Filming - Part One

Set up
My filming has been split up in to two sections, my first filming stage involves the young singer and is set at a house location. The lighting was a very important part of the filming and I had to make sure I got the right proportions to create a lighthearted atmosphere with  certain aspects of "seriousness" - these were highlighted by the darker areas of the set.

As I am working on my own in this task I asked for a few friends to help me out around the set, for example to follow along with the storyboards to check I was filming the correct shot at the right angle and to stop and start the music as I needed.  This allowed me to be more organised meaning I had more concentration on the actual filming and directing process.

Filming
I was very specific with my filming, I wanted to capture the innocence in the young singer and make sure the audience sympathise with the images in front of them. By using a range of angles, maybe some that a lot of others may have not included in their video. I would say that the lip syncing process was very difficult at first, I found it hard to get the expression in the characters face because he was miming the lyrics a Capella trying to replicate the music after he listened to it. This did not work and so I came up with a solution:

Lip Syncing Problem - It was very hard to sync the characters lips with the lyrics of the singer as he did not know the precise timings.

Lip Syncing Solution - I played the music whilst filming and had the character "sing" out loud along with the music as it played along, this helped sync the lips in time with the music and added the expression I was looking for in the characters face. This also helped the character to feel more relaxed as with the music playing loudly in the background you were unable to hear his actual "singing" and so he didn't feel as nervous.

I made myself a set of rules to follow whilst filming, bearing the editing process in mind, I had to ensure that I had the correct type and the right amount of footage to work with, I strictly followed along this filming rule as it involved every shot that I took:

My Filming Rule - Take at least TWO good shots that could be used

I kept the amount of people on set in the first part of the filming process to the bare minimum that I needed, I had the actor and one other person to help out with small jobs and lighting. This is because the lip syncing process can become very stressful if it doesn't go to plan and with lots of people to organise on top of that can make it impossible to create workable footage. With the minimum amount of people possible on set at this time I was able to concentrate on organising two people, the helper and the young singer and also on filming and directing.

Outcome
The footage to come out of this filming was of a workable standard, the next process was to create a small draft version involving only the singer so I could see how well the lip syncing went and could visually see the blanks where the next piece of footage would slot in to.

The camera made the quality of the footage a lower quality than I hoped. It also meant that the lighting did not come out as well as it should of done, with a camera that produced higher quality footage I feel the music video would have been of a much higher standard.

 

This was the outcome of my first rough draft attempt at editing the footage:

FUSD Test 1 from N Kumar on Vimeo.


 Points to Improve On:

• Lip Syncing - The words are not with the lips and the sound does not completely match the scenes.
• Shot Cuts - The shots are not exactly as they should be but as this is a rough draft this is expected.

This rough draft helped me develop my lip syncing skills and produce this draft with all of the shots of the young singer - the blanks are where the next bit of footage could go:


FUSD - Test 2 - Mixture of new footage and test footage from N Kumar on Vimeo.

Now I am ready to move on to the next filming process, producing rough drafts as I go along help me develop the music video through the stages and make sure I keep the editing process in mind whilst filming.