Production Days

A2 Media Project

Day 1

The first day of filming for my final music video took place at the same location as I initially chose, a public footpath on the outskirts of Hethersett.

This filming day took approximately 2-3 hours of filming and by the end of it roughly two thirds of the filming was complete.

There were two individual issues with shots on the day which I encountered. The first one being with the tracking shot used to introduce the artist lip synching to the song.

However due to the limitations of equipment with me the final footage was shaky and looked unprofessional.

The other issue was finding a prop to symbolize ‘sweet’ in the lyrics. Initially I intended to use a flower. However since the filming day was in Autumn I flowers were in short supply.

Instead I used a prop in the form of my dog. Taking several shots I tried having the dog run up to the singer, but instead have the singer walk up to the dog and cut to the dog being fussed.

Several of the shots taken during filming needed to be edited or modified in order to get the finished shot. For example one shot depicting a dirty puddle was not ideal as the puddle was not centred enough in the composition. In editing it would need to be zoomed in and moved so that the puddle is the centre of attention and a symbol of risk or danger.

One additional shot I filmed was a Big Long Shot (BLS) showing the singer as she is walking from one end of the pathway to the other.

Instead of having one shot that’s duration would completely upset the flow of the song I would later cut it into three short Jump Shots cutting to the singer getting closer and closer.

As the day progressed the actress became a lot more confident with the song and by the last couple of scenes she her lip syncing was much more professional.

Day 2

On the second day of filming, after acquiring a prop, we filmed the scenes involving the singer playing the guitar.

The first shot filmed was an important introduction towards the final verse of the song, where the guitar is composed on the ground as a POV shot from the singer’s perspective.

Other shots filmed on this day included a Close-up shot of the singer playing the guitar. This complimented the final verse of the song as the guitar is a prominent piece of music in it.

Day 3

After some reconsideration, I decided to alter the narrative of the music video, showing an artist drawing and creating the story which I had filmed prior. This meant creating a new opening scene which depicts the artist turning the light on an beginning to draw. The Medium shot used establishes the scene and its duration makes it mysterious and engaging.

Another main part of this new setting included creating time-lapse footage. Starting with filming in time as I drew pictures and lyrics and later editing the footage, speeding it up to as much as 2000x to make the writing in time with the lyrics.

Day 4

After receiving constructive feedback with the lip- synching in my music video I decided to re-film some of the sung parts starting from the first chorus onwards.

Despite the fact this had to be filmed whilst snow was still being thawed out, the actress remains as the centre of attention with much clearer lip-synching.