May Day Break Turns Film Set: The Complete Behind-the-Scenes Chronicle of Our Original MV Shoot

From Total Rookie to All-Purpose Go-To

My journey began with a rather “caught-off-guard” role: production assistant. The first big task was location scouting—and I hit walls everywhere. The café I’d chosen suddenly closed, the classroom I booked got snatched, and the weather refused to cooperate. I practically sprinted around the entire campus, my phone buzzing with “maybe next time” after every rejection. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t discouraged; I seriously wondered if I was just dragging the team down.

Luckily, filming finally rolled. Once the shoot started, most PA duties settled down, so I became the resident jack-of-all-trades—holding lights, lugging props, clacking the slate for the director… At one point, I was glued to the monitor, logging every take’s code and notes. It was then I truly grasped how precise the division of labor is on a professional set: the gaffer tweaking a reflector’s angle for ten straight minutes to soften a face, while the cinematographer swapped ISO and focal lengths over and over to capture that one second of dreamlike light.

From Casual Phone Clips to “So That’s How You Really Shoot”

I used to think phone footage that “looked okay” was good enough. But this project revealed the razor-sharp demands of professional shooting—every detail of lighting, composition, and settings had to be flawless. We’d shoot N takes from the same camera angle, and maybe only one or two would make the cut. Let a light shift even slightly, and the sparkle in an actor’s eyes vanished; the sound mixer could pick up a subtle tonal gap in the hum of the air conditioner. For the first time, I realized that “quality” isn’t something you slap on later with filters or flashy edits—it’s painstakingly carved out on set, inch by inch.

Unexpected Takeaways

Wrap day blazed with sun. Standing alone in the empty location, I replayed the whirlwind—the anxiety of scouting, the sweat of rigging lights, the whole crew holding its breath after “3-2-1—action.” What moved me most wasn’t the images on screen but those moments of grinding shoulder to shoulder for a single frame. That May Day break taught me cross-disciplinary adventures can truly shine. Next time I pull out my phone, I’ll probably think about tweaking the light or leaving a touch of negative space—because for those few days, I saw how the pros do it, and I want everyday life to look just a bit more cinematic.