Motion Photography

From looking back at all the work we have done over this past term I am very pleased with the way that out video turned out. Throughout the term we have learnt a lot of things to help us in digital film. At the beginning of the course we were asked weather we wanted to use DSLR’s or the large video cameras that we can rent from CLR. The majority of the class wanted to use DSLR’s as we all owned them. I think by using DSLR’s to shoot our film has turned out a lot better, as we were shooting on location (in the woods) it made carrying the equipment a lot easier. We also had a lot more access to DSLR’s totalling 5 between us that could shoot in 10-80p HD video. The video has changed slightly from our original idea. Originally we wanted to create a music video with a live performance and have a story to narrate it. We decided to change this idea, as we wanted to keep the focus on the liver performance. Originally we were meant to film the band doing an acoustic rendition of their song ‘say it all’ but the band decided not to as they said that the their song ‘tear down the sky’ would sound better. They played us both and we agreed for them to play tear down the sky. I am very pleased with the location and we were very lucky with the weather on the day of shooting, I think it made the world of difference it was really sunny, giving us a strong natural light to work with. We used four cameras in the end; cannon 5d mark ll cannon 7d x2 and a cannon 550 d, to record the performance we used a Zoom H4 – N I had my friend mike help us with the sound as he is at Ravensbourne studding sound design. To insure we could sync the video with the acoustic recording we had to start each shot with a clap so that in the editing process we could align these two up so that the video would not be going out of time in places. We had two fixed shots for the recording and used the other cameras to capture moving shots. Once we had filmed the fixed shots we were then able to film close up shots of the guitars and of the band. I am happy with the shots that we got but I think that we could have explored with dollies and jibs, to get some ore interesting shots. One shot that I think is really effective is the macro shots of the guitar and fingers of the performer’s.  I was able to get this shot by simply turning the lens the other way around on the camera and holding it against the body of the camera, I was then able to go really close to the subject and pick up on a lot of detail of the strings on the guitar etc. Some of the shots that we have in our video that we did not plan for; we decided to experiment with some slow-motion shots. We did this using a cannon 7d and shooting in 50 fps. We then slowed this down in the editing process using cinema tools. I had my friend Lloyd help me with the slow-motion work as he had done it before on some of his university work. I think the editing process went really well. We did all of the editing ourselves using Adobe Premier Pro.  I had never used the programme before so I knew the editing process would be the hardest and longest part of the project. Mid way through the project my harddrive on my laptop failed and I lost some of my work, luckily I backed up the majority. I was able to use my dads iMac but had to download all my programmes which set me back about a week, it was also an inconvenience not being able to have a laptop at university and when it came to the editing process, Hayley and Nadia had to come round to my house. That was the biggest problem we faced as a group. During the editing process I was really discovering things as I went along, adobe premier pro was new to me and didn’t really know what I was doing but it is very self explanatory and I was able to pick it up easily. I also used adobe after effects to create a title sequence I really liked the way that the two programmes worked together. During the title sequence which we added in as an introduction to the video consisting of slow-motion shots of the woodland around and the band preparing for the video. I added some birds tweeting to add to the woodland autumnal feel of the video, I just done this by downloading them of the Internet from freesounds.com. We wanted to add some panning shots in the video as well as hand held shots, Nadia bought a new tripod for filming, It had fiction on it while panning so that we were able to get some smooth shots of the band, unfortunately the tripod was broken when we unpacked it on the day, one of the locking screws was missing and the tripod would not stay tightened up.  We should have gone through all of the equipment to make sure everything worked before we set out for our shoot. Overall I am very pleased with the way our video turned out and I think I worked really well with Hayley and Nadia. It helped that we were able to work with others like sound engineers and video editors to help us with our project. I am really pleased that we did the majority of the work ourselves, as we were able to get it exactly as we had envisioned and discussed.

we watched all of our videos today. i am really happy with the feedback we got and will add it into my evaluation write up. i was also really impressed with the rest of the classes work! 

this is what we will be recording the performance with, we have asked a friend who is studding sound design at uni to help us with the recording of the performance. it will be good to have someone that knows what they are doing! 

we have decided to shoot the video in some woods. we think that the colours in the woods with all the fallen leaves will look really good and reflect the bands song. the woods we have chosen - Sparrows den West Wickham. we originally decided to play the bands song “say it all” but we have decided to change it to “tear down the sky” as the band decided it will sound better acoustically preformed. i have headed tear down the sky and i agree twits them as it is structured better to be played acoustically.