Filming Day #2

     Today we finished filming everything that we thought looked bad in the last filming day. Before we started filming, we had to look over the footage we had on ClipChamp. We thought we only had to refilm two of them, but we actually had to redo 4 of them because the other two we were missing the popcorn bowl. The first one we redid was of Alea getting off the couch to get the popcorn. That scene was fine, until we realised the footage on the TV was copyrighted!

            

    Then we had to refilm the part where I was opening the envelopes. We realised it was WAY TOO long (over 1 minute) and I kept smiling because the envelopes weren't opening properly and it was sticking to me and my clothes. It was so bad... This time it was way shorter and I didn't smile because we didn't actually seal the envelopes. Also, the popcorn wasn't there but we realised we had it in the shot but never showed us moving it, and it just magically disappeared. We actually forgot about the popcorn until we watched it over for the 3rd time..

          

    After that, we filmed the scene were we get the call and the camera zooms into the "Yes or No" part of the letter since it was a very bad cut. We actually didn't have the phone we used last time, but thankfully there was a random black phone charging next to us and just used that. The camera was different so I covered it with my hair as I was holding it. It took many tries to get this part right because my partner had to go from a close up of my face and swerve into a close of up the letter which was on the couch.

          

    

Production Post #2

     Filming day was kind of chaotic, we got distracted a lot and I couldn't get into character many times because we kept laughing, but it was fun. I think every time we film we always get distracted some how.

     The last project, which was our music video project, instead of getting started right away when everyone got there. We had a conversation for an hour and then went to McDonalds!! Which was kind of perfect because we got pictures for our band's Instagram and Tiktok. Unfortunately this was not the only time we got distracted for a long time. Well I guess the next time it wasn't distraction. We needed the sky to be dark since the setting was a party and we still had an hour or two before the sun would start setting, so we watched Camp Rock and ate cupcakes while we waited! I can't believe that was all the way in December. It felt like we just filmed two weeks ago..

    Before we started filming the character scenes, we had to take care of the credits, which were pretty easy to do. We just stood there holding the camera as still as possible to capture 10 seconds of the clip. We did this 3 times, once for the lotter tickets, the dishes, which you can see below, and the clothes on the couch.

    I think this was during the part where it was a close up of Alea's face staring at the TV, which you might not see in the final product because it was kind of bad and awkward to look at. Here you can see how easily distracted we get while filming. I forgot what we said before this, but I know this was our 2nd or 3rd take and my partner, who is filming me, the character said something to make me smile and I couldn't get serious after that. BTW the person filming the behind the scenes is my partners sister.

    This is a clip of us actually filming, without being distracted for once. This was the over the shoulder shot of Alea reading what was inside the red envelope. It was going to be the shot we were going to use... but then my partner's sister started talking to the camera telling us the date and what we were doing, she didn't know we were filming so we had to start again. She did this many times throughout the day that my partner had to start saying "We are filming" to let her know when to not talk. It was hilarious!! 

Production Post #1

    Last week on Sunday, we started filming and got most of our clips that were going to use. However, this blog isn't about filming yet, its about the props we had to make on that day! 

    First we have the lottery tickets! We had my partners dad buy them for us 30 minutes before filming, and since none of our parents had scratch off tickets just lying around. This is also where we got our production company name from! Out of the 4 tickets we got we only won one dollar, and our film name is won% and the tickets costed $1 each, that's kind of crazy.

            

    After the lottery tickets we had to make the bowl that we were going to use to put popcorn in dirty since they didn't have any dishes in the sink. My partner's dad also got fried chicken with the lottery tickets so we decided to rub some of that on it, but it wasn't saucy, just oily. Instead we had to go into the fridge to find something to rub all over the bowl. We found some pretty expired drinks I think, it smelled weird and had a weird texture... We threw it away after we poured it! 

                                         

    Next we made the popcorn! It was pretty simple since it was microwaved popcorn, we just opened it and stuck it in the microwave. While it was microwaving, we started recording the part where Alea is sitting on the couch and we can hear the microwave and popcorn popping (next blog!). 

    After that, we had to throw the clothing somewhere in the house and we decided to throw it on the other couch, not the one the character sat on. We had to use her dad's clothes because I forgot to bring mine..

    

Production Company Name and Logo

 Hi! Come make my production company logo with me. Before we start let me explain how we got our name, Dollar Studios. 

Today in class, after my teacher explained the CCR’s, we started thinking about names. I was thinking to do something related to our film so I suggested “Shark Studios”, because of loan sharks, and Alea, our character is in massive debt. I was thinking of writing the words “Shark Studio” with a shark skull open around it. 

Like this:

However, my partner doesn’t really like the idea, and that was the only one I had. A few minutes passby and I’m thinking of our filming day last sunday, and I realised that when we were scratching the lottery tickets, we won one dollar, and our film is named won%… I told my partner that and we decided from that  we would named it “Dollar Studios”

That was the end of class, so we decided to call tonight to figure the icon out. In 3rd period (right now as I’m writing this), I thought of an idea and I decided to screen record it all while drawing it out on Canva! I sped it up as much as I could on IMovie (2x). If it’s still too slow, you can also speed it up here on Blogger in the Settings then Playback speed. I hope it’s not too long. Also if there are awkward long pauses on the video it’s because my pen wasn’t working or my screen was frozen. Sorry!

I just sent the video to my partner, so this isn’t the official logo yet, but I made two different versions of it. I will update this blog after we call tonight! 

Okay so update on the logo! We decided to change a tiny bit of the logo, just the font and size hered the final product!

Lighting

     The lighting for our film opening "won%", is going to be motivated lighting. I had to research all the different types of lighting types because I realised that lowkey wasn't the right one. 

    We decided to have barely any light because it reminds us of bed-rotting, which is a term made for people who stay in bed all day and do nothing but eat junk and scroll on social media. We planned on starting to film at around 1 P.M and finish before 5 P.M since it starts setting then and getting darker. If we don't finish, then we can just continue the next day. Sometimes when it's too dark, the camera quality looks very bad, since we don't have professional cameras, just our phones, we will probably have to use one of our phone flashlights on the lowest setting to make the footage somewhat visible. 

So the smaller yellow lines is the sun peeking through the blinds and the big yellow thing is going to be the TV. Where there is a very dark grey is where most of the shadow is going to be since there is no light from the side we see.

    Besides the natural light from the outside, which won't be super bright because we're going to close the blinds, there will also be some light from the TV since Alea, the character, is going to be watching a sports game. There will also be the microwave, but I don't think that will effect the camera as much as the TV, since it's pretty small. 

Sources: 

DeGuzman, Kyle. 2021. "What is Motivated Lighting in Film — Building a World with Light." StudioBinder. Retrieved February 15, 2026 (https://www.studiobinder.com/blog/what-is-motivated-lighting-in-film/).

Wiktionary. 2024. "Bed Rotting." Wikipedia. Retrieved February 15, 2026 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bed_rotting).

Props

Props we made from scratch: 

Fancy envelope: 

1. I looked up an envelope template and I cut it out to trace it on the red paper.

2. I cut it up and started folding it where the dashed lines were on the original template.

3. I glued it together and made sure that a piece of paper would fit inside.

Letter: 

1. Before I started writing the letter, I had to make sure paper fit into the envelope because it was a pretty small envelope. Since regular paper wouldn't look good or fit, I decided to use this paper from a journal I had lying around.

2. I then cut the end off to make it look like it wasn't from a ringed book.

3. I then went on Canva to find some nice fonts to see how I should write it and I found a perfect one called Sulat Rizal

4. Next I wrote a draft in pencil to see how it looked

5. Then I wrote it in pen, I added some words to it as well. 

Logo/Wax Seal:

My partner made this super nice 3D logo out of her nail gel and chrome powder!! Were planning on putting this on the front of the envelope, and the wax seal will be on the back where you open it.

1. print the words out, she used the font New Icon 

2. Use builder gel to make the letters. Roll it into a thin worm then use a spatula to shape it on the paper

3. Cure it under UV light 

4. Dust the chrome powder on

1. Roll the builder gel to a ball

2. Stamp the gel with a round cap

3. Use dotting tool to engrave the % logo

4. Cure it under UV light

5. Dust it with chrome powder

Overdue Bills:

My partner found a cool website where you can find some fake debt mail templates. She edited it to look like it was addressed to Alea Punter. She also named the street Alea lived on to be "Albatross Street", because an albatross is a bird that symbolizes debt. 

After she printed a few papers of the bills out, she put them in the regular white envelopes and used her printer to print out what they would usually stamp on past due bills. 

Props we DON'T need to make from scratch but will use: 

Lottery Tickets/Scratch offs: 

Dirty Dishes/Full sink, they don't have to be dirty we will probably just stack a few dishes under like one or two saucy ones: 

Microwaved Popcorn/Snack (not healthy):

Sources: 
- Reddit user. (2023). And nothing… 4 in a row nothing not even a 10 [Online forum post]. Reddit. https://www.reddit.com/r/Lottery/comments/11ce9vd/and_nothing4_in_a_row_nothing_not_even_a_10/
- Henderson, A. (2023). How long should you let dishes soak? Southern Living. https://www.southernliving.com/how-long-should-you-let-dishes-soak-11844524
- Delish Editors. (2024). Reasons not to eat microwave popcorn. Delish. https://www.delish.com/food-news/a62718777/reasons-not-to-eat-microwave-popcorn/
- Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. (n.d.). Debt collection model validation notice [PDF]. https://github.com/cfpb/debt-collection-files/blob/gh-pages/print/cfpb_debt-collection_model-validation-notice_en.pdf

Were going to start filming tomorrow and hopefully we can get it done this weekkkk! But still have it look very nice, because I don't want a bad looking project, but we probably shouldn't spend too much time on filming because I think editing takes a lot more effort....

OH YEA Happy Valentines Day :)

About the character

 Naming our character:

We decided to take from her gambling problem and create a name from it.  For her last name, we were first considering using the word Gamble, but we felt like it was too obvious that the name Gambelle or Gambale would come from Gamble. Instead we googled synonyms of gamble and the world Punt came up, and it sounded like a real last name so we decided to go with that. For her first name, we googled "Girl names that mean risk" and we saw Alea, which we thought was a very pretty name. Her name is Alea Punter. 

Background of Alea:

Alea: 23, an unemployed college graduate. She majored in acting, which her parents didn't approve of, and unfortunately, that also meant they wouldn't pay for college. She wanted to figure a way to get rid of the debt quickly so she could pursue her dream of becoming a celebrity actress, however, that led to her taking advice from the internet... Which lead her to her addiction, she's a mess and does nothing all day but watch TV, bet and gamble her few winnings hoping for a larger one.

Alea Punter's mood board:

Alea's Personality:

Alea is lazy, naive, and a risk taker. She's always wanted to become a famous actress, but she didn't put much effort into it. Now in debt and not being able to hold a job, she started gambling and buying lottery tickets all because of a random person on Reddit... She'd rather take the risk of the lottery rather than working hard. 

Sources: 

Nameberry. (n.d.). Alea - Baby Name Meaning, origin, and popularity. https://nameberry.com/b/girl-baby-name-alea#google_vignette