Filming my Pentel Commercial

Today was the filming day of my commercial. My actor came over and we had to get right to work as we had limited time. There were a few circumstantial issues, such as the fact we were filming in the living room and we had to make sure none of my family members messed up the shot. Another issue was the lighting, as there wasn't sufficient lighting due to the constant raining and generally cloudy weather. We fixed this by taking longer shots and multiple takes, so if someone was in the background doing something that we could see we would take another shot until we got the perfect one. As for the lighting, we had to improvise by adding some lamps around the shot without breaking anything. When we got to filming we had originally planned to do a tracking shot as the actor walked up to look through some pens, but we realized it wouldn't be feasible with our current equipment. The filming process did end up being much faster than I had originally thought. This is the first time I've ever had to direct other people, so it was definitely a learning experience. I had to think about how the shot might look and whether or not I liked that, actually execute it, and watch it to make sure it was the shot I needed. This was hard because communicating my ideas to my actor was definitely something I had never experienced before. It definitely helped that my actor has had experience in directing others, so his insight and directed questions allowed me to give him an idea of what I needed to be done and how to say it. Going from directing myself to directing others was pretty hard, but in the end, I managed. Personally, I'm really excited to see everything come together with editing. Seeing my ideas come to light from the storyboard was so thrilling as well. I had envisioned something there, and even though what I have is pretty similar, I still think any changes made were for the better. Now, for the hardest part, editing.

Here's a blooper from the commercial!

Until next time, Danniella Miller signing off :)

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Danniella Miller AICE Media Studies

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