Diary entry for our new music video

Our video is about a girl who has insecurities about her physical appearance and we are going to portray that by showing how the media impacts people with this issue. 

We chose to film mainly on Wednesdays and Fridays because both me and my partner have a lot of free periods on those days. It turned out we only needed to film for 3 days. We filmed for about 5-6 hours each day.

Filming Times:
Date: Wednesday 12th March 2014 2:00-7:00pm.

Location: My House.

On Wednesday we filmed the first part of our music video of our main character (Cynthia). We chose to use my house because we decided in our planning that we wanted to use a house so the audience could have an insight of the protagonist's home life. Our plan was that we film a part of her on the floor of her bedroom crying which will hopefully allow the readers to connect with her more. Wednesday was a perfect day for us to film because we were both free and we didn't have any lessons and seeing as we were already behind and had a tight deadline, we didn't want to waste any time so we started filming straight away. Below are some of the scenes we filmed on our first day.

Date : Friday 14th March 2014 3:00-8:00pm

Location: Assembly hall 
In our plan, we decided that we wanted a good chunk of the song to be in the assembly hall. The reason for this is that there is a piano in the assembly hall and when we were planning originally what we were going to film, we decided that we wanted a piano in the music video for our artist to play it because the beat of the song is mostly piano based which made the assembly the perfect place place for our filming and it was also a quiet area which made the mood of the video more peaceful. There is also a big black curtain behind the piano so it creates the perfect lighting.

What did we achieve in the shoot?

We focused on filming the protagonist in the assembly hall with diverse shots such as  low angles, high angles, mid shots with the costume and props we had.

What actors/props/costumes did we use?

The actress we used was Cynthia. The props we used was a piano which is one of the biggest, main props that the artist uses in the video. The artist was wearing a fitting grey and black bodycon dress to focus on her appearance.

How did we set up our equipment?
The whole music video was filmed on my iPhone, without a tripod.

 What went well?

We filmed different types of shots in order for us to have a diverse amount of shots so that when it was time to edit the video, we had many clips to choose from incase some were shaky or I had filmed them the wrong way so it had 2 black blocks on the side. 

What went wrong?

One thing that didn't go so well was when our main character went onto seats in the assembly hall.When i filmed her singing, I zoomed in rather than simply moving closer, this lowered the quality and the lighting was also bad. So after talking about this with our teacher, she said it would be a good idea to re-film.

What we need to achieve next time?

Our next day of filming will be on Wednesday 19th March. We will focus on filming the parts where our protagonist will be in the forest.

Here are some pictures from the scenes we filmed that day.

Date: Wednesday 19th March 2014 1:00-6:00pm

Location: CS Lewis Forest

On Wednesday, our plan was to film in a forest adjacent to CS Lewis's house. It is said that he used this forest as inspiration for his best selling book, "The Chronicles Of Narnia (The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe). I thought it would be ideal to use this forest because of the idea that Narnia is a world used for escapism. Our music video portrays this perfectly when we show our character going to the forest to escape social media and its pressures and expectations. We filmed many extra things because we didn't have the time to go back to the forest if things needed re filming as it was quite far from school and fairly difficult to get to. We mainly filmed her just walking through the forest. This symbolises her finding herself. The forest is seen as a positive place and she finds her self confidence there. So to show this, we chose to have her jumping over a gate to show her overcoming her her first obstacle.

What did we achieve in the shoot?

We successfully filmed everything we needed to. We didn't need to go back and re film anything which is what we feared because of our limited amount of time. We wanted to show our protagonist in a different light to the rest of the video. I think we achieved this. We used many different angles when filming too. As we couldn't bring lights with us to a forest, we made sure to film during the daytime. I think our lighting was well managed. 

What actors/props/costumes did we use?
The actress we used was Cynthia. We didn't really use any props, we just took advantage of the fact that we were in a beautiful forest and shot some really beautiful scenery.The artist was wearing a a casual jacket with dull coloured skinny jeans. I felt that our target audience could relate to this costume. It is also a very different costume to the performance half of our video. We wanted two complete opposites for the narrative and performance sides to the video.

How did we set up our equipment?
Again, the whole music video was filmed on my iPhone, without a tripod.

What went well?
I think that the lighting was really good in our forest scenes considering that we didn't have any extra help and just depended on natural light. I wasn't shaky when filming so I didn't need to re film anything. The fact that is was rainy and muddy was very fitting to the mood. 

What went wrong?
We wanted to put a horse in the video. I filmed a few scenes with our main character and a horse, but when we uploaded it on the Mac, it didn't look right because the horse was not looking in the direction we needed it to. So we ended up using some of the extra footage we filmed in the forest just incase anything went wrong!

What we need to achieve next time?
Our next day of filming will be on Wednesday the 19th March. We will focus on the scene where we show several girls with a post it note on their head symbolising the label that society has given them.

Below are some pictures from the Forest scenes:


 

Date: Wednesday 19th March 2014 1:00-6:00pm
Location: School, Mac Suite.
This part was not in our plan. We were given a suggestion to do this in order for the message of the video to become clearer. We decide to have one second clips of about eight girls, with sad faces and a post it notes on their faces, showing their negative stereotype that modern day society has given them. Then at the end of the video, we wanted the complete opposite by showing them laughing in slow motion and the opposite of their stereotype from the beginning of the video. For example, one girl had the label "dumb" because she's blonde. Then towards the end of the video, we show her laughing, with a post it note saying "intelligent".

What did we achieve in the shoot?
This shoot was very successful, it only took about 10 minutes. There were almost no issues.

What actors/props/costumes did we use?
We used a studio light in order to highlight the actresses faces as we only used 1 second from each girl, so it was important for it to be clear. We also used an interactive whiteboard as a white background. Lastly, the post it notes were the main prop. We chose to use them because its simple and we wanted to keep the video fairly simple.

How did we set up our equipment?
Again, the whole music video was filmed on my iPhone, without a tripod.

What went well?
It was very quick to film. This was convenient because we had a limited amount of time anyway.

What went wrong?
Towards the end, we needed to somehow make the girls do a natural laugh. This proved to be quite difficult at times. But we eventually got there with the help of my media teacher making funny comments.