Filming Day 2

For our second day of filming for our final footage for our music video, we decided to go to Harold wood. Sydney lives quite local so she knows the area really well. She took us to a tunnel at the back of the houses. The was a stream running underneath the bridge that we first walked on. The stream was covered with trees and bushes all round the edges, and the surrounding grass was over grown. 

Around the stream, at the top of the bank was a huge open field that contained a beautiful brown horse. Opposite the gate where the horse stood waiting for passers by, was an old farm cottage that was perched next to the end of the stream. It was really open plan here and the sky was bright and blue. 

It was like a scene from 'Dorothy' with the old wooden house in the middle of nowhere. 

When we kept walking we came across a huge black tunnel. The train tracks were above, so it was really loud, almost like thunder when it passed through.

Underneath the tunnel, on the walls there was a lot of graffiti, which fits in well with our theme because its 'angry' and our choice of costume and makeup resembles a 'grunge' 'street wear' sort of fashion. 

We did a few run through's of Karina lip syncing the whole song at all different angles and shot lengths. We tried to ensure we used a range of Close ups, mid shots and long shots; as well as ensuring she wasn't center of the shot persistently, we remembered to be sure to include the rule of thirds to keep the shots interesting. So we used  variety of angles.

When we watched the footage back, we realized that Karina looked quite dark and dull, as the lighting under the bridge was generally low key, due to the dark walls, there was nothing to reflect off of the blue sky. Also by this time, being the end of November, the nights were getting darker a lot faster. So typically by around 4 o'clock the natural light begins to fade.

We thought of an idea to use the 'full beam' light on my car. So I reversed through the tunnel and parked up in a spot that was out the way, however was convenient and close enough to shine the lights effectively on to where Karina was standing. We found that the lighting created a brighter, more high key look which made the quality of the filming better. When it got to the chorus, which is the 'can can can you feel feel feel' sections I flashed the full beam on and off with the beat of the song. Its quite up pace so it took a good few shots to get correct and in time.

Another shot we did was by the horse that was alone in the open field. This was just before we did the tunnel shots so it wasn't as late, therefore wasn't as dark. We asked the owner of the horse if we could have permission to use it to feature in our media work and she very kindly agreed. 

The theme is heartbreak, so we wanted the actor (me) to just be looking towards the horse sorrowfully, almost looking for a little bit of recognition and appreciation, as her loneliness has shone through in a lot of the previous shots. We want to make it clear that  she feels appreciated and unloved. Although in the shots we did, it didn't go quite as plan as the horse was thrived off of my attention and was putting its head gradually closer to mine. Not being very affectionate myself, I kept flinching and pulling myself back away from the horse, which only made it  move closer to me and sniff what I had in my hands, looking for food. 

Another successful lip syncing shot we did at Harold Wood was on top of the brick wall on the bridge. This was the wall that over looked the stream. We did attempt to get the stream in the shot, although it was hard to achieve, because the tripod didn't reach high enough, and when we hand held it, Karina was too low in the shot as it was being held at a very high angle.

However the lighting was good in these shots because it reflected off of her face, in-particularly her chin, which is very important. We really didn't want any of our footage to result with Karina appearing low key so we tried our hardest to see what every angle looked like to ensure that this didn't happen. 

We too plenty of safety precautions when we were filming by the stream. Karina didn't feel 100% confident so Sydney and I took turns in holding her legs, while the other one of us was filming. This made Karina feel a lot more secure, and made sure she delivered her confidence as well as she has been in the previous shots. The wind was blowing by this stage, so the trees in the back ground were swaying, also Karina's hair was blowing too. 

This is one of my favorite places to film, because it  was very peaceful, and rare to see passers by. It was convenient because there were 3 very different settings in one place. Therefore we got a lot more footage covered than we imagined. 

As you can see, we both went for the black leather rock chic look. Karina over lapped a leather jacket with a leather skirt, black tights, leather boots and a statement necklace. However I went for a black short cotton 'peplum' skirt, green and black checkered baggy shirt, and a long black leather coat. I wanted to remain with simplicity and dark colours, with at the same time contrasting last weeks outfit which was more casual and plain costume.