Production of music video: Today’s Filming

Today we have successfully filmed in our location in Hyde Park. We specifically chose this as a venue for our central base track because we wanted to include the Gazebo/Bandstand in our music video where the artist was singing and playing the guitar. We wanted our artist who was Mika’s sister: Yumi to be in this Bandstand because we felt there was this isolation of her from the world and there was this intimacy with her and nature – Hyde Park. Also, it was because when we had Yumi in the middle playing her guitar and singing, the back drop of the grass and the different coloured trees added emphasis onto the mise en scene, making it more of a performance video, hindering on our interpretation of the lyrics to the song – Amplification from Andrew Goodwin’s theory. 

The great thing about today’s filming was that we managed to encapsulate the intensity of the song through our camera work. We achieved this by shooting a lot of “Tracking Shots” which is a common convention used in melodramatic music videos. We also made great use of our artist (even though Fahmida and I just met her) by informing Yumi what we wanted out of her, which was a lot of passion and a lot of performing, which she had to channel. Another great thing that we managed to do in today’s filming was the great usage of our location and our Bandstand because we had a lot of long shots, establishing shots, just to emphasise the mise en scene.

Some of the difficulty that we encountered during today’s filming was the bad weather. Even though it looked like a bright day, it was very cold and sadly, our artist suffered by being cold, but she persevered and managed to perform her heart out. Due to the weather, we did have to pack up filming and ‘call it a rap’ for today but I have made sure to check the weather forecast and see how the day will be. Another obstacle that we encountered was that we didn’t stay true to what we planned on the storyboard, where in some cases we did stay true like how we wanted our artist to be like in the Bandstand and what she should be doing like sitting down or leaning against one of the pillars of the Bandstand, but some aspects we didn’t stay true to the storyboard which was to focus on various parts of our artist so we can use these individuals parts as our split screen effect. 

So all in all, we managed to get a lot out of today. I am very happy of what we accomplished in today’s filming and very excited when we start editing each scene and shot together.