MOGA Video contest week 2

For this week, I'm writing about a shoot I did with a couple other BU graduates to attempt to win a Red Scarlet camera. We shot on 2 7D's on monopods, we actually had a boom and boom op for once, as well as  PA for the shoot. We used natural light for 99% of the shoot, along with couple room lamps to supplement.

MOGA is a company that creates video game controllers that connect to smart phones so the user can play games without having to use the phones touch screen. It also charges the users phone while they play. MOGA decided to host a contest with Freddie Wong (the youtuber) where they are going to give away 6 Red Scarlet cameras, along with a grand prize of $25,000. 

These prizes sounded pretty great to me, so I organized a group of filmmakers, and couple of actors I'm currently working with (ones a writer of a webseries I'm shooting, the other is an actor for said webseries), to attempt to make a video to submit for the contest. There are 3 weeks worth of competitions, so we decided to participate in the second weeks contest, which was to make a video about the agony of a battery dying. it had to include bacon, a musical instrument and a video game reference. 

So I started the project by asking for everyone involved to pitch ideas for the project. I wanted it to be a collaborative project, because when it came down to winning, we would have to share whatever the prize was, making it important to involve everyone in the whole process. Only two people sent in a total of 4 ideas, I hoped for more ideas, but you gotta take what you get. So after presenting the ideas to the group, we settled on the funniest and easiest to shoot given our time constraint. The ending idea was to make a sex joke about playing video games. 

After the idea was selected, one member of the group who couldn't be at the shoot volunteered to write it. When it came to the shoot we ended up only having 3 people show up to help, and one left within 15 minutes. It ended up being for the better since we were shooting in my room, which didn't have enough space to have an entire crew in it. 

Since I have worked with everyone before, the shoot went incredibly smoothly. Because of the rush, we didn't come up with a shot list, but since everyone knew what needed to be done, getting what we needed proved to be easy. We broke the shoot down into two sections, the beginning, then the dialogue. We shot all the coverage we needed to capture the intro of the two actors having fun under the covers, details, wides and even a few slides within the first 20 minutes. Then we were able to focus on the punchline of the video, which we used classical coverage to get. Shot reverse shot, with medium close-ups and a wide. All in all the shoot only took an hour and a half, including capturing wild sound. 

It was a great shoot, fast paced and fun. It was a great experience taking an idea to a script to the screen in only a matter of 2 days, and it was interesting to see how much the idea changed and evolved throughout the whole process and as it changed hands. I gotta thank the crew that helped me out, I couldn't have done it without them.

Voting for the video is still going on, while we aren't going to win with votes, we are still hoping to get a little recognition from the judges. Help us out and head to the link below to vote!

And check out the video we made below, its pretty funny.

Until next time,

-Jake

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Click here to vote for the video!