Filming the band

Today we filmed the band at the youth centre in Bishop's Stortford. We decided to do this at around 7pm as we knew it would be darker and therefore our lighting behind the drummer would look more effective. We set up the mise en scene whilst the band prepared to play the song by moving the microphone stands and wires so that they would fit into our shot. We wanted the mise en scene to look low budget as when we did the audience research into what they wanted to see, this is what they said. To do this, we used the black sheet we borrowed from the drama studio and hung it from pipes behind the band and found a white cage to put up to add to the punk image. We used an industrial work light and put it facing the drummer so that the camera would not pick up just the light, and the band would be seen. We asked the band to wear a shirt with skinny jeans and maybe a tie or jacket so that it would fit in with the style of punk and I think it looked very realistic as they already have an edge, we just added to their look, we also asked them not to do much with their hair and to make it messy. Using two cameras meant we could get two different types of shot per playing of the song, therefore we only needed the band to play the song twice in order to get four different camera angles.
Overall the day went well and next lesson we will upload this footage to the mac's and hopefully start editing.

Filming

There are quite a lot of short clips that we nneeded to film for our video. We have been doing this over the last couple of days, mainly in the drama studio at school, this has worked really well and i am pleased with the lighting.
We havnt quite finished filming everything, and have still got to do the main performance parts, but we have already started uloading and editing so we dont have so much to do all at the end.

Filming Jasmine

Today we filmed Jasmine for the shots with the 'gimme gimme' lyrics which is sang three times within the song, and as it amplifys the lyrics it is quite important to the video. I think this went well and because Jasmine is in our group, she knew what we wanted to do to how we wanted it to look, meaning we got the shots we wanted. We made sure that the drama studio would be private for Jasmine by making signs to go on the doors and checking there was no one in the dressing room for when she wanted to get changed. To make sure the writing would show up on camera we did a test on my arm using two different pens and decided on the thicker one, I then wrote onto Jasmines back, stomach and arm. We will upload these clips as soon as possible and start cutting them and putting them in time with the lyrics.

Filming with the band

I rang Sam one of the band members today to arrange a good time for us to film them performing, we agreed on Thursday 5th as it is when they have their weekly band practice and so was an ideal opportunity for us to film as they would be together already.

Problems with uploading HD to a Mac

Due to being one of the first groups to upload to the Mac's in the AVCHD format, I tried using the software that came with the camera but it would not load on the Mac as this is how I would have uploaded at home, so I had to find out how to upload without the need for the desired software.

As the HD camera saves to an SD card the clips could not be 'captured' as we would have done previously with the school cameras. Instead by using Final Cut Express and going to File > Log and Transfer and then selecting the clips from the cameras memory and queuing them up, all the clips could be uploaded to the Mac and directly to the sequence on FCE in perfect quality.

Summary of filming the first scene

We filmed the first section of our music video on Monday, this went well due to the whole group pulling their weight and all having an input in to the organisation before hand and also during filming, with Clarice and I setting up the scene, and then while I set up the camera equipment and tested the it with the lighting Jasmine and Clarice dressed the numerous actors we had for the shot. Setting up consisted of clearing Clarice's dinning area moving the table and chairs out of sight and removing anything from the room that could get broken. We then placed a few chairs around the room, especially the armchair as it was to be the focus point as it would be where our "goon" would be sitting and so this had to be placed accordingly for the shot. For mise en scene we placed alcholic drinks made up of empty bottles filled with different strengths of tea to achieve realistic colouring and bottles of beer for some of the actors to drink to keep an effective feel to the shot seeing as we were filming during the afternoon.

Camera equipment consisted of my Panasonic SD-10 with a 0.43x Wide Angle lens. The lighting then consisted of blacking out the windows using spare curtains from the drama studio, a strobe light set up behind the camera to give the impression of the party that we wanted and the built in light on the camera to draw focus to the subject. The actors were arranged so that I could still walk through what seemed to be a crowd and still be able to film the vital sections of the shot. Jasmine and Clarice featured in the shots and because of this could give instant feedback on anything that wasn't working from a different perspective. This meant that we got 16 shots, many of which contained usable footage for the important first few seconds of our video.

Evaluation of filming the party scene

We filmed the first part of our music video on Monday, althought it only takes a few lines of the song we had to film a lot as will be made faster. Also as we were using actors we wanted to get a few takes and pick the best.
From research we new what people at the party needed to wear to fit into the style of music, we brought some of these with us, to get people to wear. These were some of our own and some we borrowed from school. For exapmple jackets, skinny jeans and leather.
We also put dark make up on females as well as giving people messy hair.
Although there was one character which had to look different, we did this to emphasise his part.
We used old alcoholic bottles and boxes for props, and a big black sheet for blocking out light. This didnt work very successfully, but we worked around it.
Overall i think the filming went well, we got a lot of good footage ready for editing.