On the 14th, we endured awful weather conditions, travelled in the car for half an hour or so to my friend's house to film the most exciting scene in our music video - the swimming pool scene.
Difficulties
-Weather was an obvious constraint. Fierce rain and gusty winds meant we had to use umbrellas over the cameras and change the locations around the pool we were filming, moving these to underneath shelter. However, the small size of the shelter created problems with camera manoeuvrability, in the aspect that worm eye shots were difficult, for example.
-The weather also made the fire aspect a problem. Filming involved two fires, on in a fire pit, the other on a table. Due to rain and wind, the fire in the pit took a lot of gasoline to burn properly, which required re-shooting multiple times, the same occurred with the table fire. However - ultimately the fire shots still looked brilliant, especially as they were filmed in 60fps.
-Time was also limiting. Our actor finished work at 2, so we only had an hour and a half or so to film the scene. This meant we needed to be extremely efficient. The fleshed-out shot list enabled this, as all crew members could follow where the two cameras needed to be next. This meant we got all our of the necessary shots filmed, however meant that some flushes, such as close-ups of the actor's face expressing non-verbal communication, were not filmed.
-Equipment also posed a problem. Upon arrival, I removed my tripod from my bag and discovered the top had broken off. This meant we only had one tripod, which was a photography tripod, meaning performing whip pans was more difficult. However - we combated this by performing most of the shots handicam to achieve a close tracking effect, consequently benefitting the cinematic nature of the video. This is because close tracking positions the audience in the scene, therefore prompting audience affiliation at the start of the video, as the audience is positioned with the main girl through fear incited by the use of slight camera movement.
Successes
-Despite these difficulties, I am still very happy with how the shoot went. We don't need to re-film, and some of the flushes definitely achieve technical excellence.
-One thing I am particularly happy about is, despite bad weather and time piling stress on the filming, we still took care to ensure the framing and composition of shots was cinematic. Utilising the rule of two-thirds, for example:
-One shot which looked particularly brilliant was the money shot, where the girl jumps in the pool (filmed in 60 fps). The framing and lighting in this shot, combined with the brilliant slow-motion, deems it the best shot in our music video, for me.
-We still used equipment proficiently, such as the stabilizer for the tracking shot following her run away.
-We also took some stills for our digipak, which were exactly how we planned. The two juxtaposing shots of fire and water were particularly good. However, due to lack of lighting, achieving the girl's reflection in the water was not possible. This was one thing I was disappointed about.
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