Production day blog

The day of production is set on Tuesday the 31th of December of 2024 (finish right on new year's eve)

The original date is set to be on Sunday the 29th of December, 2024 but the filming date was delayed due to Christmas/New Year complications and other issues.

Location is at my friend Tom's place, whose also played in the opening.

Detailed Timeline of the production day:

I arrived at the location at 9:30 am, actors are already there. We spent around 1 hour setting up the props and scenes. Against my expectations, the lighting for that day isn't ideal. I was expecting hard sunlight shined into the apartment in the morning but it's a cloudy morning. I made the decision to film the night scene first. We closed every curtain in the apartment and managed to create a night-like environment with enough lighting to capture the silhouette of the characters. After we finished with the night scenes, we took a lunch break. After that the lighting got a lot harder so it's perfect for the day scenes. We finish the day scenes at around 3 pm.

Images of us setting up the day scenes

This is the setup of the scenes from the stream point of view:

Skills learned and used:

Camerawork:

- Manual ISO adjustments - Allow for special lighting effects with minimal efforts

- Different unique camera angles and shots - I used many camera work technique including Low angles, panning shots, high angle

Lighting:

- Filming night scenes during the day by blocking a certain amount of light

- Using Back lighting which highlights the character's silhouette 

- Using Lowkey lighting which requires manual ISO changes, precise and complex lighting but will be able to produce great effects

Sound design:

- Recorded natural apartment ambient sounds during the filming session

- Every single OST is self-composed in FL Studio

Check out this blog for more details on the OST composition:

Frank's Media Factory: How I created the Official Soundtrack for INCOGNI

Staging:

- Maintaining continuity throughout scenes. (A discontinuity was found later during post production)

- Used many of the available props to create a good representation of Jaren's lifestyle and preferences

- Used blinds and LED to design a convincing replication of the original design of Jaren's room.

Costume designing:

- Designing a practical (stealthy) suit for the main antagonist

- Utilizing what we can gather to produce usable costumes for characters

Directing and producing:

- Learned the process of placing actors and props, give out directions base on pre-production documents.

- Kept the condition of the filming environment comfortable, provided food and entertainment for the crew.

- Motivate the crew throughout a long session with various offers and methods.

Final product compared to pre-production:

- The name of the film is now "INCOGNI" instead of "Incognic" to streamline the term as well as adding stylization to the film title.

- Most scenes are kept the same as planned, some scenes are changed to fit new creative decisions.

- The killer doesn't show up in the end on another stream but instead leaves a folder of evidence, with the words written in bold: "AN EYE OPENER"

- Character designs are also changed, Jaren (streamer) no longer wears a cap. The detective is now younger and shows considerably more inexperience. The killer costume is also overhauled.

Explanations:

- Jaren (streamer) doesn't wear a cap inside because after filming we found it difficult to film morning scenes where Jaren lies on the ground while still wearing the cap.

- The Detective age and backstory is changed due to us not managing to find a suitable star.

- The killer costume is overhauled to look more stealthy, he now wears full black, with a black cloth to cover his face and a black cap. This ensures that the viewer cannot see the character as well as play into the creepy thriller aspect of the film.

Challenges we faced during production and how we fixed the issues:

1. Non-ideal natural lighting

- The lighting condition of that day isn't what we've expected, there were too much cloud which diffract and reduced the light intensity which makes the scenes look a lot more "afternoon-ish" .

Fix: Filming the darker sequence first and then waited for the lighting to fit the intended level.

2. Filming night scenes during the day:

- I cannot book a reasonable time at the location during the evening because it is still an occupied home.

Fix: pulled every single curtain in the house, using cloth to cover windows, doors without curtains

3. Technical issues relating to the hardware (corrupted footages)

- Framerate in certain scenes was drastically reduced.

Fix: Spent time debugging the hardware, and then reshot the scene

4. Motivating the crew

- Some crew members were tired due to having to wake up early to film morning sequences and film during a heated afternoon.

Fix: I did not expect this to be an issue. It was a really hot afternoon but I managed to keep everybody calm and ensured the filming go as planned.

What can be done better:

Checking the shots more often since we have found some corrupted files later during the day.

Preparing props earlier which will allow us to find even more suitable props with less cost.