Account Of Shoot Day

The day before our shoot day, we had to set up the scaffolding that the band are going to perform by. We also had to put up the lights on the scaffolding, to create the lights going amongst the band. Setting up the scaffolding took a while, as we had to bring the different sizes in and put them all in different locations to make it look effective.

When I woke up the morning before our shoot I was quite nervous about meeting the band. I didn't know what they were going to think of the scaffolding or even of us. I was also quite excited as our shoot day had finally come and all that we had been planning was finally going to be done. We could then see if it would work. We wanted to see all of our work come together as we had worked so hard over the past couple of weeks.

We had done as much as we could the day before. There was not a huge amount that we could do on the day. The band turned up slightly late because of traffic due to the rain, so there wasn't much we could do before they got there. This then meant that we didn't start filming till about 10 or 10:30. When they arrived we had to bring their instruments in and help to set them up.

Our studio set was not that complex. We used scaffolding to represent the heavy metal band and had LED strip lights screwed onto the scaffolding to light up the band. We didn't know what the band were going to think of it, as this was their first video, therefore it had to be how they wanted it.

We all played different roles. I started off by being the director, which was good as I got to watch it on the monitor seeing which shots we needed to add in to the music videos and which shots we didn't need according to our shot list. I then changed and moved on to playing the track. This involved playing the track when, whoever was filming said 'camera rolling' I had to say '3, 2, 1 go' and press play. I also had to pause it at then end, then repeat this. After doing this job, I moved on to doing a bit of filming. This involved much more than when we were creating our thrillers as the shot had to be accurate. It also enabled me to be able to see what the best shots would be to use in editing.

I think I did well at directing, as I am organised and I really enjoyed seeing the clips on the monitor. I also enjoyed filming the shoot as it enabled me to get involved and to develop my skills from AS on the camera.

One problem we encountered on the shoot day was that the band were late as they were stuck in traffic and flooding. This meant that we didn't start our shoot till much later than we wanted to. Having said this we still did manage to finish filming by 4:30.

I think the most successful part was when we started shooting the band. The video started to come together, we were really worried about what it was going to look like before the shoot day. On the actual day when we saw the lights all joint in with the band, we thought that it looked great. The tracking shot looked really good, especially when we did a tracking shot round the drummer, as we saw all sides of him playing the drums. This shot is going to be our opening shot in our music video I think.

The actors we used was an actual band so we did not have any problems with controlling them. They did what we wanted them to do and did it to the best of their ability. This made it much easier for us on the day, not making us stressed when trying to control them. I think it was also easier in that we had adults as our actors rather than students.

I enjoyed the whole day, I liked setting it up arranging it to how we wanted the scaffolding to look, I enjoyed meeting the band, which at first I was nervous about. I also enjoyed filming it seeing the shots we had sketched out in the animatic coming alive and seeing them work really well together, along with the lighting. The bit I didn't enjoy was taking it all down, because we were on a high from finishing and wanted to start editing, however we got on with it and had finished before we knew it.

I am looking forward to seeing all of our shots on the screen, seeing which shots worked and what shots didn't. I am also looking forward to editing it all together and seeing the finished piece.

I think our whole group worked really well as a team. We all put ideas forward saying how we wanted it to be done and what shots we wanted to include. We had Lydia who does photography, so she took photos of the day which was really good. Max and I worked on it all taking videos to put onto out blogs and seeing whether the shots looked good and we had Bertie who was really good at doing the lights. This worked really well as everyone did everything no one sat around doing nothing all day.

We asked the bands advice on the album covers that we had designed. They really liked them and said that they looked really effective and different. The one thing that they said they would like on our cover was the logo of the band so that the audience would know who the band were. Other than that they really liked our ideas. We filmed an interview with them so that we can put it onto our blogs, but also so they can put it on their website for the audience to see.