Shooting

I have shot the main parts of my music video now and am very pleased with what I have achieved. I did all my filming over a weekend because I needed to get everything set up on the first day and on the second day I need to film the band playing. I needed all of the warehouse to be laid out the same over both days and this was the easiest way to do this.

On the first day, I set all the toys up and where I wanted to position the boxes to make it look like a toy factory. Luckily because it was already a warehouse it did have boxes in it, but I need to turn a few around to hide the logo's of the company - as they held loudspeakers. Once I had positioned these, I started to mark out which angle I wanted to shoot it from and I decided to shoot diagonally across the space I had. So that the drum kit was taking up some of the aisle, this way I could make the warehouse look realistically like a toy factory. It also made the distance between the camera and the band further so I could fit all of the band in fully zoomed out.

Also on this first day of filming I wanted to try and get some stop frame animation done so that the following day I could have a full day of filming the band and get as much done as possible to avoid going back another time. This wouldn't have been ideal because then the props which were used would all be in different places and would mean that the continuity would all be wrong, along with that the lighting conditions may have changed.

Various shots like these.

The second day arrived and I had high hopes for what I was going to achieve. I got their early with the band to get a whole days work in and primarily to get all of their instruments set up and make sure that I could actually get them all in shot. I had to do a bit of moving around where the band members were positioned to make everyone visible. The drummer is always a bit of a problem, because they are sitting down at the back and I had to be careful that the lead singer didn't get in the way. After I had organised where everyone was to stand, I marked it out - very faintly - on the floor where I wanted them to stand.
I took a few practise shots of the band in action which went very well, I did this to see if anything around the band was being picked up which I didn't want to be there. If it was, I would move those objects or re-position the band members again.

When I started to film, I got the band to mime along to the original track which I played through an amplifier so they were all in time with the original track. Obviously the drums were being hit, otherwise it would look very unrealistic and the lead singer sang as well because this could have looked a little bit unrealistic as well.
I did a shot from in front of the band several times and then at the editing stage I would take the best shot are use that for my music video.

Next I did another shot of the band playing from behind the drum kit so some of the drummer could be seen and it would also give a different perspective of the toy factory. I also did this shot a few times as well, to get the best one in the end result.

I did some long shots from down aisle's of each of the band members. I used the zoom function on the camera to zoom in and out while they were playing. My first idea for this was to zoom in while going backwards on a chair to create an unusual effect and possible to confuse the audience a little, but when it came down to me trying it out I couldn't do it because they hand held camera effect didn't work well, I wanted it to be steady, so I ended up positioning a tripod at the end of the aisle and filming from there. This actually worked quite well in the end. Like I said, I did this for each band member, but I am not totally sure I will use it for each band member, I might just use it for the bass and guitars because when I was filming the drums for this part it was never in time. From playing the track which was the other end of the warehouse to where the drummer was sat, there seemed to be a time delay which must have been caused by the size of the warehouse and the music bouncing off the walls and the amount of boxes in the way on them. I tried to get this spot on so many times but it wasn't possible. I do have some takes from it, so I can try to fit some of them in by either slowing or speeding up the frames, if not that I could put them in hitting the drum on the beat and then quickly cut to something else.

I did some more shots like this of individual band members accept they weren't down a aisle, the were standing in front of the camera using direct address. This was for the start of the song where it is just guitar and bass. When I come to editing, I am going to chop it up and have it alternately playing through out this section of the song.

I have also done this for the drums, I recorded them playing the whole song with the camera positioned in front of the kit and then I will cut it up to where I want them to appear. Instead of the drummer playing down the aisle I could use this, not only was it recorded in time - because there was nothing blocking the sound - but it is him with his whole kit as well, and not just his snare which limits the amount of movement he would be doing compared to the other band members who moved quite a bit with their guitars and bass.

The next bit of filming I did, was to get the lead singer to hold the camera and move with him holding it to his face while singing the words. I then wanted him to walk around the warehouse, singing using direct address and the occasionally when there were no words to look around so it looked like he didn't know where he was or he was a bit scared/worried of what was going on. I asked him to do this for the whole song so I could chop it up and then use it where I wanted to throughout the music video.

The last shot of the band playing was just focused on the hi-hat - which is part of the drum kit - I did this because for a couple of the places in the song there is a small section of just hi-hat with nothing else playing I thought it would look effective to fill it with this and it would look even better once I had matched it up to the music while editing.

One of the final parts I wanted to do, wasn't filming, it was stop frame animation of the band, but in Lego. I found some Lego men and decided on who was representing the band member, next I made a little Lego island where they would be positioned to be taken a photo of. I added the first Lego man and the took a picture, then added the next and so on.

The last bit of filming I did on the day was to film the Jack in the Box pop up on a shelf. This is to fit into the end of the music video after the song has finished, it will correspond with the beginning of the music video, where it is just a black screen and then the 'Pop Goes The Weasel' song will play - which is what plays when a Jack in the Box is wound up. I successfully did this in only a few takes, but to set up this shot it was quite hard because I had to position the tripod in a good place where the camera could see all of the Jack in the Box's head where it popped up and only a quarter of the box. This was because I had to wind it up to get it to pop up. I also had to choose the correct lighting for this and because I was lucky enough to know someone who owned big colourful lights on tripods, I used them in my video for the lighting. There was a white light setting which I used to light the Jack in the Box up and I positioned it so it didn't get too much of a shadow.

These days of filming were very successful and I got a lot of my filming done. I got all of the band footage filmed, but I still have to do a bit more stop frame animation for the toys, so I can spread them out through the video and divide up the large cuts of the band performing.