R+P Post 33: Reflections on my role and contribution during Research and Planning

Overall I am very happy about what my group has manged to accomplish within this research and planning period. We have all worked well together as a team with Sian and Meera both contributing significantly to this project.

During Research and planning this is what I contributed:

Test shoot- Filming

• I took on the role of 'AJ'- the artist of the music video
• I encouraged and gave feedback to Meera and Sian whilst they danced
• I was constantly rehearsing my dancing in preparation for the main shoot
• I helped create the lighting set-ups
• I sorted out the background, i.e. the backing curtain, so it worked well with our lighting and had no visible creases on camera

Me (centre) learning a dance routine

Me performing one of my lip sync shots

Test shoot- Editing

• As I have a lot of experience in editing from past projects I took more responsibility for this edit
• I helped organise the shots onto the timeline and then sync them up to the main audio track
• I helped bring in members of our year to watch our edit- audience feedback

Me and Sian editing

Story boarding

• As I spent the majority of our planning time learning how to dance and practicing my lip sync I did not have much of an opportunity to help with the timeline, however I was able to plan out our key storyboard shots and then organise them into categories
• This again was a process I was familiar

All in all, what my group has accomplished so far has been to a very high standard and we have definitely had a lot of fun along the way. I can't wait to see how we progress through the construction stage.

R+P Post 32: Test shoot and rough edit

Our rough cut from our test shoot:

This rough cut was made from our test shoot footage and was therefore very helpful is judging whether our ideas worked well and how we could the adapt them to improve the overall flow and look of the music video.

Overall, the test shoot was a huge learning curve for us as this was the first time we were given full access to the equipment within the studio. This meant is was very useful to us as we wanted to be as prepared as possible when it came to filming our main shoot. The main thing we wanted to experiment with during this shoot was the lighting desk as we had some rather complex ideas that we needed to see. These included 'flicker' effects, strobe lighting and a screen with shadows.

Our blue lighting set-up

However, the lighting set-up we were most impressed with was the dark blue silhouette lighting for the dancers. We thought this looked really professional and cool and definitely fitted the look we were going for; it worked really well when Meera went through her routine and in turn influenced us to have Sian now have a routine with the lighting.

R+P Post 31: My call sheet

To help make sure that all of our actors and crew turned up on time, we created call sheets; these were given out to all the crew and all of our actors. Each sheet shows clearly at what time each actor needs to be on set and all the health&safety details they require, such as fire exits and a risk assessment.

Call Sheet for the Monday shoot (in school/studio)