Unit 4: Critical and Contextual Awareness in Creative Media Production - Task 3: Production Diary - Music Video
Wednesday 22nd January 2020 - Shoot Day 1
Crew:
After our unfortunate day before, this was now our first real shoot day. Before we headed over to Tom's house, where we were filming the training scenes, we first grabbed some equipment from the studio. Taking a camera, microphone, fig rig, and an LED camera light. We also made sure we had all of our pre-production work with us, to look back at notes of particular shots we were going to get that day. We also made sure that we all had brought our SD cards, as we needed a main SD card and then a backup just in case the other one stopped working.
We then headed over to Tom's house and as soon as we got there we started to set everything up. We were filming in Tom's garage, as he had a punching bag in there, and we were able to move a few things around and taken down a few pictures and posters to make it look like a rough and bare boxing gym. The placement of the punching bag was in one of the corners of the garage, this worked well as it showed the garage door and the exposed brick wall which made the setting look more rundown and empty.
As we were about to start filming, we noticed there was a problem with the camera. When Sam had turned it on and was trying to get shots of Tom, the camera was very zoomed in and Sam was unable to get the camera to zoom out. This was a huge problem as Tom was then too closeup on camera and we weren't able to get all of the setting around him into frame. We all tried to figure out why the camera wouldn't zoom out and we tried everything. This went on for about ten minutes, as we couldn't move on with production until we had solved the problem, until Tom found a button called the D.extender which allowed the zoom to then be freed and we could adjust the zoom of the camera the we way wanted it to be.
After trying to figure out that little problem with the camera, we then went back to filming and got a start on our production. We first got a lot of shots of Tom punching the punching back, some being slow and others being fast as we didn't know how they would both look when we edited it, so we played it safe and got many different versions of Tom with the punching back. I was told to go on lighting and Sam told me where to stand to get the best lighting on Tom, whether it be just lighting on the punching bag and showing shadows of Tom or the light fully lighting Tom up on camera. We got many shots of Tom's facial features as he punched the punching bag, as well as shots of the back of him and the movement of his legs while training.
As we kept thinking back to having to put a black and white filter onto the video, we tried to think of practical effects we could achieve in production that would be seen well in the filter, especially with the lighting as well. We thought it would be a great idea to get some talcum powder and put it all over the punching bag so when Tom hit the punching bag, the powder would fly off. This didn't exactly work as when Tom hit the bag, none of the powder would come off of the bag. So, we then tried to put loads of talcum powder on Tom's boxing gloves so that he could hit the bag and, again, the powder would fly off of both the boxing gloves and the bag. Again, this did not work out the way we wanted it to, as only a little bit of talcum powder flew off and most of it just went onto the punching bag. So, in the end we just decided to scrap the whole idea of the talcum powder and ended up juts filming other shots of Tom training. We mainly got shots of Tom hitting the punching bag and we played the song whilst filming so that Tom could keep his punches in time with the beat of the music.
We got many shots of Tom doing sit ups and also of him punching a smaller punching bag. This first part of filming was finished in about 20-30 minutes, this was good as we got a lot of footage and we were then able to move onto our next location at the right time, as we needed to get there once the sun started to set and was getting much darker.
After we had finished up at Tom's house, we then headed over to his Nana's farm, Toft Hill Farm, to get shots that involved fire and also so we could get shots in a wide open space of the sunset and night sky. Once we arrived, we then headed out to a giant field on the farm along with Tom's uncle, who was supervising as we were creating the fire. We waited until the sun had set enough to get many shots in the dark, as we were able to see the fire more in the darkness.
We first started with getting shots of Tom behind the fire, with his face appearing through the flames. We had a few attempts at this as the fires we were creating were quite small and would go out really quickly due to the weather. When the fire started to die out, we took shots of the embers coming from the dying fire and we even got some shots of Tom stomping the fire out and see the embers spark of the fire even more. When it started to get much darker and much harder to see Tom behind the fire, I was put on lighting again and set the LED light to a very low setting so that the fire wasn't affected on camera, but also so we were just able to see Tom's face behind the fire as well.
After finishing all of the shots with Tom and the fire, we then started to think about other shots we could get at the farm, as we wanted to overshoot rather than undershoot and not have enough footage for our video. Were we filmed, we were close to a hill that overlooked the sunset skyline and I thought it would be a good idea if we got a shot of Tom walking over it, only showing his silhouette in front of the skyline. This was another great way to play around with the lighting and colour grading in post-production, especially once we put the black and white filter onto the shot.
We also got some shots of Tom, still stood on the hill and still showing the skyline, lighting matchsticks. I was, again, on lighting and set the light to the lowest setting so that the camera could still see Tom. We did also get some of just Tom's hands lighting the matchsticks, so that we could only have the lighting from the flame exposed on camera, as well as seeing some of the smoke coming from the matchstick.
After we finished up with those few shots, we wrapped up for the day and it was my job to bring the camera bag and all the equipment inside of it back to college the next day.
Friday 24th January 2020 - Shoot Day 2
Crew:
This was our biggest shoot day as we were filming all of the fight scene, as well as trying to get a time lapse of the sunset. I got to Preston Park for 12:00 pm and met up with everyone in the wooded area where we were filming. Sam, Amiliyah and Kai (actor) had first gone to college to get the equipment, same equipment as our previous shoot and also brought the drone as we wanted to get some bird's eye view shots of the fight.
We were now just waiting for makeup and the actors to arrive, but during this time we started to check all of the equipment and also looked around the area to start blocking and visualise some of the fight scenes, mostly how the gang was going to be stood around the fight. We were aware that there were many people walking through with their dogs, so we just needed to make sure that, once we got to filming, that they weren't visable in the background of a shot and also to make them aware that we were filming for a project.
At 12:30 pm, the makeup artists had arrived and Sam and Amiliyah had gone to meet up with them, to then bring them to our filming location. We were hoping Danniella (our tutor) would be able to come and help us work the drone, she was unable to attend but she said for me and Kai to try and practice flying the drone. I first downloaded the DJI GO app and onve it finished downloading, we then hooked my phone up to the drone through Bluetooth. This was then the trickiest part as me and Kai got the camera working and we were able to see the perspective of the camera on my phone, but we weren't able to try and get it to fly. All of a sudden a button appeared saying to press to try and fly it, so we pressed onto it and the drone went off. We then tried to get to grips with the controls, but we were both unable to and decided to land the drone and turn it off. So, we thought it would be best not to use the drone as we didn't understand how to control the flight of the drone and we didn't want to break it as it's an expensive piece of equipment.
Sam and Amiliyah had arrived with the makeup artists and we started to discuss the best way we could film with the special effects makeup on Tom and Kai. They said it was best to film the sequence backwards and having Tom and Kai with their final beaten up makeup on, and as Kai was here already they started on his makeup straight away. We also told them the exact cuts and bruising we wanted on their face as we had sent them photos for inspiration before but they wanted to understand the difference of cuts and bruising on the two.
At 13:00 pm, Tom and all of the actors arrived onto the set. We got Tom into makeup straight away and also had HD makeup put on actors who didn't have balaclavas to hide their faces.
All of Tom and Kai's makeup was then finished at around 14:00 pm - 14:30 pm and we were then ready to get filming. We first started to try and get shots of just Tom and Kai at the end of the fight, Kai gets on top of Tom and starts to beat him up mercilessly. It was much harder to film as when Kai kept moving, pretending to hit Tom, the camera kept getting blocked by Kai's arms and we were then not able to see Tom getting hurt. We also wanted the shot to be an over-the-shoulder shot of Kai hitting Tom, but it wasn't working. We then tried to get shots from the side of Tom and Kai fighting, but then we needed to have the supporting actors around them, as they would be seen in the background. So, we then started to position all of the actors around Tom and Kai, and leaving quite big gaps in between them as when we would be filming behind them we still needed to see the fight in the middle and it would be easier to not have an actor block the camera.
After 20 minutes of filming, I then got a phone call from home about a family emergency and needed to get home as quickly as possible. So, I had to leave the group and let them get on with filming. I know they did a fantastic job as they sent plenty of pictures to me and I looked back at some of the footage and it all looked amazing.
Friday 31st January 2020 - Shoot Day 3
Crew:
This was one of our days off from college and we all decided to come in to work in the studio for some of the cutaway shots in the music video. We all came in for 11:00 am, as we would then get more done and get fished up earlier.
The shots we were getting were of Tom and as his character is a fighter in the video, we just got some closeups and mid-shots of him stood in front of the black wall, I brought my makeup to do a fake bruise on his left eye. This took about 20 minutes to do, which was no time at all, and after I finished Tom's makeup we went straight onto filming.
We got many shots of him with the spotlight on either side of his body, mostly he was lit on the left side of his body as that was the side where he had the bruise. We tried to get as many shots as possible of Tom stood with a neutral expression on his face, as well as experimenting with the lighting. We tried to get some shots of Tom where the light kept flashing on and off on him, I was asked to get the LED camera light and to keep turning it on and off on the left side of Tom. When we looked back, the beginning of the shot looked fine although the light was quite slow when turning on and off, but when it got nearer to the end of the shot, the light was very exposed on camera and it became blurry and hard to see Tom. So, we decided to get rid of that idea and instead tried to get shots where we could only see the left side of Tom's face, again I had the LED light and held it quite a distance from Tom so that he wouldn't get blinded and also to try and not have too much light exposed on his face as well as trying to not get light anywhere else on his body.
After we had done many shots of Tom using many different shot types and angles, we then moved on to get shots of the drum kit. Luckily, we had a drum kit as a band from college would sometimes practice in our studio and left the drums in the room next to ours. So, we took the drum kit and tried to set it up as well as possible, none of us being familiar with playing drums we didn't understand how to properly set the drums up.
Once we had set the drums up as well as we possibly could, we then had Sam be the person to play the drums in the video. We only have his hands in the video as it isn't a performance-based video and mainly wanted shots of the drums being hit, as we wanted to link the drums to the music of the song which is an intense drumbeat that comes up now and again in the song. So, we played the song in the background so that Sam could try and drum to the beat of the song, it didn't need to be perfect but needed to at least keep in time with the drum beats in the music. This started to become a bit of an issue as Sam couldn't hear the music over the drumming and kept missing the beginning of the drumbeat near the beginning of the song. Sam then got his own headphones and phone to play the song so he could hear it better whilst playing and then I had my phone playing the song to Me, Tom and Amiliyah so that we could know the right timing of the drumbeat, and that we were going along with Sam at the same time.
After having Sam play the drum kit, we then had a shot of him playing one of the drums, on its own, with water on it. This was a great idea because when Sam started to hit the drums, the water bounced really high off of the drum and the lighting defined the water more, especially for when it came to editing and adding the black and white filter over the shot. Throughout filming, we had the camera on a tripod and when it came to filming with the drum we still wanted to use the tripod but the top of the drum needed to be level with the camera so that we could see the water bounce off of the drum. We didn't want to use a table to put the drum on as we thought it didn't look great in the shot, so Tom got on the ground and held the drum on top of his stomach. The camera still wasn't level so he tried to hold it up and as it was too heavy he wasn't able to keep it up for very long, so Amiliyah laid down head to toe with Tom and held the drum up like a makeshift table. Somehow, Amiliyah was then left to have the drum laid on her stomach, with water on top of the drum as well. I found this a bad idea as Sam would have to hit the drums really hard to get the water bouncing up and that would be very dangerous for Amiliyah. So, in the end we just had the drum on the floor, only showing the drum kit and black wall behind and it looked great.
It was then 1:30 pm and that was a wrap for the whole of filming our music video. We all cleared the studio up, putting the drum kit away, clearing the water that had splashed all over the floor from the drums and I also had makeup wipes for Tom to take his bruise makeup off and that was then the end of filming.
Crew:
- Co-Directors - Harriet Parvin (me) and Tom Swales
- D.O.P - Amiliyah Ashraf
- Camera Operator - Sam Liddell
Cast:
- Fighter (main character) - Tom Swales
After our unfortunate day before, this was now our first real shoot day. Before we headed over to Tom's house, where we were filming the training scenes, we first grabbed some equipment from the studio. Taking a camera, microphone, fig rig, and an LED camera light. We also made sure we had all of our pre-production work with us, to look back at notes of particular shots we were going to get that day. We also made sure that we all had brought our SD cards, as we needed a main SD card and then a backup just in case the other one stopped working.
We then headed over to Tom's house and as soon as we got there we started to set everything up. We were filming in Tom's garage, as he had a punching bag in there, and we were able to move a few things around and taken down a few pictures and posters to make it look like a rough and bare boxing gym. The placement of the punching bag was in one of the corners of the garage, this worked well as it showed the garage door and the exposed brick wall which made the setting look more rundown and empty. As we were about to start filming, we noticed there was a problem with the camera. When Sam had turned it on and was trying to get shots of Tom, the camera was very zoomed in and Sam was unable to get the camera to zoom out. This was a huge problem as Tom was then too closeup on camera and we weren't able to get all of the setting around him into frame. We all tried to figure out why the camera wouldn't zoom out and we tried everything. This went on for about ten minutes, as we couldn't move on with production until we had solved the problem, until Tom found a button called the D.extender which allowed the zoom to then be freed and we could adjust the zoom of the camera the we way wanted it to be.
After trying to figure out that little problem with the camera, we then went back to filming and got a start on our production. We first got a lot of shots of Tom punching the punching back, some being slow and others being fast as we didn't know how they would both look when we edited it, so we played it safe and got many different versions of Tom with the punching back. I was told to go on lighting and Sam told me where to stand to get the best lighting on Tom, whether it be just lighting on the punching bag and showing shadows of Tom or the light fully lighting Tom up on camera. We got many shots of Tom's facial features as he punched the punching bag, as well as shots of the back of him and the movement of his legs while training.
As we kept thinking back to having to put a black and white filter onto the video, we tried to think of practical effects we could achieve in production that would be seen well in the filter, especially with the lighting as well. We thought it would be a great idea to get some talcum powder and put it all over the punching bag so when Tom hit the punching bag, the powder would fly off. This didn't exactly work as when Tom hit the bag, none of the powder would come off of the bag. So, we then tried to put loads of talcum powder on Tom's boxing gloves so that he could hit the bag and, again, the powder would fly off of both the boxing gloves and the bag. Again, this did not work out the way we wanted it to, as only a little bit of talcum powder flew off and most of it just went onto the punching bag. So, in the end we just decided to scrap the whole idea of the talcum powder and ended up juts filming other shots of Tom training. We mainly got shots of Tom hitting the punching bag and we played the song whilst filming so that Tom could keep his punches in time with the beat of the music. We got many shots of Tom doing sit ups and also of him punching a smaller punching bag. This first part of filming was finished in about 20-30 minutes, this was good as we got a lot of footage and we were then able to move onto our next location at the right time, as we needed to get there once the sun started to set and was getting much darker.
After we had finished up at Tom's house, we then headed over to his Nana's farm, Toft Hill Farm, to get shots that involved fire and also so we could get shots in a wide open space of the sunset and night sky. Once we arrived, we then headed out to a giant field on the farm along with Tom's uncle, who was supervising as we were creating the fire. We waited until the sun had set enough to get many shots in the dark, as we were able to see the fire more in the darkness.
We first started with getting shots of Tom behind the fire, with his face appearing through the flames. We had a few attempts at this as the fires we were creating were quite small and would go out really quickly due to the weather. When the fire started to die out, we took shots of the embers coming from the dying fire and we even got some shots of Tom stomping the fire out and see the embers spark of the fire even more. When it started to get much darker and much harder to see Tom behind the fire, I was put on lighting again and set the LED light to a very low setting so that the fire wasn't affected on camera, but also so we were just able to see Tom's face behind the fire as well. After finishing all of the shots with Tom and the fire, we then started to think about other shots we could get at the farm, as we wanted to overshoot rather than undershoot and not have enough footage for our video. Were we filmed, we were close to a hill that overlooked the sunset skyline and I thought it would be a good idea if we got a shot of Tom walking over it, only showing his silhouette in front of the skyline. This was another great way to play around with the lighting and colour grading in post-production, especially once we put the black and white filter onto the shot.
We also got some shots of Tom, still stood on the hill and still showing the skyline, lighting matchsticks. I was, again, on lighting and set the light to the lowest setting so that the camera could still see Tom. We did also get some of just Tom's hands lighting the matchsticks, so that we could only have the lighting from the flame exposed on camera, as well as seeing some of the smoke coming from the matchstick.
After we finished up with those few shots, we wrapped up for the day and it was my job to bring the camera bag and all the equipment inside of it back to college the next day.
Friday 24th January 2020 - Shoot Day 2
Crew:
- Co-Directors - Harriet Parvin (me) and Tom Swales
- D.O.P - Amiliyah Ashraf
- Camera Operator - Sam Liddell
- Makeup Artists - Phebe Moyneux, Ani Ealand and Amy Caldecott
Cast:
Fighters:
- Tom Swales
- Kai Speight
Gang Members:
- Ben Race
- Dan Barry
- Joe Harston
- Jack Webster
- George Dabner
- Joe Convey
- Jay Doverston
- James Yeo
This was our biggest shoot day as we were filming all of the fight scene, as well as trying to get a time lapse of the sunset. I got to Preston Park for 12:00 pm and met up with everyone in the wooded area where we were filming. Sam, Amiliyah and Kai (actor) had first gone to college to get the equipment, same equipment as our previous shoot and also brought the drone as we wanted to get some bird's eye view shots of the fight.
We were now just waiting for makeup and the actors to arrive, but during this time we started to check all of the equipment and also looked around the area to start blocking and visualise some of the fight scenes, mostly how the gang was going to be stood around the fight. We were aware that there were many people walking through with their dogs, so we just needed to make sure that, once we got to filming, that they weren't visable in the background of a shot and also to make them aware that we were filming for a project.
At 12:30 pm, the makeup artists had arrived and Sam and Amiliyah had gone to meet up with them, to then bring them to our filming location. We were hoping Danniella (our tutor) would be able to come and help us work the drone, she was unable to attend but she said for me and Kai to try and practice flying the drone. I first downloaded the DJI GO app and onve it finished downloading, we then hooked my phone up to the drone through Bluetooth. This was then the trickiest part as me and Kai got the camera working and we were able to see the perspective of the camera on my phone, but we weren't able to try and get it to fly. All of a sudden a button appeared saying to press to try and fly it, so we pressed onto it and the drone went off. We then tried to get to grips with the controls, but we were both unable to and decided to land the drone and turn it off. So, we thought it would be best not to use the drone as we didn't understand how to control the flight of the drone and we didn't want to break it as it's an expensive piece of equipment.
Sam and Amiliyah had arrived with the makeup artists and we started to discuss the best way we could film with the special effects makeup on Tom and Kai. They said it was best to film the sequence backwards and having Tom and Kai with their final beaten up makeup on, and as Kai was here already they started on his makeup straight away. We also told them the exact cuts and bruising we wanted on their face as we had sent them photos for inspiration before but they wanted to understand the difference of cuts and bruising on the two. At 13:00 pm, Tom and all of the actors arrived onto the set. We got Tom into makeup straight away and also had HD makeup put on actors who didn't have balaclavas to hide their faces.
All of Tom and Kai's makeup was then finished at around 14:00 pm - 14:30 pm and we were then ready to get filming. We first started to try and get shots of just Tom and Kai at the end of the fight, Kai gets on top of Tom and starts to beat him up mercilessly. It was much harder to film as when Kai kept moving, pretending to hit Tom, the camera kept getting blocked by Kai's arms and we were then not able to see Tom getting hurt. We also wanted the shot to be an over-the-shoulder shot of Kai hitting Tom, but it wasn't working. We then tried to get shots from the side of Tom and Kai fighting, but then we needed to have the supporting actors around them, as they would be seen in the background. So, we then started to position all of the actors around Tom and Kai, and leaving quite big gaps in between them as when we would be filming behind them we still needed to see the fight in the middle and it would be easier to not have an actor block the camera. 
After 20 minutes of filming, I then got a phone call from home about a family emergency and needed to get home as quickly as possible. So, I had to leave the group and let them get on with filming. I know they did a fantastic job as they sent plenty of pictures to me and I looked back at some of the footage and it all looked amazing.
Friday 31st January 2020 - Shoot Day 3
Crew:
- Co-Directors - Harriet Parvin (me) and Tom Swales
- D.O.P - Amiliyah Ashraf
- Camera Operator - Sam Liddell
Cast:
- Fighter (main character) - Tom Swales
- Drummer (only his hands are seen on camera) - Sam Liddell
The shots we were getting were of Tom and as his character is a fighter in the video, we just got some closeups and mid-shots of him stood in front of the black wall, I brought my makeup to do a fake bruise on his left eye. This took about 20 minutes to do, which was no time at all, and after I finished Tom's makeup we went straight onto filming.
We got many shots of him with the spotlight on either side of his body, mostly he was lit on the left side of his body as that was the side where he had the bruise. We tried to get as many shots as possible of Tom stood with a neutral expression on his face, as well as experimenting with the lighting. We tried to get some shots of Tom where the light kept flashing on and off on him, I was asked to get the LED camera light and to keep turning it on and off on the left side of Tom. When we looked back, the beginning of the shot looked fine although the light was quite slow when turning on and off, but when it got nearer to the end of the shot, the light was very exposed on camera and it became blurry and hard to see Tom. So, we decided to get rid of that idea and instead tried to get shots where we could only see the left side of Tom's face, again I had the LED light and held it quite a distance from Tom so that he wouldn't get blinded and also to try and not have too much light exposed on his face as well as trying to not get light anywhere else on his body. 
After we had done many shots of Tom using many different shot types and angles, we then moved on to get shots of the drum kit. Luckily, we had a drum kit as a band from college would sometimes practice in our studio and left the drums in the room next to ours. So, we took the drum kit and tried to set it up as well as possible, none of us being familiar with playing drums we didn't understand how to properly set the drums up.
Once we had set the drums up as well as we possibly could, we then had Sam be the person to play the drums in the video. We only have his hands in the video as it isn't a performance-based video and mainly wanted shots of the drums being hit, as we wanted to link the drums to the music of the song which is an intense drumbeat that comes up now and again in the song. So, we played the song in the background so that Sam could try and drum to the beat of the song, it didn't need to be perfect but needed to at least keep in time with the drum beats in the music. This started to become a bit of an issue as Sam couldn't hear the music over the drumming and kept missing the beginning of the drumbeat near the beginning of the song. Sam then got his own headphones and phone to play the song so he could hear it better whilst playing and then I had my phone playing the song to Me, Tom and Amiliyah so that we could know the right timing of the drumbeat, and that we were going along with Sam at the same time.
After having Sam play the drum kit, we then had a shot of him playing one of the drums, on its own, with water on it. This was a great idea because when Sam started to hit the drums, the water bounced really high off of the drum and the lighting defined the water more, especially for when it came to editing and adding the black and white filter over the shot. Throughout filming, we had the camera on a tripod and when it came to filming with the drum we still wanted to use the tripod but the top of the drum needed to be level with the camera so that we could see the water bounce off of the drum. We didn't want to use a table to put the drum on as we thought it didn't look great in the shot, so Tom got on the ground and held the drum on top of his stomach. The camera still wasn't level so he tried to hold it up and as it was too heavy he wasn't able to keep it up for very long, so Amiliyah laid down head to toe with Tom and held the drum up like a makeshift table. Somehow, Amiliyah was then left to have the drum laid on her stomach, with water on top of the drum as well. I found this a bad idea as Sam would have to hit the drums really hard to get the water bouncing up and that would be very dangerous for Amiliyah. So, in the end we just had the drum on the floor, only showing the drum kit and black wall behind and it looked great.
It was then 1:30 pm and that was a wrap for the whole of filming our music video. We all cleared the studio up, putting the drum kit away, clearing the water that had splashed all over the floor from the drums and I also had makeup wipes for Tom to take his bruise makeup off and that was then the end of filming.
"Free Falling" - Leuk
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