“Frenemies” was written and directed by Corey Glass. After receiving the script of the story, it was molded to be better from beginning to end. In the beginning there was a scene that we were going to use as voice overs to show the relationship between the homeboy and the girlfriend. However we didn’t feel that should’ve been initiated to the storyline. Starting the film off with her calling her boyfriend was more than enough to show her irritation towards him. Which will lead to why she is so irritated.

Location

Choosing the location wasn’t hard at all. I knew I wanted a place with a lot of natural light coming inside. Natural light tends to help me not to use any lighting equipment. Filming something by yourself can be challenging but you enjoy the moment because it helps you be very creative on set without opinions.

I don’t try to think about everything that I would need on set gear wise. My whole objective on set is to make everything look natural to what our eyes can see without the extra.

No extra equipment needed

One good reason why I love a house with the right lighting and lots of windows is because I don’t have to worry about setting up lighting equipment. Using the right lens can also help with that. It was never written that any scene was suppose to be filmed at night. Due to season changing, it started to get darker early than usual. So we had to think of a way for the story to make sense, in which it did. We created a time elapse.

Good lighting and lens kept the scenes smooth

Be creative in the present

The time elapse created a change on set, it was no longer everything has to be daylight. So I initially decided when the homeboy leave in the beginning that we create that time elapse there. That would bring us to night time of just the boyfriend and girlfriend having their time alone without the homeboy. Which could create some type of intimacy between the two.

Create in the now

Before the time elapse was even thought of, we recently filmed the ending in broad daylight a day before the house scene. There was no intentions on filming any night scenes. The beginning and ending was suppose to be broad daylight.

Day 1 of filming the ending.

Ending better than before

As I stated before, the ending was suppose to be daylight. While on set, we walked a couple of streets over to find a nice corner with street light to light the character. Once again, I desired a natural look to what our eyes could see. We found a few alleys which were restricted but eventually found a corner with a street light. The night scene looked way better than the day scene. From the streaks coming from the car, to the corner standing that we didn’t have at first. Not only that, I suggested to add the female laying in bed calling the homeboy while he was talking to the boyfriend. The bedroom idea wasn’t written, but I wanted to use every part of the house if possible. So it blended right in with the story instead of showing her calling him with her name popping up.

There was a light mounted on the corner of bed. We turned it on and let the scene be.

Be the Team

One interesting thing I know is that I can be a whole team behind the camera. I’m good at capturing sound but not so good at editing sound. Which is okay to not be so perfect along the journey. I capture good audio making sure everything is dead silence and on my close up shots. Thankfully my cinema camera allows me to adjust audio settings with the channels. However, dealing with just 3 actors in an empty scene was grand.