A series of Unfortunate Events

A few things may have gone slightly awry during our production process, but, thats film-making! In the end we pulled through and despite a few setbacks, we got almost everything we wanted filmed.

Lategate

On Saturday we were supposed to meet Aneenaa at an event she was going to be performing at. For some reason, me, Nyx, and Manu, had collectively accepted that the event started at 7... Turns out, the event actually started at 5 and we had all been going off of a wrong time assuming someone else had double checked it when no one really had... definitely a lesson for the future. Anyways, we ended up getting there very late after a mix up and not being able to find a ride as the event was quite far and none of our parents would let us drive that far alone. In the end, we arrived when the event was essentially ending. It was enough to get some b-roll, but we were not able to meet our goal of making the event a primary story beat as we first wanted to since we were not able to arrive there on time. This forced us to adapt our initial vision, and honestly I think our documentary might have been better off because of it. We did get some nice b-roll so at least it wasn't for nothing!

Poorly Timed Immune System  

The day we were set to shoot our first interview with Shiro, came a very poorly timed immune system hiccup, the flu. And not just a little cold, it was the Flu Flu and I was OUT.  I masked up, hood up, fever also up, and headed to Shiro's house anyway because today was the only day Shiro was going to be able to film. Although I was kind of fighting for my life, I was able to contribute some great ideas, especially when it came to staging b-roll. The film shoot was overall a complete success. The only minor problem was that our micpack lost battery a few minutes after the start of the interview (I'm sure this won't cause any disruption whatsoever later on). 

 

But, despite my flu troubles we did what we had to do, and that day with Shiro we got an awesome interview and some really interesting b-roll as Shiro was awesome enough to bring many medals and awards from doing poetry.

Out of commision 

That Sunday would be the last time I'd leave my house in a few days, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, I'd be bedridden from an unstoppable fever, headaches, and terrible chills. Unfortunately in those days I was gonna miss a good part of our filming as Monday I would be too sick to film at Aneenaa's house (our other poet) and I would not be able to make it to school Tuesday, when we would be filming Mrs. H, our poetry coach.

Masked up, hooded up, shivering up(?)

Interview Cuts

Even after the big cut of interviews, for a moment we had considered interviewing a friend of ours who goes to university nearby and is an ex-member of the literary club. Buttt, they could not come down for the weekend, which would have forced us to have a Zoom interview. We decided, since our other two interviews were in person, and the in-person environment was important for us to get staged b-roll, that we should not interview this individual. Therefore, we only ended up interviewing our two main poets, and our poetry advisor (wait, remember how I told you to put a pin on this last post, well here's where your patience might pay off!). 

That's right, we weren't able to interview our poetry coach :(

We were actually pretty sad about this, she was one of the people I was most interested in getting the story of through this documentary, but these are types of things that happen in production and you've just got to roll with the punches! Basically what happened was that we were gonna film with her during our poetry club meeting that week on Tuesday, but then unfortunately she was not able to attend, and we were not able to schedule a different time with her before the due date. 

But, unfortunately, these types of events, especially with tight deadlines happen all the time with film and television. So we slightly revised our plan, and decided the documentary could still perfectly go on with just our two main protagonists. In some ways, our documentary might even be better off, as it has finally narrowed down its focus and can now fully focus on just the stories of these two people.