Filming - Day Four

Our fourth day of filming focused on the band shots of our video; where we gathered together friends who can play musical instruments and real musical equipment such as amps, a full drum kit and lamps to give the shots a much more professional and realistic feel. Once again we had a large variety of shots to cover as the band shots are present throughout the video and cover all range of tempos and intensities within the song. For this reason we used a large variety of equipment and techniques, such as three different lenses for the camera, allowing us to greatly alter the focus on shots to fit their purpose, such as a 50mm lens which allowed us to use a very shallow focus in order to draw focus to a certain object, leaving everything else in the shot blurred. We also used this lens in order to shift focus between actors and objects in the foreground and background with a great degree of success. The location chosen was our schools gym that I organised to be available for us to use for the afternoon, as we felt it reflected the high school feel of the video, and thus helps us reach out to our target audience as they can very much relate to the setting of the video, as well as the character of the protagonist.

An example of shallow focus used to shift focus between the lead guitarist and bassist.

Once again we realised the dolly would be an issue as the hard wood floor of the gym caused it to shudder whenever it passed over the gap between two planks of wood. In order to solve this we used some exercise mats that we found to run the dolly over, which gave us a much smoother shot that we felt worked very well. Below is a picture of the setup we used, and how we countered the problem of the uneven flooring.
We placed the band close to the middle of the hall in order to allow for shots to be taken from all sides which further allowed us to achieve a great variety of shots, which proved massively useful when it came to editing, especially during the intense part of the song where more shots were used in quick succession in order to reflect the frantic nature of the music as well as the frustration of the protagonist during his angry outburst.

The band performing in our chosen location.

We filmed a variety of shots on the day, which range from fast paced handheld shots, containing a lot of purposeful movement to be used in the solo or chorus, to slower, dolly and tripod shots to be used during the slower verses and build ups to the choruses and guitar solo.

We identified the guitar solo as a key part of the video as it is when the narrative climaxes and also carries the most intense feeling of the entire song, and is where our editing is at it's fastest, for which reason we took lots of shots of the lead guitarist performing the solo.

Shot of the lead guitarist performing the solo, from an off centre angle to mirror the solos frantic nature.

Overall the day was again successful, allowing for us to film all the shots we had planned on our storyboard for the band shots, as well as the remaining narrative shots of the protagonist running from his home to the location of the band shots. We now have everything we need in order to create our finished product.