Today was our last filming day, we accomplished so many things that were crucial for our project and JUST KIDDING! Did you believe me? Of course, things didn’t go right today! As a matter of fact, we didn’t get a single second of footage for the film! Let Me explain why…
Jake and I were just going about our day when suddenly BAM! Zack (Z) text’s into our cast group chat saying he can’t record today because his sister was giving birth as we spoke and he was on his way up to Gainesville to be with her. 😳. What to do? NOTHING! There was a baby on the way, we couldn’t do anything more than congratulate Zack and go ask Tina what we could do to shoot around him late that day. So we decided to shoot everyone else’s lines but not Zack’s and to have a double stand-in for him pretending to be asleep. Problem solved right? NAE! All of a sudden Dani (Isabella) calls me and I was busy working on the project so I give it to Jake, turns out she was under a similar situation. No baby involved this time though, she just couldn’t make it. So we had to adjust again. And this was the start to a day off, well for lack of better words, insanity…
Early in the day, I went to the media center to ask for permission to let me record after school. The media center staff said it was totally fine and that I could start whenever I wanted. I was smart enough to check the school’s online activities calendar to see what activities were scheduled for the media center this afternoon, just as I suspected there was a mock test for Computer Science scheduled to test in there until about 4:15. We were going to start filming at 4pm so we figured we could wait 15m. Little did we know there was a booboo on the testing side which would soon rain on our parade.
To kill the “free time”, I suggested we shot the scene of Bryce taking off his glasses (which is you recall is set in Mrs.Zocco’s room, conveniently located right next to the media center. When we shoaled up, everything was normal and I even began setting up. The out of NOWHERE a lady walks right to the door (If this was a movie she would have kicked it down) and tells us to leave the room because she was supposed to use it. At first I thought we were dealing with a Karen, but it turns out that the State of Florida does End of Course Exams (EOC) makeups thought the week and it just happened to be that we were in the wrong classroom and the wrong time. As much as I love reading at 7th-grade level, and pretending to know Algebra, we did not stay for the EOCs.
With both sets unavailable, we had little option but to sit and wait. What we didn’t know is that our testing coordinator had failed to start the exam at the scheduled time which meant that the entire exam duration was pushed back all the way to 5:50. Of course, we didn’t learn about this until we had been waiting for a while because how could we? They didn’t say anything to anyone or made any update to the schedule, they just extended it right into the 6 clock cheer meeting also taking place there.
We were stuck. Jake and I just sat on the floor and stared at each other in disbelief that another filming day had been spoiled. As easy as it is to wallow in self-pity, we knew we had to make the best the situation. We decided to switch gears and bank on content for our website and key art instead. After all, our website concept is especially challenging because we have to create extra media as if this school really existed to properly execute the marketing strategy (made famous by the movie Monsters University). 
So we took everyone and started to take pictures of the cast as their characters. We took videos for the website, yearbook headshots, and pictures of them participating in Stok High’s social life. The day suddenly didn’t seem like a complete waste of time; plus, we were waiting for the EOC room to be empty so we could record in there. At last, that did not happen. The EOC finished and everyone left and we didn’t even have the chance to go in and film. Security wouldn’t open the classroom for us even when we had the approval of the teacher; c'est la vie.
Here are a quick video and some photos from the photoshoot we took today!
Uploading Everything
When I got home I began the uploading process. For editing, we’re using WeVideo, which is an online editing software that allows Jake and I access to the video through the cloud and offers the basic necessities for editing. I started uploading the clips and boy oh boy did they take long to make their way into the cyberspace! Thankfully, I’d been keeping the clips and photos organized on my computer since the very beginning which made it really easy to source through them. 
Once everything was uploaded I started to look over some clips, picking some at random like a quality control manager in an assembly line. I’d done this a few times when I was organizing the videos on my computer, this gave me a better idea of what we were working with. For the pictures, we took them on Jake’s SD card so we needed to find a way to always be able to share stuff with each other without physically being next to one another. Usually, we would use Google Drive where we have a shared file, but Jake’s space was running out and it was a lot of content to transfer. Instead, we used the business one drive accounts that our school’s provide us with and transferred the content keeping the quality pristine!
This was a crazy day. It was really an emotional roller coaster, between thinking we could film and then getting shot down to figuring out what to do with the cast who was waiting on us to tell them what the plan was, it was packed. We had to make some quick decisions which I personally think worked out to our favor. Now Jake is trying to find a day that works for the whole cast again, and in the meantime, I will hop back onto my computer and continue to build our website!
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