Construction Post 3: Week 3 Production

The sole aim of week 3 was our promo photo shoot which we carried out on a set in our school's media department. The set-up we used can be seen below:

Our photo shoot was very successful as we not only managed to get all the photos we needed for the digipak covers but also a lot of other promo shots which we placed on the website and our two social media platforms. As I took on the character of AJ I was required to be in front of the camera, whilst Meera and Sian switched between the roles of director and photographer as the week went on. I really enjoyed the whole process as it was fun to experiment with my character, moreover as the main aim of the promo shots was to portray the personality of AJ (which is quite similar to mine, i.e. goofy) I was able to have fun on set with my group whilst still taking high quality pictures which we could use across all the different platforms of our project.

Below are some of my favorite promo shots from the photo shoots:

Construction Post 2: Week 2 Production

The second week of production was our main shoot week. We spent the majority of the week in the school studio, with the Sunday being spent on location.

To keep on track we created a schedule which showed us who would be in the studio at any one point. This was very useful when creating the individual shoot schedules for each day as we could easily see who would be available at certain points. It also enabled us to create a call sheet with our actors as we could match up our schedule to theirs and find times when were all free to film.

Our group schedule for the week

Studio Shoot

Monday's Shoot Schedule

Above is an example of one of our shoot schedules which we made to help out with the studio shoots. As a whole this shoot was quite successful as we managed to get all of the footage which we wanted to get, however they were some big obstacles we had to overcome throughout the week, all of which are listed below:

• On the Monday we had to work on the background in order to turn it into an infinity curve, this provided many complications as the actual process of sticking A3 and A4 paper to the parting took all the morning, however after recording some footage with this infinity curve we discovered that the idea didn't work as our lighting was too dark and therefore made the background look a bit off. Overall, this process put us behind schedule but in order to ensure this time wasn't wasted we brought in the male dancers and had them rehearse their routine with Meera whilst myself and Sian tightened the Cyclorama

  

  The monitor showing the attempted infinity curve

• On the Tuesday we really face any issues and in fact we actually made up a lot of the lost time from the previous day
• On the Wednesday we were having some difficulties with the camera; it wouldn't read the SD card and therefore wouldn't allow us to capture any footage. Fortunately for us, our teachers and technician managed to find a nearby repair shop who could fix the camera fault and have it fully functioning by the next morning. Our replacement camera, a Canon Legria HFG30 (our camera for location shoots), was available for use at this point however the difference in quality between it and our studio camera, Canon 5D MK 11, was huge and in turn did not work with the lighting we sorted out in the test shoot. As we did on the Monday we decided that instead of wasting our time we should sped the time rehearsing; I learnt the group routine and a selection of moves for my solo dances

My dance rehearsal

Construction Post 1: Week 1 Production

For the first week of production our group focused on preparing and carrying out the first location shoot. This shoot took place over one weekend with one night-time shoot on the Saturday and an all day shoot throughout the Sunday. The footage we captured over these shoots consisted of promo shots, filler shots, lip-syncs and rehearsals for narrative shots which were scheduled for the following weekend.

Saturday

First page of our shoot board for Saturday

Our first location for the Saturday shoot was at an old fashioned lamp post near Sian's house. As the shots we wanted at this location were filler shots and lip-syncs my role was solely on performing. Sian took on the role of cameraman and Meera directed. The shots we planned to film differed between hand held shots and tripod shots as we wanted more variety and creativity when editing. However, after filming the tripod shots in a CU we decided to scrap using the tripod at the location and instead capture a lot more hand held footage; we felt that the tripod made the shots too static and therefore boring, in contrast we felt the hand held shots brought the scenes to life whilst also allowing us to film in multiple angles and framing within each take.

Meera giving me direction between takes

The second location we filmed at on the Saturday was on the road by Sian's house, we decided to keep all of the roles within the group the same for these shots. For this location we wanted to mix up the shot types by adding character movement with camera movement; we achieved this with a tracking shot of me walking down the street lip-syncing to the camera. We particularly liked the lighting at this location and in turn decided to film some filler shots, as you can see below. The lighting form the street lamps gave an outline to my head in a LS and added a shadow to half of my face in a MS. 

A filler shot with back lighting from the street lamp

Sunday

First page of our shoot board for Sunday

On the Sunday our main location was in and around Meera's house, i.e. her back alley, her living room, her attic and staircase. Our aim for the day was to take a selection of promo shots, primarily our back cover for the digipak, film our rehearsals for narrative shots and capture the rest of my lip-syncs so that only studio lip-syncs remained. As I was required to be in every shot, Meera and Sian split the filming and directing and switched throughout the day. Due to myself taking on the main role of AJ I felt a lot of pressure to give a convincing performance, however Sian and Meera was great and gave help motivate me throughout the day to keep me on track.

Meera filming one of my outdoor lip-syncs

Once we had finished with capturing all of our lip-sync footage and promo shots that we had scheduled in for the day we decided to practice some of our narrative shots for the coming weekend. As well as practicing and experimenting with framing for the couple shots of myself and Sian we decided to script the argument scene between me and Sian; we believed this would be great preparation for Sian and I as we would be able to learn our lines.

The script for the argument

Overall, I think we had a successful first shoot weekend as we managed to film all the shots we wanted and manged to get in great preparation for the coming week. Some of the shots we filmed on the weekend actually became some of my favorites in the final edit and I believe as a group we worked very well- a great confidence booster for the stressful studio shoot week.

R+P Post 33: Reflections on my role and contribution during Research and Planning

Overall I am very happy about what my group has manged to accomplish within this research and planning period. We have all worked well together as a team with Sian and Meera both contributing significantly to this project.

During Research and planning this is what I contributed:

Test shoot- Filming

• I took on the role of 'AJ'- the artist of the music video
• I encouraged and gave feedback to Meera and Sian whilst they danced
• I was constantly rehearsing my dancing in preparation for the main shoot
• I helped create the lighting set-ups
• I sorted out the background, i.e. the backing curtain, so it worked well with our lighting and had no visible creases on camera

Me (centre) learning a dance routine

Me performing one of my lip sync shots

Test shoot- Editing

• As I have a lot of experience in editing from past projects I took more responsibility for this edit
• I helped organise the shots onto the timeline and then sync them up to the main audio track
• I helped bring in members of our year to watch our edit- audience feedback

Me and Sian editing

Story boarding

• As I spent the majority of our planning time learning how to dance and practicing my lip sync I did not have much of an opportunity to help with the timeline, however I was able to plan out our key storyboard shots and then organise them into categories
• This again was a process I was familiar

All in all, what my group has accomplished so far has been to a very high standard and we have definitely had a lot of fun along the way. I can't wait to see how we progress through the construction stage.

R+P Post 32: Test shoot and rough edit

Our rough cut from our test shoot:

This rough cut was made from our test shoot footage and was therefore very helpful is judging whether our ideas worked well and how we could the adapt them to improve the overall flow and look of the music video.

Overall, the test shoot was a huge learning curve for us as this was the first time we were given full access to the equipment within the studio. This meant is was very useful to us as we wanted to be as prepared as possible when it came to filming our main shoot. The main thing we wanted to experiment with during this shoot was the lighting desk as we had some rather complex ideas that we needed to see. These included 'flicker' effects, strobe lighting and a screen with shadows.

Our blue lighting set-up

However, the lighting set-up we were most impressed with was the dark blue silhouette lighting for the dancers. We thought this looked really professional and cool and definitely fitted the look we were going for; it worked really well when Meera went through her routine and in turn influenced us to have Sian now have a routine with the lighting.

R+P Post 31: My call sheet

To help make sure that all of our actors and crew turned up on time, we created call sheets; these were given out to all the crew and all of our actors. Each sheet shows clearly at what time each actor needs to be on set and all the health&safety details they require, such as fire exits and a risk assessment.

Call Sheet for the Monday shoot (in school/studio)

R+P Post 30: My Shootboard

To ensure that each of our shoot days ran smoothly and efficiently we made shoot boards. These contained details, such as the shot description, shot number, time available for the shot and the cast/crew required for the shot.

Below is a sample of one of our shoot boards:

Saturday Shoot board page 1 

Saturday Shoot board page 2

Saturday Shoot board page 3

The shoot boards also contain visuals from the storyboard which help bring to life our intended shots, thus making it easier on the day to envisage what we want from each shot. Moreover, as they came directly from our storyboard, each picture to the key, i.e. orange note is a close-up, whereas a green background is a long shot. This is very helpful when positioning the actors and framing the shots.

In the set-up column we have also left a good amount of room for us to note down which we thought was the best take so when editing we could located the shots we wanted more efficiently.