Construction Post 3: Week 3 production

Week 3 was our mainly occupied with shooting our studio shots, which took until Wednesday. We had 4 main setups, and within these we produced doezns of different shots by changing the colours we used, the camera angles and through varying the types of performances given.

1. A setup that used a DJ deck and a stool, which functioned as the main studio performance shot.

 

2.A setup with a projector, where we projected various videos of kaleidescopes and optical illusions onto the back of the studio. inpired by the video for 'We Found Love' by Rihanna.

3. A setup with alternating blue and red 'police siren' lighting inspired by the Kali Uchis video for 'Tyrant'.

4. A setup with a sofa inspired by the video for 'Stay The Night' by Zedd.

This week went very well for the most part, and we got a nice variety of shots. I also got to try out a variety of roles, such as as an actor and a cameraman. I also got a lot of experience using the studio's lighting desk, which I had never previously used before, other than in the test shoot. I believe that I became very competent at using this piece of equipment over the three days of the shoot.

We ran into only several small problems, mainly to do with shots being framed at slightly wonky or uneven angles and to do with the shadow of the camera operator being prevalent in certain handheld shots, which we re-shot in order to fix. We also had an issue with some of our group shots using external actors, as some of them seemed nervous or uncomfortable on camera. We fixed this by getting in some actors that we knew were more experienced with the media shooting process on our final day of shooting to fix this issue.  

Our target audience responded very positively to most of our studio shots, with the distinctive colours and realistic performances being praised.

Brick Lane photo shoot

After our main studio shoot we travelled to Brick Lane again to take some photos for the inside cover of our digipak. This was a quick but efficient shoot, as we were re-visiting locations we had used in our music video shoot. I acted and transported the tripod to and from the shoot.

  

Construction Post 2: Week 2 production

In our second week of production we had another location shoot in Wood Green, and planned our studio time, which was booked for the third week of production.

Wood Green Location Shoot

A picture of the car park in the daytime.

On Thursday 16th November we left school at 3:45 as a group with our actors and took the bus to Wood Green, where we walked to the top level of a car park, by which time it was night. Here we took several group shots and a handheld solo shot of our singer before our battery power ran out and we had to leave. Although I would have liked to shoot some more solo shots, the material we did get was very atmospheric and fits in with the aesthetic we want for our video.

Similarly to in Brick Lane, I did work as an actor, as a camera operator and as a clapperboard operator, and I also suggested some parts of the car park to use in our shoot. We also encountered some issues, such as when two men started watching us film, which put off the actors in our video, but they quickly went away when we stopped filming. We also had to ensure that we were very careful when shooting on the ledge as there was a large drop below it, but we managed to do this successfully.

An example of some of the shots taken at Wood Green

The audience feedback was a bit more mixed on this shoot, with many suggesting that we should have got more footage, because they thought the car park was "a cool location" and we could have got more shots within it.
Planning our studio shoot

For the rest of the week, we planned for our studio shoot scheduled for the following week. In order to do this we created a shootboard, an example of which is below.

Our shootboard for monday. All of our shootboards looked similar to this.

In-School photo shoot

Throughout the week we had two in school photo shoots to get images for our digipak and website, which went very well. We had planned the shots we wanted for the digipak beforehand, so we were able to quickly get these photos, but since we hadn't planned any specific setups for our websites we took turns posing and using the camera in different costumes and positions. Overall this was a quick and trouble-free experience and I believe we have got more than enough shots for our website. Some examples of photos are below:

Construction Post 1: Week 1 production

For the first week of production we had our first location shoot at Brick Lane and planned our second shoot in Wood Green.

Brick Lane Shoot 

This shoot took place on Sunday 5th around a specific corner of Brick Lane covered in graffiti. All of the shots we planned to shoot are visible on the shoot-board to the left, which we followed closely to get all of the shots we needed. We utilised some of the most colourful walls to get a variety of solo and group shots that embody the gritty, urban feel we were going for. We also filmed several narrative shots that will help give our video a sense of progression. We faced several problems, such as having to try and avoid traffic while filming, but this was solved naturally as the time moved beyond lunchtime as the alley we were using became less busy. We also had several revisions, such as choosing not to film a planned shot of Aisha stepping on a sweet wrapper, as we decided it was too cheesy and against the image of the duo, but apart from this there were no major changes to what we had planned.

Overall, it was a successful shoot, as the actors all turned up on time and helped us to achieve what we had planned.

Some examples of our group during the shoot.

My personal contribution to this shoot was quite large, as I helped to transport the tripod to and from the shoot, acted in many of the shots, operated the camera on several narrative shots and also did the clapperboard.

The audience feedback we received when we showed the raw footage to some members of our target audience was generally positive, with them praising the urban location and Aisha's performance as the singer, but also commenting that the external group members looked slightly uncomfortable in some shots.

 Planning the Wood Green shoot

We also planned our Wood Green shoot, which we had scheduled for Thursday 16th November. We had to contact a different set of actors, as we plan to have many different people in our location shots, and we did this across Monday-Tuesday. The location we plan to use is the top level of a car park at night in Wood Green, so we also had to think about safety precautions, such as seeing if many cars would be coming in and out of the car park and about the precautions the car park had.

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

In terms of planning our test shoot I feel like we all shared more or less equal responsibility and all contributed ideas to every aspect of the planning. The roles I think I was strongest in were storyboarding the video, creating potential designs for the digipak, working on the lighting in the studio and editing the rough cut of the video. I think the main aspects I need to work on in the real shoots are my performance skills as the DJ in the video, as this is something I have yet to master. There have been several steep learning curves, such as learning to use the camera in the studio and especially learning to use the lighting deck, but I believe that I am now confident in these areas, and I am ready for the main shoots!

R+P Post 32: Test shoot and rough edit

Our Test shoot went very well, as we followed our test shoot schedule:

We focused mainly on four different setups, one using a projector:

One using a sofa with different lighting setups:

One with lighting that we attempted to use to emulate a police car's flashing lights:

A two shot of the Dj and singer, which we also used to film the handheld shots of the DJ:

The test shoot was very useful to me, as it highlighted some practical problems we had yet to consider, such as how footage using projections would flicker. Because we realised this, we had to think about how to stage our shots using the projector to minimise the effect. It also gave us a chance to test out different lighting set-ups, and as a result we have several saved set-ups that will save us time in the real shoot.

The rough cut we produced using footage from the test shoot is below:

R+P Post 30 & 31: My shoot-board/ call sheet

This is our combined shoot-board and call sheet for our test week of filming. It has a tightly scheduled layout of when we are doing specific set-ups we had planned. It also contains a call-sheet of when each of us was available, as during the test shoot we used every possible opportunity to film. We didn't have any actors that weren't already in our group, so we didn't need to add any other names to the document. This shoot-board/call sheet was extremely useful for the test shoot, as it was kept us on schedule and allowed us to see who was available at what time, allowing us to plan when to shoot the shots requiring specific group members as actors easily.

R+P Post 29: Rehearsals

In order to make sure the test shoot ran smoothly and that we were cast in the correct roles, we held a test shoot for Aisha, who plays the lead singer of Cruze. This was immensely helpful in seeing whether Aisha would fir the role of the lead singer, and the result proved that she was very confident and enthusiastic in the role.

To get into my role as a DJ I watched various videos of professional DJ's to get a feel for what actions to do. I found this video especially helpful: