Our specific roles…
Arina and I shared all roles equally and were both active in all stages of production, especially directing. I was more in charge of coming up with ideas for the narrative and shots, directing and editing in terms of colour-grading.
Arina was more in charge of filming, directing and editing.
Arina, my partner
18th of November 2021
Our filming began on the 18th of November. It was a very foggy day, perfect to get some ominous atmospheric footage for our film opening.
-We first created a simple storyboard as guidance for the filming but also to not restrict our imagination and inspiration as the footage we planned to get were more for abstract sections of the film opening.
This is a picture I took of my two classmates who were passing by, but it is evident that the fog was so heavy it almost covered up the entire school building.
Shot-list:
1.Daisy(me) walking out of the school (through the school gate)
2.Another walking out of school across the school field
3.Daisy(me) laughing in a creepy manner
We then followed our instincts and filmed some shots based on the foggy setting. The shot we actually used in our film opening is a wide shot that is framed by some tree branches where I stand in the middle with the camera dolly in to create an eerie feeling. We incorporated this with the Oscar award model footage in our title sequence, which was very effective as it forbodes the complex nature of Daisy.
Our second filming date was the 29th of January. During these months we made changes to our script and created the full storyboard.
Our initial filming plan:
1. Start at 11:30 and finish at 5:30pm.
2. Film the section where Chris and Daisy enter Chris’ home---take off their coats and shoes---exchange a quick conversation---go in to Chris‘ room where Daisy observes the Oscar trophy model---Chris‘ father calls them for dinner--- Daisy goes out of the room and bumps into Chris’ father---she touches his arm and leaves.
3. Then we would also shoot the bathroom scene but only the parts with Daisy’s school uniform on.
We anticipated these shots to all be of good quality and will be applicable for the rough cut. We were confident that we could shoot all of this within 6 hours.
In reality, however, this was not achieved and we faced many difficulties:
-First, the shot coming in to the apartment alone took us around an hour including the time to set up our equipment. The reason to this is we felt the shot we planned on our story board wasn’t as good as we expected it to be, we wanted it to be more creative. Thus, we tried a variety of ways to show Daisy and Chris walking in; starting from the elevator doors opening, panning from one angle to another, etc. Our initial idea was for it to be a tracking shot similar to the one from ‘Birdman’, however because the background setting lacked action and the pace wasn’t as quick, it seemed dull and boring.
The attempted one-take follow shot of Chris and Daisy arriving at home.
-After two-hours (four hours left), we finished the filming for coming in to the apartment and the quick conversation.
-We then had to film the part in Chris’ room. Originally, the dialogue in his room was in English and was quite long, however we felt that the Mandarin version of the dialogue sounded more natural and was more concise. Hence, we adapted the conversation to be held in Mandarin.
-We set up the lighting (60% yellow lighting) to make the room seem cozy because the headlight in the room was too white and too bright which didn’t fit the mood and atmosphere.
-We first tried the shots based on our story board, however, it wasn’t ideal; the shots were messy and seemed unprofessional. We then spent about one hour in total figuring out the angles to create a nice shot. There were more shots required because originally, we had more dialogue so it required changing perspectives and angles. We tried our best and found a relatively good angle and continued on with the filming.
-The second part which was also the last part of the filming we did that day was the shot of Daisy going out the door and bumping into Chris’ Father. At this point, the camera ran out of battery so we had to charge it and meanwhile I did the makeup for Arthur (who plays Chris’ father) to make him look more mature, I drew him a mustache and accentuated his jawline, I also made his skin tone darker and added some spots.
-It was around 3:30pm when we started filming again. It took us some time to get the angle right for the shot so that it does not show Arthur’s eyes and above(we wanted to make sure that he seemed believable playing a man in his late forties and remain him as mysterious because his face isn’t what we want to highlight but more so the interaction between Daisy and him) as well as the acting right; at first we couldn’t stop laughing, then we retained our professional integrity and tried a few different body language, reaction, poster and levels.
-We then experimented a few different shots to see what looked best and delivered the message; the Father’s point of view shot worked well as it highlighted Daisy’s reaction and made her seem shorter to foreground that idea of her being an underage teenager (to accentuate the sinister feeling). By the end of the day we finished the shooting which required the father and Chris but definitely not as much as we expected.
That day, we learnt an important lesson about time management and realistic planning.
February 17th
Arina and I met at 1pm and planned to finish at around 7pm due to the lesson we learnt from last time. The plan for the day was to finish filming all the parts at Chris’ home which included Daisy:
-The washing hands scene in the bathroom
-The promiscuous side of Daisy appearing in the mirror scene
After last time’s shooting, we checked the footage and decided that we had to reshoot some of the parts of me entering the apartment. This is because we felt the shots were average and a bit plain, not captivating enough.
We started by filming the beginning and we kept some of the techniques we used last time, but also tried to create a pan that goes from behind Daisy all the way to her right as she walks forward. This was one of the shots that took us one hour because it was very hard to create without a track as the camera turned out to be very unstable. We experimented with the stabilizer but it still did not work, we then tried shooting this shot with our phones and it turned out great because the phone was very light. However, we couldn’t use this footage because the quality was very poor compared to the professional camera. We changed this shot to a simple truck.
-At this point, we decided to show a bit of a nosy/intrusive side to Daisy because so far, the narrative portrays Daisy as the innocent victim. We achieve this by having her touch and look at the objects displayed on shelves while Chris puts on slippers. After three and a half hours we finished the beginning parts and got some nice close-ups with Daisy fiddling around with objects. (This was not used in the end due to inconsistency in-between shots as well as exceeding the time limit)
-We moved on to the slow zoom in on the Oscar model. This took me around 20 minutes because we had to adjust the lighting as well as mise-en-scène. At first the slow zoom wasn’t very smooth but after a few trials I created a smooth zoom in.
Another shot that took us an unbelievably long time was a worm’s eye view follow shot of Daisy’s footsteps to the bathroom. The reason why it took us so long was because it was again challenging to create a smooth camera movement:
We first used the stabilizer, but it kept on crashing(suddenly it would turn in all directions or it would shut down).
We tried to:
-Restart it
-Check if the battery was full
-Find tutorials online
Which still didn’t work and somehow it kept on moving. We even named the stabilizer ‘稳稳‘ (wen wen)which means stable in Chinese to ask it to be kind and work. The only time when it was smooth was the time I pushed the door too hard it bounced back from the shelf and bumped in to Arina…
So we tried other ways, we found a trolly and placed the camera on it but because there was the door frame, there was a little bump.
-We then tried with a selfie stick which surprisingly worked better than all the other tools we used. But obviously the camera wasn’t attached to the stick but rather our phones which are lighter and easier to maneuver.
-We also went with the most basic way which is holding it by hand but the footage came out looking like it was on a roller coaster.
By the time we decided to not continue to try because we weren’t being efficient was already 6 pm so we moved on.
We shot the bathroom scene where Daisy washes her hands, we first tested a few times without using water so we wouldn’t waste too much water or paper. This part of the shooting went as we planned and we did finish at around 7 pm. But we were missing the promiscuous Daisy shots which would be edited into the washing hand scene, to symbolize a ‘glitch’ in Daisy’s identity.
After serious discussion, we decided we should finish filming the evil Daisy sections the same day. After dinner, I applied makeup and changed, it was around 9 pm. Originally, we planned for this part of the shooting to take the longest time, we thought it would take us around 3 and a half hours. Surprisingly, it was the one that took us the least time, we finished the filming in an hour. We didn’t have any movement sequence pre-planned for this but we had an idea that we could use feathers to ‘seduce’ and also as a symbol of liberation, since birds are usually associated with freedom; the liberation of the other side of Daisy.
During the filming process, we came up with random ideas for POV shots such as me pushing the camera/person down or me holding the person’s hand to reinforce the idea that this is a POV shot but also to illustrate how the person doesn’t want to have this typical connection with Daisy so he pushes her hand away. The point of this shot is to clearly demonstrate the other dark side to Daisy and it is also a flashback from Daisy’s mother’s ex-boyfriend who she attempted to seduce but did not work out so ended up killing him (we don’t aim for the audience to understand the specific information in this montage, it is an indicator to Daisy’s problematic (sexual)aggression when feeling unsuccessful or embarrassed and serves as an enigma). I had an epiphany of a dutch-angle shot of Daisy playing with a knife, this worked really well and even Arina was nervous but I was careful so it turned out effective and also successfully implied the death of the POV character.
3rd of March
We returned to school as the footage required the setting of lockers and the school’s front gate.
-The first difficulty we faced was noise coming from the hallways because there would be teachers and students passing by but as soon as classes started, the hallways were quiet again.
-The next difficulty was us making too much noises because the lockers where we were filming at were right next to the library, but we managed to negotiate with the librarian and keep our voices as low as possible.
The first shot was supposed to be Daisy walking towards the corridor and her books drop as she passes a few students, the next shot would then be a mid-shot of the students gossiping. However, because both Arina and I are in this first shot we had to kindly ask a friend to help us film this, this was when communication skills were crucial.
I first explained the narrative of this section and what each actors will be doing and how I would like this shot to be taken. I then went to the actors to explain to them what they had to do.
Initially we shot a few over the shoulder shots of Daisy walking in front, but we removed these shots when editing as the time was exceeding the limit too much. After a few trials, we decided not to drop my books because it didn’t look very natural and the camera movement was too messy. In the end, Daisy’s books almost fell but she catches them and this can all be seen within the frame without having the camera move down too much. Later, I was in charge of the filming, at first the dialogue didn’t go very naturally so I told the actors to deliver it in a way they would normally do, they tried and it was just like the way it was written---the presence of the camera made it a bit awkward so I asked them to be closer so their proxemics would not be too distant and perhaps more natural. After adapting, the shots went well and I experimented with different angles, point of view shots and by the end of the day we had a variety of footage which we liked.
10th of April
After reviewing the footage from the 29th of January, Arina and I decided all the footage including Chris, excluding the one with Chris’ father had to be re-filmed. Arina arrived a little earlier than Richard (playing the role of Chris) who kindly came to help us so we could finish the shots including Chris. Arina came in advance so we could plan and go through the logistics of the filming so we wouldn’t delay anyone. During the planning stage, we considered the time limit of the film and experimented with different methods to save time because the tracking shot following Daisy and Chris took too long.
I then thought of creating a smooth transition, an invisible cut; a pan to follow Daisy and after she walks in front of the camera, whilst panning the camera goes closer to the white column and would brush away. This shot would be followed by continuing the movement of the camera by panning to the right as Chris opens the white door in his room. This managed to save us 4-5 seconds.
We had planned to spend about 40 minutes on the shots in which Chris and I enter the apartment and have a quick conversation whilst removing our shoes. Since we were simply recreating what we had done for the first shoot for this part, we did finish within 40 minutes. The next shot took us about 1 hour 30 minutes because during the shooting, the camera ran out of battery so we had to charge it.
On the 29th of January, when we filmed this section we struggled a lot with camera angles, composition and movement so this time we decided to keep it less complicated. Arina and I decided to shoot it in the form of a POV: first we recorded a mid-shot of Daisy walking a step forward and stopping, then she turns around—> a POV showing some parts of the room and Chris talking, then I held the camera and walked to the Oscar model. When editing this, the cut from the mid-shot to a POV wasn’t very smooth so we decided to reverse the action of Daisy turning to the camera into Daisy turning back connecting the POV shot. This foregrounded the action code and connected the two shots better, the reverse of Daisy’s actions was rather stiff and robotic which generated a spooky, tense effect and worked well with the POV.
In the afternoon, Arina and I selected the shots we liked as we had many backups. After the selection process, we edited the shots into the rest of the edited pieces and afterwards we began to select music and choose fonts for sub-titles. By the end of that day, we were only missing the footage with Daisy walking out the school gate after school to meet Chris.
Overall,
we both think our filming was successful and we both learnt a lot from this ‘roller-coaster’ experience. I am glad that when filming we were very open to experimenting new angles and camera movements and thankful for the challenges we encountered as we often ended up with more impactful shots for our final film opening.
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