Clean up time.

I made a mess. My house looks like a literal crime scene. I basically stuffed everything from my sisters' room into our tiny hallway and my room. I also just threw all the clothes that I used in my scene on the floor of my room whilst I was filming the other scenes.

This is the aftermath. I had a lot of cleaning up to do and I took a time lapse of me trying to reorganize my room, but ultimately I had to end it because I was tired and needed to sleep.

I spent the next day (today) finally making sure that everything was back to normal. I finally got some help from my dad who is so bored, he wanted to move furniture around for a couple hours.

F I L M I N G

I spent a couple of days prepping and shooting this film and it was honestly extremely exhausted. I got way too ambitious and I should have just come up with a dumb story that I could have shot in an hour, but instead I came up with a dumb story that took about a week.

The setup for each shot took a very long time, but about halfway through I decided to speed up the process and started using the Panasonic Image App. I explain my process the video:

Overall, the shooting process was quite annoying and inconvenient. Having to do every single thing and not being able to delegate any task is so irritating. I could only really do a couple of shots a day before the sun went down. I ended up cutting out a good chunk of the shots I had originally planned to do because I literally don't have the time to try being Edgar Wright.

I was also waking up at 1:00 PM but that is besides the point.

I wanted to open and close the film with a push in and back out of me in an empty room, but it became apparent that was not going to be possible. I slapped my camera onto a tripod and then stuffed the tripod into a suitcase. Suitcases have the smoothest wheels on the planet, so I was sure it would work. The only problem is that the wheels turn. I took two kebab skewers and tied them to the wheels to keep them from turning and it didn't work. Ultimately the moving shots came out shaky and gross.

I am so incredibly upset with myself. Every time I make a film, I forget to have a photoshoot at the end or something for thumbnails and promos. I promised myself I would not forget to take pictures because I knew that I needed it for the post card, but I forgot anyway.

I will just have to make do with the stills that I have from shooting. I think this still works fine and I can use it for a postcard or the website.

4K and a slow computer

Hi. I have a pretty old mac with about 7gb left of storage on the disk and 8gb of RAM. I'm not a computer nerd and I don't pretend to be, but every single online support and internet forum says that these conditions are extremely difficult to edit with.

I knew that I had a very slow computer, but I thought... you know what? I'm going to shoot this film in 4k anyway. I really like how the 4k looks on my camera. I shot my AS-Level project in 4k and loved how it turned out. The image is impeccable, but it takes me probably 4-5 times longer to edit in 4k than normal 1080p.

I did a little research and it turns out the answer is simple: just create proxies. Proxies are apparently lower quality versions of the 4k file that are easier to edit on. PERFECT! All I had to was shoot in 4k and then proxies would save me.

I shot my first day entirely in 4k and I was so impressed by the results.

Here's a shot. No color correction/grade yet.

I ended up with about 18gb of footage, which really was like 5 minutes of footage. I wanted to start editing to get an idea of what the film would look like and I started to ingest the videos and create the proxies. 

I thought these proxies were going to be a quick and easy fix, but Premiere Pro estimated about 5 hours to create the proxies then crashed after 20 minutes.

4k is out the window. I will be reshooting most of the shots from my first day in 1080p. 

Production Design AKA Trashing the House

This took way too long. I wanted to shoot in my sisters' room because they are gone and they have white walls, which will look super cool for when the character gets rid of everything. The big problem with shooting in my sisters' room is that it has essentially become a storage unit for all kinds of stuff we don't want. 

I had to breakdown a bed and move a bunch of mattresses and other furniture. Also the bookshelf needed to be tweaked because I don't actually read books. I hung up a bunch of random stuff on the walls to make the place feel very full and cluttered. There are little bits of symbolism here and there with some of the posters and props that comment on politics, consumerism, etc. and it makes it seem like I know what I am doing, but really they're just happy accidents.

I was planning on drawing out a design for the room and meticulously placing things, but it would have been a waste of time to do that so I just started throwing things around that felt right.

It took about seven hours because I had to figure out where to store all the extra stuff that was now out of the room. The battery on my camera died several times and I found out timelapses are hard.

Staying Organized

As much as I would love to just get started with shooting the film, the logistics needed to be worked out first because there is a lot of moving around of furniture. I once heard someone say that 90% of independent filmmaking is moving around heavy furniture, and they are definitely not wrong.



I want to use my time as efficiently as possible and also I need to make sure I keep continuity for certain shots. I needed to get organized, so I started by numbering all of my shots.

Some shots are virtually the same and only require me to change outfits quickly and then do the same shot again so I would label them like "8, 8.1, 8.2, 8.3.



Then, I took all the shots and put them into Excel into a shot list. I've used a template before that I stole off of Celtx or StudioBinder or something. I'm not a big fan of it because there is so much going on and most of the columns are made very clear on the storyboard. This stuff is more for big shoots with a crew, so everyone is on the same page (especially the script supervisor.)

I created my own simplified shot list. It helps me understand how long it will take me and check off when I finish them.

This project is quite the undertaking because of the immense number of setups that I have to do and the fact that I have to film myself. The total time that it should take to shoot is about 1035 min or 17.25 hours. That time includes set up times but it doesn't include how long it should take me to design the "set" which is going to take probably a day or two.

I divided the shoot into four sets with different shots to maximize efficiency and then split the sets up over three days.

Storyboard

I went a little crazy with the storyboard. There's some stop motion, timelapse, fades, etc. It's really disorganized but I understand it.

A funny thing I did, which I mentioned a bunch of posts ago was about messing around with my aspect ratio. I plan on changing it about three or four times, switching between 4:3, 16:9, and 2.35:1.

For example, the opening shot and closing shot are the same, but it opens in Cinemascope and closes in Academy ratio. It de-romanticizes his Minimalist lifestyle at the end because the small field of view takes the focus away from his environment onto the character himself. This is supposed to be a really pretentious way of hitting on the themes I discussed in previous posts.

I labelled a shot at the end tricky because I'm not sure I will be able to pull it off because there's a bunch of mirrors involved, but if my logic doesn't fail me, it will be a really cool shot.

"The Minimalist" Script

I finished writing the script for my idea and gave it a really on-the-nose title: "The Minimalist." I'm pretty proud of the way it came out and I'm excited to get to work on the storyboard.

I named the main character Ricardo because nobody watching will actually know the character's name, I'm acting in it, and the film is largely a critique on myself and my own stupidity.

I came up with a pretty cool idea while writing (in my head, I'm certain nobody will find it interesting). Ricardo at one point gets rid of instruments in his room. I thought it would be cool if while he is getting rid of them, the music starts to lose the instruments as well. So, when he gets rid of his drums, the drums in the score also abruptly disappear. I'll probably have to become a sound engineer overnight to pull this off...

I am unsure of the ending. I like how it ends visually because it really hits on the theme.

The "theme" or "moral" I am trying to get at is that Minimalists believe that in our consumerist society we are told that buying more stuff will make us happy. Minimalists argue that having less will make you more happy. My argument with this film is it doesn't actually matter because both sides of the aisle still place too much emphasis on materialism. The character in my film got rid of everything he owns, hoping to feel complete and enlightened, but we find out he doesn't. He cares about whoever the person in the photo is and their absence is what makes him feel incomplete.

Showing the main character alone in an empty space but still holding on to the photograph is pretty powerful and I feel like it could be tainted by the voiceover. However, if I do not include the voiceover it may be a little too ambiguous as to what the photograph means to the character.