SHOOT DAY

We arrived on the set of our shoot day with a rather vague idea of what we were going to do that day. We knew what we wanted to achieve but we knew we had a tough job to do in order to get there. We all arrived at 9 O’clock and we began to dress our band and do hair and makeup. We then began putting all our set together and making sure we had everything in order. We set up the swing inside our bird cage and we dressed the swing with vines and flowers in order to make our set more atmospheric. We then began setting up our camera and our lights. We then all began deciding on what roles we would each be apart of throughout the day, we decided to alternate all the different roles throughout like who was on play back, camera, lights and costume. As we all got on well within our group it showed us just how important this is in order to work well together.


We then began shooting, we began with a wide shot of the cage but this then led us to realise that the floor of the studio was effecting our shot and was not very attractive on screen, so we went to the theatre to get black material to cover the floor so it would not cause a distraction on screen. We then tried again and we started using the dry ice machine which then led to other problems, the fan was not working properly and the smoke began to fill the camera and it soon became very difficult to see what was happening we also then set off the smoke alarm all of this led to more delays. Once we had sorted out the smoke alarm and the floor we started again. We began shooting and then came to realise that the lighting was not right at all as it was causing shadows across Karis, our lead singers face. It was also too dark when she swung to the back of the cage and the too bright or too shadowed when she moved forward. We finally got everything sorted out and we began our shoot day for the third time hoping we had everything sorted out. It was now 10:30 and as we started so late it led to other problems with time management later on.


Once we had sorted out all our technical problems this gave us the freedom to continue filming and be creative with our ideas in the video. We began filming a few full wide shots, then mid shots and the close ups to make sure we had all the basics of what we need. And then we began shooting a few slow motion close ups on things such as Karis’ face her clothes and other things like her eyes or hands. Once we had a good amount of simple and slow motion shots we then began to introduce the feathers into a later part of our song. We had a cherry picker and a ladder on either side of the cage with people standing on it holding a XXXX filled with feathers, we had a person standing in front of the camera dropping feathers and then three people holding up fans and throwing the feathers in front of them making them all blow into the cage. We had to shoot this part over and over again as we had to get the feathers just right as they all had to begin to fall at the same time. This became difficult as we had so many feathers and they had been blown everywhere but all of this effort, although also very time consuming was worth it as it had a very vital and atmospheric effect on the outcome of our video.


We then began to film the rest of the band, we moved away the bird cage and set up the green screen but as we had lost a lot of vital time earlier in the day we did not have much time to film the band, we also did not have enough time to get all our green screen prepared so we decided to film the band on a black background with the same black floor as the bird cage. We only needed a few good shots of the band as we were going to inter cut the shots of the band very quickly with the bird cage sequences. But we also need the feathers so fall at the same point in the song as it had before. We had four band members, a guitarist, a drummer, a harpist and then our lead singer. We set up the band in a triangle like shape so that our lead singer was at the top of the triangle and the focus on the screen with the rest of the band members on the hot spots on the rule of thirds. We had a few good shots of our band members with the feathers and a few close ups of their instruments but as we had wasted a lot of time in the morning we had to stop filming in order to let the group that were filming in the studio the next day set up for their shoot. So we began to pack up our things and take our footage up to the edit suite. We then had to tidy up all our mess and pick up every single feather we had used, this took almost as long as our whole shoot day had!


We filmed our whole pop video using a JCV500 HD camera which gave us the best opportunity to have a very high quality video. We also used the cherry picker at times throughout our video, we used it in order to make the feathers fall from above and we used it to film a birds eye view shot from inside the cage. We knew that we wanted to use tracks in our filming as we originally wanted to start our video with a close up on Karis’ face and then track back to reveal the cage into a wide shot. We set track around the cage in order to get a 180 pan of the cage from left to right and right to left this had a good effect on a lot of our shots as it let the audience feel intermit with the shot and feel apart of the scene.


I had many shots that I loved from our shoot day but my two favourite were two of the slow motion shots we did. The first one being the shot we filmed using the cherry picker form above the cage. The shot began above Karis on the swing and it began to zoom in to her face as she spun round on the swing looking up into the camera. It was all filmed in slow motion and I think this shot really worked as it is not a normal over used shot, it is unique and I think it will keep audiences interested. The other shot that I think really worked was another slow motion shot that we filmed right at the end. This shot was a tight close up on Karis’ face with feathers blowing towards her as she moved closer to the camera and closer to the bars. This shot really works as it lets the audience feel intermit with the singer as she connects to the camera staring straight into it.
Some shots that we have come to realise that do not work are some of the close ups of the band members playing their instruments as many of them were unsure of the song or how to play the instruments. Our close ups of the instruments did not look realistic as they were not playing the same notes as the notes in the song. And this is why they do not work with the rest of our video, and as we were running out of time towards the end of the day we did not have the time we needed to perfect the filming of the band.


Overall our day went really well. Although we got off to a slow start after having wasted a lot of time sorting out some of the technical problems in the morning. Once we had got going we all worked really well and the atmosphere throughout the day was positive and energetic and I really enjoyed the whole experience as well as the bad as I have learnt from it. I think that together we have created a really good video different from anyone else’s with some really good visuals and that we all balanced each other out really well throughout the day alternating our roles as cameramen directors and everything else that needed top be done.