Construction Post 1: Week 1 Production

In our first week of production, we completed the filming for our music video. 

Overview of the week:

I think that week 1 of production was very successful.

Our whole cast

We managed to get all of our shots filmed, including multiple takes and multiple versions of shots - different angles, camera movements etc. - to allow us a lot of choice when we got back to the editing suite. I am very happy with how our footage turned out; I believe our performances were all highly energetic, and our shots all look very colourful and befitting to the image of our band which we are trying to promote.

Although filming intensively for a week was exhausting, we still had a lot of fun working together to finally film our creative ideas that we have been planning for weeks.

We also learnt a great deal about the logistics of working on a film shoots. As well as gaining lots of experience working with the technical kit, such as the camera and the studio lighting, we also learnt a lot about co-operation, problem solving, how to make efficient use of our time, and how to keep the energy and morale up for a whole week.

Each of us took equal responsibility in the different areas of the shoot, including filming, lighting and performing, and shared these roles equally.

Overall, although at the end of the week I was very tired, I felt that it had been a very rewarding and enjoyable experience, and I was proud of Noa, Emilio and I for managing to complete the filming of our music video.

My contribution:

During the first week of production, I:

• Filmed a good proportion of the music video, including the Alice in Wonderland and Sergeant Pepper set ups. 

• Did the lighting for a lot of our set ups before filming.

• Performed in the music video as the band's guitarist, Hugh Tyler.

• Directed the other performers to try out new actions; e.g. gestures and facial expressions for Casey to do whilst singing, create 'signature moves' for the extras that related to their characters.

Shaggy's (played by Ray Baker) signature move

• Helped choreograph some extra dances moves for the Singing' in the Rain set up.

• Briefed our extras, letting them know what to do and all the health and safety information
• Backed up a lot of our footage onto our Mac and hard drives, and formatted the camera afterwards to wipe the SD card for a new shoot. 

• Helped keep up morale by providing food and drink to shoots. 

Challenges we faced and how we overcame them:

Our first challenge was to organise our ensemble of extras in the first day of our shoot, which took place on the Saturday. With this number of extras to deal with, we had to make sure they all knew what they were doing, how to behave and any health and safety notices so that no-one would end up injured. We kept control over our cast by giving them all a quick briefing in the morning. This meant that they all knew the rules of the studio, health and safety hazards they needed to be aware of and what they would be required to do in their performance, so that when we began shooting, we could be confident that everyone would be able to behave professionally and be confident in what they should and shouldn't be doing. We also had snacks, music and frequent breaks to keep their morale and energy high. On reflection, we had no major problems from our cast; they all danced energetically and behaved very well whilst in the studio.

Secondly, we had a problem creating the infinity effect on our cyclorama, as there was an obvious crease where the curtain on the back wall met the floor, resulting in a dark line behind the performers. We attempted covering the crease with sheets of white A3 paper, a method that worked during our Echosmith remake for our prelim. However, we realised that this effect only worked when the lighting was over exposed and white so as to blend the gap between floor and wall, whereas in our more colourful, less exposed lighting set-ups, the paper was very obvious and the gaffer tape used to stick the paper down shone in the lights, resulting in a tacky unpleasant result. We decided that the best option for our music video was to take away the paper and leave the crease. We decided this because it did not matter to our music video aesthetic if it was obvious that our video was shot in a studio, as our handmade props and set design already display a very stripped back, raw image.

Our cyclorama

Another problem this challenge created was that laying down the paper to see if it looked good took up a large amount of our scheduled shooting time for the Sergeant Pepper set up. This was luckily easily resolved because we had scheduled a longer period of time later on in the week in which to catch up on shooting this set up, and luckily this did not delay our shoot.

Our main challenge we had to face happened mid way through the week, where a substantial amount of our footage got corrupted whilst we were backing it up onto our hard drive. This meant that we had to schedule reshoots for three major set ups, that being Singin' in the Rain, Alice in Wonderland and our handheld band shots. Fortunately, we had prepared for a technical issue like this to occur and had planned to finish our shoot on Thursday, leaving Friday through Saturday clear if we needed any back-ups. Therefore, we scheduled reshoots for our missing footage on the Friday and Saturday, deciding to shoot our two themed set ups on Friday and our band shots on Saturday, when Tom was completely free. The reshoots went very well, and we decided to make the most of them by improving on the ones we shot before. For instance, we choreographed a lot more interesting dance moves for our Singing' in the Rain sequence, taking more inspiration from Gene Kelly's dancing in the original movie.

We were not 100% how the corruption occurred, so to make sure it didn't happen again, we agreed to back up our footage onto two hard drives from then on so as to have two back ups if one transferral did not go well. We were also more careful not to touch the hard drive when it was backing up so we didn't disturb the process, and made sure to review every piece of backed up footage before we formatted our SD card.