The 14th was my first day back in lesson after half-term and weeks holiday. On return , we made the constructive decision to re-shoot all of our studio based footage as we felt our previous shots lacked technical quality and we found certain continuity errors in terms of shot transition (our previous footage is linked in an earlier post). From these errors and lacks in continuity and quality, we made various changes to the mise en scene of the shots. Firstly we changed our background from a plain white, to the use of a green screen, as it provided a more solid basis for technical editing. The main reason for this is that the white background was very creased when we were editing the shots, and this led to inequality issues between shots and throughout transits. Another of our reasons for re-shooting was the costume chosen, we chose to revert to a smarter yet casual option, and dressed our subject (Mitchell Banks as Dappy) in a suit jacket, blue shirt, denim jeans and a hat which maintained iconography with Dappy’s personal attire, and this outfit was used throughout the video to maintain consistency.
I feel that being present I added an extra element to the team, as they conveyed difficulties with setting up and filming whilst I was away. As a group we began by re-arranging the rooms furniture in order to allow room for shooting with a green screen, which we assembled shortly after. We only had a relatively short period to film, due to room availability issues, so we began filming promptly and concisely. Within our studio-based footage, we focused on the opening 15 seconds of the video, as well as incorporating emphasis on certain iconic elements further on in the song. Personally, I took the role as a second cameraman, assisting Dan Russell in keeping continuity and balance the camera when using moving shots i.e. pans. In the second half of todays lesson we moved into the Mac room where we began combining our shots, and editing within the programme ‘’After Effects’’ which Dan Russell, and I took leading roles in. Dan possessed a greater technical aptitude, so he led procedures involving things such as editing the shots replacing the green screen with a black fade, and the cutting and placing together of edited shots. I took a creative lead and led procedures including the timing of cuts. As a group we had chosen to mimic a group of shots from a video by the artist ‘Labrinth’ for the song ‘Earthquake’ featuring Tinie Tempah, in which a serious of pans are used to establish Labrinth as the videos key subject, and I felt that I possessed the right creative imagery to help in this stage. Luckily, we managed to obtain enough footage on this day to eliminate further need for studio-based shooting, and this allowed us focus on locational-based shots on further lessons, and this led us into planning filming for our next lesson, Wednesday the 16th, which we planned to film on various locations in Telford town.
On the 16th, I woke up to quite adverse weather conditions, but as a complete group, we ventured out into the cold of Telford town centre to get the remainder of the footage we needed to complete the video. From our initial location report, we ended up shooting on 3 locations, 2 were rooftops of the ‘Cherry Tree Car Park’ and ‘Lemon Tree Car Park’ respectively, and a grass verge near the local Park inn. The Park Inn was our second hand choice due to administrations issues with shooting at the Telford Plaza forecourt. This was due to a lack of prior contact between the plaza officials and ourselves. The main reason we chose to use a number of locations, as well as studio footage, was to add variation thus enticing the viewer into watching the whole video.
Our first location was the Park Inn grass verge, were we shot numerous sequences of the whole songs, as well as various key shots such as the choruses. There was also a large group of containers on the site, and we felt this would an urban element to the shots, so we shot a further run through next to one of these. Next we moved on to our first rooftop, at Cherry Tree car park. As with the grass verge, we shot various run through’s, and key shots such as the choruses so as to give us more footage to choose from. We were then asked to leave due to the car park being in use, but the shopping centre staff were very helpful, and offered to close the top floor of the ‘lemon tree car park’ for us too finis filming. This ended up being my favourite setting as the scenery and skyline gave a spiritual feeling to enhance the meaning of the song.
