Production Diary

29.11.13

      Today, we began filming the first couple of scenes for 'Human' by The Killers and used two distinct locations. Filming the part of the woman, we had our actress, Chelsey Willis, lay on a medical bed (in our school's medical room), start filming using a birds-eye view that pans to follow the woman wake up, sit up and then get off the bed to answer her phone. We had Chelsey mess her hair up to try and capture a dishevelled look along with the clothes that she wore when sleeping on the the bed. We wanted to give the impression that she didn't have a permanent residence; was homeless, or a runaway. We then filmed the beginning to the Man's narrative, played by Ryan Hayden. His first scene followed him as he plays a hospital patient (more of a metaphor than playing an actual patient) being pushed through a 'hospital corridor' (actually the school science corridor) by the orderly, played by Josh Hobson. We only filmed the man being pushed through the corridor, zooming in on his face as he passes by the camera, but due to some shaky movement, I'll have to reshoot this in the post-filming stage. All filming equipment was borrowed from school for this particular shoot.

3.12.13

        Today we had our band's lead singer, Jake Jones, lip sync the majority of the song 'Human' by The Killers so he could be able to lip sync during the filming of the music video, hopefully arranging the band members (Joe Clark, Jake Jones, Daniel Howley, Jack Charlesworth) in time for filming them and finish their parts along with the green screen setting in the forest clearing. We borrowed the equipment from school to do this practice.

6.12.13

        Today, we filmed Ryan Hayden's hospital scene again, but replacing him with Leon Asgari due to some difficulties. I recreated every shot I'd done, but with a few added ones, including the shot of the wheels rolling along with the orderly's feet behind it. Another added shot was of 'The Man' (Leon) noticing the music and getting out of the chair and walking down the hall to the entrance of the 'hospital.' After that, we did a couple of minutes of out takes, where Josh Hobson rolled around on the wheelchair pretending to be Professor Charles Xavier from 'X-Men.' All of the filming equipment was borrowed from school, as seen on the equipment booking form I will be posting soon.

7.12.13

       Today, I filmed Leon's scenes for his characters journey through his narrative, starting with the outside of the hospital (we have to film him coming out of the door on Monday), leading to the streets with occasional change in clothing to signify the spontaneous behaviour that he's expressing, and through a (as hopefully convincing as possible) small wooded area. We did a few of the same shots for back-up in case of problems with other shots. I used my own equipment for this shoot.

9.12.13

       Today, me and Leon was given permission from Montagu Hospital to film on their grounds. We shot Leon's character exiting the hospital (that began with the 'hospital' corridor shot in school) in the gown he was wearing, walking up the path from the entrance, which then leads to the shots we did on Friday the 7th, almost completing his narrative, which will be finished on Friday, the shooting deadline. I used my own camera for this shoot, with the hospital 'gown' and the tripod borrowed from school.

10.12.13

         Today we re-shot Chelsey Willis' scenes, with Nicole Denman replacing her as the lead woman. We used a different room to the original one used, this time a room that had lights that will actually stay switched off. We added another shot that comes before Nicole's character is introduced, where the camera pans in from a shot of an outside building then into the room. Josh Hobson also assisted me with difficult movements of the camera, which we borrowed from school as well as the tripod.

11.12.13

         This afternoon, I went out to Creighton Woods in Swinton to film a forest clearing that will be put onto the green screen on Friday the 13th *gasp*. I found a relatively spacious clearing, with enough space to 'hold' the band on the green screen, but having less of a crowd in this setting. I slowly panned and shot from different angles of the clearing to be able to have some accompanying shots incase something goes wrong. I used my own equipment for this shoot.

12.12.13

         Today, I filmed two separate shots of two different streets that were empty, so filming them at the right time was crucial as cars frequently drove past and people occasionally walked past. I used my own camera for these shots.

Note: I was going to film Nicole Denman's character scenes as well in the afternoon, however, problems for her arose today, so if given permission, I will film the scenes the week before the holidays.

13.12.13

        Today, we filmed the vast majority of the green screen clips for the video. There were certain problems however, with the size of the green screen not being large enough to contain more than three people before the walls behind the screen begin to appear. These shots will have the forest scenes I filmed pasted onto the green screen to give the illusion of the performers being in a wooded clearing. 

6.1.14

         Today, we began the editing for the video, despite having to re-shoot a part of the video that was filmed but went missing after the holidays. 

         We began positioning the clips in chronological order. However, problems became prominent: the process was slow as not everybody was present to help with the editing; the track wasn't on the desktop so it couldn't be added to iMovie for synchronising; the importing of the most recently filmed scenes heavily slowed the allowance of editing because of the Mac focusing on the import (which isn't strictly a problem).

7.1.14

           Today, editing became easier with the inclusion of the song so that we could start on the synchronisation between the music and the video.

          I started synchronising the first green screen section (with a member of the band miming the song), however there were two main problems: the clips had to be elongated and sometimes shortened to attempt to synchronise with the song as perfectly as possible; the instruments used in the video were also needed to synchronise with the instrumentals in the song, so the final product would be more genuine and infrequent on simple mistakes.

13.1.14

         Today, we continued editing, adding a few more clips to the project for cutting and prolonging sequences, however, with useful advice from the tutor, we decided to clip all of the scenes together to complete the video, and eventually re-synchronise the music again, which would prove to be the best time to become careful and identify the flow of the video and the music. We also began briefly focusing on the colour palette of a certain sequence; the hospital corridor, where Man (Leon Asgari) is being wheeled through the hall. We darkened the blue tone in this scene, so as to create a more cynical, dark and depressing atmosphere to suggest Man's life. There were'nt any mentionable problems within this session.

14.1.14

       Today, we continued the darkening of the blue tone in Leon's hospital scene. New clips were added, completing the majority of the beginning scenes, leading steadily into the mid-section of the video. There were certain problems: a scene featuring Leon 's character exiting the hospital through a door, then walking along a path towards the street, which was hit with an unexpected problem, a sign which read 'Ambulance Turning Point' outside where he was walking, revealing a mistake on his location, so the scene would require rather heavy cuts. However, there were many positive outcomes in this session: we transitioned clips correctly to avoid certain problems; the jump-cuts were clearly positioned to avoid abrupt cutting; we handled the editing of our Woman (Nicole Denman) opening the door from an inside perspective to an outside perspective.

20.1.14

     Today, we continued with the editing and found a couple of more affecting problems. We edited more clips together correctly, however, we needed to start re-filming two scenes: Nicole's narrative and the whole green screen section with the band performing because of the rejecting of proper pasting of the forest to the background due to colours not separating upon pasting it.

22.1.14

    Today, we continued editing the footage. We imported Josh Hobson's performance of miming the song outside and playing an electric (or bass) guitar (which we had permission from the music department to use). The performance was satisfying, furthermore satisfying as a flock of white birds unexpectedly entered the frame in a fitting way (aesthetic and well-timed). When we finally synced it with iMovie, we then decided that we would need the whole band to play, intending to use the same location (a field with a single tree) to film it at.

27.1.14

    Today, we filmed the band performing the entire song, from 4 different cameras; one angled from the left, one from the right, one directly facing the band, and a Gear Pro camera for portable use. However, problems such as the wind was present. Cameras blew over, the whistling overwhelmed a lot of the sound on the recording, even though we were able to edit out the sound. After filming and packing up, we filmed the singers performing the song again, using the Gear Pro to do close-ups and panning shots. The problem with this was that the camera hadn't recorded the footage; I must've not realised that the camera was recording the 'behind-the-scenes' part instead of the actual scene.

4.2.14

    Today, after importing the band scenes, we continued the editing process, adding in the new clips for the correct timing and importing previously lost clips to bring the video to its final minute of editing. There were problems such as scenes being difficult, but after improving them, it goes out of sync again. However, fortunately the process is going fine, so we hopefully won't take long for the completion of the video.

10.2.14

   Today, we re-shot the band scenes again, yet with more close-ups of one of the performers (Josh Hobson) so that I could create a variety of camera shots and angles. The wind proved to be a problem; blocking out the music so that it wasn't understood enough to be able to mime. After finishing the shoot, we began to import it, as well as doing some very brief editing.

17.2.14

      Today, we continued the editing; adding and taking away some scenes. The biggest problem was trying to sync the miming with the music, by lengthening, shortening, adding or deleting various clips. We're onto the 3 minute mark of the video, correctly syncing it, however we left the editing with a scene out of sync, so we will alter the rest of the video tomorrow when we have over 2 hours to finish and import it. We also added timed black screens that will be replaced with Nicole's scenes once we finish filming them.

18.2.14

        Today, with over two hours to finish the video, we finally got to the end, finishing at the 4:05 minutes mark just as the session ended. We altered the previous day's synchronization and it fit perfectly, as well as adding close-ups of drums, syncing more voice-overs, darkening a few bright scenes that don't match the rest of the video (which was mostly dark weather), turning brightness to -18%, the contrast to -48%, and the saturation to 70%. It was the closest to the intended surrounding weather, however it became a problem as the picture quality decreased because of the changes, but it was still very clear. We had a few more problems with it going out of sync, but because of the amount of time we had, it wasn't much of a problem to fix. We passed the singing stage, going onto the instrumentals that end the song. The end shots consisted of our drummer, Josh (also the person pushing Leon in the wheelchair) throwing his drumsticks into the air, subsequently putting them in the tree, then the camera slides up Connor Faulkner's guitar, signalling the eventual detachment from the band as the song draws to an end (we also changed the beginning scene of the video, where we instead used a shot of the camera sliding down the guitar as though to introduce us to the band), and finally, the image of the guitar and drumsticks in the tree, then panning upwards, fading to black. The song ends.

         We also manipulated Leon's end scene as he comes out from the bushes, making it look as though he's looking at the band with confusion (as well as Nicole), then turning his head (used from a previous shot) as though to face Nicole, who will also appear from the bushes (which is yet to be filmed). We won't be having both people in the same shot however, due to time constraints, instead trying to be creative and manipulate the scenes as though they are looking at each other.

         We started exporting the film just as the lesson ended.

CONTINUED: 

19.2.14

     Today, we filmed Nicole's final scenes where her character is passing through the trees (mainly bushes) and eventually appearing out onto the same field as Leon's character, so that the loose ends could be done and connect the video to what they are both seeing: the band. We had a few problems however: disagreements on how much inside the bush Nicole's character should be positioned in due to the bushes being potentially irritating; and the state of the bushes being without leaves, unlike the bush that Leon comes out of, despite them both being on the same field and us only realising later that we could have used another location that would've been easier for shooting. Another problem was Nicole's haircut, which was different to earlier shootings, so we decided to mostly show her through close-ups to avoid attention on the difference, as well as the difference in clothing, which we sorted because we acknowledged the theme of the video being about spontaneity, so the change in clothes (which happens to both characters in the video) was justifiable. 

21.2.14

      Today, we imported the final scene, and after editing it into the video, we exported it to meet the deadline. The problems we had were: as the clip was added onto iMovie, the last quarter of the video again went out of sync and we had to lengthen the end scene where the band is putting their instruments up in the tree, as well as lengthening the scenes where Leon and Nicole come out of the forest (bushes) and see each other; putting Nicole's quick glance at Leon in slow motion to lengthen it slightly, and eventually pit the video back in sync, where we could now leave the factors of length alone. We made a few alterations to colour so that the vast majority of the video would be in the same tone. As the lesson ended, we exported the video.