Filming Equipment

 In this blog post, I am going to be highlighting some of the equipment I used to film my project. I used pretty basic equipment such as a tripod and a ring light, but showing the equipment I used, can provide more insight into my filming process.

This is the tripod I used to film my entire project. Finding a usable tripod was more difficult than I expected. I have quite a few tripods in my house, but they all seemed to be missing a piece that would allow me to put my phone on them. I finally found one where I was able to screw a phone attachment to the tripod, but another issue arose. When I put my phone on the tripod, it moved downwards because my phone was too heavy. I asked my dad for some help and he added tape and rubber bands to keep it straight. This worked perfectly and I was able to begin filming with the tripod. There were some pros and cons to using this tripod. It had a handle that made it easy to tilt up and down, which was good when adjusting shots but would've been even better if I was using those movements throughout my opening. It was good at keeping my shots steady, but it was difficult to get close-up shots because it is much bigger and a bit bulkier. I adjusted it to be smaller and held it, but it took time and patience. Because of its size, it was difficult to get some of the angles I wanted for the film, and some shots, like the one of the photos on the wall, took a while because it wasn't as easy to set up the shot as I envisioned it.

This is the ring light I used to film my opening. It was attached to a tripod, but that tripod wasn't very practical for the purposes of this project but, I still wanted to use the light. I just removed it by unscrewing it. It was attached to a cord that allows it to light up so I just plugged it into a portable charger to make it easier to provide lighting wherever I saw fit. Throughout filming, I mostly just hung the light on the tripod behind the camera but for certain shots, I would have one of my parents hold it behind and above the camera or, I would hold it closer or farther from a subject to achieve the lighting I wanted for a specific shot. A ring light was very helpful and created great, well-lit shots for my film opening. 

Equipment was essential for filming my film opening. As mentioned it was pretty basic, but it was really all I needed. I wasn't recording much dialogue so equipment like a microphone wasn't necessary and using a monitor to see my shots would've been too distracting. I was lucky my parents were able to help me set up my shots to where a monitor wasn't necessary. Now I have talked about my filming process, I am going to start the editing process and document it in my next blog!