5th Day of Filming

Time was running very short so we decided that the 5th day of filming needed to be the last, and we needed to get everything we needed on that day. Together we planned heavily and we came up with a definite list of shots we needed, colour coded. The colour code was for which member(s) of the band were in the particular shot.

Here is the link to the scanned images of the list of shots on Jake's blog page.

Below are some images of the group in action on the final day of filming. Unfortunately, due to illness and work commitments, I wasn't able to join them, but I gave them my ideas to use and was available via phone throughout the session.

More Filming

On the following Saturday we returned to the Red Lion to film again. The footage we shot before was good, but because of time restraints and issues with the setup, we didn't have nearly enough. This time we were a lot more confident in what we were doing. We had our actors and our equipment, so we could get straight into it. This time, we also had a set list of shots that we needed to get so that was fairly structured too. The problem came upon arriving, we didn't stick to our list of shots enough. This was perhaps largely down to me.I took over control with a lot of the filming myself, with then others acting in a more directive role. I didn't do it on my own however, Jake did some as well, as did Jacob. Tom was very effective as a director, surpassing any of us. This is when I first noticed that we worked very well as a team and I was personally impressed.

The other thing I noticed was that we were working much more professionally. We were using much more media-specific terminology in our casual speech, and working with the set in a much more professional manner. We obviously realised that mise-en-scene was much more important than we had thought in our first shoot. Back then, we had thought nothing of random items appearing in the back of our shots, but now it caused us genuine concern.

However, as I have mentioned above, we didn't stick to our shot list or script enough, and having one person doing the majority of the filming probably wasn't the best idea. So,while we got a lot of good shots this time, we didn't get enough of what we needed, and we got a lot of unnecessary footage.We would have to go back again.

Post-Filming

Whilst in the process of filming we thought everything was going well. We knew that we would have to go back, because it took a long time ti set up and work out where we wanted to arrange all the components of our set. But we thought the footage we shot was good, but it seemed this wasn't the case. The background we made didn't cover the wall behind the set, so brightly painted words were still visible behind the band. Also, there were a number of other objects in the background of our handheld shots.

Overall, the main problems were:

A - The location just wasn't good enough, it didn't look like somewhere a band would play or the set of a music video.

B - We hadn't been professional enough. We didn't set up our shots effectively or with enough quality. We needed to focus a lot more carefully next time we filmed.

We decided to address these problems when we returned to the classroom, and in the meantime we agreed to look at alternative places to film.

The other thing we needed to look at in the meantime was copyright permission. We couldn't find an email address as we had when contacting Frank Turner's record label. However, Tom was able to find the address of the head office of Capitol Records. Jake drafted a letter to send them, and so this issue was taken care of.

Filming

With our plans ready to go, we got filming straight away. The location we chose was a scout hall in Sutton-at-Hone, Kent. We thought this would have the space and facilities we needed. When we got there we found that it matched up to our expectations fairly well. Despite a few minor problems with camera placement, everything worked well. The safety aspect was also well catered for, there were fire extinguishers on site and we had enough of our own equipment to make sure we were safe.

Final Planning and Filming

Upon meeting with the group again, I found that the others had similar ideas to me, and that my own personal contributions were well received. The vision for the video was to have an older man, performing the piece, but also, reflecting the message of the song by attempting to be young again. To achieve this we decided to have him performing actions traditionally associated with children. We hoped that this would look comically ludicrous and reflect the vibrant feel of the music. By this point, beginning our filming was becoming a massive priority, so we decided to start as soon as possible. After making our final plans, we agreed to start filming on January 23rd.

Our initial filming was riddled with problems from the very beginning. By leaving it so late, we weren't available to get together to film, with our actor, until 3 o' clock. This meant that we couldn't film any exterior shots, because it would get dark very quickly. So we decided to start filming an interior performance shot at our first location. This location was a cellar used by a friend of ours as a music studio. The room seemed to have the right feel and was available when we wanted to film. However, more problems arose as soon as we arrived. Due to a limited amount of lights and space, it took a long time for us to set up our first shot. What we managed to shoot was fairly good, but we simply didn't have enough time to shoot a suitable quantity of footage. So, we returned to school with what we had, to see if we could do anything with it.