a lot of... improvising!

     Recently my sister, Sara was invited to go to Dania Pointe to celebrate her boyfriend's birthday. Naturally as her “protective older brother” my father had sent me to go chaperone the two of them. At first, I didn’t want to go because I would’ve been bored and me and my sister have an agreement where I let her get away with her secrets and she lets me get away with mine. Not only that but I like my sister’s boyfriend Lorenzo, because he’s respectful and I trust enough to not mistreat or hurt my sister. In any case I was not looking forward to going to Dania Pointe because I wouldn’t have anything to do, but then I came up with an incredible idea: invite Lauren to join us and record a few shots I was missing. So within an hour before I was supposed to be at Dania Point, I had called up Lauren, told her about my circumstances, what I wanted to do, and if she could make it. And lucky enough, she was! Because Lauren lives so close, I was able to pick her up and take her with me. I got there with Lauren and spent a little while with Lorenzo and Sara and walked them up to the Bowling Alley. Shortly after our mom had left us and Lauren and I left to go find better places to film. I ran into a slight problem however, and that was that I only had 2 people. Typically, in our shots I have both me AND Lauren in them, though because of the fact that it would require a total of three people, our options were to either record solo shots, OR to enlist the help of relative strangers to record quick shots of us. Given the fact that both Lauren AND I were embarrassed to ask someone to record us ask like we’re in a rap video, I decided to go with the first option. For one of the shots, I had to record Lauren tripping, as the lyrics ask “how many pray that you fall? A lot” It was funny because in our storyboard, Lauren is the whole who falls and I’m the one who prays in another shot, meaning for that day’s purposes, it was Lauren who got to trip on a sidewalk, and it was I who got to sit discreetly on a bench and record it. Naturally as a good director I had to ensure I got the best shot and had Lauren do several takes just to make sure I had the best shot. Truth be told I ended up using the 3rd shot I took but better safe than sorry! I recorded another solo clip of Lauren pretending to cry and made sure to use make the camera start looking away then pan to her. After all these I still felt as though I could achieve more, but they would require us taking option B of asking strangers for help, so I just decided to go for it and asked someone to point a toy gun at Lauren while she was on a phone call as per our storyboard, and cropped it so that the camera would tilt down to Lauren, and then the hand and gun would appear. Overall, it was a successful result from an unexpected opportunity. I hope my viewers feel more connected to this Highschooler’s means of improvising with the circumstances given and coming out with enjoyable results. 

I’ll see you all in the next one:)

Me taking the liberty of testing out our props while Lauren and I enjoyed a lunch break