Construction Post 2: Week 2 Production

4th Day - 18th November 2015

For the majority of day 4 Shayam had prior commitments to take care of, so we focussed on getting as many of the shots of Mario alone done as possible. The majority of this was purely just filming him sing the whole song through from different angles, so we didn't really run into any issues as it was relatively simple. This process was also sped up by the fact we shot with both the school's Canon 5d mkII camera, and my Canon 600d, thus we were able to shoot more than one angle at a time.

We'd shoot an angle with my camera...

...and shoot a different angle with the
school's camera.

I'd say this day was very successful, as we recorded an abundance of shots of Mario that could be used similarly to master shots, as we can keep cutting back to them when editing.



5th Day - 19th November 2015

I also tried out focus pulls to add a bit
more variety to these shots.

We tried out various styles of
dancing in order to both add variation
but also ensure we had shots that
would fit both the faster-paced sections
of the track and the slower ones.

Day 5 was the most complex day for shooting, both in terms of planning for it, and on the day itself keeping everything running smoothly and on-time. The reason for this was it was the day which used both the largest number of actors, and the most other miscellaneous stuff, such as the glow-in-the-dark paint, which ended up not working. Although the paint didn't work, the glow sticks we used worked perfectly in the end night-time party scene.

I had to increase the ISO for longer shots
to get (what appeared to be) similar
brightness.

In order for the largest number of our actors to be available whilst we were shooting, we shot the majority of this during a media lesson. The only hiccup we had was that we overran by a small amount, however this in itself didn't really present any issues. The reason we overran was due to the fact we wanted to get as many takes as possible so that we had as many options of shots to choose from as possible. Furthermore we also would randomly think up interesting shot ideas on the spot and then want to try them out. I also spent a good 5-10 minutes trying a few shots whilst varying the ISO, I did this as I wanted to get the glow sticks looking as bright as possible whilst not getting interference appearing in the dark areas.

After school, we then shot the orange scene, which is the other main party scene but in a much lighter setting. Although all went to plan, and we finished ahead of schedule, looking back on the footage I feel like we should have perhaps shot more of it at different angles. In addition, these shots look far more 'awkward' than the end party shots, this is probably mainly due to the face we have long shots with far fewer people in them. If we were to redo this scene I reckon we would use more actors and a wider variety of shot angles and lengths.

Looking back on a couple of the shots, we should've had less space
between the characters, and also had far tighter framing in order
to better represent a fun, relaxed party scene.

6th Day - 20th November 2015

After the rush and stress of the previous day, day 6 was a far more relaxed shoot day. In the morning we reviewed the previous day's footage, and at lunch time we re-shot anything that we felt wasn't of a good enough quality. This was mainly just improving singular shots of Shayam, me, or Mario, and we spent just under half an hour actually shooting on this day.

Despite there being seemingly two good takes in this shot, we
felt the need to re-shoot it as Mario's head was slightly cut off
at the top of the frame.