Account Of Shoot Day (2nd November)

     On Tuesday 2nd November was our shoot for our pop music video. The day before we placed the set in the studio, gathered all the costumes, collected all our props and painted the set. This planning reassured me when walking into the studio on the Tuesday morning knowing that everything was carefully planned and placed were it should be.

    We gathered the cast and crew and got everyone into their fitted costumes and started rehearsing with them to make them less nervous when it would come to shooting. We also told them our plans for the day so they knew when and where to be on the set throughout the shoot. Before we started shooting we looped the track so that our cast we were going to use first (Tunde & Ben) could practice and go over what they had rehearsed. When we began to start shooting they felt uncomfortable with the camera. After a while, we managed to get them to relax by reassuring they were doing a good job, which they certainly were. It was great to see them go from strength to strength from then on in.

  As we needed only Ben & Tunde in the morning we let our leading cast member (Georgina) out and told here to come back to the set at a specific time. We had scheduled a trumpet player to arrive at 11:30 to shoot some abstract shots of him against a green screen. And arriving at 10:50 was Connor, who was going to be doing a contrasting dance against a green screen. So we needed to get as much use out of Tunde & Ben as possible. By 10:20 we had managed to get wide shots, mid shots, and close up shots of the dancers (Ben & Tunde). So we had an extra half hour to use Ben & Tunde. We decided then to do more whacky shots, which involved doing extreme close ups and panning around the dancers. After getting plenty of interesting footage of Ben & Tunde Connor arrived in his costume.
  
     As a last minute idea we gave him a cane, which we asked him in some way to involve in his dance. As this footage we were going to shoot of Connor was going to be shown in a silhouette we asked him to make his dancing as large as possible so that it would show up in silhouette. To show Connor's characters status we shot up at him. We managed to get a nice amount of shots showing Connor dancing. A few of my favourites included; A close up of Connor's feet because it is energetic, which relates to the music. Another shot, which was one of my favourites of the day was when conner by mistake threw his cane across the studio. At the time it was a mistake but when we come to editing we thought how in post-production we could reverse it to create an illusion.

     As we finished with Connor the time was 11:25. We decided to have a 5 minute coffee break as we all had been working hard. at 11:30 we got back to the set and Miles (our trumpet player) was in his costume with his trumpet. We gave him the track the day before so he knew how the tune goes and he knew when to play. We shoot Close Ups, Mid Shots and Wide Shoots. To create a variety of shots we had him standing facing to the left, right and straight on. As this would work well in silhouette. Everything we shoot with miles was shot in front of the green screen.

       After we had breaked for lunch we set up the set for the afternoon, which consisted of wide stairs and large white columns.

 We then started to shoot the opening sequence of the track, which involved the Backing Dancers. We had choreographed them earlier on so they knew what they were doing and when in the track. We did a tracking shot for this section. We focused up on the backing dancers and then tracked forward to reveal Georgina. This was possibly one of my favourite shots of the day. But was took a lot of time to get right.

   After this we had to shot Georgina singing the old fashioned sections of the track. This was quick to shot as Georgina was comfortable with the camera. We then had one more tracking shot to do, to show Georgina walking across the set. This was particularly difficult as we had to track at the right speed so she would stay in the right place in the frame. 

When finished shooting this tracking shot it was a wrap!