Universal Studios Shoot

This weekend has certainly been eventful. It was highlighted with our filming at Universal Studios on Saturday. My day started out by waking up at 6:30 and helping Aaron pack drinks and food for our actors/actresses. It took us about an hour to load everything into a ZIP car, which our producer (thank you, Jake) managed to rent. All of us arrived in front of the SCA building around 7:00 and started unloading and loading all of our things onto the bus. Our whole crew and cast met up with one another and introductions were thrown out. Around 8:15, our SA yelled out that we were about to leave.

We got to Universal Studios around 9:00 and started unpacking all of our things and taking them to our specific location. It took us about 4 or 5 trips to bring everything to our location. We started rehearsing and finally managed to film around 9:30. The weather the whole day was unbearable but that was the least of our concern. The whole cast and crew especially our director and DP were running a bit slow and by 11:30 were a little behind schedule. We managed to film 13 out of the possible 46 shots we had arranged before lunch.

After lunch, we were on immediate overdrive and started just having one rehearsal for every shot. Our pace picked up rather quickly and we managed to get 15 shots in 2 hours. Still, our crew especially between our producer, director, and DP started to quarrel over the pacing and speed of everything. As the time reached around 2:00, everything seemed to be settled and everyone was working well together. However, on one particular segment, our DP accidentally dropped the camera and one of the lenses popped out of its socket. Fortunately, our film wasn't severely damaged. It took us a little while to regroup after that but we managed to stand strong once again.

Shooting ended around 4:00 when all of us started packing all of our belongings as well as props and extra water and food back to the bus. We left Universal Studios around 4:30 and arrived back at USC at 5:00. It was one of the most tiring and arduous days of my entire life but hopefully what we captured on film made up for it.