Shoot Day 24/11/1

By this point we had recorded 99% of our shots, as well as the vast majority of our publicity shots in the bank. Starting at starting at 0850, we powered through with our remaining publicity shots; having to take prolonged breaks because of our timetabled lessons throughout the day.

We managed to take all of our publicity shots by 1425, at which point we began setting up for the narrative club scene which we decided to retake after taking a step back and looking at the narrative with staff after our previous shoot.

Original shot

The suggestion from staff was to have something which shows the progression of the bad times in her relationship, something to show the arguments going to the next level. He thought it best to have her do something slightly more aggressive andf explosive in the moment Roza sees her boyfriend dancing with another woman.


In our initial footage, Roza's reaction was much calmer, with her opting to make her boyfriend aware of her knowing his actions and then leaving him in the club on his own.

Slap in argument

This was our most controversial shot, because we said from the start of our project that we didn't want Roza to come across as having an explosive personality. However, we all agreed that we needed the argument in the club to be much larger than what we already had. Whilst we were slightly sceptical of the idea, we decided to go for it because we really needed a much larger argument.


Our fear of having something so explosive as a slap, was because it was so different from our original idea on Roza's personality; but looking back on it, I think that her reaction as a whole works well to make her seem more real as a person. There are very few people who would react calm in that situation and it was naïve of us thinking that it was realistic for Roza to act in such a way.

Shoot Day 22/11/14

Our plan for this shoot was to tie off any loose ends and fine tune our performance shots, with our main focus being:

- Fire projection performance shots (Shooting a variety of compositions and trying out some camera movement)
- Rose performance shots (Increasing shot variety, paying extra attention to the lip-sync in these shots)

We planned to start at 0800, but because of severe road closures we didn't start till 0830, with one member of our group not arriving till 0930. The first shot we set up for was Rose performance; in our last shoot we had some time free, so we tested the set up for this shot and played about with what compositions look best. Due to this, we were able to prepare the set and lighting confidently while Yssy did her hair and make-up.

Directing Yssy while she acted

One thing that we realised when talking to staff, is that most of the facial expressions for our performance shots looked fairly similar. This is the total opposite of what we wanted, the whole idea was to use different performance set ups to convey the changes in Roza's mind-set. While the camera was rolling, I was left shouting directions over the track to ensure this didn't happen.

This worked fairly well, giving us a range of expressions in our footage and conveying the progression in Roza's emotions throughout the song very well. Yssy fully understood what I meant by each direction and really brought the meaning of the song out in her performance. All of us were really pleased with the look of the footage, with us ecstatic at how strongly contrasted the red of the rose and the blue of her jacket are with the black backdrop.

Rose performance Close-up

Next up was the reshoot of our fire projection shots; we took extra care to re-adjust the setting on the camera so that the vibrancy and intensity of the colours of the flames come across well. We were all slightly unsure of which settings were best for this, so we asked for the help of our media technician. He showed us how to best capture the bright flames, while still ensuring that you can clearly distinguish Roza amongst the flames.

Old footage (left), New footage (right)

Good pieces of camera movement

 Again, we tried out camera movement on these shots, this time with much more confidence because we all had more experience behind a camera. Matt taking the initiative to place himself behind the camera once we had all of our static shots and trying out camera movement for the shot. Unfortunately, yet again these didn't turn out very well; whilst the majority of the camera movement wasn't what we wanted it to be, there were some hidden gems which, although quite short, were really nice and usable.

Since this was one of our final shoots Yssy's confidence in front of the camera had grown enormously and knew exactly what was required in these shots. When looking back at the footage, you get a real sense of self confidence and belief. As though Roza was putting everything that had happened behind her and was ready to stand strong on her own.

Confidence in performance

The close-ups were really difficult to capture, because we were unable to place the camera in front of projector or else the tripod would cast a large shadow over the fire projection. As well as being unable to zoom in close enough to get the framing right with the camera behind the projector. This lead to a bit of DIY engineering on our part. I managed to find secure positions for both the camera and projector, which gives us both; the correct framing for a close-up; and no shadow covering the fire projection.

Makeshift positioning for camera and projector to ensure correct framing

Shoot Day 19/11/14

Starting at 1230 and finishing at 1545, this was the shortest of all our shoots. Since we were so close to the end of our month of production, we thought it was time we tied off certain loose ends and got on with out promo shots. Our only set-up for the day was the White performance shots, with us having to film mid close-ups, close-ups and extreme close-ups. While Yssy got into costume, Matt and Harry set up the lighting and I prepared the camera.

 

We wanted to go for a "wet" look in these shots, keeping the shot very simplistic to act as our main performance shot throughout the video. Because the framing is so tight in this shot, Yssy had to ensure she enunciated each word, so that what she was singing was very clear.

Reviewing the footage

This was our most important shot, so we wanted to make sure there were no issues what so ever with our footage. Because of this, we would review the footage after each take and pin point anything that needed to be changed in lighting or in the way Yssy performed.

In the close-ups and extreme close-ups, it was so important for us to use the external monitor, because any small issues are blown up to huge proportions and become extremely easy to see. While shooting, I would be constantly looking at the monitor to ensure that there were no issues with the shot. It just made the whole process that much easier for us as a group.

                             

                                    Watching for any errors while filming

ECU on the monitor

This shot did require us to be on our toes constantly; the studio lights were so hot, that if we didn't frequently wet Yssy's hair and face, it would be minutes before she was dry again. Just before each take we would redo the water so all of our takes are consistent with one another, on one occasion I needed to redo it mid take.

Re-wetting Yssy's Hair

The footage from this shot turned out really well, showing Roza in her most vulnerable state. This footage gives us a really good base layer on which we can layer various emotions, through the use of our other performance shots.

Base layer for performance bed

The remaining time in the studio was used taking promo shots for our website and album cover. The white shots were good to do before our promo shots, because the set is virtually the same. I have no idea why, but as soon as we started taking the promo shots, I turned into what people stereo-typically see as a photographer. I was taking photographs from the strangest of angles, getting as close to the ground as physically possible, running from one area to the next and even giving her directions like "tease the camera".

Production from the Promo shoot

 

 Take away my odd personality change, I managed to get some really nice shots showing Roza in a variety of different ways and letting the fans see various elements of Roza's personality. Below are examples of the images capture.

Shoot Day 11/11/14

We had fully prepared ourselves for this to be the most challenging of all our shoots from a logistics sense; bringing in various people from outside our group, media and even the school. Prior planning was crucial if the day was to run smoothly. Luckily for us, everything went to plan, people turned up on time and we were able to stick to schedule.

Starting at 1345, Harry and I began to set-up for the club scene while Yssy and Matt were in lessons. Re-adjusting the lighting and gathering all of our props, these mainly being plastic cups and drinks. It wasn't long before our extras arrived along with Yssy and Matt. They were all asked to bring costume and prepare make-up before hand so we had a chance to brief them while Yssy and Matt got into costume, fortunately for us, everyone had done exactly as asked and we got straight on with the shots.

We wanted to create this whole club environment, something which can be quite difficult if you have a small number of people. However, we had planned the shot so that you get the effect of a full and busy club, whilst still only having 8 or 9 extras. We decided that the best approach to the shot was to have fairly close framing and have the camera constantly moving so that you get a sense of a club environment.

We tried out various scenarios to show Yssy and Harry as a couple:

Dancing with close framing

Meeting friends in club

The club scene's main purpose other than to introduce the couple, is to show the progression of the bad times in their relationship, made worse by Harry looking at and talking to other women in the club whilst the two of them are on a night out together.

We had one of our actors, Esma, walk past Harry whilst he is in the club. His eyes follow her as she leaves, inciting Yssy to make it known that she has seen this.

However, after looking at this, we thought that we could make the scenario much clearer audiences and leave much less for them to infer. So we did another take this time with Esma and Harry talking and laughing with one another right in front of the camera. This time, Yssy sees him doing this, confronts him in front of the camera and very visually shows the audience that she has had enough of him.


Yssy visually telling Harry to leave her alone

We were all happy with how the footage turned out and what all of the actions conveyed, so with it hitting 1545, we let all of the extras enjoy the rest of their afternoon.

Next on our list was the back shots, however since we had already completed them on the previous shoot, we began setting up for the Silhouette Dance shots. The dancer we had organised to be in our shot, Tasha, was scheduled to arrive at 1630, which was perfect for us as it allowed us time to change the set and clean up.

Filming the dance shots was a really easy process, having sent Tasha the track a couple of weeks before, giving her time to get a feel for the song and choreograph a piece for us. As soon as she arrived, we gave her a quick brief of what we wanted from her and had a look at what she had prepared; both seemed to match up very well, so we got straight on with the shot.

      

Initial takes of dance

After dancing through the song twice for us, we then asked for her to make her movements much more fluid, especially for the slower parts of the song where we intend to use a lot of cross fades and slow down the pace of a lot of our footage. Ever the professional, she got started right away, this time being much slower in her movements and bring out that fluidity that we needed.

Movement much more fluid and controlled

With all of us pleased with the dance sequences and Tasha happy with how she looks on camera, we moved on to our next shot; the drumming with water.

This shot was very simple to do, changing the lighting set-up to one we had programmed previously, setting up the drum kit and tarpaulin to catch any water and getting on with it. So that no water leaked through the skin of the drums, we wrapped them in cling-film. We did it in such a way that it isn't noticeable to audiences, only to those who know it's there and actually go looking for it.

Drums being hit while covered in cling-film and water

Matt was really keen to be the drummer and we had no objection, the rest of us took turns on camera and making sure the drum kit is topped up with water. Getting really good splashes from the drum kit required all of us to work together; with Matt having to hit it as soon as we stop pouring water, a few seconds after and all you get is a drum or symbol being hit.

Hair flick set

Our final shot of the shoot and probably Yssy's most enjoyable, was the hair flick shots. Matt got straight on lighting, setting up the turret light in the back and changing the lighting set-up, while Yssy got into costume and Harry and I changed the set. We had to pull the tarpaulin right to the other side of the studio, so that none of the water from this shot got onto the flooring in the performance space.

The footage we captured looked stunning, the way the water shoots off from Yssy's hair and then falling back into shot, glinting in the light. None of us had anything to say after the shots other than how much we loved the footage. The perfect way to end our shoot; on a high and nearly an hour ahead of schedule, finishing at 2000.

Hair flick footage

First Rough Edit

As a group, we were collectively editing as we went along, adding in new footage as we filmed it to see what does and doesn't work well together. Below is the our first rough edit of our music video, there are some sections of the video that are blank because we found it difficult to decide what should go there.



Once we reached this stage of our edit we asked for audience feedback from staff and to a certain extent it was what we were expecting. With the main points being:

- The video feeling very disjointed (i.e. nothing pulling all of the clips together)

- The concept shots seem very random, not being placed at moments in the video that make sense

- Our video being very Narrative lead, when we said from the start we wanted a loose narrative

- Our narrative not having a clear structure
- There being no shots pinning down our artist identity

These were things which we all had at the back of our minds but didn't act on because we felt we were so far along in the process. Although, it should probably ring alarm bells in our heads when we cant watch our video the whole way through without turning away.

Her advice was to start again on the edit, this time laying a proper performance bed before adding in any narrative or concept shots. She thought that we had captured some really good footage and that it was shot well, it was just the way in which we put it together that was letting us down.

The next thing for us to do is to start over with out edit, this time looking at the video as a whole, rather than individual sections.



Shoot Day 10/11/14

Considering the number of shots we were unable to complete in our last shoot, we opted for a much more conservative approach to this shoot; opting to complete our Ice smashing shot and the Rose performance shots. We in fact strayed slightly from our shootboard for this shoot; instead of filming all of our rose performance, we opted to to capture our back shots, because we though that would be a better use of our time.

Starting the shoot at 1230, the logistics of the shot weren't in our favour, with us having to send Matt back home to get the rose in ice, because we were unable to find a place suitable to store the ice for the 5 hour period between lessons starting and our shoot starting. While he did so, we began setting up for the shot, changing our lighting for our initial plans so that the light reflects off the ice best. Once Matt arrived with the ice, we were able to make the final adjustments to the lighting.

Three different cameras

We opted to use the GoPro, Canon 5D and the Canon Legria to shoot from three different angles, so we have a choice of shots, each with different image qualities and frame rates. Matt, Harry and I took charge of a camera, while Yssy got the pleasure of smashing the ice and covering herself in water.

                                                       Ice smashing on the Canon 5D (left) and Canon Legria (Right)

I'm really happy with the look of this shot; certain unexpected elements such as the water surrounding the rose turning pink, worked well and added to the artistic feel to the shot. As the ice smashes and all of the water splashes out, it reflects the light perfectly.

Next in the shoot was the montage of back shots, in which we build up a mosaic of meaningful words on Matt's back to reflect the progression in Roza's relationship. After cleaning up all of the water and ice from the last shot, Matt got his back straight into make-up, to give us a blank canvas to work on.

Applying make-up to Matt's back

Our planned collection of words to use

We planned our a multitude of words to write onto Matt's back to reflect Roza's relationship going from the good to the bad, starting with the word "Love" and ending in "Hate".








We made sure we had a corrector pen with us, so that if any words were mis-spelt  or the placing wasn't quite right, we were able to remove it and start again.

Me correcting a mistake on Matt's back

After writing each word on his back, we would get Matt to pose completely still for a few seconds, so that we could be able to place all of the clips in a sequence, showing a build up as the song progressed. The sequence looks really nice, starting with very timid, introverted poses, ending with a very strong pose and the word "Hate" in full view of the camera. We all agree that there is a nice progression, which will work well in the context of the music video.

Harry writing on Matt's back

Since we we were ahead of schedule by an hour by the time we finished this shot , we opted to test out the close-ups for the Rose performance shots so that we save time for when we want to shoot them. Ending the shoot dead on 1730, having captured all of our footage and practised for the Rose performance shots.

Shoot Day 03/11/14

This was our first studio shoot and we really felt it, starting at 0930 and finishing at 1745. Admittedly, things did take much longer than we had anticipated; with us not starting shooting until 1200. However, once we had started shooting, it didn't take very long to gather our footage, and as time went on we got much more comfortable being in the studio and working with our equipment.

Our first set up was for the silhouette performance shots, in which Yssy and myself had to try and match our actions without being able to see one another; eventually we got an idea of where the other person would be standing and what they would be doing at each point in the song, but it did take a large number of takes before this happened.

Messing up positioning (Turn on Captions)

Setting up the lighting for this shot did take us a while, not being helped by the fact that the retractable seats in the studio had been left out, which required us to wait for the site team to remove before we were able to properly get a look at how everything appeared on camera.

Even with the various delays and frustrations with this shot, I am really happy with the way in which these shots ended out; even managing to get some footage of Yssy walking into and out of the shadows, which looked absolutely amazing.

Due to all of us having lessons throughout the day, once we had got the footage, 2 of our team had to leave for lessons; meaning that it was left to Harry and I to take down the white back drop and prepare the projector for the fire performance shots. Yssy and Matt returned at 1425 and set off to prepare make-up, costume and finalise the set, whilst Harry and I went to lessons; all of us agreeing to be back in the studio, ready and set to go by 1550.

It hit 1550 and we were all up for getting on with our shots. Yssy had a good understanding of the meaning behind this set up and as such, took to performing with the fire projection in the background instantly. These shots are much more lively than the other performance shots, allowing Yssy to be much more physical and encouraging her to move around the set much more.

Yssy moving around set

Yssy encapsulated the meaning of these shots really well, so once we had some really good footage of her moving about, we opted to test some of the shots with the camera moving in a random fashion.  These however, didn't turn our quite as pleasant looking as we had initially expected; being quite shaky at times and at some points, cutting out part of her body while she was performing. I was the one responsible for filming the movement, because i was most confident behind the camera; however, now i know that this is something i must practise if we are to use camera movement in any of our other shots.

Image from footage captured with very dull colours and out
of focus

Upon reviewing the fire performance shots from the shoot, we became less and less fond of the quality of the footage. While a lot of the performance was great and it was what we wanted, the colouring of the footage was off and looked somewhat "stale" in a sense. The colours were very dull and weren't appealing; this to some extent being due to us using the Canon Legria HFG30, which didn't capture the bright and vibrant colours of the flame projection very well. In addition to us opting to use auto-focus, because we thought it would capture Yssy's movements better than us having to manually adjust it. Unfortunately this was bad judgement on our part, because the camera constantly re-focused due to the moving flames in the background. Meaning large sections of our footage were  out of focus.

We decided as a group, that it was best to re-shoot this footage; this time using the Canon 5D, which gives us a better depth of field and allows us to control more aspects of the images.

Unfortunately, by the time we had finished the fire performance shots, it was so close to the end of our shoot. This meant that we were unable to complete all of the shots we had planned for this shoot, meaning we had to reschedule them for another occasion. We were fine with this, as we had been quite ambitious with the shoot, without really understanding the practicalities of a shoot. A real learning curve for me in particular as i make adjustments to our current and future shootboards.