Account of Shoot

Our shoot was on Friday 11^th November 2011. We had set up a day earlier, but we ended up changing the position of the band so we could benefit from better lighting. We didn’t much to set up in the first place because our set just consisted of the four band members and their instruments. We did, however have to collect and bring all the props from the off-campus storage to the cabins outside our set so they could be accessed during the shoot. Also, a lot of time was spent to arrange the lighting correctly which our video depended on. It was crucial to spend time on this because the camera would be in a fixed position the whole way through the shoot, which means that the lighting had to stay the same throughout.

This is the camera we used – the same one we shot our AS Thrillers on.

We started by shooting the wide shots of our band. The lights were synchronised and were placed on the perfect spots after spending a lot of shoot time to arrange this. We then proceeded with the single band member shots where the light was still.

Each of our band members played at all four different positions - front, back right and left. This is an example of our bassist who in this shot was playing on his left.

By the time we finished that, it was time for our lunch break. We were on schedule with our shots, so everything was pretty smooth. After that, we filmed all the shots we required with our props. We then ended by filming the close-ups of each of the band members in various different positions. We also filmed a few shots of the band members swapping instruments and playing each others’.

This is an example of our band members swapping roles and instruments.

All in all, we had a hassle-free shoot that ran pretty smoothly and thankfully we didn’t face any big challenges, other than synchronising the lights. We got all the shots we needed on time, and our band was well-prepared.

Preparation before our shoot

We had two weeks to prepare our shoot, which was very useful for us. We used our time to arrange props, rehearse our band and it gave us the flexibility to make last minute decisions. We ended up getting a lot of props that we hadn’t planned which was useful because our video depended on props and so, the more we had the better it would be.

We had to juggle this along with our band rehearsals, which was a challenge because they had very busy schedules and it was hard to get all of them to be present at the same time. Also, we needed permission to use the band room, which was only available during certain times. We ended up rehearsing each band member separately, which worked out perfectly fine and even though they didn’t rehearse as a group, it seemed like there wouldn’t be any problems.
We did, however have a big problem with our lead singer who didn't turn up to any rehearsals and was difficult to contact. George from our group then stepped in to play the part of the lead singer which we thought would turn out well since he already knew all the lyrics.

Digipak: First Draft

This is the first draft of our digipak

Final Cast List

Due to the busy period of our shoot, a lot of our cast backed out of acting in our music video. This was a problem because it was difficult to find appropriate cast that would suit the image of the band memeber we required. There was a shortage of people but we finally managed to have all four of our band members a week before our shoot.

This is the final cast:

Drummer: Jamie Parker
Bass Guitarist: Jim Troughton
Pianist: Ryan Heenan
Singer + Guitarist: Kyle Foreman 

All our cast members have the appropriate skills of the instrument they are required to play. This is the basis on which we decided to cast our band because it is vital to know how the play the instruments seeing as our video is performance based.

Shooting Schedule

Coming up with a shooting schedule is another task that is vital for the preproduction of our video. We need to realistically evauluate whether all our shots can be done on time and we needed to decide the most efficient order to shoot them in so as to not loose any time or miss out on important shots.

This is what we came up with. The shots towards the end are not vital to have in our video but we would choose to shoot them if we had more time. We placed them at the end because it wouldn't cause us a problem if they weren't i our video.