Shoot day reflection

For our shoot day as a group we made sure we were all in school at 8:15am in order to prepare and get all the final bits ready for the shoot. We further made sure our cast members were in school by 8:30am so that they could have breakfast, get dressed, and start warming up before 9:00am which was when we would begin shooting.

It took us a while to get into it and into the process of shooting the music video but after a few run throughs our group was well warmed up and everyone was adjusting to the space and layout. We first began with a full wide shot of the band performing and we did this a few times to make sure we got the right shot and were pleased with what we got. We then moved onto all the other shots and the wide shots, mid shots, and close ups of each band members. This was a very time consuming task and we had to be extremely patient with this and follow the process in order to make it look good. 

On the day of shooting I was assisted the role of the director, this role meant that I was in control of calling out all the stage directions to the cast members for example stand by, roll cameras, and playback. This task meant I had to get involved with our cast members and interact with them and tell them if they were doing well or if what they were doing could be improved and how it could be improved. This role took a lot of control and meant that I had to be constantly aware of what was going on and be on set at all times. 

The most successful part of our shoot was the set 2 set up in my opinion, this set up was very minimalistic and very simple but it also looked very good. This set up excited us as we could see and vision what the final outcomes could look like, whereas for set up 1 it was much more difficult to visualise and incorporating the different shots of the different members made it harder to put together in my head. Both the set ups worked really well and looked really good but I do think set up 2 was more successful. There was nothing which ultimately stood out as not being successful and overall I do think this was an extremely well organised and well planned shoot and I am pleased with our results.

The most enjoyable part of the shoot was filming the VHS effects and actions. We got the band members to play around the set and not lip sync to the song and just do fun actions and movements which on the day we had to improvise. We had originally planned what we wanted our band members to do in this section but as our set had to be adapted (due to the space) so did our ideas. We made our band members do different actions which made them further look like a band and we wanted these clips to almost look like behind the scene footage. It was also exciting using an old VHS camera and looking at the quality of the camera. We were very pleased how these shots turned out and we are excited to see our final edited product including these clips.

Another enjoyable part of this shoot was the studio set up where we placed our band members in the music room and got them to mess around with the set up. We placed George A in the recording studio singing with headphones on into a microphone then in the other room Luke and Molly were on the computer messing around with the keys to make them further look like a band who are releasing music and to create the effect of 'behind the scene footage' of the band members rehearsing. This was a very relaxed set up as we did not want it to be too intense or too overboard and we just made our band look like an actual band.

With our band members overall they performed very well and every take which we shot they were fully engaged and enthusiastic. In terms of resting our band members we made sure that when they were not needed on set they could go to the side and rest, we did this to make sure that we did not burn them out before the end of the shoot so we kept them going throughout the day will relatively generous breaks. 

In the edit I am most looking forward to how our ideas will join into one another to one final piece and I am excited to see our different set ups and different elements emerged into one. Overall this was a very successful day and everything worked out how we were hoping it would work out, even with the problems we faced this worked in our favour and made our video look even better. 

As a production group Amanda, Wendy, Millie, and I worked extremely well together. We all shared the roles equally and also shared ideas equally. There wasn't one of us who took charge and lead the rest of us, we saw this project as a group project and followed this throughout. We as a group were also really good at organising ourselves and we prevented any of us or our band members letting us down. We knew what we wanted and we were not going to let anything or anyone prevent us from getting this.