Filming - Day one

This post is about our first day of filming, which took place on 29/12. On this day of filming we were taking footage of the shots of the singer singing, which were originally designed to be straight on shots in very bland settings, ideally with shallow focus. On the day, we realised that using the 50mm f/1.8 lens we could achieve a very shallow focus, with good telephoto footage, and use the focus to create interesting effects.

We discovered that focusing the lens at a shallow depth of field in front of lights or LED's, the lights showed up as circles in the picture, which looked great and we decided was an aspect that we would want to include in our production. We set up the filming set in my cellar, having the D5000 on a tripod at about eye level on one side of the room, with the subject, the singer (me) half way down the room with christmas lights arranged and stuck to the wall on the far side. Due to the random colour arrangement of the lights and also the colour of the wall, we decided the footage would look better if we filmed it in chromo-tone. This allows for a contrasting set of shots tone-wise, as well as cancelling out the garish colours which were in shot before.

The pictures below shows our set up of the filming. We had to make full use of the space provided to A) get telephoto footage of the subject as to make it look more professional, as well as B) getting enough space between the subject and the lights in ratio to the space between the subject and camera, as to make the focus shallow enough to make the christmas lights appear as circles on camera. We also needed to arrange lighting properly; we had one overhead light and this provided enough light in shot to make it appear bright enough to come out properly on screen. It also provided enough base-light as to not make the shot appear too high contrast, and bringing out enough of the subjects face which the directional light did not. The directional light we used to put enough lighting on the singer's face, as this is the focus of these shots and to not light it properly would have a negative impact on the composure of the image.


The picture below is a screenshot of the footage we took. We decided to have the subject on the left hand side of the frame, as the negative space served for composition as well as allowing a place for the out of focus lights to take up in the frame.


Overall, the day was a success, as we recorded quality footage and we became more familiar with the camera we are using as well as the lenses, and so we are better prepared for future days of filming.