P4: Create the production materials in line with the plan
In the videos below they show how I directed the actress during filming. For most of the shots, we first discussed what would happen in the shot in detail, in some cases we needed to practice the shot once first - for example, the shot putting the jacket on. After discussing the shot in detail, we would get any props ready and set up the chosen camera angle - by preparing well, most of the shots could be filmed in one take. In some shots, like the raw footage below of putting tights on, I needed to direct the actress a little as we were filming, and this was possible since the raw sound would not be used in the final product. However, she didn't need much prompting since we took the time to talk through every shot beforehand.
Below are some of my rushes.
The first shot I won't be using in the final edit because it isn't a very flattering angle for the actress, so I tried this shot a few more times before finding the best camera angle. The second shot was very successful and I plan to use this in the final edit because it is dramatic and fits the mood of the video. The third shot is a first attempt, because I felt that the actress walked out too calmly, when she is meant to be a moody teenager, so we tried this shot again and it went really well the second time. I will be using the fourth shot in my music video because it shows the teenager's outfit in detail, but I might cut out the end part as the clasp of the necklace was a bit fiddly.
This is the camera I used.
D2: Justify the creation process against the original concept documentation
On the whole, I followed my planning materials from LO2 and didn't change much of them. However, when I started production I soon realised that I hadn't developed the documents as much as I could have, and I made some minor changes. The main one was to my storyboard, which I added many more shots to while filming. I realised that the shots I had planned would be very long, and would make the music video very boring - therefore, I added some variation to the shots I had planned. The camera angles I planned in my storyboard were also lots of head-on shots, so I chose to add some more exciting camera angles. For example, I added a close up of the actress playing the bass, because this shows in more detail that she is such a fan of the band that she learnt how to play the bass riff herself. There are more long shots of her playing the bass and dancing, including a very back-lit low angle shot, which is very dramatic and adds some contrast to the rest of the shots with overhead lighting.
I also used a shot of her phone playing the song I will use, which gave me the idea of using a sound bridge in my edit. I feel that this would work well because it shows the audience that the girl is a fan of the band as she has their song on her phone, and it also shows what the album cover looks like so listeners can look out for it to buy the single if they really like it. The sound bridge I plan to use would involve the music fading between diegetic and non-diegetic sound to create the effect of getting lost in the music, which a lot of people can relate to. I think the aim of a music video should be to immerse the audience in a song and include visuals that show what the listener imagines while listening to the music - and by using a sound bridge I think I can achieve this. I recorded the beginning of the song with the microphone in the camera, which is diegetic sound because the character can hear it. Then while editing, I will fade this into the MP3 file of the song, which is non-diegetic because the character can no longer hear it during the montage.
I decided to use more varied camera angles in the production than I had planned because this is a convention of rock music videos. During my research, I found out that the two music videos I looked at consisted mostly of head-on shots, but the social-realism trailer had a much wider range of camera angles to imply different things. So I decided to combine these two styles, because my music video is much more of a concept video than the two I analysed, and this style allows for more unusual camera angles. The different angles make the music video much more visually stimulating for the audience compared to if I had stuck to my original storyboard, and the pace of the shots can match the tempo of the song. Since I have more shots to use in the same amount of time, I can cut between them more often when I come to edit the video, creating a faster pace. I think this is appropriate for the song because it is an upbeat song, so the video should reflect this and try to give the audience the same feeling of excitement for an event, since that is what they see on screen.
Although I added some new shots to the music video, coming back to this after editing, it is clear that the general storyline is still the same and a side-by-side comparison of the storyboard vs the offline edit can be seen below.
I was also able to follow the production schedule I outlined and found it very useful to make sure we were on track. It would be very obvious if we didn't get all the filming done in one day as the lighting wouldn't be the same, so I am glad that thanks to my production schedule I was able to do all the filming in one night.
Lastly, there were no accidents that happened on set, so the risk assessment was effective in helping me to consider any risks and prevent them from happening. My risk assessment and production schedule can be found in LO2 P3.