Filming Overview

We have recently been filming our footage for our music video and yesterday we filmed the performance based part of our music video in the "50's setting". Originally we intended to have Claudia as the singer in the 50's setting however we have had to change this and we now have Claudia's understudy, Katie, as the singer. We plan to have at the end of our music video a shot of Claudia looking at a photograph of Katie to explain that Katie is a 50's popular icon that Claudia really admires. We have cast Katie as the singer as we feel she has a 50's look and she also knows the song therefore she will be a confident mimer. Yesterday we filmed Katie's performance and we asked her to actually sing along to the song so that the miming is realistic. We used our school hall as our location as there is a red curtain across the stage therefore we positioned Katie with the microphone stand infront of the red curtain. We felt that the red curtain behind Katie made the location appropriate as it has connotations of love which relates to the song and also the red curtain makes it look like a performance. We used our storyboard to guide us and to begin we positioned the camera quite far away from Katie so that it was a long shot of Katie as we wanted the stage's red curtain to be visible and we also wanted the audience to see Katie's 50's outfit clearly. She was dressed in a black and white polka dot dress which is appropriate for the 50's theme, red lipstick and red shoes. We filmed a long shot of Katie singing along with the song. After we had filmed the song through once in long shot we then started to experiment with the different shots on our storyboard. For example, for the part in the song when Kate Nash sings, "I don't usually notice people's eyes" we filmed this as a close up and asked Katie to look directly at the camera when she sings this so the emphasis is on her eyes and face and by looking at the camera we felt the audience might feel more involved and connected with the song and this is also a voyeurism. Furthermore, we filmed Katie singing also from a side angle and this shot was a long shot. We decided to film from another angle as this was what we planned to do originally on our storyboard and we want our shots to be varied and more interesting and this means we will have a number to choose from when we edit in the post production process. We also filmed mid shots of Katie singing so that there will be a variation of interesting and effective shots in the music video and we also filmed a close up of Katie from a lower angle so the camera is partly looking up at her as we felt this shot gave her status. We also filmed close ups as when we filmed the long shot footage the microphone covered some of Katie's face and wasn't as clear as we wanted so we rectified this by filming close-ups and mid shots. Overall, the filming process was positive and effective as we got what we needed to do done and we feel we took some professional footage as we tried to evoke meaning with the shots we used by trying to sometimes give her status and also vulnerability with the long shot which reflects Nash's feelings of vulnerability in the song.

Below are some stills from the editing post production process. As you can see we made the performance sequence into a black and white monochrome. We did this using the tools of Adobe Premiere Pro. At first we found it difficult to convert the sequence into a black and white monocrome as we were unsure of what tools did this. Therefore we clicked on the "Help" link and asked how to change the footage into black and white. We were advised to use the "black and white effect" tool which is found in the Transitions/effects palette. We decided to make the footage into a monochrome as we wanted the performance sequence to look old-fashioned and sophisticated, like a flashback.


We decided to film a Mid close-up shot of Katie as it effectively shows Katie's facial expressions when she is lip-syncing and the Mid close-up shot focuses on Katie's lip-syncing which looks realistic as we asked Katie to actually sing the song rather than miming it. This way her miming looks professional and we can edit out her singing so that it is the song playing.

Long shot


Mid shot from a side angle