Camera Assessment

Thursday 14^th october 2010

Alice and I loaned out the camera equipment along with a torch and a tripod to film different shots of our perfomer singing to the camera. This was a great opportunity to see if our actor was comfortable is confident infront of the camera and to recap our camera skills. Our actress we intended to be in our music video was ill off college so we got two of Alice’s friends to be the performer. If Eve cannot make the shooting date, we will ask one of the performers today to be the main performer. We were faced with the pressures of time, so we didn’t have long to film. We managed to make the performers familiar with the lyrics before we shot. We were going to film in two locations – one infront of a black background and the other outside on the grass area but we didn’t get time to film outside unfortunatly. We filmed from three different angles whilst shing the torch on the body to creat a sense of ‘mystery’. We feel we have both gained from this activity and we have positioned our roles with Alice being the director and me filming for our the music video.

ashleigh

We had both Evie and Harriet being filmed to see who suited the role of our main performer more. after shooting them both we decided either of them would work as although Harriet glanced away from camera a few times and Evie didn't appear as confident this was the first time they had heard the song or sang the lyrics and actually really enjoyed the experience. We are going to have Harriet as the main performer and Evie as one of the animal performers. all of our chosen performers either do dance, performance or drama so they are all comfortable moving and communicating on camera. 

alice

The above the video is the finished product for our camera assessment.

The editing process took us an hour to complete after importing the footage, assembling the shots in a logical order with effective lip sync. We also looked up some transitions that would make some shots interesting but we only put one or two in which included flash and fade in because we wanted the effects to look ‘natural’ in its environment and not just ‘stuck’ on there for the sake of it. As you can see from the video, we have used a variety of shots. We have used a variety to make the video interesting and not boring to watch. We filmed 4 main shots at different angles. The angle types are appropriate for this videos and doesn’t distract you from reality as it looks natural. AS for lighting, Alice shone a torch on the performers shoulder to create a shadowed effect. Instead of using natural lighting, we thought we’d use black curtains in the background and a beam of light. The black and white gives the video a sense of mystery and ambiguity. Looking at the shots on the MAC computer, I think that they were well framed. The performer was well framed in the middle and the torch light doesn’t reflect too much on camera so the shots are isn’t over exposed with light. Considering we had to film in the dark with the lights off, I think we did pretty well!! During the editing process, we tried to edit to the beat. Because we had four main shots to work with, we used different shots for different parts of the song so you could get a different perspective of her lips moving. For our first take of filming, our performer mimed and when we played it back, it somehow looked like she was miming. So the second time round, we got her to sing it out loud and then abstracted the sound out in the editing suite. Her words wore spoke with diction so her lip movement seemed natural and more emphasised. This task proved particularly useful because we were able to see if our performers were suitable.
Ashleigh