Preparing to film "Super"-Hero!

Welcome back, bloggers! In today's post, I will be going over all the preparations that are in place for the official filming of "Super"-Hero. Specifically, I'll be reviewing 6 main components of our prep, as well as which of them will be easier to pull off than others. 

1. Actors

The actors for this opening will be: myself, Yulian Vargas, Pedro Rodriguez, and Pablo Mendez. Yulian, who has appeared on this blog numerous times, will be cast as Power-Man himself! Yulian has always been a phenomenal actor, especially with his work on the Sound Story project, and I have no doubt his performance as our beloved protagonist will rival any Hollywood actor! (Okay maybe not ANY Hollywood actor but you get the idea.) As for myself, I will be cast as the lead robber, (name). I always thought that, if I were an actor, I would suit a villainous role way more than a heroic one. So, being cast as the main antagonist is not only my best fit, but also a chance for me to prove myself right in that I would play a decent villain!

2. Costumes

As for costumes, the only actor who will need some extra attention is Yulian, since he is playing Power-Man. For now, our plan is to dress him up simple and generic: Colorful costume, cape, and mask. Not only will this save us the headache of creating an original costume, but it also fits with the genre of the film, that being an action-comedy. Our goal is to not go overboard with the seriousness of the film, but still keep things traditional enough so that viewers will know what our intentions for the story were. Making Power-Man's costume generic will satisfy this goal perfectly. The robbers won't be dressed in anything crazy, although we didn't want to be completely unoriginal. The robbers will be dressed in black suits and tie to add a spin of absurdity to the scenes.

3. Props

"Super"-Hero will feature a couple of basic props. Firstly, we need bags for the robbers to put stolen items in, and this will probably be done using garbage bags or pillow cases. Since the robbers are just robbing a seemingly ordinary home, there's no need for us to go crazy with money bags or suitcases or anything outlandish. As for how the robbers will take care of the homeowner, we're opting for some basic bats. Since this opening is meant to be similar to that of a kids show, we wanna keep true to that feeling, so giving the robbers cartoony weapons works better here rather than giving ourselves prop guns or other crazy things. This should be everything as far as props go, since with how we plan to shoot the scenes it doesn't look like we'll need much else.

4. Locations

The entirety of "Super"-Hero will be shot at our group member Pablo Mendez's house. In the mood board post, I stated that I had an idea in mind for how we could shoot the film in a casual location. As it turns out, Pablo's house was perfect for this! His house is predominantly white, and looks like where a fairly wealthy individual would live, which connects with the plot of the film perfectly! We won't be filming in the entire house though. The plan is to film in a few select rooms, where the robbing is set to happen, and we'll have Power-Man enter the house from the back. The main confrontation is set to happen in the living room, and then the robbers will escape in a getaway car right outside the house. With this plan, we will be able to shoot the entire film without going overboard with locations!

5. Dates and Times

Due to complicated scheduling, "Super"-Hero will be filmed early in January 2025, most likely either the 3rd through the 5th or the 10th through the 12th. We tried aiming for a December 2024 filming date, but since half of the group was going on vacation, filming the project in January was our best (and only) option. The entire opening should be able to be filmed to completion within one day, but just in case the process is a bit rocky, one weekend to film should be enough to get as perfect of a shot as we can (hopefully). We plan to film "Super"-Hero during daylight hours, preferably in the afternoon. If we can't get a good product during the daytime, we might consider doing the film at night. If anything it'd make more sense to make the opening take place at night since it's a robbery, but doing it in the daytime would add a touch of uniqueness to the opening IF we can pull it off.

6. Film Equipment

Although we did have opportunities to acquire special filming equipment, we have decided that this film will be shot on iPhone. Even though we wanted to use special equipment to make our film look nicer, we decided it would be best to film with our phones so that we could have flexibility when filming the final product. By flexibility I not only mean with scheduling, since we won't be bound by strict filming schedules due to the rented equipment being due a certain day,  but also with capturing some camera angles and movements that would otherwise be hard to do with specialized equipment. Although so far we have no plans to use such angles and movements, some examples of which being canted angles or handheld movement, the ability to do so if we change our minds in the future is a nice thing to have just in case.