Filming Day Two

     Today was the day we were supposed to film Madelyn with Martina…however, after our change, it was time to film Martina and myself. Before we started filming, I knew I had to try to look like a girl about to go to college. Rather than sweatpants or shorts, I grabbed a pair of jeans and a nice, long sleeve shirt. I put on some makeup and hopefully now I looked older and ready for this part. I thought about the final scene that would be filmed today and what materials would be needed. When I realized that I had to get a trunk that looked like I was leaving the house, I started looking everywhere for boxes. I got some empty boxes and some full boxes and out them in the car to make it look as full as possible. Finally, all that was left was the other actress! I called Nico to come over to start filming and I went to pick up a very excited little girl.

Thiago Lesende & Martina Di Giuseppe

     When returning back to my house, I saw that my front door area was not going to work. The street is too far away from my front door and would make the walk from place A to place B too long. Nico and I then saw my neighbor’s house and noticed that the structure was perfect. I rang the doorbell and after getting permission, we started filming! Nico set up the tripod and I started explaining the scene to Martina. She understood it perfectly and did not ask for her lines to be repeated at all. She tried to look sad just as I had explained and didn’t look at the camera. The only downside would be her dancing! Martina is a dancer and wanted to show us her moves, which was super fun, until she started dancing every time we stopped the camera. Getting her attention was hard at times, but overall, she was an excellent actress!

     Everything was going well, until we looked back at a clip and realized that the camera was way too far from us for any sound to be heard. Since we had no microphones available, we had to improvise. I asked for my little brother to let me borrow his cellphone and started recording. At first, I attempted hiding the cellphone inside of the box. But after a re-do of the scene, all we could hear was the thumping of the phone against the box as I walked. I attempted holding the phone behind the box, but it was obvious that I was hiding something, so that did not work either. When I realized that nothing else would work, I turned around and put the cellphone in my shirt. I apologized to my little brother as he laughed at me and I kept the very large phone hidden with my bra strap holding it! A bit unconventional, but hey! It worked!

     We re-did the same scene about 40 times, redoing it anytime that something was off and trying it from several different shots and angles to have more options when editing later on. The  most important part of this day was to film the final scene. It has to be emotional and a nice way to end our short, so we tried to make it as emotional as we could with tight shots and other details we included. Martina was so great that she even reminded us she had to be holding the book in the final clip! I had left the book in the box after the last time we had shot and if it had not been for Martina, we may have forgotten to have her hold the book at all! Overall, today was a success and the sunny weather was definitely on our side. Now enjoy some pictures!