Good day to all of you samaritans out there, I hope all is going well for everyone.
SUPER EXCITED NEWS, as it is FRIDAY!!! Do you know what that means??? It's filming day! Before I get into the blog, I'm not sure if I mentioned it previously, but filming in the HOSA classroom didn't work out because of Blake's class schedule, so we decided to film it on Saturday.
Well, without further ado, let's provide some updates on how the filming went! Today I had school, just like everyone else, but the fun stuff happened after school. At 7pm I had planned with Blake and Oscar to come to meet me at a local basketball park so that we could go film. I invited Oscar because naturally since it's a highlight reel, there needs to be someone for Blake to demolish. Oscar would essentially be the "clip bot," and just play bad defense or bad offense so that Blake would be able to demonstrate his skills. It would be bad if he looked like he wasn't even trying, so I did make sure that he was making it look as if he was trying, and he was trying... at being bad!
Anyways, I arrived at the parks at about 6:30; and almost immediately ran into an issue. I didn't have a basketball with me, nor did I have one at my house. Before I even started filming, I had run into some issues! I first went through the possibilities of what I could do now in my head. I could either ask Blake or Oscar if they had a ball or just see if we could borrow one from a random already at the court. In the end, I asked Oscar if he had one and he did, but he wasn't home and he was coming from another event so that option was out of the picture. I asked Blake and he said he didn't think he had a ball. And just like that, once again, I had major issues before the filming even started. In the end, Blake ended up finding his ball, but this experience showed me that quite literally anything can happen while preparing to make a movie and being prepared to adapt is the best solution possible.
Texts with Blake, where he stated he doesn't think he has a ball.
Long story short, everyone arrived on time for filming and I was able to get all the camera equipment set up to shoot. I purposely wanted to film at night so that the footage would look cooler (in my eyes) and also because it was the most convenient for everyone. While setting up my equipment on the side, I had to stand in the middle of the court so no one would just come and play on it. While setting up the equipment, I had Blake go warm up because I would need him to actually make shots in basketball LOL!
Now since I had a loose idea of what I wanted the NBA draft highlight reel to look like, it was easier to shoot, but I purposely didn't plan it as much to specific detail beforehand because I wanted my creativity to flow in the moment, and because I'm not a basketball expert, and thought that Blake and Oscar could give me some tips on what shots I should include.
To start off, I had Blake shoot multiple threes while moving the camera around so that it was positioned with the hoop and Blake both in view so that every time he made a three the audience could easily see his skill. After that, I had Blake do some layups without the defender guarding him just so that once again, the audience could see his raw skill. After this set of shots, I decided to move on to some real game experience filming, with Oscar manning up on Blake and playing actual defense. I used the gimbal for these shots so the camera was right up there in the action, and so that the audience, when watching, would feel as if they were right there with Blake, watching his amazing basketball skills unfold. I had Blake play against Oscar 1v1 for a while so that I could get a mixture of defense and offense, and I also filmed using both the gimbal and the tripod for this. At times, I would use the boom microphone to capture some great basketball audio in case I wanted to include it. After all of this filming, I had Blake do some "interviews" in front of the camera just like he would in real life for the NBA draft. I might or might not include these interviews, but I thought it was a good idea at the time.
The images above depict Blake dribbling with Oscar holding the boom microphone to capture good sound quality, and then the camera focuses on Blake dribbling.
This video is one of the interviews I had with Blake. During these interviews, it was very hard to get Blake to be serious since he would keep laughing every time and was also exhausted from playing basketball for like 2 hours. Eventually, we managed to get everything done, and while I haven't deeply examined all the footage, I am very happy with how everything came out, and think I got great footage. (45 minutes of film for a 2 minute film opening!)
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