Behind the Scenes: In Him Part 2

Dear Blog,

Its been a hectic week, but a very fun one too. I just came back from taking my Korean test and I must say…my Korean is pretty weak. But anyway, back to blogging about my filming experience for this “In Him” Project. For today’s post, I will do a review of how our production schedule went.

Day 2 of 5: Friday Night

This day was really stressful because we couldn’t get anything rolling properly from the get go. Our call time was 5:00 PM, but the general crew and talent arrived around 5:15 PM. We setup all our gear and prepared for the shoot, but one of our supporting roles didn’t arrive till 6:00 PM so we had to work around this knot. I decided to shoot all the inside apartment shots first. We were shooting all the scenes in Justin’s apartment (Stephanie’s apartment), so when arriving, we had a LOT of rearranging to do. [thank you for allowing us to use your place Stephanie] We only had 3x 1k Arri tungstens, so I was a little frustrated when trying to control the lighting. The 1ks are good lights but they are more or less a good medium light. They are a bit strong for low lighting, but they are pretty weak for day fill. I tried using a double flag and scrims to tone down but I realized using a tweenie [300w] would have been better for flooding purposes. Also, the shoot got a bit out of hand when one of the lights blew out. So we were limited to TWO lights… Haha.

I wanted to show the character Justin as someone with a hip and edgy lifestyle… even as a high school student. So this party that he hosts is very bright and lively. The purple gels were used to give off a late night lounging feel.
When the supporting cast member Jayme (Katie) arrived, we shot scene 3 but it was difficult to shoot as well because the weather was NOT on our side. The winds were reaching 30mph and the rain was getting all over our equipment. On the bright side, we got the shots we needed and I feel adequate with them. I will post them up soon.

Day 3 of 5: All Day

So today we shot at my house and at the chapel.

At my house, we did a few shot reversals and used the kuleshov effect to reveal the protagonist, Simon’s daily prayer and journaling habits. Its nice to shoot in a location thst you are familiar with because you can really abuse the space to its fullest potential. We shot in my bedroom a scene where Simon’s brother shares the importance of Simon’s upcoming track meet. I knew that my hallway would be underlit because it doesnt get any natural light so I was initally planning to throw a 1k in the hallway but I realized it might be a good thing because I wanted to cut to a morning track scene.

The chapel shoot was really fun because I got to get that magic hour chapel look. I have always wanted to shoot it but never actually did till now. Our key grip Tim threw on some heavy CTO (color temp orange) and pointed it as a hairline light. We also placed a 1/4 CTB and some frost (diffusion) on the fill light to give a stronger contrast.

We also used the slider to get a track shot of his feet but this shot did not pan out the way that I intended for it to. The composition of the slider shots would serve its purpose if we were creating a collage in the opening scene, but if not, the shot would seem too dramatic and misplaced. Therefore, I got the shot, but am skeptical to whether or not I will include it.

On Saturday night, the weather forecast predicted some light rain in my area, so I decided to get the shot I’ve always wanted to get of the protagonist walking in rain. However, on arrival at my driveway, there was very minimal rain, so my friends and I were a bit bummed. However, I decided to still get the shot, so we took out the hose and splashed the asphalt on my street. It worked, but after reviewing the footage I’ve come to regret not buying a monitor. This is perhaps one of the biggest lessons I have learned from shooting this project. By not using a proper viewfinder or a quality monitor, I have not been able to address the exposure levels properly. I bumped up too much ISO on the night shot and it resultingly  came out way too hot. When looking through a 2 1/2″ LCD, the shots may look fine, but when you zoom into it on a 27″ screen, you can see the major differences.

Luckily though, right before we started rolling, the rain started falling again. It didn’t pour the way I hoped for, but it did some wet damage on the streets, and I really thank God for that.

Day 4 of 5: Sunday Morning & Night

On Sunday, we shot both the morning track scene and the goodbye party scene at Justin’s apartment. Unfortunately I don’t have footage from the morning track scene to share because we were in too much of a rush to capture the sunrise. We woke up around 4:45 AM, got together by 5:30 AM and drove over to Kennedy High School’s track. Over there we brought a ladder, camera, sound eqp., and crew. I forgot to bring a bounce and I really regret not doing so. Nonetheless, we only had like 15 minutes of quality shooting because the sun rises…. pretty damn fast. We decided to meet again early Monday to get the rest of the shots.

Sunday night we got the next party scene, and I wanted to give it a different feel because this is where Simon encounters the tragic suffering from his allergic reaction to marijuana. To emphasize that something should feel off, I spilled green onto the walls.

The colors were strong, but I wanted to really punch them to get the message across.. hah. In this picture, we see Justin feeding Simon the cookies that are laced with THC. This time around, the shoot was much more successful because everyone had an idea of how fast we needed to move and how much work needed to be done.

Day 5 of 5: Monday Morning through Afternoon-Track & Hospital Scene

So this morning the essential cast members for the morning shot and crew got together by 6:00 AM, jumped over my backyard wall to KHS’s track, and started rolling by 6:05 AM. It was a SUCCESS. Hahaha. We blocked everything on Sunday, so we knew exactly what we needed and threw together the shots in 20 minutes. Thank god it was overcast this day.

The hospital scene was the last scene of the shoot. We all met at my church by 10:30 AM. However, the actress playing Simon’s mom was lagging (by 45 minutes), so we had to recast within the last 5 minutes before heading to the location: Bell Christian Home. I looked for someone at church, and as He always provides somehow, Mr. Lee (our Sunday Mass preparer) was luckily doing some maintenance work around the nun’s house. I asked him if he was willing to be a part of our film and he AGREED. THANK GOD! The story was saved, and I think it turned out much better in this final scene than I hoped because Mr. Lee NAILED his lines, although he has no acting background. Wow…

Overall I must say that this was probably the most interesting project I’ve shot so far, (out of two), and it is a very rewarding project because there are many individuals involved that I cannot thank enough. All those involved from KMCC’s high school leadership team did a fabulous job without question, and they constantly impressed me by how fast they learned every day. Also, it was my second project working with Jason Hwang (1st AD), and I must say it was great getting to work with him again, as it has been 2/3 years since our last one? It’s a bit early to do shout outs, but I have to say thank out to Esther Kim for sticking out the beginning pre-production stages and helping me to creatively punch out the story in 5 days. And Ankush for reviewing the script. I also thank everyone who helped crew including Jessica, Tim, and Michelle (Kyrie crew) because they were vital assets to the sound, grip work, and overall smoothness of the flow of production. I have to throw this thing together for a rough cut by this coming Wednesday, but luckily Peter Yun (editor) will be helping me, so huge thanks goes out to him. Also, I have to hand it to the Score Composers Jennifer, Will, and their drumming friend Jonathan for meeting over this past weekend and producing the tracks (SO FAST AND SO BEAUTIFUL… i think you guys will like what you hear b/c I did). Thank you to all for helping to make this project successful so far… I hope the editing works out. I will keep you all posted. Thanks for checking the blog, till next time!

PEACE KENT.

Posted in: Behind-the-Scenes