Viral video filming

The making of the viral video film continues. Real progress has been made, but the process is still unbearably slow. The biggest challenge has been getting my cast and equipment in order. My original way to obtain a camera fell through, so i obtained a different camera through the media department at school. Its another film/digital hybrid camera that just about fits in the palm of my hand.

My crew and I shot footage on location for about 5 hours today. Poor guys, I ran em pretty raw, taking repeat footage of the same sequences over and over again. We shot footage for scene 2 and 3 in my 4 scene viral project, "The Information Genie," including alternate footage for a more "G" rated version. This is the first video project I've ever done from a production side, and the first video project ever for my main lead, so it was a learning experience.

We had problems from the get go. The audio wasn't very good on the camera, so I pretty much had the actors shouting for a lot of the shots. The film location that I scouted out earlier actually ended being a poor location to film, but by the time we realized that we had committed to location. There was a lot of pedestrian traffic and screaming children running up to us that bogged the process down greatly and forced about 25 retakes.

In the end though, I got some pretty good shots for the project. Tomorrow they will be loaded onto a digital format (a process which requires a fire cable. The cable i have, but my laptop doesn't have a port for it! Work computers once again to the rescue!) and the process of editing these scenes can begin!

With half the physical work done, a date just has to be set up to film scenes 1 and 4: both office scenes. I got permission to film on an office location, so shooting should begin sometime the week after next for the last of the filming. The digital props for the scenes are crafted, including a fake "search engine" web page called "Mergle" and a fully crafted information broker web form (hand written HTML, never though i coulda done that!) This is turning out to be an awful lot of work, but i think it will be worth it in the end.