The Shoot: Day 1

So, we had our shoot scheduled for Sunday 14th December, of which still went ahead. However, unfortunately I came home from school on Wednesday feeling ill which I had hoped would pass, but on Sunday I was still in bed ill, so unfortunately I was unable to make it along for the shoot, but of course, the other three team members were all still able to make it. I am so sorry to the team that I let down, but now I am better and ready to get on with the editing of the footage which they got from the shoot on Sunday.

I therefore got the low-down on what happened at the shoot from my fellow group members. The group met at around 2pm in Essex, met the cast (of which consisted of around 10 people) and then headed to the forest for shooting. They chose to initially start with a photoshoot to produce stills of the music video shoot, which came out pretty good as the lighting was great then, just before it got dark. However, looking back now this was probably a small rookie error because the actual footage which was recorded came out too dark and grainy because it got too dark and too much time was spent on doing the photoshoot earlier on. Therefore, this is a lesson learnt for the second shooting where we will make sure we start filming much earlier so that the footage comes out brighter and better quality.

The filming didn't start until around 3:15pm which straight away seemed a mistake and it became very clear that the group were working in a race against time before it got dark, and hadn't allowed enough time before the darkness overcame. The footage completed was done by successfully following the storyboard which had been previously created and all the necessary shots were filmed in the correct order etc; and when it came to editing the beginning of the video this was extremely helpful.

The weather was fortunately dry and sunny which helped to enhance the lighting of the shots, and as long as it wasn't raining then all is good! Although I was wrapped up nice and warm up bed, the rest of my group were out in the freezing cold filming all afternoon for our video, however luckily everyone came dressed appropriately as they had been told that it would be cold.

Here is the footage we got, with a bit of editing:




The problems:

Problem 1: The cast

As a bunch of teenagers normally are, the actors couldn't keep still. They wasted endless hours playing with the sparklers and chatting which could have been time we spent filming. Now we have to order more sparklers too.

Problem 2: The time

Many of the cast live quite far away and so by the time we started filming it was time for them to go home which meant not much 

Problem 3: The lighting

As it is winter time, we forgot how quickly it gets dark. By around 4.30pm, it was so dark that you could barely see a metre in front of you. This meant that there were tonnes of miscommunications between the actors and director but worst of all it caused all sorts of problems with some of the camera shots. Our light source was either too bright or not bright enough an overall the quality of the footage just wasn't good. Below are some examples:

There is an incredible amount of visible 'noise' in this screenshot from the footage which looks highly unprofessional and collectively we weren't very happy about, and not even Final Cut could fix this! There is also the error of copyright with the beer logo visible to the viewer, we therefore can't have this because of Trade Mark laws. 

Overexposure was the problem when looking at this shot. The problem wasn't the camera, but the fact that our LED light was placed too close to the actor. It was hard to find a balance as too far and its noisy, too close and its overexposed and unnatural. 

Again, noise was a problem in this shot. Plus the light was in a bad position and the top half is underexposed, bottom overexposed. It's just unprofessional. And the fact that the light source keeps jumping around is just comical too as it's another continuity error to add to our long list.

The overall outcome of the footage which was recorded is one of mixed feelings. At first glance, Zach was not at all satisfied with the footage and believed that it looked far too dark and grainy. However, of course we didn't have all the footage anyway and would need to shoot on another day or two anyway so the initial idea was to reshoot the footage earlier on in the day when the lighting is better. However, once Zach put the footage onto Final Cut and played around with some of the effects and watched some of Passion Pit's music videos for editing inspiration, he added a sort of vintage effect to the footage and it somehow enhanced the footage and took any notice off of the graininess, this really reflected the music video 'The Reeling' by Passion Pit. He then showed our teacher who said that it looked much better with the effect on it. However, one item of feedback which stood out to me from the teacher was that there is a lack of initial narrative and that the audience may be slightly confused by the context, therefore we need to adapt on a stronger narrative for the future shoot(s).