A2 Music Video: Film Session Three

The weather was a bit poor today again, but no snow!

Garden:
We decided to film the garden scene first to make sure that the weather didn't get worse. The first part that we filmed was Chris entering the garden. This was done with two separate shots. One from the outside of the garden where we used a slight pan to follow him into the gate. Then another from the inside of the gate for match on action. Again this was a pan from the gate to halfway across the garden. After this we had a static shot of Chris running through the washing line. We then used POV and ran through the clothes with the clothes. Then we did another track shot in front of Chris following him through the clothes. We plan to cut these together to add variety. We then filmed one more shot of him running across the rest of the garden and down the little gap beside my house with a bra attached to his head.

After this, we set up the camera from outside the house facing a fence (he had just ran towards this.) This was a static wide shot of the fence where the audience can watch Chris jump over the fence with a bra on his head the run off screen. We are planning to join this to the street shots we filmed yesterday.

Office:
The first part that we shot for the office scene was the CCTV viewpoint. Typically, a CCTV is positioned in a high place filming a high angle. Due to the limited space in my room, we used the bed and bedside table for the height. The dots in my diagram show where there camera covered, to shoot this wide range, I slowly rotated from left to right, then back again following Chris as he walked to the chair and sat down. In editing, we plan to make the image grainy, black and white and add some digits. This shot was also used to film Chris singing the lyrics to Vampire Weekend. Although we had planned what parts we needed Chris to sing along to, we asked him to lip sync to two chorus' and a verse to be sure. We thought catching him singing on CCTV added to the humour that our target audience wanted. The only difficulty was for me to keep the camera in the same place for the number of takes we had to do.

We had planned to show Chris putting a "Vampire Weekend" CD into the laptop so to do this, we had the CD ready on the desk and held the camera above the CD. A high angle was used. Similarly to this show, we filmed a close up of Chris turning up the volume on the laptop indicating his enjoyment.

The next part that we filmed was Chris throwing paper up in the air, and using the paper as a transition. We set the camera up using the tripod. Freddie held a piece of paper big enough to cover the lens above the camera and as Chris threw the paper up in the air, Freddie covered the lens with the paper. We stopped recording at this point. This process took a few attempts because the paper didn't spread like we wanted. After we had got this right, Chris wore a bandanna and stood on the desk with a guitar. We placed the paper back over the lens, pressed record and moved the paper to below the camera to reveal Chris rocking to the song. After editing, it should look as though a piece of paper Chris has thrown, floats over the lens and as it comes down, he will be on the desk playing and singing along.

The next part we filmed was Chris playing the guitar and singing along, unfortunately, he cannot play the instrument. We decided that this didn't matter too much because the image of him dancing along, singing and guessing how the guitar should be played was much more fun and entertaining. The most of our video is supposed to convey energy, humour and fun so the fake guitar playing added to this nicely. All of the guitar shots we filmed were hand held and a bit shaky to give a more natural, fun image. We used a wide shot for Chris playing to see the whole of him, a close up of the guitar as he strummed it and we also had a shot from the fret board, looking down the guitar. This section was fun to film and we hope that the variety of shots will convey energy.

The final part we filmed in the day was the office workers reactions. This was easy to do as we only needed short shots. This was quite fun as we used ourselves for the talent. I held the camera whilst Freddie popped his head out from behind a board. The board was used as an office desk divider, his expression showed excitement and shock towards Chris. This was a hand held medium shot of Freddie's Face. Freddie then filmed a slight high angle of me entering the room with a smile on my face. I held some "documents" in my hand to help the audience identify me as an office worker. I feel that filming went really well today although it was getting a bit dark toward the end of the office scene, we hope that this didn't affect the footage.

Window Pan:

We waited for it to get dark to film the last part we needed which was a pan from one window to another. We needed it to be dark because we were using lit Windows to show where the character was in the house. Freddie was outside with the camera whilst I was inside, the window was partially open so that we could hear each other. I turned my bedroom light on and when Freddie shouted "GO" I turned the light off. When he shouted "GO" a second time, I turned the bathroom light on. Between the two "Go's" Freddie filmed a close up of the bedroom window, then panned to the bathroom window. This worked well.

Issue:

We have completed filming apart from one shot. We had planned to shoot Chris entering the "office" building. We have planned to use the school for this but because it is half term, we were unable to do this. Fortunately, we have planned a re-shoot day in December in case we need more footage so will shoot this then.