Filming the Music Video

On wednesday the 14th after college, Sam and I went and got clothing and props, before heading off to our actresses house. When we arrived there we got to work filming the introductory scenes for the music video. These involved the girl (Becky) looking up the band Betty on MySpace, before seeing that they have a gig coming up. When she reads this she jumps straight into the act of dressing up in an 'emo' fassion.

This took a while to film, as I had to film her dying her hair. This was one of the more impressive points about the video, is she genuinely dyed her hair black for the video. So after filming her on her computer, Sam and I went about filming her dying her hair black, trying to use the long time it took to dye to our advantage as we could set up some good camera shots. We shot lots of footage as this was one of the parts in our video that it would be impossible to shoot twice. The cost of the dye was around £12.

After this we filmed Becky putting on the more prominent items of the emo style. Showing the audience clearly what she was doing. We referred to the storyboard a lot. This was to get all of the shots, making sure we didn't miss any.

Today, on thursday the 15th, Sam and I arrived at the Junction at around 11 o'clock. We sat around for a while and discussed the storyboard. It was useful being there before the others as it allowed us to liaise about the storyboard and plans for filming and organising the (up to 25) people coming to be the crowd for our shoot.

Other diploma students began to arrive later on (nearer twelve o'clock). Sam and I were able to go and get the first peek of the studio where we would be filming and were quite pleased with the results. It was set up nicely and the venue looked professional. James set to work filming his music video which gave me and Sam time to look around and scout for other locations (that would work in the storyline of the video). By the time we had located these it was almost half past one and a fairly large crowd was gathered outside, waiting for us to tell them we could film.

Several people also helped us to go and find other people that may be able to appear in our film. Due to lack of time, we only gave each person Sam's model release form (contrary to our previous plan to give each person both mine and Sam's). Once we had those filled out it was almost time to film.

I went back in to the studio to find that James was just finishing up. One of the most difficult parts of doing this was keeping the crowd interested in the points where there was nothing to do and they were just standing around. During this time a few of them got bored and left. If this happened too frequently then we'd lose the crowd, thus ruining part of our music video. To prevent this from happening, we tried to keep at least one of us outside at all times to talk to people and not let them feel bored.

When James finished, I went outside and called the whole crowd over to the doors and into the studio. They gathered around the stage quickly and efficiently, making the procedure quicker and making Sam and my life a lot easier. We were able to get started very quickly. The crowd were perfect. They did exactly what we'd asked them to, they were lively and looked like they were having fun.

This left me with the task of making it look good. So far in the project, I have acted as the lead camera man, with Sam organizing everything, and both of us giving our input on direction and editing. I think that we have worked well in this team and have no complaints on how things have gone so far.

I feel I got some good camera shots, and managed to make it look like a real concert venue, with more people then were actually present. As well as getting effective music video-esque footage of the band in performance.

After we had finished filming in the studio, we left the main building and headed to the bar. Through a stroke of luck it wasn't locked and we were able to use it to film. This was great as it added a new depth to our video that we weren't sure we could get filmed, due to the bar normally being locked.

Filming here was easier, and we were able to get all the shots we needed relatively quickly as we only had a small number of people to organize and there was no one else waiting for their turn to film. As a result I was able to take more care in what I filmed, making it look better than before.

We filmed in a variety of locations today. Including the junction corridors, the studio, the bar and the girls' toilettes.