Account of Shoot Day.

On Friday the 4th of November was our shoot day for our pop video, having set up our shoot the day before we felt confident and reassured that the day would go smoothly. In the morning before we started we had a few issues, due to the weather. The majority of our pop video was to be filmed inside the studio, which no doubt was a problem. Although the other half of our shot day was in Guilford, although the forecasted weather was rain and thundershowers. We decided to make a decision after lunch, whether we will go ahead with filming in Guilford or whether we will have to think of another idea. 

Our day didn’t follow our shooting schedule as such, but it was a helpful guideline tool. Having gathered our main characters, Affie and Georgia we briefed them about what was going to happen throughout the day. Not needing Georgia for a couple of hours, we sent her off and asked her to come back later. It was important for Affie to feel comfortably with the set and the surroundings, so we put the track on repeat so Affie could familiarize himself with the song and the set together, we had a few difficulties due to the fact that Affie didn’t know all the song lyrics, this caused a little frustration as most of the shots we planned to do were close ups or extreme close ups of his face. Although running through the song 7 or 8 times had helped Affie learn the lyrics. The pictures on the left hand side demonstrate our shoot day focusing on the first set lit, also the monitor is shown where we watch the recording live, in order to see how it looks on tv, also the lighting desk where we could control the lighitng and playback of the track.

he majority of our shots were taken on the camera and tripod, the various shots we took was,
- establishing shot http://www.cla.purdue.edu/english/theory/narratology/terms/establishingshot.html

-close up 
http://www.answers.com/topic/close-up

- extreme close up
http://www.answers.com/topic/extreme-close-up-graphic-arts

- extreme close up of half his face

-shots flipped to other side of his face

-shutter shot
http://www.ehow.com/about_6702380_definition-camera-shutter-release.html
-another shaking shutter shot

-side on view of hat/face.

- tracking shot 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tracking_shot

I especially liked the tracking shot, as it give a different perspective of our set and our character, we did this tracking shot 10 times in order to get a few good shots out of this. We used the dolly in for the tracking to result in the best shots. We simply made our artist follow there camera around the set, in order for it to add to the ambiance of the music video.


Change of set- Blinders

Due to my group wanting a contrast in sets, we came up with the idea of having one wall full of blinders, these blinders are large lights which are very powerful. We discovered the lights erase all of our artists except for his shadow/outline. We took down the old set, and left the studio bare except from the wall of these lights, it then allowed us to assemble the tracking down so we could take some tracking shots. Using the blinders, we decided we wanted Affie and Georgie to have a shot with these blinders, using Affie first we asked him to behave and sing similarly to as before although over-express his actions and move around more frantically, in order to create more silhouettes and shadows. After Affies time with the blinders, we moved onto Georgia, here we focused more on her face and singing, we dimmed the lights a lot more so more of her body and face was seen, although the lights crept in between her body and displayed rays of light. I felt these blinders was a good alternative to a set as it was visually interesting, unusual and a very simple concept for us to achieve.

The only problems we had was occasionally when we turned the blinders up too bright, it was difficult to film and even track as we couldn't see anything through the camera as it was just a white light, also in this incident we had to get the right exposure of light in order to still get an image of the character. Above are a few images of Georgia and Affie in set with the blinders.