Changing Locations on the Fly

Initially, I had planned a few shots to be filmed in a public restroom. However, Martina is 16 and her parents said we couldn't leave her residential community so... what her parents say goes (I would rather not have the police called on me for kidnapping).

While I originally planned to film in either a Publix bathroom (despite being a nicer grocery store, their bathrooms don't reflect this) or at the public restrooms in Gator Run park, which is right in the middle of Martina and I's neighborhoods.

None of these things exist in Martina's residential community, so we had to impromptu it. First, we considered using Martina's bathroom, but her bathroom is actually quite nice and it doesn't fit the vibe of the scene I had envisioned at all.

Then we remembered we're right by a golf course and those bathrooms are so.... soooooo bad.

So, that's a picture of the golf courses. Nice, right? Super well-manicured green (or whatever you call it, I don't play golf) However... the bathrooms are a nightmare.

Here they are on the outside, with my little brother pictured. We encountered a small issue being that the women's bathrooms were locked. However, the men's bathroom didn't even have a lock on it so Martina and I walked in and had Nico (my younger brother) guard the door in case any of the nearby golfers tried to interrupt our high-class film production.

I'm pretty pleased with how the clips turned out. This is a picture I accidentally took instead of pressing video record, but it's the same angle I ended up using. The mirror looks dirty and grungy (well, because it is) and the tiles on the wall had dents and chips in them. The lack of maintenance in these bathrooms both disturbed me and helped out my cause.

While we were on the green we took a few more extra unplanned clips just in case I wanted to use them in the trailers. It's always better to over film compared to having too little footage. Luckily since my younger brother was there, we had him act as a proto-crew member and had him carry around the duffle bad between locations.

One scene involved Martina lying on the grass, however, there was the sun in her eyes. This was our fun resolution for how to block the sunlight without having it look like a person's shadow: a funky little pose that would cast a shadow over her face.

Overall, despite some setbacks, I felt like we were able to overcome them without sacrificing the original plan.