Filming Day

     Filming of the entire opening took place on Sunday, March 5th. I spent the time before filming making sure I had everything ready (outfits, props, confirmation from actors/people on set). About an hour before filming, Teddy's actor (Sunnie) texted me that he was sick and wouldn't be able to make it. He apologized profusely. Everything was ready for filming and it would be very, very hard to reschedule. I'd have to check on Panna to see if it was okay to film another day, which they could have said no. I would have to get confirmation from the friend who helped me film (who would have been unavailable that weekend and the next). So, I decided to just cut Teddy from the opening. There are positives to this: It keeps the opening more focused on just Aba and Mika, which does make sense for coming-of-age openings since the ones that I researched mostly focus on central characters anyway. 

    So the time came, and my dad drove me and my little brother to the Panna and met up with my friend who helped me record (Ale). I was a little worried that the manager might've changed her mind in the moment, but we got the okay to film there. We went in and quickly filmed in the aisle and avoided accidently filming anyone. I was using Filmic Pro to film, thought I should mention. While I was there, I was carrying a guitar on my back and a random guy I didn't know kept asking me if I was going to perform. I had to tell him multiple times that I was not. After filming the instore segment, which took a lot shorter than I thought it would, we stepped out to film the outside portion of the opening, but realized that it was way too noisy film. Panna had two inflatable tube men posted up outside, waving their arms, and making a LOT of noise. It was going to be practically impossible to film out there. After discussing with my dad where we could film, I had mentioned Circle K as a previous option I had thought of and he said that it should be ok to film there since we would only be filming outside. I asked him if he was sure, multiple times, and he said he was. So we drove to the Circle K.

    We got to the Circle K and found a quiet, solitude, little area behind the building and sat there and began filming. We had the storyboard and script printed out to follow while filming which made things a lot easier. For the cigarettes, my dad bought a real pack earlier and I used it as the box that Mika pulls out, but when I smoked the cigarette, I used the herbs. Just a little thing but it turned out pretty realistic I think. Movie magic. The cigarette smoke kept blowing in my face and eyes and nose which was agitating and annoying. They also kept going out or burning too quickly. This resulted in having a new shot where Mika puts the cigarette out about halfway through the opening. Another problem we faced was low storage on my phone, so between every other shots I had to go through my phone and delete and apps or information I wasn't using. It took a lot longer than I thought, but eventually, we had finished recording. I was exhausted, I was tired, I went home. 

    After looking through the footage, I realized my hair looked horrible during the entire recording. I also realized that I should have added shots where credits can be placed since there isn't really and appropriate place for them to be with the footage that I recorded. So, I will be going back to the Circle K in order to film just a little bit more of extra footage to put the credits in. All in all, recording went great. We had to cut Teddy, but that turned out well enough. I don't think there would even be enough time to include him in the opening after looking at the footage so yeah. I'll start editing later this week. I'm still tired. Three days later I'm still tired. Those cigarettes tasted horribly.