Director's Reflection:
This project was enlightening because you had to put yourself into the filmmaker's shoes and mind. I learned how purposeful each shot has to be in your story because time is sacred and whatever is in your frame needs to help the story move along. Working with Sariah went very well. There is much camera movement in this scene. She had the camera on the rig the whole time and she performed well. I thought the actors did pretty well in being in character and trying to recreate this scene. As a director, I learned how important blocking and movement with the camera is because the camera needs to exactly know where the actors are going and doing. The lighting was tough to recreate because our Arri kit was so powerful in such a small room it blasted the whole room up. We used practicals and china balls to help us with our lighting. One of our lightbulbs went out so that stunk. Also, I failed in trying to get more of a contrast like in the original as far as shadows go. I messed up on Tommy's blocking at the end. I learned how just one turn and can screw up an edit if you didn't capture it on set. In the future, I want to pick another scene and do this exercise because I learned how important lighting and camera set ups are to your story.
Working on this project with Cameron was a great experience! As a director, he really was the backbone of this shoot. He kept morale up, and set the tone for the whole night. It was easy to take direction from him, because he was able to figure out what wasn't working and fix it. He also was very patient with me as I muddled my way through trying to figure out what the lighting needed to be like and working with the resources we had. I learned a lot about equipment and what different things are good for. In hind sight, I should have known that the Arri kit would produce too intense of a light for the scene, and the dim practical that was in the house already proved to be more useful than any of the Arri lights. I also learned that it's really important to try and figure out the exact blocking patterns of the actors so you know where to be with the camera. I worked a lot more with the actors than I thought I would. I think I could have tried a bit more to get some of the shots with Adam right and Brother Parks in the background. I could have gotten that better, and I apologize for that. But overall, it was a really valuable and good shoot, and I am glad that I had this experience working with Cameron. I think it turned out really nice.
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