Reflection Of Shoot day.

On Monday we filmed our music video which we have been planning for the last few months.
The Friday before our video, we had one hour to prepare our first set. We were all relatively nervous, but after five minutes we quickly got the hang of preparing the set. We started by setting up the walls of the set, using clamps to join the walls together and supporters attached to weights to keep the walls straight. We then moved the wall which had a window inside of it which was acting as the rapping booth which we had envisaged. This window was pink from a previous video, so we had to paint it, to suit our video. The time went by extremely quickly and before we knew it, it was 4:30 which is when we had to stop.

When we arrived early on Monday morning, we all brought our agreed props.  I brought loads off empty drinks bottles, posters and ash trays. When we arrived I was slightly nervous as we had been planning this for a long time, however, as the set started to come along and we were getting ready to shoot our first shots we began to feel more confident. As a group of three we each had individual roles.  Cam was behind the camera as he felt the most confident of the group at filming, Lara was directing the cast which she felt she could do the best and I was behind the clapperboard for each shot as well as getting behind the scenes footage and looking after the cast. 

In the first hour we were keen to get individual shots off the band members on the set.  We therefore did not attach the last wall with the producers desk in as this would have made filming much harder. 

We started by filming our main character Jacob, who is the rapper. We got several different shots of him in the booth on many different lenses which gave us a variety of different shots to cut to. 

The featuring artist on the song was Sam and he then came into the shot after we had several shots of Jacob alone. Sam walked in from the side door for the last section of his song. The first takes we did of Jacob and Sam rapping, they weren't very confident, and were not singing out loud.  We attempted to up the energy by giving them lots of positive feedback and also singing the song from behind the camera. This really helped and after a few more shots, both characters were performing the song excellently, singing out loud and far more confident. 

We then went on to film the guitarist, Nammer. He was extremely confident and had learnt the song which gave him more confidence, which looked great on camera.  We got several different shots of him using different camera lenses to get wide and super close shots. 

We then proceeded to film the drummer who had also learnt the song, which made it much more convincing and also it gave him more confidence as well. The one thing with filming all of the band on their own first, meant they weren't as confident, as all of the attention was on them. Looking back it would have worked out slightly better if we filmed them on their own after we had filmed them as a band together. However that being said they still performed extremely well.

Lastly but not least, we filmed the keyboard player. From being in a music video last year I realised how important it is to get someone who can actually play the piano, as if the character can't play, it looks very staged. Luckily we picked a confident piano player, annoyingly he couldn't find the exact music for the song however as he was a talented pianist, he managed to play the keyboard making it seem very convincing.

After this we gave the band a rest and quickly started to work on the set to place the last wall into the set which was giving the look of a old recording studio. Cam and I had to go to the music department as the producer desk was not working, so we had to quickly go and get another one which delayed us by around ten minutes. Looking back we should have tested to make sure the one we had worked which would have prevented us being delayed. 

The plastic which we used in the set to act as the glass for the recording studio was extremely dirty and you could hardly see through it, so we had to get window cleaner and clean it down several times. Even after this it wasn't a very clear image however it looked great on camera. 

Even though the image was not very clear, it gave a very cool effect of the producers point of view. As the area where the band were performing was very small, fitting them all in was relatively hard, which meant us having to very slightly move where they were initially standing, as its essential to keep continuity, we moved the artist very slightly. 

Even tho the band were slightly squashed, they performed very well. We carried on having Sam walking in from the side for his verse and when he finished he stood next to Jacob. This looked very effective and Sam and Jacob seemed to have a very good connection on the camera like they were good mates which made it even better. 

The time went by extremely quickly and it was already lunch, we had planned on finishing with this set by lunch but still had three more shots to capture. We all had a thirty minute lunch break and went quickly back to work. The cast were very good at meeting the timings which made it much easier for everyone. After we had filmed these last three shots we had to quickly pack the set up. We had an hour and a half to take down this set and then also film the second set. This was definitely rather stressful, so we were all extremely efficient at packing the set up. Cam and I quickly moved the producer desk back and while we were doing this Lara and our set designer hung all the wall hangers and tapestry up and also moved the coffee table in placing all the empty bottles on top of it. 

Cam and I then moved a sofa from the shipping container boxes and realised there wasn't a second sofa, we had to go to the music department where we thought there was a sofa but it had gone so we had to go get another one from the upstairs media room which was very hard to get down. Unfortunately this ate into our recording time. 

The girls who feature in this particular set then arrived, by this time we had finished the set. We sat everyone down into position having Jacob in the armchair directly in the middle, with Sam sitting on a speaker next to Jacob. We then positioned the band with the girls on the sofa having two of the band members and one of the girls entering the video half way through almost like entering a party which was a very cool effect which we hadn't actually planned on doing. We were very pleased with this set and looked very similar to an actual party setup. 

Jacob and Sam at this point were extremely confident at performing the song. We wanted to get a certain shot before the time ran out which involved Jacob staying completely still, while the whole party left the room. I had to pause the song on the exact moment so Jacob knew when to freeze. Needless to say this took several attempts at filming as there were so many aspects which could have gone wrong. We managed to get the shot just in time for the allocated time we were given for the studio. We then got all our actors to leave after saying a huge thank you, however we needed Jacob and Sam for the final scene. We quickly moved the sofas back to the original locations and removed all the props which was much easier than putting everything up. We then all moved the flats which took little to no time as everyone on the set helped out which was extremely helpful.

We then drove to Guildford with Sam and Jacob to film the last scene, this was a narrative shot which we were filming in town, so we didn't need any large speaker.  However we brought a small speaker just in case. We started filming in an underpass which looked very effective and there were a large number of people walking through the underpass so we had to be considerate of them and also had to plan when to shoot so we didn't have anyone we didn't want in our video. We got several different shots of Sam and Jacob walking from different sides of the under pass meeting in the middle and greeting each other which was a very nice shot. We then went to the riverwalk way where we shot Sam on one side of the river and Jacob walking along the other side with lights reflecting of the river. This took many different takes as there were lots of pedestrians. 

In conclusion, I feel that our shoot day was extremely successful and as the day progressed the video got better and better. After filming I've realised there are several things which we could have done better like sticking more closely to our timings which we had previously planned, however this being said we managed to get all the shots we aimed to get. We could have also shot the band all together at first as I feel this would have broken the ice slightly and built up their confidence before moving on to filming them individually.