WE DID IT !

Dear Passionate Media Followers,

   I am very happy to announce that (drum roll please) WE FINISHED SHOOTING THE FILM OPENER!!!! Everything ended up working out perfectly. A friend of mine even surprised me when my group had our meeting at Dunkin Donuts at 8am with an intense amount of equipment. My friend brought us a lighting kit, an audio kit, two camera kits, and an Atomos Ninja V monitor/recorder. We shot the whole film opener on a canon c500 with a canon wide angle cinema lens and a canon 70-200mm f2.8 L lens. We also shot the B-roll of Miami on a Canon T6s. My group members got a little mad at me for making them bring all their equipment, but I told them I had no idea my friend was going to come in clutch. With that said, we stuck to the plan. The only thing is that we decided not to go to the skate park and we just went to Wynwood to shoot the B-roll of Miami and to get shots of the actor skateboarding. My uncle thankfully didn't get mad at me for being late because he ended up being late to our location in Surfside and we waited for him.

  Even though everything worked out, it was still a very chaotic and stressful day. I think it was like this because we tried to fit a lot of things in a very short amount of time. As well as, since we were using very complex camera equipment there was a little bit of a learning curve at the beginning of shooting. I have used a canon c100, but I have never used a canon c500 but after a couple minutes shooting I got pretty comfortable with the setting. I also think that a lot of the craziness and stress of the day came from the fact that we really didn't have a detailed plan. I think we had an idea of what we wanted to shoot and how we wanted the film opener to look, but we really didn't ever sit down as a group and plan each shot of the film opener from start to finish, so we were really had to think on our feet during the whole shoot. I can definitely say that when the day ended, I realized how crucial  planning is in pre-production for a film. The last three obstacles I found as we shot the film was because of the complexity of the film equipment only two people in our group knew how to use the equipment so the two other group members really couldn't help out a lot which caused me to get frustrated with them multiple times during the shoot, but during the middle of the shoot I figured out things they could do to help with the shoot. Furthermore, shooting outside was a major downside because not only did I get a major sunburn, but I also almost passed out midway of the shoot because I didn't drink or eat anything all day. Lastly, we shot most of the opener hand held and because the c500 was so heavy, I struggled many times with keeping the camera on my shoulder. Thank goodness I didn't drop the camera because I probably would be grounded for life if that happened.

Overall, it was a great shoot. I learned a lot about how complex filmmaking is and how much planning matters. Furthermore, I really can't thank my friend, the individual's that acted in the film,  and my group members enough for working incredibly hard to finish shooting this film opener in one day. I know we have a lot more work to do in post production, but I am excited to see how our film opener turns out. I have attached pictures from the shoot below!

Sincerely,

Matthew Liebman

Filmmaker

March 17th, 2019