Day 4 Filming - Glenn

Half term was upon us and so we thought it would be best to try and get as much filming done as possible so as we had enough footage for when we came back to school. So, I messaged Glenn and asked when he was free hoping he would be able to help us out again. But it was unfortunate that due to it being half term, Glenn was down to work most days and was not available on the days the rest of the group were free. Frustrating yes, but it is something that cannot be helped when the model is not physically free! So, we agreed over the holidays that the best day to go and film so that we had enough footage for when we returned to school was 20th February, where we were all free to travel up to London and film.

Myself, Jay, and Adam went up early in the morning to try and do bits that we did not require Glenn for, such as more location shots and shots of crowded areas with people going about their every day life.

Trafalgar Square

Jay With Street Artist

One of the first locations we went to was Trafalgar Square. This is a well known area in London which is constantly busy with tourists, commuters and street entertainers. At this location, we simply took a few pan shots of the area that showed the busy life around the square. As well as this, we noticed some street artists that we thought we could take advantage of. Whilst filming, Jay walked up to the artist and placed money in front of him and we filmed the reaction (see above. The shot also made it into the final cut). We thought it was good to incorporate a number of street artists that we found on our travels as they show how different people have their own ways of earning money and it is interesting to see who and how many people approach them.

Westminster Bridge

Bagpipes Man

As well as Trafalgar Square, we did some pan shots off of Westiminster Bridge. The views off of this bridge show the likes of The Houses Of Parliament, The London Eye, and shots up and down the river. As well as locational shots, becuase the bridge is so busy, we utilised this and held the camera whilst walking across the bridge and had some decent shots of the public walking towards us. When walking across, we also came across another street artist/busker. The man can be found on the right hand side of the page and you can see that it made it in to our final cut. Again, we thought it would have been an effective shot just to walk past and have the camera look at him just as a normal member of the public woud walk by and look at what he is doing.

Southbank Busy

Me Filming

At the end of the bridge, we turned right on to Southbank to walk past the London Eye and try and see as many street artists as we could. At the top of the steps down to the bank, I stopped and put the camera on a wall and recorded the 'life' below. The area is constantly busy due to there being a McDonalds, arcade, aquarium, London Eye and a 'scary experience'. The picture on the left is the where I placed the camera (a little bit further forward so that the wall was not in shot). With a selection of zooms and mild pans we had a good variety of shots that could potentially be used in the video (the shot was used in the final cut and is also a contending shot that could be used for one of our ancillary tasks) After we had gotten the shots that we wanted without Glenn, it was time to go and meet him. By the time he got to us, it was about 1500, and Jay had to go to work, so he left us for the day and Adam and I carried on. On the right hand side is a picture of me filming at one of the location shots.

Rough Cut Dark Shot

Final Cut Lighter Shot

So, we met Glenn at London Bridge station, about 5 minutes after Jay left and proceeded to the tunnel that the group filmed in that made it in to the rough cut. We knew that we had to film every shot we had from the rough cut again as they were way too dark. We spent only half an hour or so here filming Glenn a number of times performing the song from different camera angles. The picture on the left was used in the rough cut and I even played with the colour becuase the darkness was so bad. The picture on the right hand side was shot for the final cut in the light. You can clearly see the difference in the shots. It shows how the time of day can influence the video, too dark can make it look dreary whereas being too light and bright may mean that you cannot see the shot properly.

Outside Mayor's Office

After we had finished in this location we decided to walk on to Southbank with Glenn and do some more performing/busking shots. This was something that our audience feedback asked us to do, more performing locations. From the last time that we went up to London, I knew that a good spot to do this would be outside the Mayor's office. Here is constantly busy with commuters and tourists, as well as having Tower Bridge in the background on one side, and London Bridge on the other. Here we managed to get a good few performances of Glenn with the public walking by looking which is an effect we wanted to create.

Day 3 Filming - Glenn

On the afternoon of 25th January, Jay, Adam and Glenn went up to London to do some more filming. I was unavailable due to work committments, however the others went up anyway as we needed some footage! Again, there was a race against time with the light, but the footage that they got was of a good standard and we managed to use it to put into the rough cut. Below is some of the shots that the group managed to get that appeared in the final cut.

 The shot on the left is one that we originally wanted from our story board ideas. It is our model holding a sign reading 'What'. There are other shots that with him holding signs that say 'A', 'Life' and '?'. They are not all shots of him in front of the telephone box. When they went up, Adam and Jay just asked Glenn, in different places that they came across, to stand holding each sign for a few seconds. The idea is then to almalgamate all of the sing holding shots together and have a montage of them shown on the screen.

Dark and Overcast

The shot on the right is a pan shot of London from Waterloo Bridge. The shot over looks the train line leading into Charring X station. Jay and Adam thought that it would be effective to have a few pan shots of the city, which I also agreed with, and when walking over Waterloo Bridge, noticed the view so decided to take a shot of it. The only poblem wth the shot is that it is a bit dark with heavy cloud cover which may ruin the continuity of the video fro going to broad daylight to overcast and darkness.

Bright Lights on Traffic

Another shot that was taken on the day was of moving vehicles. As it was dark, the vehicles had their lights on. Glenn put forward the idea to Adam and Jay that filming the traffic and speeding it up in the actual video would look effective with the bright lights. In order for us to speed the footage up, we had to film for a substantial amount of time in a neutral position. Shooting for a short peridod of time, say 10 seconds, would only be about 2-3 seconds on the screen. So they filmed for 2 minutes to get a decent amout of footage with differet vehicles, people and volume of traffic.

Some of the best footage that Adam and Jay got was the shots in the tunnel. When they were up in London, no one could remember where the original tunnel was and I was unavailable to be contacted, but luckily, the lads came across another tunnel. The location is instantly recognizable to anyone who loves and listens to Coldplay.

This is the tunnel that Chris Martin and his band filmed the beginning of their video to 'Fix You'. A link to their full video can be found here. The tunnel is exactly what we wanted with the high brick walls

Day 2 Filming - Glenn

On 19th January, the group went up to London for the first time with Glenn. Glenn informed us that he had been trying to learn the lyrics as best as he could the previous evening and said he knew them well enough to sing along to. There was a slight problem that we had to deal with when up in London, and that was time Due to other commitments in the morning, Glenn was only available from 1230, meaning that we didn't get to London until 2 which in turn meant we were fighting to use as much daylight as possible seeing as it gets dark very quickly over the winter months.

London Bridge

When got off the train at London Bridge as we were going to go the the tunnel that I had showed Adam the first time we went filming. As we were walking to the location, we were walking over London Bridge (the bridge that goes over the Thames) and Glenn thought it was a nice location to begin filming. This was not an original location that we had thought of, but when we stopped and looked at it, we realised that he was right. We were been able to have get a number of different shots here that included, looking over the river whilst performing the song, walking over the bridge whilst performing and also just general pan shots of London as well as some establishing shots. The picture on the right is one of London Bridge. As you can see, it has quite a large pavement so there was plenty of space to film. Another idea that the storyboard shows, is how our model is to walk across the road towards the camera. Although a very busy road at times, we feel that this could be the ideal location as you have the river as a backdrop, and also, the road as a central reservation so Glenn could easily make it to the middle without having to dodge traffic!

Jay Filming On London Bridge

So, when we were at location, we decided quickly that we would all take it in turns to operate the camera so as 1) we were all seen to be doing something and not just standing around, and 2) to see who the best camera person was. 
People adapt differently to different things and it may have been that Jay or Adam was better at using the camera, utilising the variety of shots better than I would be able to. The picture on the left shows Jay using the camera with the tripod at the London Bridge location. The idea was to film glen leaning on the bridge wall and we would have the camera moving around his body (so start filming on one side of his face, and end on the other side). Although this possible would have been a good idea and looked effective in the video, it proved difficult to keep the camera steady and the final product was a shaky picture. It would have been better if we had a dolly with us which would have held the camera for us and moved it without the wobbly effect.

Glenn Performing On Southbank

The next location that we filmed at on this day  was on Southbank, just outside the Mayor's office. I thought of this location when we were on the train as I had recently seen it in another iconic music video. The video is one by JLS and how they used this location can be found in this link. We thought it would be a good idea at this point to have Glenn in the position that he is in in the picture, whilst singing the song. The backdrop is effective with the iconic Tower Bridge and we also liked the ground with the laminate like flooring.

After we had done some filming in this location, we thought that because the Tower Bridge was so close to us, why not take advantage of it and do some filming there too.

Adam Filming Glenn Along Tower Bridge

The picture above shows Adam filming Glenn performing the song whilst walking along the bridge. Apart from getting a few funny looks and people getting in the way of the camera because they thought they were on TV, the only problem was trying to set the right speed that both Adam and Glenn could stick too. It was hardest for Adam who had to try and walk backwards whilst trying to keep the camera steady. To do this and ensure that the pathway was clear for him, Jay and I walked ahead of him a few feet. The end result looked good with only minor wobbles that cannot be helped.

Me Filming Glenn In Tunnel

By this time, it was well into 1500, and we were all hungry so decided to get somthing to eat. By the time we found somewhere to get some food, get the food and eat it, it was dark. We still wanted to do so many more different location shots with Glenn, but it just wasn't possible with the light that was available to us.

All we could do with the light available was to go to the tunnel that was going to be the focus of the video and begin filming. The light did not really affect us here as it was lit with bright overhead lights. As you can see from the picture on the left, I am using the camera filming glen against the wall, singing whilst playing the guitar. Someof the shots came out really well, but otheres not so well. When we brought the footage back to the class, we realised that the location looked a bit dull and dreary.

Day 1 Filming

On Sunday 15th January, me and Adam went up to London to begin filming. Jay and our model Jack had football in the morning and were going to follow us up after their match to help us begin filming properly. What Adam and I intended to do before the other two joined us was to film te London Eye. From previous posts I have explained how we intended to have a shot of the London Eye spinning round quite fast. The only way we could have this effect is to film one full rotation of the wheel and then speed it up. This would have taken us half an hour to forty five minutes which is why we went up early so as not to waste time doing it when the other two joined us.

London Eye
When me and Adam reached the London Eye, we noticed it wasn't moving and was in fact shut for 'essential maintenance', the only time it is ever shut in the year. Because of this our filming schedule was ruined for the morning and we had to decide on another day to begin filming. We went and discussed what we could do in regards to filming before Jay and Jack came to meet us and decided on going to our main location of Leake Street and begin filming the opening and closing shots, as well as the still shots of the images on the wall.

Leake Street
When we got to Leake Street we noticed how the street was filled with cars, something we thought was unusual for a Sunday morning. When we entered the street we also noticed a large group of youths in the centre of the street in a huddle. There was also a strong smell of cannabis blowing through the tunnel/street and based on these observations we did not feel it was appropriate to be filming here. It may be OK to film on some days when the street is virtually empty however should we need to re film anything from this street (which is more than likely) then we cannot guarantee that it would be appropriate to be filming here. So, another hurdle that we had crossed and needed to overcome. I mentioned to Adam that on a visit up to London recently with my family I had walked through an underpass/tunnel along the Southbank river which was an even better location to film than Leake Street, so we decided to go and check this location out. The pictures on the left and right are of the new location and you can see that this is identical to our original thought of having our model perform in front of a brick wall, appearing to busk.

OUR DAY GOT WORSE!

Jack

En-route to the new location of filming, we got a phone call from Jay telling us that we needed to find a new model. Jack had text him telling him that he had too much of a workload to cope with and also had no money even though we offered to pay for him... It was obviously an excuse to just not help us out, but either way, our group was stuffed without someone to film. Me and Adam frantically started to think of someone that could appear in our video that would fit the part. It even got to the stage that we started considering someone within the actualy group to film! But then I thought of someone. At the start of the course our teacher mentioned to us that a student from last year, Glenn Rice was in a band and that we should film then, but we decided not to becuase we were not keen on his bands style of music - maybe we should have agreed to doing this and not had all of the hassle of finding locations etc and made it more simple for ourselves by filming a performance video. So I messaged Glenn asking him whether he could help us out, and near enough straight away got a message back agreeing to help us out!! Above, right, is a picture of Glenn. This is not one we have taken ourselves, but it shows Glenns style. It also shows that he is musical becuase of the guitar, which is handy because we need a guitarto appear in our video.

Equipment Needed

Before we go up to London we need to establish what we are going to take up to help us. Obviously the main two things that are needed are a camera and a tripod. The camera, for the filming aspect, the tripod to prevent any shaky camera movements. Equipment that we need are as followed;

• Sony Handycam
• Tripod
• Camera Tape
• iPhone/iPod
• Digital Camera - Sony & Hitachi
• Acoustic Guitar

Each piece of equipment is vital to us in order to help us film the video.