Filming Day 1

Last Saturday night I set my alarm to get up bright and early (10 am), because I was filming for the first day at David's house. The plan was to film the two scenes Connie had to be in, so I needed to get there at around 1 o' clock and set up for about an hour until Leandro got there at 2. 

I ended up pushing the schedule back an hour when I realized I still needed to cook the fish for the dinner scene. Apart from that, everything went smoothly. After having to run around my house and the nest I call a room last minute to get everything I needed, it went pretty okay!

Because I wanted the light from the kitchen window to come in, we (as in David and I) set up the lights for the "childhood" scenes first. We had to set up five individual lights to light the actors' faces, because the light from the window was too overpowering and was silhouetting the figures.

Oh look its an actual picture of me setting up lights and framing. 

Everything was going smooth, or as smooth as a shoot directed by me can go, until David's family showed up unannounced how dare they interrupt my creative process. Nonetheless, I was on a tight schedule so I worked around the mild inconvenience, and confused hispanic relatives who now had to try to be quiet, and filmed close up shots of Leandro that didn't need audio syncing. 

Still from film, color corrected. 

For this scene Leandro is wearing an orange oversized shirt, a yellow  cap, small jean shorts, and yellow socks with white shoes. His costume was meant to read as childish, not only because of the color psychology of the playful orange, but the fact that he's wearing clothes a small child would wear. I also color corrected the footage to look vintage, implying this scene takes place in the character's past (or his memories of the past). 

After Connie was done taking care of her guests, we continued filming the remaining childhood scenes, and moved onto the beginning dinner scene. I really wanted to get a symmetrical shot, to highlight the differences between the mother and son, so I ended up having to move furniture around.  Then, we set up the same lights again to illuminate the actors' faces and began rolling. At this point my camera was about to die, so I had to quicken the pace at which I was shooting, which led to problems I now have to work around in post. Some of Connie's lines were a bit too challenging for her grand acting debut, so I had to change my shots a little. For example, in one of the longer lines I had to switch to an over the shoulder shot of her so that I could later put any audio over it with minimal editing. Aside from that it was pretty great! 

Another color corrected still, though I need to crop it.

Part of me wants to start the analysis and spoil everything, but I might as well keep some kind mystery until you see the final product ;)

See ya!