I'm the director of a short film called "Speak." It is about a college student with selective mutism who befriends a girl who has issues at home. He must decide to either keep quiet or speak out for his friend.
This project has been so much fun to work on. The script was originally one of my group member's, Artem. His original script ended up pretty different from our final draft. He and I wrote and rewrote a total of 7 drafts of this piece.
We started filming on April 23. We filmed that entire weekend and that was all an adventure in itself. We made curtains for our actors (at that point, stand ins. That's another story.) to be silhouetted against. We ended up using paper towels instead of actual curtains and it's pretty awesome looking. Even our professor didn't realize that they weren't curtains.
Despite one actor dropping out, our lead actress being incredibly sick and missing our last shoot day, and our crew dropping out last minute, we shot almost every scene from the 23rd-26th. It was incredible! We had long shoot days, but they were so worth it!
We still had two scenes to complete and a few pick-ups for a montage, so we filmed again yesterday, May 1st.
For bts on filming on May 2, see under the break.
This project has been so much fun to work on. The script was originally one of my group member's, Artem. His original script ended up pretty different from our final draft. He and I wrote and rewrote a total of 7 drafts of this piece.
We started filming on April 23. We filmed that entire weekend and that was all an adventure in itself. We made curtains for our actors (at that point, stand ins. That's another story.) to be silhouetted against. We ended up using paper towels instead of actual curtains and it's pretty awesome looking. Even our professor didn't realize that they weren't curtains.
Despite one actor dropping out, our lead actress being incredibly sick and missing our last shoot day, and our crew dropping out last minute, we shot almost every scene from the 23rd-26th. It was incredible! We had long shoot days, but they were so worth it!
We still had two scenes to complete and a few pick-ups for a montage, so we filmed again yesterday, May 1st.
For bts on filming on May 2, see under the break.
An 8 am call time means a 6:30 wake up call and starting driving at 7am. Can't start driving that early without a selfie =P
We had a call time of 8am. We went to Goucher College to film and it was gorgeous there! We filmed one scene and then part of the montage. We also filmed one last scene at the Cedar Cafe in Towson.
Our leads rehearsing while we set up the camera.
Sam waiting to start.
Artem setting up audio at Goucher Collge.
Every time we turned off the camera, the petals fell gorgeously. We never did get out "sempai, notice me!" shot.
Part of the montage. Filmed at Goucher.
These geese came out of the water while we were filming. The second we turned the camera off and turned it away, they all just walked back to the water.
More of the geese. We're going to have to pay them. They're the only SAG actors on the film.
Final shots at Cedar Cafe.
Production has wrapped and, as I'm writing this, all four of us (Artem, Gina, Rebecca, and myself) are editing our rough cut, which is due tomorrow morning. Now we move into the fantastic world of post-production!
~Rachel
~Rachel