As we changed our plans very last minute al of our months of planning went out of the window. This made our shoot day very spontaneous, however, I think that this allowed our imagination and creativity to flow freely. We started off our shoot day by deciding on make up and appearance that the two twin girls, who were going to be our band and performance element, would look like. Alex did the make up and hair and I helped create the set in the studio. The first scene we shot was coincidently the first scene we have decided to use in our opening introduction. We constructed the scene by pushing two sofas together but we did not want it to appear this way, we then placed all sorts of girly items, such as; flowers, petals, fairy lights, pink netting and covers over the sofa in order to disguise them. We were aiming for our set to appear quiet abstract and intimate. We then decided to shoot some footage of each girl singing individually, this was to make sure we had as much footage as possible to when it came to editing, we did lots of variations of shots here, all of which we came up with on the day. One shot that I had been inspired from avatar and Pearl Harbor, was to have the sheets hanging from above and to have the girls walking in between the sheets while miming to the words. This didn’t come out how I had expected it never the less I was still pleased with the outcome. After this shot we shot the final shot of the day; the performance element of our pop video. This, like all the other scenes was to look quirky and unusual, including a sense of false realism. To create this, we place the two original sofas together, this time on their sides and places the two girls inside it, almost like a creator, we followed similar steps that we did to complete the first scene but this time adding a keyboard allowing this to show our band element.
Throughout the shoot day we divided the jobs up equally between us this also included divided the filming equally between us. The filming was done using Sony NX5 cameras.
The lighting for all our sets was consistent all the way through the shoot, we kept it the same even when we decided to change the sets, the reason for this was because we were planning on not having continuity in our editing we had consistency in our lighting instead, allowing us to have more freedom with our style of editing. Our lighting was a lot of flashing lights changing colors on the subjects, to add to the lighting, the night before our shoot I downloaded lots of music visualizations, originally we were just thinking on using the default visualizations that came with itunes but decided that there was a high chance that these would be recognized to decided to find out own. We projected this onto the set making the lighting more unusual especially when it was on the skin of our cast also appeared particularly interesting when it was on the white clothing we had placed the twins in for this very reason.
Most of our shots were close up or mid shots, this was to keep the feeling of intimacy a common theme throughout the video. We also used hand held camera for a lot of our footage, this was to make you feel as though the audience is there or much more involved, this particular technique was used in the thriller ‘Cloverfeild’ to make the audience feel as though they were part of the scenario, one we adapted for our video. A good example of this is the opening shot were the two twins were laying entwined next to each other and we lay the camera on its side to make it look like a third person in the bed.
We had many problems in the planning towards our shoot, and our plans all fell apart at the last minute when all our cast dropped out. This meant that we either needed to recruit new cast quickly or come up with a totally new idea; we did the second of theses. We came up with this idea of shooting a very abstract video with a very un real feel to it. We aimed to achieve this by using lots of different colors (especially in our lighting) and keeping close, tight shots to confuse the audience, once you use a wide shot they are able to distinguish more. We had always had the two twins planed as cast for our video and they did not drop out, so instead of them playing the role of the band they became not only the band but also the entertainment element to. Because of our plans failing we had no call sheet to refer to on the day of our shoot, this meant that everything that was shot on the day was decided on the day leaving us with no room for error but lots for imagination. Although we had no guidelines to follow, we didn’t really come across any major problems on the shoot day, which was surprising as little planning was done.
One shot that I fee work really well was one were we almost created a tent out of the sheets, we stuck the camera into the tent through a gap in the tent, this was risky as we coul not actually see what we would be filming through the camera, although everyone but the camera man could see the footage on a screen that was linked up to the camera. The thing I like most about this shot was that we projected the animations on to the side of the sheet, because they were white sheets you could easily see the projection and some was even going through the sheet and onto the girls, this added a really nice effect and added almost a fantasy element to the video especially.
Another shot that I was particularly proud of as a shot was the first shot we filmed, I know that it is typical that your first footage is often not your best as you are getting used to the camera and just getting started but I felt it really captured the feel of the video well and was very happy with the mise-en-scene. In the opening and final scenes we shot the blonde twin on the left and the brunette on the right, this changed for all the footage in between the beginning and end as we did not particularly want either one of the them associated with good or bad so to make sure of this we regularly change positioning. In the opening scene we had the blonde one in the first hotspot and the brunette twin in the third, this lead the eye nicely around the shot and I think had the brunette twin been situated in the second hotspot it would have seem a little over crowded. Furthermore, having the brunette twin in the third hotspot enabled us to pan nicely between the two girls with an equal gap so that the audience could focus their attention on other props in the scene.
One shot that was apparent, would not work as well was the slow motion throwing shots. In theses shots we individually placed the girls onto a sheet (lying down) we then got people to help us hold the sheet while pulling it tight and throwing the girl upwards towards the camera, which was filming from above, all of this was filmed in slow motion. The reason I don’t think this shot worked as well was because we had a lot less control over the girl when we threw here. Also because we were using tight close up shots she often left the frame. Moreover, being thrown into the air is a very difficult task to pull off while wearing a dress and still appear graceful. This meant that in order to capture what was happening we also got hands of the people who were holding this sheet. After looking at the footage, there is a lot of this particular scene that will be useless but I think that if we were to crop it slightly then it may become good footage that is workable.
In conclusion, considering the situation we found ourselves in and so close to the shoot day we did a very good job of not only coming up with a entirely new concept but also managing to capture all the footage leaving us time to capture footage that was extra giving us as much materially to work with when it comes down to the editing process. I really thought the day went well, I was especially please that the girls had learnt their lyrics and their overall appearance fitted well with what we were attempting to achieve.
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