First Day of Filming

 

Today was my group's first official day of filming. After an extensive planning period, we have finally finished quite possibly the hardest part of our entire project. Although there may be a lot of complaints, once our group actually met up, we accomplished a good deal. We started on Sunday, February 26th, and decided we were going to split this up into two main days of work. 

OUR PLAN

To maximize efficiency and (hopefully) not have to do reshoots, we decided we're going to have two different filming days. Today, we worked in the Miramar County Public Library and ATTEMPTED to do the Pembroke Pines Police Station, but not everything went to plan. 

Let's start with what didn't work out so well. Our group knew that one of our opening scenes would include a policeman getting out of their car, walking up to a crime scene, then an establishing shot showing the location. At the time, we only had a security car to work with but that idea got scrapped until we got a much better opportunity. Aaliyah had connections to an actual on-duty cop, so in the future, we're going to be able to film someone in uniform with a genuine car. After that, I drove around the city trying to find a suitable police station for filming. These are what we found. 

Below is the Miramar police station, which is what we thought we might be able to use. Although the area is nice, there is no direct indication that this is a proper police station, so we decided to scrap this idea. This led us to drive to a nearby location, being the Pembroke Pines precinct.

The picture above shows the Pembroke Pines location, which is likely what we're going to be using in the future. We attempted to film a drone shot of this location, but the weather wasn't the best, leading to many failures in filming. 

What Worked

Now, let's move away from all of our failures and move on to something that actually worked. My group found a group study room in the library that actually works very well for what we're trying to find. The location was nice, with it being soundproof (to an extent), with controllable lighting and an open room. The pictures of me below are when I went to the library to take pictures of where we were actually going to film. I was scoping out the area if you will. Filming itself was pretty difficult, especially when your groupmates don't have steady hands... It's fine though because at our next attempt we're going to get better quality cameras and microphone equipment. We'll also be able to record more seriously and try not to get distracted, laughing most of the time. 

Well, that concludes our first official day of filming. To end it all, we ended up going out for dinner. Overall, it was a fun experience. Hopefully next time will be even more productive.