Two-Bit Pictures is Looking Forward: PART 4 - The Filming

The shoot was to start around noon but really we started around 2. We read through the script, gathered costumes, and set up cameras and lights. Sometime during the writing process it was decided that I would play the main character, Valerie Hart, an unhappy teenage psychic. I can’t say that I’ve never been in a film because my friends and I would make them all the time in high school but this was the first time that people other than my friends (and the kids in my high school English and History classes) would see a film I worked on. This was the first time that there were real cameras and lights and a script. This was my first experience being in a film that was going to be shown on “the big screen”.

I was super nervous and I didn’t know how to deal with it. I’ve been on stages dancing, singing, and acting (where you only get the one chance a night to get it right) and I’ve never been nervous before; but being in front of a camera was rather unsettling. There was a lot of fumbling around trying to get good shots of me saying my lines but once we settled in things got better and we started to have a lot of fun. Most of the fumbling was me trying to remember my lines, not look at the camera, and then not laughing when other people got silly. There was a certain amount of fiddling with cameras, lights, and mics that slowed us down a bit, too, but it was a really good learning experience for everyone. It was the first time any of us used the camera so all the settings were explored to try to get the best cinematography. Some things worked, some things didn’t, and some things worked until we put the footage on the computer and realized that it didn’t.

Filming wrapped up at exactly midnight on Saturday. It was a whirlwind of fun, frustration, cleaning, memorizing, trying not to fall asleep, and getting utensils stuck in appliances. We moved from apartment to apartment in pajamas in the dark, ate leftover pizza, and sent people on adventures to find wife beaters and allergy medicine.

As we gathered our things and filled out our paperwork the only thing on our minds was sleep. However, sleep was not on the docket for some of us because although we had the filming complete there was still the elephant in the room: editing.