June 13th, 2015. 6:00AM

Ricky and I awoke for our packed day of shooting. First, we would shoot the first half of the film at a ranch in Davie, FL. Thanks to our lead actor, we were able to secure this location on short-notice the night before. After a short break, we would then proceed to shoot the rest of the film in the residential hall showrooms of Nova Southeastern University. If everything went according to plan, we would complete the shoot by 5PM.

We ate a quick breakfast, grabbed our equipment, picked up the food we ordered for our team and headed to the set.

8:00AM

We arrived to our set and began setting up for the scenes. Our lead actor was the first to the set, so we began with his voice-overs.

I made the decision to ADR the entire first half of the film because I wanted the story to be portrayed from the mind of Jack, telling the experience to Dr. Sternwood. This included the dialogue scenes of both Jack and Sky.

After his VOs, we shot his close-ups and solo scenes as we waited for our lead actress to arrive.

10:30AM

With most of the cast and crew on set, we began shooting the bulk of the scenes in the ranch. We did the VOs for our actress, shot the introductory scene and then went to the outside of the ranch to shoot our “picnic.”

1:00PM

By this point, we were running late. Everyone was supposed to be at NSU by 2:00PM to shoot the “office” scene, as well as the flashback sequence, and we hadn’t even completed the prologue yet. We hopped the fence with our equipment (trying to avoid the “souvenirs” left by all the horses) and searched for a safe area to place the picnic blanket. It just so happened to be very hot and humid that day and we were all extremely sweaty, including our actors. Unfortunately, our lead’s sweaty shirt was not something we were able to hide.

2:30PM

With the first few scenes completed, everyone set out for NSU, where we’d be shooting the office scene, as well as the flashback. Honestly, I think we did pretty well with making the residential hall showroom look like a doctors office. Sometimes, I even forget that that’s where we shot it. We had a single lab coat for our doctor’s assistant, but we still needed a coat for our the doctor that would escort our main character down the hallway. Luckily, we found a coat rack with three other lab coats on it in one of the rooms. We moved some chairs and desks around and managed to create the office. We quickly went outside to shoot the flashback and then went straight in to shooting the dialogue scenes, this time recording the audio straight from the scene.

6:00PM

After getting a few final angles of the corridor shot, it was a wrap for the day. We cleaned up the room, leaving no trace that a movie had been shot there. Most of the cast and crew went back home. Ricky and I went back to headquarters (Ricky’s House).

After much contemplation, it was decided that we would rest for the remainder of the day and begin editing on Sunday. We slept for 10 hours. (This could possibly be a world record for the most sleep recieved during a 48 Hour Film Project).

No Monster Energy Drink needed. To this day, they are still in Ricky’s refrigerator.

The full version of my 2015 48 Hour Film Project film, “Foggy Sky” is now available online!

This short, from concept creation to finished product, was made in two days.

On June 12th, I, along with my boyfriend and co-writer, Ricardo Lugo, drove down from  Davie, FL, to The News Lounge in Miami to draw our genre and receive instructions on our required prop, character and line of dialogue. By this point, we had scouted some of our locations, prepared a cast and crew of 10 people and had a general schedule of how everything would pan out. No matter what, we would write our story on Friday night, allowing everyone else to rest while we update them via messaging and email, shoot the entire thing on Saturday, rest, and then edit entirely on Sunday.

During a past Meet-and-Greet, there were other teams that told us we couldn’t make a film with a cast and crew of only 10 people. They said we needed multiple cameras, people to simultaneously prepare different scenes for shooting, story-boarders separate from the writer and multiple editors to edit on the fly, among other things. We knew that none of these things were necessary, and would probably hurt the project more than it would help.

We were so eager to compete that we can take pride in saying that we were the first to at the location before the event. As the kick-off commenced at 7PM, my screening group was called to the stage to draw the genres. I was disappointed to pull “romance” out of the hat filled with the many genres of the competition, as I had been hoping for comedy, but that soon subsided as my partner and I began coming up with ideas for the film. We received our prop (a souvenir), our character (Uncle George/Aunt Georgia), line of dialogue (“Okay, let’s go!”), as well as complementary Monster Energy Drinks, and rushed back to Ricky’s house to begin writing.

We got home by 8:30PM, and began throwing more of our ideas around. By 11PM, we had our script ready and sent it out to our cast and crew. After discussing assigned roles and wardrobe with our cast, establishing a call time of 8AM Saturday, storyboarding and planning out a schedule of events, we were ready for our shooting day by 3AM.

Setting up the camera and sound equipment by the front door, we headed off to bed, anxious for the day ahead.

Stay tuned for Day 2, coming soon!

The above video features just a handful of the projects I’ve participated in over the past year. This reel does not only highlight my editing work, but my cinematography as well. Of the films in the video, I was the cinematographer for “The Devil’s Due,” “D.A.R.K,” and the Nova Southeastern University promotional videos.