Diary of a Days Shooting

Day 1 – Hackney

Our first day of filming was not like any of the other days we experienced, due to the fact it was not planned. We had signed up to go on a trip with the Media department at school to visit the SAE Studios in Hackney, London. When walking around Hackney during our visit we discovered that the scenery fitted perfectly into the rap genre of the song. This was due to the graffiti and old flats which are often associated with rap.

Once our visit to the SAE Institute James, Joel, Joe and our friend Daniel (a film studies student) decided we had enough time and the perfect location to film. We therefore decided to have a second look at the surroundings. With help from Daniel, we found three locations in Hackney in which we felt was ideal for our chosen song and genre.

The first setting was stairs and a handrail running down the middle. We felt it would meet the ‘random’ theme of our video to be sliding down the rail, while doing a number of different things. These include, reading, singing, chatting and simply having a good time. We knew we needed to film as much as we could and so we got around 15 different shots of this being performed.

Once we felt we had enough footage we decided to move on to a graffiti wall just around the corner from the stairs. We felt we needed more miming as it was hard to mime whilst sliding down a handrail. We found this difficult however as, due to the trip not being planned, we did not have any speakers to play the music through. We therefore had to settle for the small, rather quiet speaker on James’ phone. We had Daniel pressing play on the phone, Joe filming and James and Joel performing which we found worked effectively. After some difficulty getting Joel into character we encouraged him and told him to relax and to not act awkward in front of the camera. After a while he performed a lot better and so we got a few shots of James and Joel miming various parts of the song. We then found that we may need fillers within the video to make up time which we may not have enough footage for, we decided then to do a number of dances and shots of us messing around before we moved on. We then found graffiti on a separate wall which James and Joel walked up to, leaving Joe and Daniel at the bottom. We found it effective to film low angle shots of James and Joel simple pointing and admiring the scenery.

We then decided to continue exploring Hackney before leaving for home. We came across blocks of flats which we felt was perfect for our song. We found this would be a great location to film a part of the song in which James’ character raps. We found the part we wanted to film and done so around 4 times. This was another low angle shot which also featured the camera panning down the flats to find James miming. We felt this location would highlight the rap element of the song as oppose to the pop genre which is evident in other locations of the video.

Day 2 – Kidspace

Following our trip to Hackney we felt we should continue filming as soon as possible. We therefore organised to return to Kidspace to film for our final video. As we only had half an hour before the public were allowed onto the premises we decided to concentrate on filming on the go-karts. This is because this was the only area of Kidspace we had fully planned. Also, every other location within Kidspace appeared very dark meaning the footage came out unprofessional.

We arrived at Kidspace with a clear idea of a race scene between James and Joel in our heads. As we arrived we was greeted by the lady we had met previously when investigating the Kidspace premises. Also, we had emailed her regularly before our visits before arriving.

As soon as we arrived we decided to head straight over to the go-karts and start filming. We knew we only wanted two go-karts on the track in which James and Joel would be driving and racing in. We found however that there was three on the course and so we had to ask the Kidspace workers if we could remove it from the track. We were given permission to do so and lifted the kart off of the track immediately.

Once this was all set we decided to do some shots of James and Joel before the race. We found it would be affective to present this in a way in which we would expect to see two boxers before a match, face to face and very serious. We then thought we would do a number of shots of us getting into the karts as this would fit the tempo of the song when the slower instrumental kicks in. We then noticed that all of the go-karts were numbered 1,2 and 3. This is what sparked the idea of the countdown before the racing starts and fast pace of the song kicks back in. Again, we knew we needed to film as much as we could featuring different angles and shots. Therefore all of us had a go at filming, with Joe shooting from around the course, with James and Joel filming each other on the go-karts. We felt this would make the viewer feel as though they were in the kart and featuring in the artists music video.

As we only had thirty minutes we found that we had no time to film anywhere else at Kidspace. As we had been filming for more or less the whole thirty minutes we knew we had the right footage for our music video.

Day 3 – Park

A week later we arranged between ourselves that we would go to Romford one afternoon when we all had free periods at school. We had planned to film at Lodge Farm Park, Raphael Park, Vue Cinemas and Joes house in Brentwood.

We left the school at around 12.20pm where we headed straight for Shenfield Station. Once on the train to Romford we discussed everything we planned to do once we arrived. The train pulled up at the platform and we stuck to our plans and headed straight for the Vue cinema located in the Brewery Centre. Vue were fine with us filming in an empty cinema, however we found lighting was a major drawback. The lighting was so poor we decided to abandon the idea of filming here and thought we’d use our time wisely and go straight to the park. On the way we knew we need crisps and lager for a shot at the park. As none of us were 18 we went searching in ASDA for the perfect replacement, when settling for apple juice we walked past a ginger ale bottle. We found that as this was fizzy this would work perfectly and so we left with ginger ale and crisps.

First, we went to Raphael Park, which James and Joel had visited previously when looking at several locations in the Romford area. We decided the backdrop of the lake would appear affective in our music video. James and Joel done several miming scenes in front of the lake in which we watched back, looking for the best one. Next to the lake was a grass area and trees, we thought that a filler shot would be James and Joel running around the trees, in which we would speed up when back to school. These shots were easy to film as no miming or timing was involved. Joe got several different shots of us running which we will look at and pick out the best shots for our final video. There were several benches scattered around this grassy area in which we decided to film Joel miming some more. We found this would add to the simplistic and random theme of the music video. Another shot we thought would be affective was to have James and Joel's feet tapping, we got several shots of this from high and low angles.

We had plans to walk through the park and film on a road around 20 minutes away from the lake. We then decided that due to time constraints we should film this the next day in Shenfield by the school.

After making this decision we crossed the road and arrived at Lodge Farm Park. Here we found the play area with swings, slides and roundabouts. Also there was a gym which we decided we should make full use of and filmed several shots of James and Joel doing the activities. Our main priority at Lodge Farm Park however was to film on the children's play area, as this would be recognised more as things we done when we was younger, rather than gym activities. We had planned to bring somebody else along when filming here to push the roundabout while James and Joel performed in the same shot. Nobody was willing to come along however and so Joe had to push the roundabout whilst James and Joel filmed each other. Joe was initially going to film, however he was getting rather dizzy and so volunteered to push, handing over his camera phone. After shots of James and Joel on the swings and standing and jumping off of a table, we found a bench with the perfect back drop of a field and the play area. As James’ lyrics said about sitting on a park bench with a lager and crisps we felt we needed to mime this and show the props we had previously purchased. We stuck to our previous plans and had James on the bench eating crisps and the ‘lager’ poured into his mouth by Joel who you could not see in the shot. We filmed this last as we knew that the liquid would go over James’ clothing and so we did not want this ruining any other shots. We decided to film several shots of James and Joel sitting on the bench eating and drinking, understanding that the lager pour would have been shown before these shots in the music video. This means that the viewer would understand the situation and the music video would not come across as unprofessional.

Day 4 – Road/Car/Library

When in our Media lesson at school we decided that we should use this hour to film on a road around the corner from the school. This is because we did not have time to do so the day before in Romford. We knew we wanted to film the opening scene with James and Joel miming whilst walking down the road. We found this easy as we played the music and had been learning the lyrics the day before. We felt as though we had a lot of time within the music video to use up and so got some simple shots of us throwing berries at each other, casually walking and running down the road.

We felt that an effective shot would be us sitting in the boot of a car. As our friend Jamie owns a car and can drive we asked and was allowed to film in and around it. We headed straight for the car park and filmed us sitting in the boot, front of the car and back of the car. We felt that we needed filler shots in which we could place anywhere in the video, as oppose to miming shots. After filming a number of shots of us dancing and performing in the car we had a costume change and headed for the school library.

We found a table in the library and thought that it would be a lot easier to film James and Joel sitting and working on it than James performing to a class. We therefore used the resources we had, a notepad and Joe’s Macbook, to fit the lyrics of the song. The lyrics are about having a desk job. We therefore felt it would be effective to be sat at a desk doing work, whilst miming to these lyrics. Once this was filmed, we immediately began editing.