Filming Update No.5

Yesterday we filmed pretty much the rest of the shots we needed for the different location scenes. A highly successful day lead to three new locations filmed, and a reshoot of the dog scene, kitchen scene, and the start scene.

Football

The first location was outside my house. For this one I had planned to find a football field or shoot in the school, however convenience meant that we filmed here. I chose to do this because I only really needed a location that was clearly outside so that it seemed appropriate that he is playing with a ball. I got him to wear a blue Brazil football top so that it stood out against the rather dull tones of the background. He was also wearing blue jeans which again stood out against the brown and cream colours. The football we used was just a basic ball that will be easy for my to replicate in 2D cardboard when making the props for these scene.
Regarding the quality of the shots, the bright light from the sun and clouds meant that the quality of the image is very good with high resolution. The brightness also means that I can play around with the contrast to make the colours more harsh and fun.
We encountered no problems shooting this, and my dog also decided to join in with the shots, which was not planned, but it does look quite effective when he comes bounding in among the two balls being thrown at Ben. I hope to be able to squeeze those shots in somewhere in my video, probably towards the end.

Table Tennis

This was a completely improved location as the table tennis table had only been put up in my house recently. It provides a completely different look to the other shots, and the table gives the shots a new sort of depth as it comes off the bottom of the frame, as if it was protruding through the viewers screen. Since my target audience is 16-20 year olds, the sight of sports will hopefully be a reason for them to like it as they are youthful and more likely to be able to associate themselves to sports than an older audience, especially football and table tennis.
Shooting for this also went very smoothly, I had to open the curtains as wide as I could so that as much light was let in as possible. I chose to film with the window behind the camera so that the sun would light up the colours in his costume and the environment around him. Again, this means that I will be able to enhance the contrast and the colours.
These shots will replace the theme park slot in my video.

Ironing

I decided to film in my utility room, and have Ben iron some clothes and play around with the iron. Again this was pretty much improvised on the day. I chose this to provide a complete contrast to some of the stereotypically teenage and fun things that are happening in the other locations in order to create a slightly comical effect. At first, he just appears there and starts to iron, but then I filmed some shots where he starts to get bored and decides to climb underneath the ironing board, play with the steam button on the iron and dance around. I think that teenagers will be able to relate to this idea quite well, because being a teenager normally means that you have to do chores around the house, and these shots directly appeal to the teenagers who get annoyed and fed up with the countless chores around the house. This is referred to completely comically and there is no deeper meaning to it.
The quality of the shots is pretty good, again I opened the blinds as much as I could to let as much light in as possible in order for Ben to be lit up properly, along with the other objects in the room. This again means I can play with the contrast and brightness in editing stages.
The only slight problem I encountered here was fitting the tripod in the room. Since it is quite big and the room was quite compact, it was tricky finding a place for the tripod to go so that it was still a long shot. After a lot of squeezing I finally find a perfect spot.
Since Ben appears here and the ironing board is already in front of him, I will have to make sure that when I film with Rachel I put the ironing board prop down first, then put the mannequin down behind it, then cut to the live action.

Reshooting

Reshooting also went pretty much perfectly. First we redid the dog scene outside before it got dark, which was the main problem with my last shots. Since it wasn't raining, my dog was in a very playful mood and was willing to stay outside. The shots are so much better this time around because the lighting is brighter and happier. I managed to get lots of shots of Conan playing with a stick and Ben giving him cuddles and playing with him, which will be going in the ending montage of the video. This will appeal to teenagers because, like I said in my Pitch presentation, animals are used a lot in pop music videos and they are adored by many teenagers.

The first thing we did when setting up for the kitchen seven was close the blinds to the window that you could see me and the camera in in the last shots. I then moved a lamp, turned all the lights on and turned the tv on so that as much light was being produced in Ben's direction as possible. After someone's didn't know what Ben was wearing on his head, I decided to use a different chef hat with black and white checkers around the rim so that t was clearly a chefs hat. Other than this, the shots were pretty much the same, just without any camera reflection in the window.

Then finally, we reshot the starting montage but filmed on a sofa instead of my brothers room. His room had really bad lightning so for this very reason, I decided that shooting on the sofa with a lot of lighting would be a lot better. We did pretty much the same thing with Ben lifting each of his limbs up as if they're being pulled up from above. I also tried to do a bit of a pan when Ben stands up so bring another dimension to these shots. I will see what this looks like when I come to editing.