Outdoor art gallery (graffiti)
Performance practice room
Indoor plain background studio
Overpass
The shooting took roughly up to 20-25 hours as we began on the 16th of February. We’ve tried multiple locations both indoors and outdoors as the lighting evokes different vibes and moods. The overall filming process took longer than anticipated as we faced many issues with lighting and camera movements.
In our two-person group, I acted and Sophia did the filming. Certainly, we had other friends who came to help with setting up lights and being the other artist (Linn). Despite being one of the artists featured in our video, before shooting, we always negotiate about the camera angles, movements, and lighting adjustments. Hence, my involvement includes playing the artist, directing, storyboard design, lighting, and a small portion of editing.
I first began experimenting with indoor lighting. We’ve purchased a portable studio set with different coloured backgrounds. One major problem was the insufficient lighting which produced shadows in the background and artists’ faces.
To eliminate this, we’ve borrowed a COB light which helped to erase most of the shadows. During the bridge section, most of the shot was filmed on a black background featuring artists' mid-shots in a more abstract form of editing. Originally, the first half was dominated by one artist only (Linn).
After editing it, we felt it was too repetitive to only have one style of shot throughout I thought of adding the other artist in but singing the backing vocal section to create more interest. This turned out well as we incorporated more special effects and highly saturated colour grading into the footage.
The filming process was not as planned and long as new ideas came along. There is an original storyboard plan, however, after editing the photogates together, the cuts and transitions seemed odd and failed to establish a smooth continuity. For instance, the part of:
‘So I write him all these letters and I throw them in the trash
'Cause I miss the way he kisses and the way he made me laugh
Yeah, I pour my little heart out, but as I'm hitting "Send"
I picture all the faces of my disappointed friends’
We planned to refer to Ariana Grande’s opening of ‘thank u, next’ when she was making a collage book about her lover. Our interpretation was to borrow this idea and emphasis the ‘love letters going into the trash’ in our lyrics. Initially, we filmed this scene where the bed is covered with crumpled paper indicating the multiple letters she attempts to write. This shot was followed by an over-the-shoulder shot of the artist writing the letter. While planning, this idea seemed to fit, however, the actual footage in sequence did not make sense. As we concluded, the cuts between shots were the issue. This verse of the song is like a rap which leaves us little time to make frequent cuts of shots. Therefore, we planned to replace shots in the verse section with continuous shots that involve more camera movement.
We spent the afternoon filming the performance section in a rented studio practice room. We asked our musician friends to form a small conventional pop band. The filming was successful but only some footage could be used. One problem we ignored during filming is the lack of camera movement which made the video very calm and still and this is an alternative/indie song with a very upbeat rhythm. As a result, we only selected the ones that had dramatic movements and angles. The low-angle shot creates a difference from the others as it is an ordinary perspective. We did film close-ups of artists and musicians, but the overall colour scheme and style did not match with the other shots we planned to use in between.
We finished most of the outdoor shooting at an art zone.
Shots of graffiti walls and overpasses were both filmed here. From 2 pm-8 pm, we switched locations in between to maximise the use of natural sunlight for both locations.
We did plan diverse camera angles but due to the unfamiliarity of the filming location, we improvised during the filming process. For example, the arc shot was inspired by several duet music videos which keeps the audience’s focus in the center. In general, the shots at the graffiti wall were very colourful, also interesting, and easily be grabbed the audience's attention which was successfully filmed.
Our footage:
Referencing:
'Girls Like You'---Maroon 5 'Left and Right'---Charlie Puth, Jung Kook
We used 2 LED light sticks with contrasting colours (red and green) on opposite sides to further highlight the vivid colours on the wall meanwhile, shining them onto our artist so they match the overall tone. However, not all shots were perfect. The shot on a bridge during nighttime fails to match with the others in terms of colour grading. While the artist's face is brightly lit we ignored the background’s light intensity. This created the visual feeling that the artist is disconnected from the background and the high contrast between light and dark made the lighting look very stiff and harsh on the artist.
Additionally, a few shots were discarded as they lacked camera movement that didn’t fit the genre of a music video and failed to accomplish the motive of featuring different aspects of the artist.
To sum up, the overall filming process was harder than we expected. Although many ideas and plans were disregarded as we made progress in filming, we have managed to produce a work that is up to standard. This was because the ideas we thought required more equipment especially in lighting.
For instance, the studio's plain background scene was thought to be the easiest shot but turns out it requires the most work in lighting design. Before filming, we made a detailed plan about the shots we were going to use but some we failed to recreate. Many of our inspirations came from successful musicians’ videos.
1. The Devil Wears Prada (clothing transition scene)
We wanted to borrow this idea to be used in the outro section by using large obstacles or buildings to make character or clothing transitions. However, this didn’t work out as we didn’t prepare many stylish costumes that aimed to portray the different sides of our artists. Also, we haven’t mastered the technique of making smooth transitions like this so we had to abandon this idea.
2. break up with your boyfriend cuz I'm bored---Ariana Grande
This pan shot of a mirror reflecting an individual’s face as another person inspired us to do something similar. We wanted to analyse this technique as the 2 artists are having a conversation implying both of the questions about their love relationship suggesting they are in a similar state. This idea was planned to be used in the last two lines of Verse 1
“Do I love him? Do I hate him? I guess it's up and down
If I had to choose, I would say right now”
3. bad guy---Billie Eilish
We wanted to create a few dramatic actions of our artists and overlap the footage to put them in one frame. As in Billie’s ‘bad guy,’ she is performing abstract moves that reflect her inner thoughts through actions. However, the portable studio set was not wide enough for use to film long shots.
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