Working With What I've Got! Production Day 9

Today was spent entirely filming the 'vlogging' sections of the opening sequence. These are the parts where Annie is talking directly to the camera, and therefore talking to the audience. Since Annie has no budget as a middle schooler, her backdrop for this is a blanket sheet hung over a clothing rack. In turn, this will create a sense of rawness and relatability for our protagonist. In these scenes, we will see every emotion for Annie from immense confidence to undeniable awkwardness. These narrations will also continue over shots of Annie going throughout her daily life. I will use this to my advantage to instill humor into the project, in the sense that if Annie is saying something funny there will be something more serious shown. My inspiration for this derives from the movie Eighth Grade, where the main character attempts to seem confident on the internet, but is really a nervous wreck.

Before I could start filming, I had to decide if it was a better idea to shoot standing up or sitting down. If I shot standing up, I would have to get a family member to hold up my phone the whole time. This would assume a disadvantage, which would be that I would need to learn how to become comfortable acting in front of my family member. If I sat down, I would have to bring a chair or table and find a way to balance the phone at the height I needed it to be. I ended up choosing a chair.

Once I started filming, I realized that I needed to expand on my script. I remembered what my friend Cece told me when we were filming at the mall, which was to add filler words. Still, I couldn't seem to find more substance to add to Annie's story. So I took a short break to brainstorm ideas for Annie to say that an actual pre-teen would say. My break proved to be beneficial, as I added my ideas to the script, I realized how much smoother the flow of dialogue was.

Aside from the dogs barking every now and again, the only other dilemma I encountered was my family coming home. My living room is the only place I can film with the clothing rack, so when my 4 other family members began to arrive home one by one, some of my takes were interrupted. Still, I found that my filming day for Annie's vlogging was a success.