BEHIND THE SCENES

When we began filming we had the ceiling lights on in the studio. We quickly realized that what we were filming looked far better when the lights were off and we were controlling the direction of light with an LED light that we could use both attached and detached from the camera. As you can see in these photos, with the room lights off Kieran’s shadow is far more prominent and the overall shot looks like it has been composed in a better way. From this point forwards we decided to film our entire video without using the room lights, and only using the mobile LED lights. Effectively we were filming in complete darkness.

Lights on

Lights off

Even though we had changed the lighting we had planned on using, all the other planned elements remained the same.

E.g. we still stuck to the idea that we would not film any shots with all three band members in it in order to create a disjointed effect.

One problem we encountered when filming was that the backdrop was quite small and was not wide enough for us to film using a larger variety of camera angles. This is because if we filmed too far from the left or right the setting beyond the white backdrop (e.g. the computers and tables) were visible on camera. In some cases we could tackle this problem, for example, when filming the drummer we could manipulate the position of the musician and instrument instead of the camera.

From our test shots we had decided that for one of the shots in our video we wanted to film the shadow of the drum being hit without including the drummer in it. We did this by shining a light from a low angle going up the drum onto the backdrop. This created a large shadow that was clear enough to be picked up on camera in conditions with such low levels of light.

When we began filming we started using the hand painted sign as a backdrop, however this did not look good on camera, so instead we decided to film just the sign on its own as the establishing shot of the video. We thought this would be nicer because it would look more professional and would also help to establish the band right from the start of the video.

In the images above you can see the location that we were filming in as well as where we set up the equipment.We initially started using an entire drum set, but whilst filming we had the idea that it might look more interesting if the drummer was using a single drum. This ended up looking far more quirky and put a lot more focus on the instrument rather than the drummer (which is what we wanted to achieve in the video).

Kieran and Hassan both don’t in fact play the instruments that we were using in our video. Therefore in order to see who would play which instrument better, before filming started we conducted a few test shots with both boys playing both instruments. Through doing this we found out that it looked better when Hassan was playing the drums, and when Kieran was playing the guitar.