Locations

We used a range of locations for our music video. For our narrative we used natural locations such as bedrooms, a skate park and a launderette. The theme of naturalism was decided on to reflect the sincerity of the lyrics, which the artist had written as a response to her own life situation. For the band shots, we used the school studio and customised the background to reflect the song.

Bedroom 1

The first bedroom we used supposed to reflect the bedroom of a teenage girl. We used Daniella's room as her room had the perfect balance that suggested this. The walls were blue and brown with a pink bed. We felt that using too munch pink would be childlike and not suit our situation. The bed here was conveniently placed so we were able to film from different sections of the room without anything getting in our way.

Bedroom 2

The other bedroom we used was purple and blue themed, this was supposed to be a neutral bedroom that could belong to a male. We felt that even though these colours were light, they worked for a male and showed a contrast between the more feminine personalised room and a masculine room. This demonstrates the 'bedroom culture' which girls develop at a young age in comparison to boys. In this room, there was less place to move with the camera which made it harder to vary our types of shot. However, we found that this room was a good location to present the idea of the protagonist not really being in the location but having a more ghost like form.

Skate Park

In our opinion, the 'rock chick' image sometimes is associated with skateboarding. We also felt that by following this, we could get a broad range of shots. We were lucky that it was a quiet day which made is easier for us to film and focus on our actors without getting in the way of other skateboarders. it also gave us an outdoor location rather than constantly indoors. The use of levels in the skate park worked to our advantage as we could stand on different levels to film rather than complicating our actors too much. Also as skateboarder cannot plan what will happen while they are active, we were able to use this opportunity to just film anything that happened without a specific plan. This meant that the camera was constantly on but in different parts or at different heights. Our idea turned out to be effective as it meant the actors were more realistic and felt less pressured, which was ideal for their safety.

Launderette

The launderette belongs to my father and so we had easy access to it, we had been told that many university media students use the launderette as a location. The idea of filming in a laundrette was thought of as different and new. We used it to show more of the relationship between the leading man and woman. As with the skate park, it was a quiet time when we filmed which made it easier to film quickly. We had an issue when filming, the staff had changed the baskets we had in the background when we started to film and so we were delayed from our finish as we had to re film certain shots. The laundrette illustrated the social class and age of our actors. Daniella and I discussed the representation this would give our actors, Daniella insisted that a middle class teenager would assist their parent by taking laundry to be done. I argues that many middle class families would own a washing machine and so I would suggest them to be working class in this situation. After this debate we sat watching the types of people who used the Lauderette and concluded that middle class would be realistic. Having the male lead work there, showed the average middle class teenager who will take any job to gain a bit of money and so we thought his postion there was realistic.

Studio

By using the studio we could use the white walls and black covers and customise it however we wanted to match it with our theme. We liked the Paramore video for 'Misery Buisness' and wanted to use a similar idea to their band shots. We used our chosen colour scheme of pink and black and we wrote 'Fantasy Boy' similar to the way that 'Riot' is written in the Paramore.

Last day of filming 14/11/09

We took the equipment to my father’s laundrette in East London to finish off our filming. We chose this location as we were making our storyline naturalistic as we could. We also decided to try out some new ideas such as have the artist singing at the same time as the narrative. This meant Georgia having to make sure not to move to much or change positions while we filmed her singing and also making sure we hadn’t moved the camera at all while filming this and the narrative. Though this was a challenge we decided it would be a way to leave naturalism in order to mix the artist with the narrative but still have them oblivious to each other.

The location proved to be a good one as it was quiet making it easy for us to film quickly enough. The fact that it was a real laundrette meant that it was completely realistic, and the general stillness of it during the times we filmed made it easier for us to shoot from various angles without interference. We used the washing machines to provide levels for us from which we could film from or film our actors on.

To make it look natural we asked them just to have a conversation while we filmed them. This worked well as it meant that all the responses to each other didn’t look like they were scripted assisting with the naturalistic theme of our music video.

Second day of filming 13/11/09

We started the day by filming bedroom shots of our artist singing while sitting on the bed. This started our idea of disrupting the naturalism of our music video by making her appear as a ghostly figure unnoticed by other characters. This suggests that the audience are watching through her point of view. We placed the camera in three different positions around the bed to experiment with angles. We tried one close looking at her from the left, one more distant from the right and experimented with zooming in and out on her and her guitar from these positions. We also had a camera filming high angle shots which reflected her powerlessness throughout the songs as she doesn’t take any actions.

We also tried filming our actress (Mellissa Levitt) getting out of bed in the morning and getting ready. This was just experimental and didn’t work as well as I had hoped as the waking up shots didn’t appear realistic to me.

Next we filmed our other actor (Laurent) reading her e-mail on his computer. We thought it would be a problem filming a computer screen and that it wouldn’t come out clear however luckily it came out fine. In this scene of our music video the ghostly artist returns and is sitting on the bed behind him.

We ended the day in a skate park filming the boys in the band skating while the girls watched. We found that the best shots we got while shooting here were the ones which weren’t planned as things seemed to happen that we hadn’t expected such as random tricks they were showing us on their skateboard. We tried filming them from the same level as the skateboards as they were moving. Even though it was difficult to keep up with them at times. I felt that these shots literally threw the audience into the narrative.

First day of filming

Today, we went into school in order to film the band shots, computer shot and school shots with our actors and band. Unfortunately an actor fell through so we had to remove the school shots and postpone them to another day. Luckily this left us more time to concentrate on the band shots and make sure we had enough footage to fit in the band in many interesting ways.

We imitated the image from the Paramore video and decorated a black area, we created ourselves, with the word fantasy boy. This gave the rock-pop image we wanted and made their performance space more creative.

We also recorded a shot on the computer by using a program which records all movement which occurs on screen. This is to show an e-mail being sent. This took a few attempts to get perfect as it was a new program to us. When we had finished, the result was amazing. It was believable as an e-mail and we confirmed that we would be able to edit it later on.

Risk Assessment

We had to identify possible risks so that we were able to avoid them and protect ourselves and the equipment.

CD cover practice

We have to create a CD cover for our band and so we had a look at the graphics techniques which were available to us in order to create it. We were given the actual image of the Snow Patrol album Eyes Open and several similar images.

We used coral-paint in order to attempt to recreate the CD cover and also to experiment with different effects.

With the use of this we intended to design the album cover for Mia-Mae.

Production Schedule

We made a plan of where we'd be filming, who with and just in case, we listed as many contact numbers as we could. This helped us plan our timing better and also meant that with contacting each other we were able to avoid as many obstacles as possible.