Waking Up:
The first action we filmed was the main character waking up. We got Chris dressed in his pyjamas and then he laid in my bed. A tripod could not fit at the end of my bed so we had to kneel down and hold and the camera as steadily as we could. Throughout the filming we used the song as a template to how fast Chris should do things. For example, the beats at the beginning of the song were used to determine the rate at which Chris had to sit up. We filmed this several times. We then asked him to do the same thing again, but we changed the shot from a wide shot to a close up of his face, filming him opening his eyes.
Alarm Clock:
The first action to be seen in the music video is the main character switching off the alarm clock. For this, we made my bedroom dark, set the alarm then as Chris pressed the switch, we turned the bedroom light on. This took several takes to get right. We will place the button/light switch on a beat in the song. We used a static, close up for this shot and didn't take too long.
To the Shower:
Whilst he was still in his pyjamas, we then filmed his feet running across the landing. The position of my landing in relation to the stairs meant that we could use the steps to lean on. This creates a steadier shot:
Next to film was Chris grabbing the numerous props: towel, shower toy and the shower gel. To make this as interesting as we could, we set up the three objects in different places. The towel was positioned over the door and we filmed it using a static, close up shot. We also filmed a high and low angle of this as safety shots. The shower toy we placed on the bed and using a high angle we filmed Chris snatching it, this was the same for the shower gel except it was positioned by a sink.
Shower:
This "stunt" required a little more patience. As he was going to be stepping into the shower in his pyjamas and getting out wearing his work clothes we used the tripod to ensure the camera was in the same position the entire time. Firstly, we turned the camera on, positioned it where we wanted then asked Chris to walk into the shower holding the three props (match on action) and fully close the shower door. We then stopped recording, using the remote so that we did not move the camera. Then Chris got out, and quickly changed into a suit and stepped back into the shower. Using the remote again, we pressed record and Chris stepped out and stood in front of the camera and adjusted his suit then walked out. Whilst he was adjusting his suit, we had to pan the camera up so that we could see Chris' body as opposed to his feet. Unfortunately, the first time we did this, we panned up too far ruining the shot. This meant we had to repeat the entire process to ensure that the camera doesn't move during the costume change. Unfortunately, the next time was ruined due to the talent laughing. As the saying goes "third time lucky", the third attempt worked out just as hoped.
Wife:
The next shot we filmed was of Gabriella calling Chris for breakfast in the kitchen. This didn't take long as all we needed to do was shoot her walk to the door (with rolling pin in hand) and hold her hand beside her mouth and shake her head a little. Because there is no dialogue in our music video, body language is needed to tell the story. We were happy with her acting so moved on after a few takes.
Coming to Breakfast:To further help the audience know that Gabriella was calling Chris. we filmed two short sequences. One of Chris running down the stairs and the other of him sitting on the kitchen chair. The running down the stairs was filmed as a tracking shot. As Chris Ran down the stairs, Freddie stood along side them and followed him down like this:
The shot of him siting down was a simple static shot position on the chair, and then Chris entered the shot and sat down.
Watch Zoom:
The watch is a key prop to show that the character is late and sends him into the frenzy. To emphasize the time we decided to do an extreme zoom. However, in practise, the camera took a long time to focus. To resolve this, we decided to reverse the zoom in filming coming away from the watch. This means we can reverse the shot in editing and there will be less focusing and a successful zoom towards the watch.
Breakfast:
Despite our film schedule stating that we would get all of the indoor shots today, the breakfast scene was the last that we filmed this day. We were perhaps a little too optimistic and unrealistic with our schedule. We also didn't take into account that the shower scene may take a long time to film, nor did we think we would need several takes because of laughing etc.. On top of this, it began getting dark so filming after this scene would have meant that we got some dark, less successful shots.
For this section, we first filmed an over the shoulder shot from behind Gabriella (wife) of Chris finishing his breakfast then looking at his watch (we will put the watch zoom after this). He felt a little uncomfortable eating a non existent breakfast so we had to do this several times. Next to film was Chris spilling the orange juice down himself, to save a lot of time we needed this to be done in one take because of becoming messy. The shot of him drinking it then spilling it went well, however, as soon as it had been on him for a little while he burst into laughter. Although the first part was good, the laughing came a little too abruptly. We decided to shoot some unplanned close ups of his face and made him re-spill the orange juice (the already messy shirt wasn't in view) for some back up takes.
Because it had now become dark, we decided to stop filming for the day and order pizza. We hoped the pizza would bring us closer as a group and make our actor happy to film another couple of days. We were also apologetic for getting orange juice all over him. :)
Despite not getting everything we had planned done, I feel that the filming went very well with only a few mistakes.
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