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Production Blog Post 1/24

Over the past few weeks I've worked to complete the production stage of my next film. During this time I worked to both record the narration that will accompany the visuals of the film and record the B-Roll footage that will be played over the narration. Both of these originally sounded like easy tasks when beginning production but have definitely changed over the course of that time. The following is a summary of my progress during the production process.

Voiceover

I have managed to do a small bit of voiceover before for both my first film, The Game VS The World, as well as for a Mini-THON instructional video. Even with this experience, I knew that it would still take me awhile to get the results for the narration that I wanted. Like most people, I am not immune to hearing my voice on recording and hating how it sounds. This really made it difficult for me to listen back and figure out what I needed to change for my performance. At this point, I feel that I do have a useable take of the narration which is hopefully good enough so that I don't have to record it again. Currently, the narration has a very dull sound likely do to it being read by a teenager instead of a professional voice actor. However, I do plan on adding some audio effects during post-production that should give the narration a more vintage and lifelike feeling.

Shooting

The process of shooting my clips was much easier in comparison to shooting for all of my other films, largely because there were no actors for me to direct. Most clips just required me to hit record in order to get the shot. One of the main bigger shots that I wanted to do was to have two versions of myself sit across from each other. I originally thought that using green screen would be an easy way to accomplish this, however, the results that I got I feel don't achieve the look that I want to do. While I might be able to find a better solution during editing, I feel like I might try and recreate the shot without green screen in hopes of getting a better result. The rest of my shots I feel ended up fairly well. I aimed to try and have good composition within shots, since there won't be actors for the audience to follow. The one shot that I probably enjoy the most is the shot embedded below which I intend to use as a repeated shot during the more climactic moments of narration.
 

What's Next

At this point I don't know exactly how I feel about this film. I do have everything I need to edit together but as I've begun doing so, it feels like it lacks something. I feel that the voiceover is decent, but might need some lines adjusted or re-recorded which shouldn't be too much trouble. Looking back on the shots that I have gives me an uneasy feeling about them. Part of me feels that they don't fit as well as they should and might need reshot. Since I do intend to heavily color grade a lot of the shots, this might change how I feel about them. While I do have some worries for this film, I think that post-production will really transform what I have and make me feel a lot better about everything.

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