Filming Process

     This blog will be longer than usual as I will be explaining the filming process. This was a very fun and unique experience.

    The film takes place in my house, so Abhiram and Hayden had to come over. We started off by planning where to film. The first scene takes place in my couch where the camera is going around the main character. Immediately we faced a problem which was the light. The group arrived to my house at six so it was still light which meant that we had to start filming from another part of the film. Hayden also made sure to bring a black mask, gloves, and a hoodie to cover up the killer.

Couch where filming first scene takes place

    We decided to start filming in the scene where the main character is running up the stairs because he saw the doppelganger. My idea was to use the shaky cam technique. Basically, Hayden would be behind me while I am running up the stairs. However, when we implemented this it looked really awkward and we couldn't get a good way to film it. What we did instead was while running up the stairs Hayden would film from behind me, and when I reached the halfway point Hayden would film me from above.

        

We then proceeded to record the scene where the main character hides in a room. After I ran up the stairs I would barge into a room and hide. The room we used is my mom's studio since it has blackout curtains and at this point it was still daytime. This was a fairly simple scene to film as all I had to do was run into the room and hide behind a piece of furniture. 

    

    After this we filmed the death scene. This was by far the hardest scene to film as we tried multiple angles and it looked really weird. This scene would take place after I came out of the room I was hiding in since I thought that what I saw earlier(killer) was just my imagination. I went to the railing in my stairs and had a sigh of relief. While I am doing this the killer is behind me and then I die. The problem with this was that we couldn't get a solid shot of the killer looming behind me. What we did instead was have the killer from a distance and when I look up I stutter and take two steps back and he jumps for me. In the actual production we would not show the actual jumping because it would not fit with the film. 

    At this point of the recording it was dark already. We filmed the opening shot which was the establishing shot of the house, and then we went on to film the first scene. The original plan for this was for the camera to make a rotation from the back of the protagonist's head all the way to his face. However we decided to cut the different shots together. We also had to film the main character while he is conversing with his friend on the phone. What we did here was that with every line of dialogue we would switch the camera to a different location to develop the conversation. After he hangs up he drops his phone on the couch and walks to the countertop which is when he "spots" the killer and runs away which loops back to the first thing we filmed.

    The final scene we filmed was the revealing of the killer. Throughout the film Abhiram was the one who was the killer and we made sure to thoroughly cover him up so when I revealed myself as the killer(since it's a doppelganger of the protagonist) it made sense. All I had to do was walk behind the couch and pick up the phone when the friend called. I then took off my mask and I went to the couch and took of my jacket so I would be wearing the same things that the protagonist was wearing. This made this scene more cohesive and more meaningful.

    A problem we faced here is that the camera ran out of battery so we just had to sit around and wait for it to charge. I will not be explaining the editing we plan to use and all the different cuts since the blog is already long enough. I will be doing that in the next blog.

    Overall, this was a great new experience and I can't wait for the editing to be complete so I can see the film in its entirety.