Aggravated Assault: Part 1

     Today is the day I filmed the rest of the opening and guess what,  I got it done in one day! This means I have the remainder of spring break left to edit! I checked the footage and everything looks good so refilming is not necessary, at least for now. No one was hurt in the making of this opening but it sure does look like they were.

    Filming was hectic at first. I asked my friend Male and my sibling Quinn to be the hands putting paint on Cam. Call time was at 5 and by then my room was almost completely decorated (thanks to my lovely mother who helped out) and I had already set up the black backdrop and the spotlight. Male arrived first and I gave her the rundown of everything she'd be doing and Wade arrived second with the equipment. We set up the camera on the Ronin and I did a few test runs making sure I could get a smooth push in (especially since the Ronin is real heavy and can only account for so much shakyness). After that I called my sibling from they're room and we did a test run where they'd turn on the spot light and both Male and Quinn would pretend to come in and put paint on Wade as I walked in. Wade suggested we come up with a counting system to make sure everyone knew they're cues. Quinn would turn on the light and I counted to ten as I walked closer to wade. At 5 both Quinn and Male would run in with paint on their hands, At 9 male would crawl behind Wade. At 10 Male would pretend to snap his neck. Time was ticking as we did these practice runs and eventually male had to leave so we just had to go for it. The practice runs proved to be successful since the shot was almost perfect!

    We said our goodbyes to Male and Wade and I began to film the second scene in my room. Remember the wide angle lens I talked about? Well that came in clutch because it achieved the exact effect I was looking for. I tried to move fast since it was already 8pm so I set a finishing time to 11pm. Wade (being very skilled at lighting) was nice enough to help me light each shot which helped a lot in creating a dull look. The assault on the paintings had begun and it hurt my soul with every slash and rip, especially after I had spent so long working on them but anything for the shot right? Man it was brutal. I also painted all of the credits on the paintings except for two that I'll add in post. 

    Then it was time for the blood. Since my floors are hardwood, I preferred not to get too much of it soaked in there, and since I needed a shot of blood pooling on the floor, wade and I took it upon ourselves to put seran wrap all over the floor as a safety measure. For the shot of wade kicking a painting, I made sure the seran wrap was visible to avoid any continuity errors. Then, I got to putting blood on Wade. At one point he wanted to taste it (It's not corn syrup it's party city fake blood from 2 halloweens ago). Yeah, maybe not the best idea. Anyways, I poured blood on his hands to get the shot of him wiping blood on his forehead, then a shot of his bloodied hands, and then the fun part! I got to pour a lot of it on his head. It was quite messy and got everywhere, even on me, so handling the very expensive Becon equipment was a challenge to say the least. Thankfully nothing broke (not counting my poor, precious paintings). Then I had to get a shot of wade laying on the ground with the pool of blood coming from his head. I'm sure he had a fun time keeping a side of his face in fake blood for the minute or so it took to get the shot.

    

And that was a wrap! Clean-up was quite the mess and a half and half a roll of paper towels was sacrified by drowning but we managed to not get a single speck on the white bedshee- PSYCH! It got on the white bedsheets (just a smidge but still disappointing). You're telling me I poured blood on Wade (who was right next to the bed), I poured blood on the ground next to the bed, and the first speck of blood falls on the bed during cleaning? Flawed but ok. Anyways, I backed up all the footage after Wade left and cleaned up the remainder of the equipment wrapping up the 2nd and final filming day!

Rest In Peace My Beloved Paintings.