evaluation of the shoot day.

The day before the shoot day was probably more stressful than the actual shoot day. We had to make sure everything was prepared from costume to the set. We began the day going to the theatre department studios, where Elizabeth, who is in charge of costume for the theatre productions had left the hospital gowns. The first thing I noticed with the gowns were that they where one too big and two too plain, not exactly like the image I had sent Elizabeth. While it would be a shame that this small detail was not met as it better sells the overall look, but I knew I would just have to let it go and move on, as one of the biggest things I learn’t from my shoot last year is that you have to work with what you got, if you haven’t planned and prepared 150% you will never get the final vision you had, and this is one of the biggest lessons I believe I learn’t in this course accepting what you have and moving onto more important things. Everyday there is a music video shoot being done in the studios from the beginning of half term till the end of November. Therefore to make sure everything was set for my shoot the next day I created a check list of all the necessary set design elements and went through with the set designers and light

guy what we had previously discussed. When I went through the checklist with set designer she appeared in an uncertain way to have everything about but it was just a matter of collecting it all for tomorrow. When I spoke to the lighting guy, it become apparent that the rectangle of lights behind the band would just not be very intriguing. So I came up with having three pixel lights vertical pointing towards the camera behind the drummer, creating the dramatic silhouette we wanted but also giving us more control, so therefore for the drop we can turn on more pixelights as well I said I wanted flood lights either side, of the three vertical pixelights. A bit less confident as I thought I would be I got all my gear prepared for tomorrows shoot.

I woke up, picked my gear for the behind the scene and went to school. I wasn’t as nervous as I thought I was going to be, a wanted to maintain calm and collective throughout the day because for me personally I find it the most unprofessional when someone looses it. Once I found my group members we gathered all the band members as Georgia and I went round finding the last elements for our band performance. The bass they had laying about looked horrendous, it had these fire stripes on it, like something you would see on a kids toy truck not a modern indie rock band. Georgia and I

went on the search, we went to the music department where a student lent us his white bass that looked just beautiful. Once we got back to the studio we began setting everything up as the band members began to get the make up done and Hugo went over the lyrics. We began by bring in all the instruments drums, bass, piano and the microphone. I went t
hrough and made everything was symmetrical and well composed. Once we where done with that we did a quick rehearsal and then wetted the floor with a mop. Due to the room being black except the red pixelights, they would reflect off the floor making a cereal futuristic effect. Well this was super last minute it still relates back to our initial design elements for the band performance but now it was more intriguing. The red lighting made everything appear very sexy.

(the main girls make up developments throughout the shoot)

I was directing, but also helped Georgia with camera as she wasn’t very confident so I was happy to help. Directing is something I love but find difficult as you need to translate a concept you have in your mind into actionable language. Especially with actors you don’t want to make an actor feel insecure therefore something I have noticed is that you have to be very gentle when giving them feedback. However, this is the first time I properly enjoyed this role and I feel I communicated

wanted we wanted very accurately and the actors responded to feedback instantaneously. At most points I would have to take over the camera work for Georgia as she would struggle a bit, therefore I found multitasking quite difficult but it was super helpful to actually capture what I was directing as I could see how it was being portrayed on camera. We began by doing wides and then we would shoot mids and then closeups of each band member. After the first play through we realised that the song actually uses a guitar as well as synths, therefore we reshot the wide and gave Rory a guitar to have round his neck for the rest of the shoot. The band performance ran really smoothly however set us back on our schedule as there are so many different elements which we should of taken into account. Jess had been rehearsing the dance all morning with Cara, which Jess had been hiding from me as she didn’t wont me to be harsh on Cara. This was a big mistake and probably my biggest mistake of the day, not rehearsing the dance days in advance as this is a big element of our piece. The lighting didn’t looked as good as I thought it would the bars we had didn’t really appear well and weren't far enough apart.
After being very disappointed with the dance, we had lunch and then it was time for the narrative element. It took the set designer and with our help two hours to set up the narrative piece, which the wallpaper was nothing like I wanted, making the set design into some weird cross cultured display. I had printed off the images of the Japanese women just days before but now it was somewhat irrelevant as the culture in which the set appeared did not really make sense, it appeared more like our original set design of being a country club. Time was disappearing and it was a Friday so are actors would soon be leaving. We had three teaches and one actress. The set design took an hour longer then we prepared for and the teachers had to all get substitutes to cover their lessons. We tried to shoot it as fast as possible, which will show in the final result as we hadn’t got enough shots of the old men.

Overall I believe the most successful part of the shoot day was the beginning as everything was on schedule and everything looked how we wanted, as time got tighter throughout the day the attention to detail began to slip. I really wish the dance was would have looked better, I think we may have to do a reshoot when we do our pickup as we forgot to have the dancer in the container. I was happy with the narrative, however we didn’t get enough it, however do to the lack of time I made sure that we shot all of the narrative in slow motion as this would mean it would give us double the footage, and do to the lack of time we would have more to work with. I really enjoyed managing the actors they were very responsive and all except one teacher tried their hardest. I am really excited to work with the narrative when it comes to the editing as I have the VFX shot to work on also I have it all in slow mo so I can get quite experimental. That might be how we save the dance by going super whacky artistic like an MTV promo kind of thing, like inverting the colours and have only blues or something like that. When it came to it the production group were really professional to work with only my media group seemed a bit uninterested at points which put off some actors and made them feel awkward. Other than that we worked well together and I am excited to see how the footage came out.