Filming- 15/01/13

We have now completely finished filming. Yesterday we got our group and band together to do the performance element of our video. We started off just experimenting with the lights in the room we were using, and making sure we had enough lighting and a consistent setting to film in. We then got to work filming. We organised our band so they were in the best possible places, and began to film, however we had a problem with our original guitarist, as he was not a convincing guitarist at all, but were lucky enough to have another person on hand who took over the post. After that, filming went quite smoothly, and we got a lot of takes done and completed filming fairly quickly. We worked together well, taking it in turns to do filming and technical work, such as turning on music and controlling lighting, and made sure to discuss things and take others opinions into account. 

Quick Update: 08/01/13

After the christmas break, we're back and preparing for editing. As a group we have spoken about things we need to do before we can film. We have already filmed our narrative, so that is no longer an issue, and now we have to re-film our performance. The reason for this is that the footage we got was of a poor quality, and we lacked a drum element. In order to combat this problem when we re-film, which will be on the 15th of this month (one week form now) we have come up with several ways to combat this problem. As our school music department will not allow us to use a drum kit and we cannot  seem to find one which we can use we have decided that we will either have an electric drum kit, which we think a friend of ours may be able to lend us, or use instruments from the game 'Rockband'. 

Plans to re-film

We decided as a group that we definitely need to re-shoot the performance element of our video, and will be doing this sometime in January. We are unsatisfied with this footage, and feel we could do much better. We also had issues when it came to getting access to a drum kit, which is something which we need to work on for our re-shoot, as we could not film any of the drum parts due to this problem. At current we are toying with the idea of an electric drum kit rather than a traditional drum kit. 

Filming- 16/12/12

We filmed the entirety of our narrative today. We went down to our local park and did full make up and paint on our main character, and then began filming. We got straight on with things, and overall things went very well and we got a lot of footage in a relatively small amount of time. At first, filming went slower, but as our cast got more confident it got much quicker until the final scene which required more work. We also had to film two alternate endings, as within our group we are in disagreement on how it should end. One ending has the living statue waiting at a bus stop, and the other is him watching  another girl, though the majority of our group prefers the first, due to it’s quirkiness and less seriousness, which means it will contrast the song. 

When we were working, I took experiences from last years directing. I ensured that I kept watch of things both in front of me and through the screen, and to be vocal about things which needed to be changed. When one person in our group felt change was necessary, we spoke as a group to decide if this was best. 

Filming- 13/12/12

We set to work filming the performance element of our video, however we encountered many problems. Firstly, we could not find a room which we could use, despite being told before hand we could use said room today at an earlier date. This lead to us to spending quite a while trying to find a room which we could use, delaying filming. When we got a room, it was not exactly ideal; the lighting was dull and we're unsure of how this may, or may not, have effected the quality of our filming. Asides from this, filming went well. We got a fair amount of footage, and our actors performed well. We took on the things we learnt from observing/directing the year ten band earlier in the year and as a result I feel we must have better footage. We made sure to be calm about how the band progressed, accepting that they would not get things right straight away, and that each shot would be better. We only used one camera in each shot, changing where it was in each shot, which was not ideal, and I definately think that if we were to re-shoot, using multiple camera's would definately be something to think about. We also did not use markers to sync up our footage, which would have been useful, as syncing the footage will be much more difficult now.