Filming Day 5 - Dartford Car Park - Luke

5/12/12

In the initial stages of our planning we wanted to make sure that throughout the duration of the video, the music plays a key part in the editing of the video. This means that we wanted the pace and beat of the music to determine when there were cuts, how frequently, and what type of action was being on screen.

Near to the middle of the song there is a section where the music slows down to create a tense atmosphere, and after a lot of thought, Josh, James and I decided on adding a confrontation between Dan and the two masked characters. One idea that we had for the confrontation that we were forced to change was the idea of the two masked men carrying guns, and using them to act as something that would mix in well with the editing of the music. We thought that it would be a good idea to have the firing of the guns as the point where the music kicks back in and the chase scene starts back up, but after discussing this idea with our teacher we realised that it would be too much of a risk and we could end up in a lot of trouble if we were  caught with imitation guns out in public. We therefore dropped the idea of the masked men physically carrying guns, but decided it might be better if there was a hint at the guns being there, with them looking down to get them out of their jackets just as Dan runs off.

The first shots that we filmed that day were of Dan running through the doors to the car park and a tracking shot showing him running over to hide behind one of the pillars. We then filmed a still hsot of him arriving at the pillar and an over the shoulder shot of him loking out to see if he had been followed.

An idea that we thought would create more tension within this part of the music video was that the two masked characters would come out of the lift together, walk slowly out next to each other, and then split off so that they covered both sides of the pillar, blocking Dan from escape, before they walk slowly towards him. We filmed these shots, and then filmed the shot where the two masked characters look down towards their guns, which would cue Dan attempting to escape.


The last shots that we filmed of the day were of Dan, Josh and Phil running down the slope as Dan attempted to escape. This turned out to be one of the hardest shots to film as even though we knew the slope was steep, and we had addressed it in our risk assessment, it turned out to be a lot steeper than we thought, and it was hard for the actors to run fast enough down it to look like it was a proper part of the chase, but slow enough to prevent themselves falling over. This then led to the shot of Dan running around the corner, and Josh and Phil jumping over the barrier out of shot.

 Overall we were happy with what we had filmed, but today when importing the shots to the computers at school, we realised that we had some big problems. The first problem was that it is clearly visible that it is night outside the car park, and all of our other shots were filmed during the day, and the other was that I had somehow changed the white balance settings halfway through filming, changing the lighting from an effective blue/green tint to an orange glow.

We have now decided that we will need to re-film some of these shots with the lighting sorted if we want our video to look as professional as possible.