Day 26: And that's wraps!

Hi there! Welcome back to my journey of Maia: Unfiltered! This past weekend I finished filming and I'll start to edit later this week. 

I filmed on Wednesday (2/11), Sunday (2/15) and Monday (2/16). 

On Wednesday, I filmed at my taekwondo dojang, and Mia (you can check out her blog and project out here!!) came with her camera and helped me as well. I set up all of the shots that I wanted, but she just pressed the record button. On this day, we were only filming 2 shots which were the bullying ones. 

In many of the over-the-shoulder shots that we took, you could tell that I was laughing and smiling because you could see the side of my cheek curling into a smile near the end of the shot (which you can see an example of below). Thankfully, I won't be using the entire shot, but I hope I don't have to re-shoot.

As you can see, I ended up casting another character who is essentially one of the bully's minions to reinforce the fact that they are really bullying Maia hard. Though they don't look THAT intimidating, these were the most intimidating guys in my dojang, so they were pretty much my only options.

I also want to thank Mia for letting me borrow her wonderful Canon Rebel and tripod. She was an absolute angel sent from heaven for letting me borrow it for the past weekend, though she was very nervous about me damaging it. I, in fact, kept the camera in perfect condition to return to Mia the other day and she saved me from using my crappy phone camera. 

Using Mia's Canon Rebel really made this whole production start to feel more real because I had an actual camera in hand. When I was shooting with the camera, I felt like a professional and got even more excited about this project.

Thankfully, I don't have to worry too much about the audio quality on the camera because I'm mostly focusing on voice over. I'll be recording my piano piece hopefully this coming weekend to use as non-diegetic sound that turns into diegetic sound during the piano scene.

Remember the two shots from Killing Eve and Juno that I wanted to re-create for my opening? Well here are my versions!!

Killing Eve (2018)

Maia: Unfiltered (2026)

Juno (2007)

Maia: Unfiltered (2026)

I do wish that I got the tight closeup (second shot) a bit closer, but I think I can fix that while editing, which I'll start later this week. For editing my opening, I'll be using Canva's video creation tool because I'm the most comfortable using it out of all of the editing software I've tried throughout the year. I've used Adobe Premier, ClipChamp (Microsoft's editing software) and Canva. I actually use Canva quite often and I think it will be beneficial for me to use an app that I am comfortable with. Because Canva also has a huge variety of fonts (because I was provided with premium from my teacher) I think it's just going to be the easiest tool for me.

On Sunday and Monday, I was filming at my house with the help of Emma, my best friend. Similar to Mia's job, Emma helped me press the record button (and also to throw a plushie soccer ball at my head). Sunday was mostly focusing on the shots in my room and Monday we did all of the other shots (outside and with my younger brother).

Overall, I had a very smooth filming process, and I think I have some good shots to work with. Thank you so much for reading and I'll catch you on the next one!