Reshoots

Sunday 6th November

The original print under the pencil is my first reshoot. The only complication was a lack of time - I only had a few hours between when my actress was available until when it got dark, and in this time I had to style her hair as well as organise the rest of the team. Due to this, we ended up scrapping the plans of filming the busking shots in South Bank, and decided to do them local instead. Similarly, Her Majesty's Theatre was switched to The Royal Theatre in Stratford. Despite swapping the Central locations to be more local, it was still difficult to stick to the time schedule and it was pitch black outside by the time we wrapped up. As both my actress and assistant director had to go straight to work, I had no choice but to borrow family members for the remaining shots, however this wasn't really an issue.

Tuesday 22nd November

Foolishly, I ended up not saving the data from the camera's SD card to the hard drive, and subsequently lost every single piece of footage that I had shot that day. This dampened my spirits to an all time low and left me feeling unmotivated and unwilling to finish the music video to a high standard. However, my team and teachers motivated me to do one final reshoot, which is everything written in pencil on the call sheet above.

I only had a few hours from when I finished college to when it got dark, and in this time I had to style my actress' hair as well as organise my cast. At the very beginning of my shoot I ran into complications whereby someone who had agreed to be my extra had completely forgotten, and had gone home. Luckily this particular shot where they were needed was going to be shot on the college field anyway, so it wasn't too difficult for me to find a replacement extra.

The quality of the shots were far better during the first reshoot, as by the second reshoot I had lost a lot of motivation to keep the standards high. However, someone watching my music video for the first time wouldn't be able to tell, so it was okay in the end.


From my reshoots, I learned to not let the stress get the best of me when experiencing emotional hardship. Additionally, having strong bonds and friendships with my team helped me to keep my calamity in many situations where I otherwise wouldn't have.

Post-Production with Partial Footage

My first step during post-production was importing all the videos that I took into Adobe Premiere Pro and renaming them according to what shot they were, for organisational purposes.

Following this, I downloaded The Lady is a Tramp to iTunes using an online Youtube to MP3 Converter. The song downloaded straight to iTunes where I could then drag it over to my project on Premiere Pro.

I began to lay down the footage that I had, so that my sequence was ready for the reshoot footage to be slotted in.

It was during this stage that I realised my mistake of the lighting on my actor during the theatre shoot. Some feedback from one of my teachers was to test out applying a black and white filter over my male's shots to disguise the shadow cast over his face, however I discovered that this didn't work. After lots of playing about with the shot, I found that the best thing that worked was a simple increase in brightness with some minor colour correction to balance out the colours. This worked to an extent - the extent being that the quality was compromised, and gained a grainy effect.




Despite the grainy effect, it was better than before:

Before


After



This is what my sequence looked like after I had layed down the first batch of footage I had:

Monday's Shoot (Central and West London)

Monday 17th October

Not long after the theatre shoot was the shoot for the narrative. The day began with a minor setback - a mix up in meeting points caused me to lose about 45 minutes, which would have been my hair and make-up time slot. As well as losing out on time which we already didn't have much of, it added on a lot of stress to me.

I had to style my actress' hair in a music practise room in the college, which opened the door to several disturbances, as it wasn't a private room. The fact that it wasn't the best environment to do vintage styling added in with how behind schedule we were made me quite nervous, especially as I wasn't meeting my assistant director until we got to Central London.

We used the college TV studio to hurriedly shoot the 'backstage' scenes, as the college theatre doesn't have an actual backstage. We then went to the tube station, however it began to rain very lightly as soon as we got there. Luckily, the rain stopped by the time we got to Portobello Road, where my assistant director was waiting for us. While we were on our way, as we were late, he managed to find the perfect record store for us to shoot outside for the vinyl shot, slightly catching us up to be back on schedule. 

We stuck rigidly to the order that I made (as seen in the 'Call Sheets' blog entry), commencing in Portobello Road, before getting the tube to Ed's Diner in Soho. Shooting in Portobello Road had quite a glamorous feel - it is quite a tourist hotspot, so people were watching and taking photos of us.

When we got to Ed's Diner, we encountered two major problems. The first one was that the restaurant manager told us that we could use the outside area, but we weren't allowed to film my actress walking out of the restaurant - we overcame this by using the take we took just before he told us that.

The second major problem was that it began to rain as we were finishing the shot. We decided to wait under some shelter for a short while to see if the rain would stop, yet it only got heavier, despite the dry weather forecast. I desperately needed the shots of my actress dancing to the busker with Big Ben striking 6pm in the background, but unfortunately, due to me, my actress and my assistant director all working at our jobs on different evenings that week, this particular day was my only chance to grab that shot. The miserable weather had a detrimental effect on our spirits as we had to trundle through torrential rain while preserving my actress' styling in order to grab this key shot. I had to compromise the busker being outside Big Ben, as there was no time or dry/light skies, and I decided that I would just have to edit the busker to make it look like he was outside Big Ben when in reality, he wasn't.

Sadly, when it started raining I had less than half the shots that I had planned to take that day, so I had no choice but to arrange a reshoot.

Saturday's Shoot (College Theatre)

Saturday 15th October 

Following the one hour choreography rehearsal was a one hour time slot for hair and make-up for my actresses - my actor didn't require any hair and make-up, as it wasn't convention for males to have styling in the 40s/50s.

I did both my actress' hair, as there was a very specific 1950s look I was going for.



I made sure to follow each exact step in this tutorial for continuity purposes for later shoots.

I used curling tongs to curl my actress' hair all over, and then used a lot of hairspray to keep the curls in place. The front curl was especially hard to do, and had to be physically held vertically while the hairspray dried to keep it in place. Despite the difficulties, I successfully managed to achieve the look I wanted:

My actresses did their own make-up, as this was easier for both me and them.

Once hair and make-up was done, we headed to the college. It was very difficult and stressful to stick to the time schedule, however I knew it was crucial in order to get all my shots done.

The first thing my assistant and I did was join the technician at the lights room to set up the lights. However, as it was my first time using a light board, I majorly underestimated how long setting up lighting takes and ended up losing track of time, cutting my shooting time very fine.

I knew I wanted a spotlight as I wanted to stay typical to the jazz genre. We tested out just one spotlight, however it was too bright and didn't look too good, as seen below.

Next, we tried dimming down the spotlight, however this was too dark on my actor's face, so we reached a compromise by adding a second smaller spotlight on his face.



I then saved this onto the lighting board, ready to use later. It was too late by the time I realised this was one of the biggest mistakes I had made on this project - the second spotlight was so small that every time my actor moved his head, his face would be cast in to shadow. I had organised his shots to be last on my call sheet, and by the time it was time to shoot these shots, I was very low on time and only had time for a few rushed takes.

Once my actor's lighting had been saved,  I experimented with how I wanted the lights to look once my actress joined him on stage. My assistant director helped me settle with a purple tint, as it gave a nice, warm, friendly atmosphere. It also contributed to the narrative, as the plan was for the lights to be just a plain black and white spotlight for the whole duration of the performance, and then the moment my actress joins my actor on stage, colour gets added in to the mix to represent her individuality.

Here is a clip of the sequence I used:

1) Lots of shadows as the song is about to start.

2) A second spotlight lights up my actor's face as he starts singing.

3) Purple tints for when my actress joins him on stage.

On the day, the technician gave me a walkie talkie so that I was able to easily communicate with him whenever I needed him. This proved very helpful as he was never very far away, but far enough where going to find him would have wasted a lot of time if I needed him.

Additionally, I wrote the whole song out into cue cards, just in case. Despite common opinion, they turned out to not be that useful as the song was quite fast paced, and it looked unnatural on camera for performers to be reading off of cue cards. As my shooting schedule had the whole song rearranged into chunks, my cast learnt the lyrics quickly and easily.

Once we had finished shooting in the theatre, there was one more scene to shoot - the taxi one. I was the taxi driver, and used an eyeliner pencil to accentuate my eyebrows and add facial hair. I also wore glasses, a hat and large coat to disguise my naturally feminine features.

For the shot where my actress is leaning out the window, my assistant director offered to be on camera while I drove the car. He leaned out the window of the passenger seat while my actress leaned out the window of the back seat, however speed bumps on the road meant we had to squeeze the line in in the intervals between speed bumps. This wasn't a major setback, yet it still did cause issues.

Overall, I learnt a lot from this shoot - my biggest lesson that I took away was that video shoots take a lot more time than you expect they would! The initial set up of the lights and set was what tripped me up the most.

Choreography Rehearsal

In order for my choreography to look the best it can be, an hour of practise was necessary before the shoot so that my actors had a clear idea of what they'd be doing when they were on set.

Here is a short clip of my duo getting to grips with the agreed routine:




Here is a short clip of the finalised dance routine:

Researching and Planning the Moving Image Work

Risk Assessments

Saturday:

Monday:

Team Update 2

After having cut down my team, it became a lot easier to manage everyone.

Copyright Permission Email

Below is a copy of the email I sent to Columbia Records asking for Copyright permission.

Call Sheets

Saturday

Here is my call sheet for my Saturday shoot, filmed in the college theatre.

Monday

Originally, I planned to shoot at Hampstead Heath Hill Garden and Pergola, however eventually I decided against it due to the £30 admin fee - there was no point paying so much when the shots could easily be taken elsewhere. Below is my original call sheet.

Here is my revised call sheet - I decided to shoot in Westminster, Portobello Road and various other spots around Central London.

Additionally, I created cue cards to speed things up on the day.

Talent Release Forms

Props

A visit to the college's prop cupboard was essential for my shoot. Items I took:
- New York Yankees cap
- Fedora
- Flower
- Trumpet
- Dress
- Handkerchief

Camera Tutorial

To consolidate my knowledge of the camera, I decided to attend a Leyton Live session - this is where a live musical performance gets filmed and recorded in the studio. Leyton's media technician showed me everything I need to know for my shoot. Watching a live musical performance getting professionally filmed really helped to give me an idea of how setting up and filming is going to be when I shoot my music video. The main camera used was a 4k camera, with 3 other cameras set up at different angles.

Camera
- Tighten the handle to tighten the camera, loosen the handle to pan/tilt/move around the camera
- Take off the plate to attach the camera, it can be tightened with a key/coin

Lights
- Set up an initial marker/waypoint as a reference point which can then be altered in more detail accordingly
- Hot lighting = 'key light' = like a spotlight
- Cold lighting = 'fill light' = spread out
- The barman doors on the key light help to adjust the spread

Focus
1. Press the magnifying glass button on the top right corner of the camera
2. Touch the screen and line up the box with the subject of the focus
3. Press the magnifying glass button twice
4. Twist the focus ring until the midpoint of the focus is found

As well as this, I have the camera tutorial done in class to help me set up basics such as shutter speed and aperture.

Hair, Make-up and Costume - Male

I have found that vintage male fashion is a lot less diverse than females'. Any suit would probably look appropriate however I would like to include a fedora and a tuxedo.

I paid a visit to my lead actor's house to discuss his costume for the shoot. I will not be using any make-up as it is unnecessary.

Out of all the outfits, this one is my favourite (with a bowtie) because the colours contrast nicely as the fact that it looks sophisticated and suave.

I don't like this combination too much because the waistcoat and shirt clash too much.

While being very eye-catching, this tailcoat probably doesn't suit my genre that well.

This blazer does not fit my actor so well so I will definitely not be using it.

This shirt looks too casual for a jazz performance.

This combination does not go that well because it mixes a smart waistcoat with a casual shirt.

Hair, Make-up and Costume - Female

'The Lady Is a Tramp' was first released in the 30s, however it also appeared in a film in the 40s and was covered by more icons in the 50s and 60s.




I have narrowed down my era to either the 1940s or 1950s. I find that mood boards are helpful for picturing what would work and what wouldn't work.



1940s

1950s

The style that I do decide to go with will depend on the practicalities - what dresses/skirts my actress and I own and how we can make them work.

I met up with my lead actress to try on some different outfits and see what works best.

This spotty dress works much better with the petticoat as opposed to without. However, it looks a bit tacky and I would like to use something else for my lead actress, however I can make the lead actor's wife wear this dress.

Despite fitting my actress really well, this dress does not suit my genre that well as it is too modern-looking.

Out of these four shirts, the bottom one with flowers is my favourite, as the other three don't really go. This skirt is ideal for my shoot as it has a very vintage look. 

This outfit is also a bit too modern for my genre, as well as the skirt being too short.

This outfit looks better with the petticoat than without, however it is a bit dull.

I like this outfit on my actress because it fits her well and suits my genre.

This dress is genuinely vintage so suits my genre perfectly, however the length of the skirt is too short for the time era.

This outfit is my favourite out of all of them, probably with the black Doc Martens. As well as fitting my actress well, both the top and bottom pieces suit my genre perfectly.

I find this outfit too plain for my music video.

I have chosen to follow this hair tutorial when doing my actress's hair on Saturday. After watching a few different videos, this one stood out the most as the most relatively quickest and easiest to do without compromising the intricacy of vintage hairstyles.

Additionally, I will be mirroring this image's make-up on both my lead actress and the wife as it is simple yet very effective and appropriate for my genre and time era.

Saturday

Chloe - Hair and make-up as above, pink skirt with floral blouse, floral DMs

Anjy - Hair and make-up as above, white and red spotty dress, heels

Angelo - Fedora, white long sleeved shirt, waistcoat, skinny black jeans and smart shoes

Serena as taxi driver - Masculine make-up, cap and glasses, shirt

Sunday

Chloe - Hair and make-up as above, pink skirt with floral blouse, floral DMs
Jack as busker -
Jack as basketball player -
Male as basketball player -
Serena as girl in court -
Female as girl in court -
Person as NYY stranger -