Recounting the Production Experience Ft. My Ring Light Holder Era

The entire production process was a rather insightful learning experience. Some things went great, others not so great, and all of them certainly made me question my romanticisation of the media industry (i.e. filmmaking is harder than I thought)—but we successfully pulled through at the end of the day.

To ensure we could start and end the filming process in a timely manner, the group decided to carpool together from school to Maroosh’s house (i.e. our main location).

Here are some snippets of our carpooling era:

We got a pass in advance so we could leave together because our school is strict like that :(

In Maroosh's car.

Reminding them to not accidentally forget me.

One of the difficulties we soon experienced was trying and momentarily failing to get the best possible lighting for each scene. The rooms we filmed in had varying degrees of brightness in different places, and I contributed to setting up the ring light (that’s a formal way of saying there were a lot of ‘standing with a ring light in my hand like a weird guardian angel of the technological age’ moments involved) to achieve optimal lighting for the respective scenes and rooms, i.e. it took a few tries and trial shots initially for me to get the hang of it and make sure the lighting looked good enough on camera, but that positively changed by the end of our shooting day. In some cases, however, we had to make peace with the dark lighting and thought the bleak mise en scène in some scenes might actually add to the sombre atmosphere of the film opening. For some scenes, the other members and I took turns either holding the ring light or setting it up otherwise depending who was acting when.

That’s one problem we successfully fixed in true Bazooka Productions style.

Another thing we learned as a result of the production process was the art of making the best of what was available to us (no, this is not the beginning of a cliche monologue in a Hallmark rom-com). For example, we ended up incorporating props like lanterns and Myiesha’s special instrument (that I still don’t understand the name of) which were readily available to us and might have replaced other, rather inaccessible things, e.g. fancier instruments like a guitar. Such decisions allowed us to utilise the location as much as we possibly could to accurately represent a bygone era and create a nostalgic mood.

That’s another few minor hindrances (including guitarlessness) that we also managed to overcome during the production process.

There were also a few noticeable instances of trial and error that honed our project even further. The scenes featuring interview footage of our imaginary band’s fans, for example, went through multiple drafts until we got them just right as Esha discussed on her blog. Getting comfortable with trial and error also meant that we weren’t afraid to retake shots while filming or suggesting changes at various stages of production to ensure our film opening could be improved as much as possible.

Which is to say that I, as the journalist, was truly able to master my fake-typing skills while Esha filmed way too many shots of my typing until we were satisfied with the final options we had.