We began filming our music video to the song 'Missing you' in Epping Forest on Sunday 19th September.
We agreed to meet at Epping Forest at 10:30am, so the day started early as I had to get up and make sure my hair, make-up and costume was right. I had to be ready for 10:00am as Sophie and Laura were due to pick me up. For my outfit (as we decided to go for the casual autumn look) I chose a black long sleeved t-shirt to keep me warm and a grey woolly jumper for over the top. To make it look realistic and appropriate I chose black jeans and my winter Ugg boots. We decided not to plan outfits before we filmed but chose something that we felt comfortable in and fitted in with the forest theme. The Saturdays often wear different clothes but still maintain the theme they are going for. I decided to not do anything to my hair and leave it naturally wavy just in case I looked over the top. With my make-up i decided to leave it simple and just wore natural looking mascara and blusher.
When we arrived at Epping Forest we had to wait around 15mins as Charlotte wasn't too sure on how to get there. This gave us time to think about what we wanted to do first. We decided that we would film each girl individually and get all of the shots for each person done, we did this in case there was any reason that we couldn't finish filming and it meant we would have to film another day which would look weird on the final video. When Charlotte arrived we set off to look for our first location.
We came across a fall down tree with a very large trunk and lots of trees coming off it, it looked interesting so we decided to films Laura's scene first. This worked well as we planned on using mainly nature as our main props. Luckily I brought portable iPod speakers which meant we could lip sync along with the song which made it easier and less embarrassing. We filmed Laura lip syncing her verse from 4 or 5 angles which means we will have more shots to choose from when editing. We shot high-angle shots, low-angle shots, full body shots and most importantly close-ups. Laura did really well with the lip-syncing, i thought that her going first might make her nervous but in fact she coped the best and was probably the most comfortable.
After filming Laura's part we began walking through the forest to find some-where for Charlotte's part. We came across a nice footpath in the middle of the forest we walked down a bit and positioned ourselves in between two trees which gave a nice frame. For her verse we experimented using the camera zoom to close in to her face while she was singing. We thought this looked good and made the shot a bit more exciting, although zooming is a simple thing to do, it looked right for the shot and complimented Charlotte's performance. We then filmed her singing the chorus with her back against one of the trees which created a really interesting shot. We filmed from both the side and then from the front which will give us plenty of shots to cut and edit together. The only downside of shooting on the footpath was that it took a lot of time due to the public constantly walking and taking their time with dogs and children, it meant a lot of time was spent waiting around.
We moved back into the forest to film Sophie’s two lined verse and her chorus section. We came across an interesting tree stump in a very well lit place, so we thought that we could use that as our prop for this particular scene. Sophie sat on the stump and we filmed her from several different angles, mainly at a medium close up. Because she doesn't have many lines we didn't think it was necessary to film her from lots of different angles. For the chorus, we had her standing up by the stump. We filmed full body shots from about 3 different angles, so it does not look boring if we decide to focus on her for a longer time in the chorus. Sophie did really well with the lip syncing and to help her feel more comfortable we all lip synced with her behind camera. We found that this technique was very helpful for us all to feel more at ease with the situation.
After we had filming Sophie's part we began walking through the forest again but were worried that we would not find another interesting location. We thought that we had got the most out of the forest locations and were running the risk that the scenery would look to similar. We came out of the forest which happened to be the entrance and found a tree that had low hanging branches. We saw this as a good opportunity and decided that I would slowly walk towards to camera with my hand lightly on the branch. This looked good although it was hard to find the right angle to film from as we didn't want to get the 'Epping Forest' sign in the background. I was the most nervous about lip syncing so to help me be more comfortable the other girls sang along with me. This worked really well as it made me lip sync without a problem. When we filmed me lip syncing to the chorus we used mainly close-up shots.
Through-out the day we filmed each girl lip-syncing the to chorus individually which I mentioned earlier and then we filmed all the girls together singing the chorus in a few different locations. Firstly, we used the tree that Laura used for her verse shots, as it was big enough for us all to position ourselves on it. We had to film this shot around 3 times due to us making mistakes with the lyrics (and me falling off the branch half way through one take). This shot worked really well as the framing looked good and it is an interesting shot to look at. The only downside about it was the fact that it couldn’t be a close up shot, purely because we wouldn’t fit all of us in the shot. This meant that we had to make our lip movements extra big as you are unable to see our mouths all that clearly from the distance of the camera.
We then filmed a shot of all of us walking in the middle of the forest, this shot is one of the best because it is such a pretty location. It took us a fair while to film this scene properly as we had trouble with our positioning, we seemed to keep missing someone out of the shot with each take we did. Eventually, we managed to position it just right and filmed us walking towards the camera singing the chorus. This shot worked well as it is similar to one of that that would appear in a real music video.
Finally, we decided we could add a bit of minor choreography to the film. This was definitely a last minute decision because initially we didn't want to do choreography as we thought it would look very amateur and cheesy. However, we talked about and decided we didn’t have to do any difficult or technical dance moves, just movements. So, we quickly put a short routine together for the chorus, and we managed (after around 3 takes) to film it to a decent standard. We are still undecided whether or not to use it in our final cut, but we thought we’d allow ourselves the option as we identified this as an important part of a girl group music video in our pitch.
In conclusion I think out first day of filming went very well. We managed to shoot all the shots we wanted without any major problems or interruptions. We also managed to get a good range of camera angles and shots. We all put in an equal amount of effort in terms of filming, whereby we all involved ourselves in each shot but only one of us filmed (and then we alternated who was filming). I think that it was successful as we managed to create additional shots/scenes that weren’t in the original plan, and these may actually help the video to look better. The thing that didn't work best was the our costumes. Because we thought it would be a good idea to not plan outfits and told everyone to wear what they felt comfortable in. This was fine, but we ended up with two very similar looking outfits, one winter outfit and one summer outfit. This, of course, doesn’t really look so good. There is nothing we can do about it now; we just need to ensure in the next shoots that our outfits are more carefully planned.
The pictures taken on this day are all put into one video and can be seen in the post below.
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