Filming with George, 5th Feb 2013

We left college at 4PM, after picking up the cameras which we had previously booked out from the media office, and headed to Birmingham on the way, Jess text George a detailed route of how to get to the Mailbox, which is where we both on planned on parking. When we arrived, we set up the cameras in the cube apartment which is where we planned on filming George, and experimented with lighting techniques and camera angles so we could get the most professional and efficient shots of him, to hopefully look better in our video.
George arrived at around 6:45pm which was a bit later than expected, but it was fine and be went straight to the cube to get started. As our previous shoot, we played his song on Jess's I phone 4S so George could sing along and it would be completely accurate to the recorded so, to therefore get the lip sync perfect. He played his guitar in many different locations around the apartment, getting some good close ups,medium close ups and long shots to make a good variation for our music video; we also had different lighting in many clips, putting the LED lights in various different positions so we achieved numerous different effects, our main idea was to gain a good background of the sky-line, and we did this very well.

After filming here, we then tried to capture shots with him entering the lift which was in the same complex. To do this, we filmed many different close ups and extreme close ups of his hands and facial expressions as he was getting in the lift, and pressing the buttons. We then continued the filming downstairs and this was a 5* lobby of the apartments and this achieved a very good, professional look, this was unique as he was wearing lower/middle class clothes, however we were in a upper class place, and we noticed that this theme is often represented in quite a lot of other videos, and so we thought this would be effective.

We also filmed him outside at around 9:30/10pm, as this was quite a quiet time, we were able to film him singing without distracted passer bys. In the cube, there are many stone men, with hearts as faces and we thought this would look like the love theme in the video, as well as being very entropic which was unique in our video, we decided to involve these in our video by him singing to them, making a very original piece.

After the filming, George then left at around 11pm. We were extremely impressed with the footage we got, and was very excited to carry on editing in the next few days!
Some pictures of the shoot are to the right:

Shot List with George, 5th Feb 2013

16:00- Me and Jess will leave college and I'll drive us to the Mailbox in Birmingham, arriving at around 5pm and taking the lighting and cameras to go and set up the location of when George arrives at 6pm.
17:30 - We will then head to the cube, and set up the equipment, experiencing on what looks good with the lighting in different areas, depending on where we want to film.
18:30 - George is expected to arrive around this time and will call us when he is here so we can go and let him into the car park, we will then head straight for the cube.
19:30- We will film George from different angles singing the song in the main room with the lighting of the Birmingham skyline behind him, we will focus on close ups, extreme close ups, long shots, and medium shots.
21:00 - Film George entering and leaving the lift, as well as extreme close up's of him pushing the buttons. We will also add different jump cuts of him walking down the escalators, with a long shot.
22:00 - We will film from canted angles of him singing and playing his guitar outside around the cube and mailbox area (as this is upper-class Birmingham and adds to the professional theme we hope to achieve).

We hope to finish shooting by 23:00 latest. 

Time Management - New Location

We were happy with what we have already filmed however we wanted to film some more shots of the performance part of the video, instead of focussing on the narrative. To do this, we thought we needed a new location, preferably that was quite professional. Because of this, I asked my brother if I could borrow his flat that he recently bought in the cube, in Birmingham. As he has only just bought the flat, it has no furniture as of yet, and we thought that this would add to it being so effective in our music video.

 A copy of gaining permission for this is shown to the right. As shown, I asked if we could use the flat on the Tuesday, as this would be the best time.
We then also had to ask George if he was free the same date.
The texts confirming this are also above:

The apartment has a very large glass window which shows off the skyline of Birmingham really well, especially when it is dark. Because of this we have worked this to our advantage, and have decided to film during the evening, so that we can film the lights in the background, we thought the lights would look very striking. And it would also go with the same theme as my Digi-pack, as well as creating a much more professional shot.

To add to both the narrative and performance side of the video, the fact that the apartment will be completely empty is a big positive for us, as it will give us more options about where to film as we will have a lot more space, and we wont have to move anything around, ultimately saving us time, we reminded George to wear dark clothing for the shoot, to go with the dark, intimate theme.

We arranged to meet George at the Mailbox in Birmingham at around 6pm on Tuesday 5th February, as parking in Birmingham is a struggle, me and my parents agreed that he could park in a car park space that we own below the mailbox, and when they arrived, I went down to the car park to let them in with my key. 
As they didn't know how to get to this location, we sent them a detailed description of how to get there, as well as screen shots so that they could find the location more easily.
We had also given George both mine and Jess's phone numbers in case of any problems.

Some photographs of the location we plan to film can be seen below:


















 As well as this, we also made sure we had done a risk assessment on the location, this can be shown below:

Time Management

Because of all the time we were unable to work because of the snow, we decided to completed a new time-plan, discussing exactly what needed to be done, and when.  This can be shown in the diagram. 

Filming with Milly, Thursday 31st Jan

  Jess picked Milly up at 5pm on Thursday and came to my house around 5.10pm. I had already set up the cameras and got Millys first costume ready to save time, she wore a silky black dressing gown, pink shorts and a navy top, this was supposed to look like pyjamas. 

We began filming Milly in the kitchen, following the shot lists which we had previously written in class/ We started by filming her take a cup out of the cupboard and placing it on the work surface, then boiling the kettle, then pouring the water ect. We changed the camera angle each time so we had a variety of shot types. We then filmed her sitting at the table and receiving a text from George, this took a lot of over the shoulder shots to get the right lighting on the phone. After that we filmed her from behind in a low angle walking out of the room. We filmed this section of the video in about half an hour - forty five minutes. 

Then we got on with the bathroom scene, which took much longer than the kitchen as it was difficult to film with all the mirrors around, so we had to experiment a lot. We used onions to help make her cry, however this didn't work, so we had to use water from the tap, although they weren't actual tears, it still looked relatively effective. We filmed her getting into the shower, and doing her make up in the mirror, and after many experimental clips, we eventually had the footage that we needed. 

Next, we filmed in my spare bedroom, (this was empty as it was unused which added to the effect we were trying to achieve.) we filmed Milly getting into her outfit from the previous night (18th January) which was the black starry corset and the leather leggings. We filmed close ups of the designer labels to connote her wealth and we intend to speed it up in our video for the up tempo sections of the song. 

It was around 10pm when we had finished this. 

Finally we wanted to get a clip of Milly using a sparkler outside, we made sure we all had plenty of clothing on as it was not much more than 2 degrees outside, so we all wore big coats and scarves. The LED lighting didn't work as well as we wanted it to, so me and Jess moved our cars and used our head lights to light the drive way. This looked excellent, however after all that effort the sparklers didn't light because of the wind. Unfortunately this meant we couldn't film that clip, however we have planned to go to my flat in Birmingham with George, so we can buy some more and film that there instead. 

Some pictures of the shoot can be shown to the right: