even have one shot showing the whole hand. I felt really bad on how they would always turn down my suggestion, I felt like Amit noticed that I was kind of annoyed and the moment, right before we shot the 2nd to the final scene Amit suddenly said "Hey guys, what about the 2nd shot for the leg aren't we suppose to do that as well?" then the two girls suddenly agreed and then we moved on setting up for that scene. Honestly I was a bit mad about how the girls were, but I'm really thankful to Amit for pointing that issue out and we were finally able to shoot that 2nd scene for the leg.

After doing all the interior scenes, we moved on to the final scene which is the matte painting scene.

We went up the rooftop to do the final scene, after this scene we all packed up our things and had dinner with Amit, and I'm really glad we had that dinner because we all had such a stressful day and by the and of that night all that stress disappeared along with the good food that we had and the company of our awesome instructor.

Once I got home from the shoot I started remodeling the design of the armor plates for the foot, It took me 2 hrs and 3 attempts in creating a new design, I really struggled with trying out different designs for the foot's armor plat but after those attempts and thorough research I was able to finally create a new design that I thought looked great and follows the design flow of the leg.

The next day I showed Amit the new design and he told me that this design looks better than the first one and I got the approval for it.

Week 8 Presentation

We also had our major presentation on Wednesday during this week, we needed to show footage that we shot, Fae was able to create a short compile of the scene we shot just the day before our presentation went well, the feedback that we mostly received was from the arm, Amit said that it does not feel like an arm, and that we need to completely change it from scratch because it does not match with the concept design as well. They also gave feedback on the leg and just mentioned that the arm should follow that kind of flow.

After the presentation I talked to Natasha and asked her if she needed anything from me regarding the arm because she is in charge of that, she told asked if I could send her the Leg model for her to follow the design flow on, after the class I sent it to her right away.