The Store! Sort of. - Pestilence
FINALLY! Today is the first day of filming. Today is February 4, 2024, otherwise known as Main Production Filming 1 [MPF1]. So much planning has gone into this project, and now it's time to film the first scene of the opening sequence to a movie with an arbitrary science fiction story about a cyberattacker.
Arrival
I met Jaydon over at CCFL around 11 am. Sarah, who is playing as the tech store cashier, arrived at the same time that I arrived. We greeted each other, and then we promptly walked straight to the Black Box. As soon as we got in The Black Box, Jaydon and I started setting everything up. We arranged the available props that were in the room and immediately started planning the tech store set. Do you see what's wrong with that? We essentially RUSHED to complete the set, with some props missing since other actors were bringing them in, and they had not arrived yet.
Dumpster Fire Crowd Control
While setting up the set, Jaydon received a call from one of our actors, Mary Huguet, one of the background actors. It turns out she had arrived and could not figure her way around the church. CCFL is a considerably large church, but we seemed to have negated that and underestimated the size of our church.
Jaydon had Sarah and I stay and hold the entry door for the hallway to the Black Box. Since it is keycard locked, only Calvary Chapel staff can open the door. Since Jaydon was a student leader, his badge was not an RFID badge. Moreover, even if it was, it could not unlock the door since I assume he would not have regular access to this specific area. This is why Jaydon had us hold the door in the first place so that he and Mary could get back in. We were then patiently waiting...
and waiting...
and waiting...
and waiting...
and waiting...
and still waiting.
It turns out Jaydon was taking a while trying to locate Mary. She ended up entering from another place that was not the entry point to the building where the Black Box was located. From there, she was lost, so lost that Miss Vettorazzi also arrived a few minutes later, met up with Mary, and ended up getting lost together. At this point, I attempt to get in contact with Jaydon, the only issue is that I left my phone back in the Black Box, as we were going to film with it. I was going to use my smartwatch to call Jaydon, however, my watch lacks cellular capability and was out of range with my phone. So, no go.
A few minutes passed by and I started to get a bit worried. I had Sarah stand by at the door so that I could run to get my phone and come back so that I could call Jaydon. He, Mary, and Miss Vettorazzi were ok, and eventually found each other and were heading en route to the Black Box. Then, it rained. They eventually arrived a few minutes later, and then we promptly started to set up.
Our "Acting"
What turned into almost two hours of setup and tracking down ended up reducing our actual filming and quick rehearsal time. We eventually got all of the actors partially familiarized with the set. Figma worked fine on the iPad that was designated as a POS prop. However, it did not want to load on one of the original working props for the customer. So, I spent some time trying to fix the prop phone. That took a while, so I ended up giving up and opting to use another actor's phone as backup.
From there, it was a task trying to even get Figma installed on that phone due to the app store not allowing installation since the phone was on an unsupported operating system version. I eventually used Jaydon's phone, but then it got to the point where we all started running out of time. Another group internal to the church was about to come in and start using the Black Box. Turns out, we were not the only ones who reserved this space.
We ended up in dire confusion, and we eventually decided that we would not film at all that day, but we would at least have a good portion of the set planning done so that we could focus on that less on the redemption filming date.
The Final Verdict
In conclusion, due to the amount of time spent on only setting up, we ended up not recording today. However, we will use one of the backup dates to film Scene 1. It is unknown which date will be allocated, but this will be posted in a future blog.
We took note that the actors were here to act, not to help set up. It took us a talk with Sarah for us to realize that. Promptly, we ended up deciding that Jaydon and I would end up arriving a few hours earlier to set up the sets and anything else that is technical-related.
