Today was our first day of shooting. All of our group, including cast (Reece and Kelsey) met at Middlesbrough Train Station to travel to Saltburn, our first location. When we arrived we headed down to the pier, getting some establishing shots on the way.
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| Taylor and I capturing an establishing shot of the pier |
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| First proper shot of the day, figuring out how to have the actors enter the shot |
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| Filming the scene in which Brandon kills Jenny |
For this sequence we mostly used the tripod so the majority of shots were static, however we did used the shoulder mount for one shot in this scene. The tripod was used for all shots leading up to the scene where Brandon accidentally kills Jenny. The shoulder mount was used to follow Brandon when he is running away. This was used both because it would be easier and look better following him this way and because it adds a sort of panicked look to the film, which is how the character would be feeling.
The wind was noticeable in this scene as it was very heavy and effected actors hair and clothes, but it couldn't be helped and didn't make the footage look bad, so it was not a massive problem.
Once we had finished filming one the pier we headed up to the cliff top to film the next scene, where the wind was far worse than down on the pier as we got much higher up. While it was very inconvenient practically it actually worked well for the content we were filming. It made the scene look very intense which is what we wanted originally, so in a way the wind was in our favour.
In this scene Brandon has fled up to the cliff top and doesn't know what to do, he moves around, panicked but upset at the same time. Reece was directed very easily in this scene, which helped our filming greatly. As for the filming itself we decided to opt for the shoulder mount as our main equipment in the cliff scene because we wanted a lot of moving/tracking shots, which we were able to achieve as we wanted. Using the shoulder mount also achieved a similar effect from earlier on the pier, creating a panicked like feel to the shot as it was shaky and never quite straight (on purpose). The tripod was used in a few shots but only when we wanted a more focused look at what was happening. I suggested experimenting with canted angles for some shots and I personally think they worked well when used because it, like the shoulder mount, it almost displayed the characters panic and confusion through the actual film.
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| Setting up the camera for one of the final shots of the day |
10/11/15
Today, the second and final shoot for the music video. In this shoot we just had the final scene left, the interrogation scene. This is the scene which runs along side the pier scene and the cliff scene. This would also be the sequence in which Brandon would sing.
We arrived at 10 am to begin shooting. Unfortunately the room we needed to film in wasn't free until 11 am so we had to wait an extra hour before we could set up and start to film. We used this extra hour to discuss what we would be doing and how we would shoot it. Once the room was free we went and set up. This involved us taking down any posters, moving the majority of chairs into the studio and rearranging the table's position to make the room look as much like an interrogation room as possible. A large problem was the light coming in from the window so we had to find something to cover it. We used a large black photography backdrop to cover the window and block out any light.
Blocking out light was important as we were using a studio/film light to light the room like an interrogation. Having basically no experience with using these sort of lights before and having to figure out from scratch how to get it to look right made this very difficult but in the end the scene actually looked very good. It gave an orange/yellow colour which contrasted with the more dull looking scenes we filmed in Saltburn.
Once we had the room set up exactly as we wanted we discovered that due to a miscommunication between a member of the group and our actor, they would be turning up late. Not having Reece to play our protagonist (until 12 pm) meant that we had to work around the problem by filming scenes in which we only needed Kieran. This was very few scenes but it was more productive to get these done before rather than wait an extra hour doing nothing.
Once Reece did arrive we got straight on with filming. Unlike yesterday where our shot list was heavily followed, today was a bit more improvised. We did have a shot list but we decided that it would be better to film in the way we ended up doing which was filming Reece singing from 3 different angles which we could just cut between. These were not on the list originally and some shots which were on the list were not filmed because they were either seen as unnecessary or because of our time constraints.
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| Filming for one of the 3 singing shots we got of Reece |
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| Testing out different angles for filming Kieran writing in his notebook (this one wasn't used) |
11/11/15
Today was our first day editing the footage. We started by getting all the footage off onto our hard drives and sorting them into bins. For example I put my clips in separate folders depending on the scene they were from. I also renamed each individual clip as the shot type it was (and numbered them if there was more than one). This helped the whole process be much more organised and allowed our footage to be much more accessible.
Once we'd done this we moved onto the actual editing. Everyone in the class did their own edit since we would all need to be graded for our editing. This meant Taylor, Jess, Ben and I split up and began editing on our own. I personally found it fairly easy to get started as I already had an idea of what the video would look like. I started the video with establishing shots followed by the shot of the handcuffs (my favourite shot). I also decided to add text over the video, while not a usual music video convention it does sometimes get used and I thought it worked for our video as it felt more cinematic than usual music videos due to the narrative being a main factor of it. Lip syncing was very difficult to begin with as it has to be exact, even if its off by a very small amount its noticeable. This first day of editing was spent more experimenting with what I could do with the video editing wise.
12/11/15
Our day today started with looking into what the budget for our video would have been like and whether we would have went over or not. Everyone in the class had gone over budget (it was impossible not to) The second day of editing was much more organised and everyone just went and got on with it as they now had an idea of where they were going. The way I edited it together so far has the interrogation scene taking place along side the pier and cliff scenes as if they were a flashback of sorts. I've managed to edit together the first minute of the video and I'm happy with it so that section is complete.
