Last Minute Filming

     All that was left to film now was the oldest girl’s flashback (aka mine). For these flashbacks, we felt that the most touching idea was to include Paz (aka her as a kid). It was a nice way to show the message we wanted to convey with her using adorable little scenes. We knew it would not take long at all, so left it for last. However, this day brought us a lot more complications and stress than we had planned.     For starters, we got a text from Paz’s mother that the friend cancelled last minute. She said that she was going to call a neighbor and see if she could act as a replacement. If this did not work out, we would be in trouble. The only little girl that would work for this role was Martina, who played the sister. Nicolas only knew Paz, so it would create an issue and change of flashback that we had not planned for. After hours of stressing, the mother texted again and said the neighbor was free to do it! Pheww.. one less issue for the day.

     Then, the mother notified us that Paz had practice at 5pm and with everything Nico and I had in school today, we could only start filming at 4pm. This would only give us ONE hour to film the three flashbacks! As worried as we were, we pre-prepared all of the materials so could film right away. Since the flashbacks were all very short and simple to film, we set out on the mission to do it in 60 minutes. Nicolas did not have his car, so I went to pick up Nicolas, then went to pick up Paz, and picked up Candelaria (the friend) last.

      We began with the flashback of Paz riding her bicycle alone for the first time. We gave Paz three different bicycles to try out, but all were pretty tall. When one worked, I got her a helmet and knee pads to make sure nobody got hurt. However, with Nico still holding on to the bike, Paz was unable to balance herself and ride alone. This was a problem. My first instinct was to check my garage for other possible replacements. I found an electric scooter that might work, but the wheels were touching the ground and the battery was dead. I kept searching and found a skateboard and longboard. The longboard is easier to ride, so I grabbed it and went back with the cast.

     Paz got on the longboard and slowly but surely, she rode it successfully! After some pushing and slipping, we got the scene. We shot Nicolas’ hands pushing her off to make it look like the father letting her go and got some different angles of me looking at my past memory. This scene took longer than expected with the issues we had, but 30 minutes later we were back inside the car and off to a park! We chose a park previously that had parks inside of it with swing sets we could use, and a forest we needed for the last flashback.

     The first park we went to looked nice…. but had no swing. Why were we having such bad luck today!? I then remembered another park inside the same complex that I was sure did, so we continued straight there and got out of the car to film. When we reached the swings, there was a little boy swinging on one of them. With only twenty minutes to film both scenes, I quite embarrassingly asked the father politely to let us use the swing for five minutes. The father was super kind and the child ran off to the slides! We got a ton of pictures for our postcard and movie cover, as well as the scene involving Paz and her friend. The lightning was not the best for the images because of some shadows involved, but they looked quite, so we left them.

     Lastly, we needed the exploring flashback. It was already 5pm, but we had everything ready at the location and were not stopping now. I took the pictures of everybody that I needed for the “cast and crew” tab on the short’s website and filmed the final flashback! We dropped Paz off at her practice only ten minutes late, to find out the practice started at 5:30pm, but they had to be there at 5pm to warmup. Because of this, we technically dropped her off twenty minutes early, so it all worked out! In the end, we got all of the scenes and pictures we needed! A successful, yet stressful day overall.