Filming day 1 - performance in the studio

Set up: 

One of the things we wanted to do when filming these shots was have 3 different cameras filming our protagonist from 3 different angles; two on tripod and one off tripod. This would have meant that we could have got a higher variety of shots in half the time. However, because there were not enough SD cards we had to make do with the one. We placed our camera directly centre of the backdrop. This meant that nothing other than the backdrop and the protagonist were in each shot. In addition to this, it meant that we were able to mimic a side shot by getting our protagonist to face away from us. This accomplished the shot convincingly and produced a better result as when we did attempt to film from the side, the projected image was not as strong and was distorted. 

We positioned the projector behind the camera. This was so that the projector was not in the shot and projected directly onto the backdrop rather than being projected at an awkward angle. However, one of the things we did have to be cautious about was the positioning of the projector so that the cameras shadow was not included the the shot. In the end we moved the projector more to the left and raised it higher to avoid the shadow. 


Light filters: 

In the photography studio we had access to gel filters. We did experiment with these for some colourful still shots.

Lights on our artists:

All of the lights came out really strong on our artist. However, the lights we preferred were darker as there was a clear contrast between the colours. One of the issues we had with the light filters was that they could not be left in front of the lights for too long because of the heat. Therefore, instead of using them when we filmed we decided to use the projector to project the colours onto Sam instead. 

As you can see in the video above, Sam had no problem with lip syncing the song which he knew very well. He was also very enthusiastic which was great for the upbeat parts however, because we want to explore a serious narrative we felt that Sam should stand still in some of the shots we filmed. This is why in two of the gradient shots we filmed Sam from the side purely lip syncing the song with no movement. However, it was more difficult to film these shots as it was clear that Sam felt uncomfortable standing so still. These shots took a lot more time to perfect and we had to do a lot of refilming.