Problems and Risks/ SHOOTIING DAY 2

SHOOTING DAY 2: Performance Parts
 

Risks? Not any, as no previous bookings were required nor any other cast member being relied on. This shooting was pretty much spontaneous, not pre- planned as such but we couldn’t sort out the narrative parts due to not being able to find a suitable male lead cast member, hence decided extra footage for performance would be useful, as it was! Especially if some shots don’t work as well, also it adds variety and thus makes it more interesting to watch so will cause visual pleasure for our audience. First off the common room shooting didn’t work well at all, it didn’t fit in and would have seemed random (not in a good way though) and there wasn’t enough intimacy or focus on Erna. Even though we had an umbrella the camera didn’t respond very well to the rain so we finished off quick, walking down the street performance was too difficult to film, there were lighting changes between shots, some shots displayed too much wind, with Erna’s hair going everywhere so some shots couldn’t be used but the zebra crossing one we all love! Also not forgetting the best shot we all felt was the one with brick wall background which had beautiful lighting (literally shimmering against Erna’s skin), you can’t always make it look like a great summer in the middle of winter with a plain camera. The outfits worked well and were very eye catching, and established the kind of focus (eye catching type) on Erna. Even though we initially planned maybe to do more costume changes it wasn’t convenient in the time we had available on the day. We didn’t want to risk the change in lighting doing parts of the shooting on different days.  By this scene we had established that we will no longer be using bright and colourful make-up and instead opting for something more stylish but still eye- catching, the signature red coloured lips and it also works with her red hair.

Problems and Risks/ SHOOTING DAY 1

SHOOOTING DAY 1: Green Screen

First of all practise shoot needed to be done so that we knew whether the green screen would work or not. Need to check availability of the drama studio, (where we are shooting) which we found to only be available for our use on Wednesday in second period. Also we had some problem accessing it so we ensured to specifically book it out to make sure no further delay is caused in filming. Had a few technical light issues, most of the time but managed to overcome them during editing. However due to the limitation of the software there are minor glitches in quality. The bird’s eye view shot for green screen as practised didn’t look as good hence we decided to use the other shots and positions mainly focusing on close ups but might be adding variety if it works well. The studio lights didn’t work, well most anyway/ focusing them in the right direction was a problem as they didn’t turn.

Shooting Schedule

The shooting schedule, we wanted to figure out what we would need and what we will be using- including locations, props, technical equipment and outfits so that we had a good idea what needs doing and didn’t forget anything.  As we went along we added to the shooting schedule (like the bar scene re-shoot which we didn’t know previously that we would need to do that) I have attached the completed version of the shooting schedule. We decided to do this after discussing exactly what was going to happen at each part of the video so that we had clear idea when and what needs doing.

Current stages of editing and filming

With our editing we currently have most of our footage uploaded and edited into the sequence, however we need to re shoot some scenes due to the lighting on the clips not being light enough to see the star’s face , this has been arranged so will not take long to shoot and upload . We also need to shoot some more clips for the green screen as we need more variation of the camera shots . when we asked for feedback from students and teachers they pointed out we need more jump cuts and close up shots to show off our main star , so when we re film our narrative clips we will also shoot some close up shots to make the music video flow more and expose our star.

Shooting Day 4

Today we shot most of the narrative sequences. We traveled to different locations, changed outfits, and used varied media equipment such as lighting.etc. Shooting required a timed schedule, that we managed to stick  to. We had to shoot some shots several times, so that we could achieve good quality footage. Sometimes we found that the shots that were achieved unexpectedly were our favourite shots. For example the birds-eye view shot of the bedroom.

Luke after a hard day of shooting!

Casting Discussions 2

We had another discussion about the male lead, as the person that we had originally cast, had prior commitments. We decided to cast Luke Stokes. He has the desired, indie styled look and he is extremely confident in front the camera. He was willing to commit to the shooting days and we were glad he decided to do it.

LiveType and Editing our Greenscreen

While editing our greenscreen , we needed to import a background that was animated and would stand out from the artist . We researched different backgrounds over YouTube , Google etc however we then came across LiveType whiched offered us many variations of animated backgrounds. We looked through the different backgrounds and selected a few , then we saved them as clips and imported them into final cut , from there we placed them over our selected clips to create the backgrounds. We had some difficulties with placing some of the clips overs the shot as the greenscreen had too many shadows which changed the background , unfortunately there was nothing we could do except re film them on a seperate day.