As this was my first day shooting my music video I had to ensure that I had all the equipment I needed so I would be prepared and would be able to start shooting my video as soon as I got to the Country Park. In the images below you will be able to see the equipment I took with me to the forest which would enable me to shoot my video. This equipment included, a Canon EOS 1200D camera, an 8 Gigabyte sand disk (SD) card, a tripod, my drawing book which included my storyboard so I would know what I would be filming and where and also the two props which included the memories box and the couple photograph. These images present all of the equipment I needed just to film my music video - however, I did take other equipment with me, but they weren't for filming - for example, I took my backpack to ensure that I would be able to carry everything at once and to keep everything protected in case anything happened in relation to the weather or even anything else. All in all, as long as I had all the equipment I needed to film my video, I knew that I would be able to begin filming as soon as I got to the location. On top of that, as I was filming on a Saturday, I actually decided to take out the camera from college on the Friday which meant I did try to again familiarize myself with the camera and this meant that it actually lost a lot of charge, so another piece of equipment I had when I took out all of the camera equipment was a charger to ensure that I would have a full battery when I went out filming on the Saturday - however, I did not take this charger to the forest with me as it would have been useless there.
On The Day
Before actually leaving the house to begin filming in this location, I kept checking the weather to ensure that there would be no sudden and drastic change which would have to make me and my actor stop filming. In the images below you are able to see two different times I looked at the weather - in the first two images you are able to see that I had taken these screenshots of the weather at 8:28am on the Saturday that I was going to film. In the first image you are able to see that between 9am and 12pm the weather was going to be quite windy and in the second image you are able to see that between 1pm and 5pm, it was going to be cloudy with a little rain - however, when I first looked at this I thought that the cloudy sky may be good for my video as I don't want a bright and sunny looking video anyway and also since there was only a 40% chance of rain I decided that I would still continue to film and if it did decide to rain then we would stop filming for that time, but if it got worse then we would have to leave.
Me and Laura were actually filming at the Humber Bridge Country Park between 11am and 2:50pm, which gave us almost 4 hours of filming and in the image on the right hand side below that I have presented, you are able to see that there was apparently going to be a lot of rain between 11am and 3pm. However, I took this screenshot just as I got out of the car to walk into the Country Park and by this time I thought that I was already at the location I needed to be in and it wasn't raining at the time and there was only a 30% chance of rain, so I decided just to stay and begin filming.
After filming on this day I went home and uploaded all of the footage I had taken on the day and had saved it onto my computers desktop so I would be able to work on it whenever I needed to. In the image below you are able to see that I saved all my footage in a folder called 'Woods Day 1' which contained 192 different shots. In this image you are also able to see that there are many shots which look similar and this is due to the fact that sometimes the shots that I was doing didn't go the way I wanted them to go, so I had to keep doing some of the same shots over and over again - however, I have spoken about this in more detail under the 'Problems' heading below. When filming on this day, I decided to take some images to prove that we were filming at the time, but due to the fact that there were a lot of shots that I needed to take and I didn't want to waste any time, I only managed to get one piece of evidence and this is just an image of we working with the camera which I had presented on the right. In this image I was actually trying to resolve an issue with the camera I was having (which again I will explain in more detail below), but at the time, Laura decided to take a photo of me just for some evidence. In this image you are actually able to see me wearing multiple layers and this was due to the fact that it was actually really cold on the day of filming, so both me and Laura brought numerous layers of clothes with us to ensure that we were warm when it came to shooting and because Laura was only wear a thin leather jacket and a t-shirt when filming, we had to especially ensure that she kept warm. Also in this image you are able to see that I am carrying a backpack, which is what I used to carry all the equipment in, but also any extra things we needed on the day as well which included props and another outfit that Laura would be wearing for the video. Underneath I will mention the issues I came across - however, as we were tight for time when filming due to the camera's charge, I decided that I wanted to get all the longest shots over with so I would be able to film the shorter shots quickly when I next came to the location, so I managed to get all of the shots with the props in this filming day and I also managed to get the shots of the silhouette which meant that I wouldn't need to worry about bringing the costume for the silhouette next time we decide to come to this location and I will have all of the shots I need.
Problems
When filming on this day there actually were quite a few issues we came across and I think this is partly because of the fact that this was the first time I had been filming my video, so I wasn't completely familiar with what I was doing and how it would turn out - however, there were also a range of other reasons that actually caused problems for me when filming on this day. Due to the issues that I came across, I didn't get all of the shots I needed for this location and as I matter of fact I only got around 15 shots out of approximately the 50 shots that I needed from this location and again I think this is due to the fact that there were many issues we came across, but also the majority of the shots that I started off doing, actually took a long time to film and make perfect, which is what may have wasted so much time.
The main issue we came across when filming was actually trying to focus the camera and although I had watched plenty of videos on the subject and even asked Liam about it, I still had an issue for some reason, even though when I was practicing with it the night before all of the images that I took were in focus. When trying to focus the camera I kept switching from video mode to photography mode to see if I would be able to get the depth of field effect that I wanted - while on this mode I also took a range of images and in these images (which I have presented below) you are able to see how I have struggled to get the main feature in the image to be in focus and on top of that, I have also provided some of the videos that I shot which did not go well, so lead me onto re-shooting. Nonetheless, I eventually got the shots I wanted and they came out just the way I wanted them and once I had got past the depth of field issue, I then managed to continue creating my video without wasting so much time.
Here are some of the images I took when trying to figure out how to focus the main feature. I have included both the images of when the camera didn't focus, but also some images from when it eventually did focus:
Here are some of the video shots I took that were out of focus which I have managed to put all in one video through the use of Adobe Premiere Pro:
Another issue I came across when filming was the weather, and although I knew it was going to rain on the day, I was still prepared to continue filming. Around 1 hour into filming, I had got about 4 completed shots done due to the fact that I had just only managed to figure out what was happening when I was trying to focus the camera and by this time it started to begin raining quite heavily which meant that me and Laura had to stop filming at that time and we both hid under a tree and put all of the equipment in my backpack to ensure that nothing would get damaged or broken. At this time, we waited around 10 minutes for the rain to stop and then we were able to begin filming again - however, we had to be careful as the ground was slippy and muddy, so we had to ensure that we wouldn't fall over. Another big issue we came across was the charge on the camera and again, this was the first time we had been out filming so I wasn't sure about how long the camera would last and as I said before we began filming at around 11am and left by 2:50pm and this was due to the fact that the camera had died because I didn't turn it off between takes, so when I film next time I will have to ensure that I save the battery and turn off the camera between all the takes. If this didn't occur then I perhaps would have been able to get more shots done and would be able to begin editing my video. Overall, this filming day didn't go as expected - however, I now know what I did wrong and how I would be able to overcome those issues next time I film for my video.
Although this wasn't exactly an issue, I did try to film one scene in a different way. In one of the scenes you are supposed to see the actor just ripping up the photograph of her and her boyfriend, but my actor had the idea to actually get a lighter and burn the image which I thought was a good concept that we could try and would go well with the music video. However, once we tried it we noticed that the photo took too long to burn, but also it was really windy on the day so it kept blowing the fire out which mean that this wasn't going to make the cut of my video - however, I took spare photographs with me, so managed to get a shot of my actor ripping the image up which will be used in my final video.
Here is the video of setting the photograph alight which didn't go according to plan:
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