Filming - Performance (1/2)

The first time we actually filmed performance, i thought it went better than expected. Although for most of it we were still figuring out where things should go and the where the lighting should be, we got some really good shots. As we didn't have a lot of time to film that night we couldn't review any of the shots whilst we were there. This meant that we had to count on patricks camera work to make sure the shots looked good. Me, Tom and Patrick then came to a decision that we should do shots with and without all the lighting just so we can compare the two and see which one looks better on the computer. We first did it with all the lighting but there was only one problem with that, the light was too bright on my face. We then tried it without all the light and that made the performers look better individually but the lighting on the setting was too low key. After uploading it on to the mac, we got people's opinions on which they think looked better. Ultimately the shots with all the light used won the vote. Fortunately on the day, we had done most of the filming with all the lights so we didn't have to re-film anything. We had filmed a lot of close ups, high angles and mid shots. We had full band shots, and a lot of individual shots of each person playing their instrument. We knew we had to get some movement in our shots so Patrick started to walk round the garage with the camera getting different styles of shots of each person as we played the song over and over again. He got some good footage which we are using in our final production. When we came to look at the image we all realised that there was too much movement going on from the actors. We realised that in comparrison to other videos, you don't see as much movement as we first thought. We came to the agreement that next time we filmed, I would have to be always facing the front, holding the microphone lower and not as much jumping, and the two guitarists would have to try and face the front rather than go in to the center and face/dance with each other. We didn't get a lot done in this first session of performance in terms of filming and what we could use, but we did get a lot done in the way of preparing for our next session. We were limited in the amount of time we had as Patrick had work, but as we were using his garage we had to end the day early. We only filmed about 15 minutes of performance this day as each one of us had to do other tasks as well. Patrick and the other band members (Gareth and Rob), helped Patrick fix all the equipment and organise the garage to look like this urban, underground location where our band would practice. Whilst they were doing that, Tom and I were collecting all the different lighting that Tom's dad was supplying us and Tom's applifiers for the guitars to make the scenery look more realistic. The only thing i could say that i wish we did differently was go down a bit earlier to have more time to film but even that was out of our hands because we needed the natural lighting to be dark. Overall i think this first day of filming the performance was highly successful as we found out exactly what lighting we needed and where everything and everyone should be. This then gave us an exact idea of what we needed to do when we came here again so that we could plow through without any interuptions.