The Final Dog Day

 Today marks the final official day of filming as I film Chico's backstory. The session went surprisingly well as my dog was very cooperative, however I struggled to account for my location. Specifically, the trouble of filming in an apartment with noisy neighbors. This was an issue I was forced to face shortly into the session as I noticed while reviewing shots there would be extra diegetic noise that was distracting. Another concern I had was this background noise distracting Chico, which happened a few times but less than I expected. Using treats to distract him from the noise was a great method to get things back on track. While Chico was taken care of, the noise didn't relent. It wasn't enough noise to reasonably be able to tell my neighbors to quiet down, but enough to pick up on the camera's microphone. In response to this, I learned to scatter my filming between the noise and take breaks when it was too loud to film. This made filming much slower than it should have been, but I still managed to film all I needed to. Other than this, filming was smooth. I filmed two angles of each shot to keep the variety and give myself the options of which angle I wanted to use in the final cut. I also got a phone stand so I could film myself without holding the phone or perilously propping it up against random objects. This stand was incredibly useful for steadying the camera, although there is a lot of extra time on takes to turn on and off the camera. The stand was also flexible, able to capture unique angles I may not have been able to hold. Unfortunately, the stand was still very small so I had to place it on whatever table was available and do some creative stacking to reach the heights I wanted. Though the stand is still a vast improvement over nothing at all. While filming, I offered a position in the film to my mom who I could add as a last minute addition, but she denied the offer. This isn't a huge deal, as she wasn't in the original script anyway. However, Chico looked a little disappointed.