This project ended up taking a very different turn than I had expected. Originally, I was planning on creating a serious chase scene, before providing a comedic break in the very last scene. I had to pivot a little bit after reviewing the shots from the shoot. The lack of a tripod or a good camera (other than my phone camera) made the shots much more difficult to create in the way that I had imagined. For one it was very difficult to keep a still frame without a tripod. No matter what, the angle of the camera will always shift enough to noticeable throw off the frame. For another, the rapidly encroaching darkness brought a lot of grain to several of the shots.

I had decided to plan the shoot right before the sun started to go down, so that I could have the growing darkness coincide with the escalation of events in the film. What I hadn’t anticipated, was how hard it was to correct the phone camera for low light. Even when I brought the lighting up in the darkest of shots, they appeared much more grainy. I had been expecting some grain to show up, though I didn’t think it would be quite so bad.

These difficulties resulted in a lower overall quality of the shots than I had hoped for and it led to a choppy narrative. To correct this, I decided to instead go for a comedic tone for the whole film. Editing was crucial in changing the narrative, and I was able to (hopefully) flip this project into a slightly more successful one.

Thanks for watching!

Gabriel Martinez