Reshooting
This is unedited footage of one of my last tries in filming this the first time. This is past footage before the reshooting. As I watched it over and over again I figured out a few of the issues and resolved them.
Here I realized a few things I needed to work on:
- Fixing the lighting situation.
- Trying again with more restricting timings and less fluid movements of the hand.
- Getting the stone out of the frame and focusing on the shadow.
- Repainting the book (as it wasn’t green enough).
Fortunately while getting some feedback, Leland suggested that I use tracing paper to diffuse the spotlight. That idea worked really well, and I noticed that only one tracing paper would be enough I realized I had to for it over 3 times and tape it to the spotlight so it can work the way I wanted it to. It diffused the light and made the words visible and paper less shiny. However, one problem I had with this is that the shadow I was going to use became more vague. The good thing about that is that it looked like a real shadow, less defined and more hazy.
When I restricting the timing it became easier to control the movements with my sister. I used the counting method which worked really well with someone so young and inexperienced. She was willing to take more out of her time to help me out which I was grateful. This time it only took 22 shots and in an hour I got all the footage I needed to edit again. Getting the stone out of the frame helped the shadow look bigger on the paper and turned to the way I wanted it to be.
I repainted the book and it gave me the same result so I stopped trying with that and spent more time filming. Here is my second try at filming:
Reem Abdou 