Filming my short film in my house with barely any equipment was a wild ride, to say the least. I knew it was going to be a challenge, small space and basic equipment, but I was determined to make it work. The whole story revolves around a power outage, and luckily, I didn’t have to worry about a location because my house had the perfect vibe for it. But even with everything right in front of me, nothing went as smoothly as I’d hoped.
We started around 9 AM, setting up in the 2 bedrooms where the majority of the film takes place. The first challenge was lighting. Since the whole premise revolves around a power outage, we had to get creative with dim lighting, candles, and whatever lamps we could find around the house. I didn’t have a professional lighting kit, so we had to work with what we had, old desk lamps, led strip lights, ring light and flashlights. It wasn’t ideal, but I think it added to the moody, suspenseful vibe we were going for.
Of course, the first thing that went wrong was my phone camera. I was using my phone to shoot the whole film and it kept overheating. Every time I set it down for a shot, it would get laggy. Overtime my phone started to go dead so I had to keep plugging it in between takes, and it felt like we were losing time, but we pushed through it.
The actors were amazing though. My sister played the lead role, and she nailed the terrified expression I wanted in the blackout scenes. But the one problem? Keeping the mood right without actual darkness. We had to make sure the room still looked “dark” without turning off all the lights, which was a huge balancing act. I had to adjust the camera settings constantly to get the right level of darkness without making it too grainy.
Around lunchtime, we all took a break in the kitchen. I made sandwiches for the both of us, and we sat around, laughing and rethinking some scenes. It was a good breather because by then, I was feeling a little burnt out.
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