Cult Filming

Day One

First day of filming...did not go great. It was dark, humid, the lights were attracting bugs. It was just generally unpleasant. Which I guess was expected but it didn't help that so much was going wrong. At first, there were a group of middle schoolers that were coming up and harassing us which was just more annoying than anything. Secondly, my tripod had a loose leg so it kept slipping in shots and I had to hold it with one hand. 

One of the major obstacles I had was deciding how to light the scene. I went in wanting to have the scene be more blue to resemble the light from a blue moon. It wouldn't be super realistic, more of a stylistic choice to represent the night time light, but I liked the idea of it, so I went with it.

This was the very first
shot I recorded, very blue

But it was balance of how blue do I want this and how much "natural" light should I have. My whole goal was to make the light look as motivated as possible, especially in a setting like this, which just gets difficult. As the filming went on, I wasn't sure how I was feeling about the blue and liked it less and less, and I started to light the scene less and less blue with each shot. 

The other major issue was the audio. For some reason, my mics weren't working. The setup I was using was connecting wireless lavs to a shotgun mic to have the audio go right to the camera, but for the life of me, I just couldn't figure out why they wouldn't work. I would be able to hear audio when I didn't connect the lavs to the mic or the camera, but as soon as I plugged them in...nothing. I spent a good 30 minutes trying to troubleshoot the audio before calling my friend Gabi who had another set of mics and lived nearby. Here's Gabi on the right. Thanks Gabi! But then these weren't working either...so I'm freaking out. I was trying to find a common variable to find the issue, and I finally got them to work through the perfect combination of aux cables. It turned out that most of the cables were just not working I guess, I still don't fully know why that is since most of them are new....but whatever. I finally got it to work...kinda cause I couldn't turn down the gain but at least I had audio. 

As I'm recording this scene though, the tube lights I have died. And just so you know the light setup I had going on, here's a picture. 

I had the big fat cob light I mentioned earlier on a stand and connected to the power generator I mentioned I was gonna buy (what a lifesaver, best investment I've made in a while), and then on top of that, I had two tube lights, which on their own are crazy bright and powerful, as a more natural yellow light source to mix with the blue on the characters' faces and to also light the trees in the background a bit so that the characters aren't just on black and develop the foreground and make sure it was clear they were in a forest. Anyway, the tube lights which I've been heavily relying on, die since they are battery-powered. Ok, no big deal because I have a backup light kit in my car, so I run back and get it. The only issue with that is that it has to be plugged into the power generator as well. But it's been taking the cob light like a champ, so I decided it would be fine, I was on the last shots I needed anyway. 

So I recorded all of Bryan's shots that needed audio, mainly just the dialogue once he is tied up and begging for his life and finally pooping and all that, and as I record his final shot of him walking away and looking back, the power generator dies. I panic and realize that there's really nothing I can do at that point. The cob light and the RGB panel lights I connected to the generator absolutely killed it and I lost all of my sources of light.

I was completely devasted. Overall, it was just a rough shoot and I was already on a time crunch cause my friends had to get home, and the lights dying just put the cherry on top of the poop milkshake. But I came out planning when everyone could reshoot and moved on. But if I tell you that car ride back home wasn't rough, I'd be lying. I didn't even open the footage that night or the next day. 

Day Two

After taking a day to just sit on it, I opened up my laptop and started editing what I filmed on Friday night...and I was liking it. As I said, during filming I started feeling differently about the blue light and doubting my decision to include it, but seeing it all together, I quite liked it. Although the shoot itself was very unpleasant, everything came out pretty well. There was only one thing I had to refilm and then shoot the cult member's dialogue, which would have been quick. After seeing the footage, I felt way more motivated and confident about what I was making. I went into the reshoot confident as I learned from my previous mistakes and also had much much less to shoot. 

And I was right in feeling so, because the second shoot went much much better, thank god. Wesley, the actor for the cult member, crushed his lines and everything went really smoothly, we were in and out of there within an hour. Here are some more pictures from the shoot. 

So overall, there were some hiccups, but it went alright. I'm editing what I have right now and am gonna prepare for what I need for my next shoot.