Filming Day Three - Any Child's Dream !!

     Time to film my childhood dream! When we walked into the house, Nico and I realized that we never bought the confetti. So, he got back inside of his car and I set up the entire room to begin filming. Once he returned, I had already set up the toys, lights, lasers, smoke machine, and tripod to start right away. The room itself was quite a mess, but I kept everything in one corner and with close ups, I planned on making it look like a room full of toys.

     To make this look as natural as possible, we asked Paz which song she like to sing and dance to and played it. (She chose one from Teen Beach Movie) I gave her a microphone and some glasses and… it was so much better than I had expected. She completely got into character and started jumping up and down with toys as she screamed and danced crazily. It was so real that it showed on camera, which is just what I wanted. We then asked her to do the same thing laying down with some stuffed animals. Afterwards, I had her do it one last time but laying on the floor surrounded by animals to make it look like she was having conversations with them. The smoke and lasers made everything look so much better as well! Filming this scene went very well, except for two small bumps in the road. First, the lighting situation was a struggle because we could not make it too bright, but if it was too dark then nothing could be seen. Second, we had a situation with the smoke machine. We may have used it too much and well… set off the fire alarm. We were under the impression that the machine could not set off the fire alarm, but were proven very wrong:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/12Em_yj7y9L8pRZFVPqFvNzcfgu5I-bMv/view?usp=sharing

Tea Party Scene

     Up next, Nico and I made a little tea party with the bears. I  remember having my tea parties when I was little, so recreated it with the toys that we had. We placed the table next to the wall to not have any distracting backgrounds and then propped up the minion on a mattress so it was visible. I sat some Barbies on the edges of the table as well to make it look more full, then Nico put some fun glasses and headbands on all of them to make it look and feel more childish. We told Paz to pretend we were not there and she absolutely killed it! She started grabbing the cups and fake pouring the bears some tea as she told stories. Hearing her talk with the bears was extremely adorable and made me wish I had my crazy child imagination again.


     When I saw the mattress on the floor that we used to prop up the minion, it sparked my imagination. Automatically, I pictured a great scene. In the spur of the moment, I got very excited and asked Nico to help me pick up the mattress. We took it over to the stairs and I held it at the top as Nico got Paz. I found an umbrella lying on the floor and had her hold it to add some more creativity. Paz had never done this before and was very scared. I spoke to her and told her it would be fun, but she was still unsure. For the first attempt, we put the tripod off to the side to make sure it wouldn’t get hit by the mattress and had her slide down. Paz LOVED it. I wasn’t happy with the angle, so we re-did it from a different side. However, still not happy, I took a chance. I got rid of the tripod and held it myself. I pictured it from straight underneath, but the tripod would fall if we did this so I laid on the floor and took my head and hand out of the way at the very last second. To my surprise, it worked just like I wanted it to!

Fort Scene

     For the last childlike imagination scene, Nico came up with the idea to make a fort. We put together some tables next to the wall, the mattress for one side, a blanket for the other side, some cushions on the floor, and added some toys. This scene was adorable, but we struggled with the lighting quite a lot. We finally tried putting the light behind the blanket and it made it look white and flashlight-like. Paz’s imagination ran wild once more and we recorded her naturally chatting with the toys. This story time ends the imagination in a nice way and makes it look like she spent the entire day having the most fun day of her life in her new house.

     We will have to see how these videos turn out as we edit, but from what we got today, I am extremely happy with these scenes. I ended up getting home at almost 9:00pm, making my family start dinner late to wait for me! It was a very long, tiring, stressful day. But, I think it will workout very well in the short!!