Post-production #1

WE STARTED EDITING! 

THE MAKING OF - Peter&The Wolf

Here is a little clip from behind the scenes of our film set... I hope this achieves to give an impression of how our set looked like and an atmosphere of how we worked - efficient, joyful and professional!
Enjoy!

Call sheet

Here's our call sheets. I created them to provide a professional looking overview of the day with the order of scene we'll film and who is responsible for what as well as what times breaks are and when the actors have to be ready and stand-by.

Account #3: The Shoot - Part2

Wednesday, 23rd November

Shooting time: 10am - 4pm

Location: Leith Hill (old boarding house) interiour

Cast & Crew:

same as before

The day started with a lot of last minute procurements of props, such as a frame, loads of old looking books and other things to supply the empty house with a bit of life. Also, we wanted to shoot with two cameras and our original idea for the house part was to track the artist walking through the house and exploring it and to underline this we chose the technique of tracking with a dolly. But - the dolly is very complicated to set up which would consume a lot of time and therefore we had some discussions with our music video enabler, Luke, if we should take it our not. In the end, we followed his advise and didnt take it.... Which turned out to be okay as we still managed to create shots that conveys the feeling of following him through the rooms. 

This is a dolly:

 And this is the HD camera with tripod on 'Eazy Dolly' as dolly replacement:
(which didn't work as the floor was too bumpy making the camera shake)

Evaluation
I think this day went even better than the first shooting day. We were more organised and knew more exactly what we wanted. Also, we had two cameras and split our group in two units to film simultanously which saved a lot of time! First unit was Grace, Luke and me with the bigger camera filming the ballerina scene and 2nd unit Helena, Leyla and Matt doing the shots with Taymour.

Account #2: The Shoot - Part 1

Thursday, 17th November

Shooting time: 1 - 6pm

Location: School, filming studio

Cast: 

Taymour Williams - main solo artist

Sam Hindmarsh - hand double

Crew:

Paula - director and producer/location manager

Helena - cinematographer

Leyla - director and cinematographer

Grace - associate producer/location manager

Media guys (Luke, Matt, Scott, Dan) - Set design, lighting, cinemtographer

To relax our main artist, we started with his hand double for the CU shots of the hands playing piano to make Tay feel comfortable around the set. Here are the keys we looked up online for him -but in the end he was so good that he just listened to the song and found them out himself and even played them on a piano which didnt make a sound.

↓

Then we started to film the performance bit with Tay sitting on the piano and lipsyncing and we shot lots of different shots of performance to put in later as alternative shots. 

At one point we thought it would be cool to just turn the piano around! As you can see here.... potential for a digipak cover?! 

* pic piano tipped

About us as a team and the set atmosphere... We didn't set the roles for each of us before we began to film. But somehow our tasks and responsibilities just evolved and I think we worked quite well together, also with the media team. 

• Helena took care of the camera and the cinematography most of the time which she is really good at and has lots of experience with. She also contributed to the directing job and came up with lots of good shot ideas. 

•  I was in the directing position talking to the artist, giving him advise and some guidelines what to do, and also made myself responsible for the schedule and shot lists to check that we do everything we need in the available time. 

• Leyla was directing as well.

• Grace was busy with some late changes we made or difficulties we faced, such as supply missing props and she also took care of the playback working efficiently - as well as keeping the actor in a fun mood ;)

Evaluation

What went well?

Surprisingly, I thought a big issue would be the time management but actually that was something that was very well managed! Also, I was really pleased with our idea of scribbling on the sheet of glass infront of the camera, which looked better than I thought it would!

What was difficult?

I think, getting our solo artist into a comfortable feel infront of the camera was quite a challenge. It was our fault in some ways as we didn't spend a lot of rehearsal time with him and as he is not a singer or a musicien it is quite hard to act and sing infront of a camera infront of many people if youve havent done it before. So, that is definitely something I would address more attention if I would do it again. 

Also, our team sometimes wasn't quite the same opinion, it was 2 against 2 at some points and that just should not happen on the set, on the important day!

One of my favorite sequences... 

Account #1: The final preperations

It was Tuesday before the first half of the shoot on Thursday, 17th November and we still havent visited our location.... So this was what we did on that day - and we were very pleased!
It's an old building called 'Leith Hill' and the interiour is exactly how we wanted it to be! Here are some pics.

On Wednesday, we went to the film studio of our school which is going to be the other location to set up the set- our white box. We put in a white floor, white walls, and a white door which we both had to paint a bit whiter and carried in the piano shell which was heavy thing to do.

This was while building it....

Evaluation
What I should have done differently?
I would say, we were lucky that we loved the location because if we would have found really bad we would have had one day to sort out something else... so timing management for such an important thing should be kept an eye on.

What went well?
I enjoyed being in the process of setting up the set myself as I felt very much involved in my production than just the set designer doing everything for us and then we just come to shoot. Also, we still had influence on where to put stuff and the size of the set so that was important.

Lighting/set design

Location: Studio

We want bright lighting, almost overexposed white lighting and white walls like a white box to contrast it with the purple color we'll put on the glass and the simplicity with the piano as only prop plus the door.

I just looked at some music videos to find some more inspiration how the set and lighting should look as an end product and I found these....

1) Rihanna - 'Rockstar'

I love the lighting focusing on the strong grey and black tones which I want to come out in my video as well. I also really like how RIhannas skin looks like, almost a soft surface and a bit unnatural and shiny.

plus the strong purple like in 'Sin City' they do it with the colors.
 



Location: House, Leith Hill
In Leith Hill we are going to keep the lighting naturalistic. I want o experiment with some effects though, such as making the image into a grainy old fashioned image with some like cracks in the picture and unexpected lighting shifts to make it seem a bit dreamy and noit quite from this world, or from another time.

Seen in:
1) 'Death Proof' - Tarantino

2) Gossip Girl scene(from 0.27s)

• grainy image - the whole movie is a bit edited as an older film shot with not as developed technology cameras which gives the image something retro and old fashioned... It looks very good I think and could convey the atmosphere of the house even better. At some moments the image could be granier and at some less.

2) 'My Bluberry Nights' - Won Kar Wai

• the colors - colorful but at the same time not too bright and a bit washed out/faded, giving some warmth
• the use of paces - at some points it turns into slow motion but a fast slow motion that conveys a very intense or emotional mood. I definitely want to use that at some moments in my video in the house, all of sudden the ballerina turns and dances or he walks around the house or drops somethingt in a slower/ jumpier pace...