Thursday 13th December:
Today was our first day of filming. It took us just up to two hours to record less than four minutes worth of footage. The fact that our actor had told us that he had learned the lyrics when in actual fact he had not, it put us to a real disadvantage because we we're so clueless on what to do. When he told us that he had learned the lines we should have made it our responsibility to run them through with him rather than just believing him and leaving it till last minute, so to be fair, it wasn't his entire fault. We were able to produce a few successful shots that we can use in our music video but overall, everything was just a completely disaster.
Friday 14th December:
Before going off to film, we re-looked at the footages that we filmed on Thursday so we could see what was left to be done and what needed to be filmed again.
Today filming went really well. We filmed all the footage that we needed in just under an hour. We filmed just over 15 minutes worth of footage. Everyone was really motivated today, especially considering how poorly yesterday went. Anthony really went for it and gave it his all. I think it was because he had to be somewhere in an hour so he was under a lot of pressure and time restrictions. I think it goes to show that some actors work better under pressure because on Thursday when we had all the time in the world, he wasn't able to produce anything productive but today he was just really great! The camera could not get enough of him and he had so much energy to give. As a group we all helped him channel his energy towards our music video. Lorrie and I we're constantly on our feet giving him ideas on what we wanted to see from him. Junior was in charge of the lighting; because we were filming in a drama studio we could control every aspect of the lighting. Rachel was like our live contingency plan, quite often when something went wrong; she already had an idea in mind to replace it.
Monday 17th December:
Today we're just looking over the footages that we filmed on Friday. We're actually quite pleased with what we produced but we have found a few faults that will affect us dramatically when it comes to editing unless we find a way of resolving the issues now. As a group we need to decide how we wish to address them. We could either think about filming the whole piece again or just leaving it all to relay on editing.
The faults we found:
Because we didn't check if the lens was clean, a lot of our footage wasn't focused and came out really blurry which is really disappointing because when we were filming it all, we were actually pleased with the facial expressions Anthony was giving us and how nice the lighting was looking.
We realised that most of the footage we filmed on Thursday and Friday was just the chorus. We filmed it so many times but with completely different ideas. That’s going to be stress editing because we don't have much footage of him saying the lyrics to the other verses. However, we did film a lot of extra clips that we could use to replace the lyric part because Anthony still hadn't learnt the lines, so we had to come up with something quick.
When looking back at the footage that we recorded we also realised that in the majority of shots, Anthony does look pretty tired. He would start off really energetic and stuff but quickly after he starts to get tired and the whole transaction shows on camera. If we had noticed that when filming then we could have had longer breaks, giving him more time to recover. But because we were so focused on filming the whole song without stopping, we completely forgot to check if he was tired or not. When editing as individuals, we have to be selective with the footages that we decide to use.
Why didn't filming follow our story board?
The original story board that we had planned was completely different to our final product. In the story board we had Anthony (our actor) doing all these crazy moves and just going on a total rampage which all could of been achievable if he was prepared to do all them things, and also if he knew how to. Before producing the story board we should have consolidated with Anthony and asked him what he was prepared to do and what he wasn't. Because he didn't have the acting skills that we needed, it made it a lot harder to follow our story board. Other scenes that we also had planned had to be cut because we didn't have the facilities needed for it. And other scenes when filming didn't really look like what we imagined in our heads so we had to cut them out too. We had filmed a few bloopers that we thought wouldn't be useful to us but when editing, I decided to go back and look at them and found that they would actually fit really well in our music video. For an example, there is one scene when a member of my group was just messing about on camera and rejecting Anthony and just pushing him away and stuff. When editing I decided to add it in because we had a scene where Anthony was begging the girl to stay, and the way we had filmed it, it made it seem like Anthony was talking to himself, so by me adding that seen it basically tied the whole seen in.
We experienced so many difficulties when filming; many of them were our own faults and could have been avoided. Before filming we continuously asked our actor if he had revised the lyrics that we gave him. He told us yes that he had but in actual facts he hadn't. It us up to us to follow him up and get him to sing the lyrics to us which would of taken less than 5 minutes but we didn't, no excuses can be made for that. However, luckily we we're able to think on the spot and replace some of the ideas that we had originally planned and replaced them different ideas. For an example, on our story board we had a scene where he was going to say some of the lyrics to when of our other actors with him looking all angry and upset. Instead we changed it up a bit, and instead of him saying the lyrics he would just be saying random things that made him look even angrier and upset. Things like "I hate you...I love you. Sorry...It's not your fault...You did me wrong" and so on.
