Filming diary (2)

filming male character in a dark room 

Our video is based on alcoholism so it was obvious that we had to film footage of the male-character actually drinking alcohol. Whilst filming this footage, we felt that it was important to focus on his facial expressions and hand gestures whilst holding the alcohol bottle as those were the features that would successfully portray depressing, alcohol dependent behavior. The camera angles vary between low and on the same level as the male-character allowing the audience for the first time in the video to feel connected to him, this is especially relevant in the conscious scene (where this footage is used) as it is almost as if for the first time in the video, he is letting the audience in to see how his mind is working and the extent of his depression.

Below I have shown a couple of the different footages out of many which really highlight what we were trying to achieve. In the first footage you see the male character holding the bottle in his hands whilst looking at the floor in a reflective manor, He then runs his fingers over his head indicating to the audience that he is deliberating on whether to drink this alcohol or not. This clip is showing the struggle between him knowing he’s not supposed to be drinking this much and him feeling like he needs to when he thinks about the mysterious girl.Throughout the time we were filming this footage, the lighting was highly controlled, all the windows were covered whilst only a torch shone on his face placing him in a spotlight. We did this purposely to show that it was just him alone in this dark room, he is lonely and isolated from the world because of his alcohol dependency and constant thought about this girl who no-one else knows. The torch light worked really well because it created a shadow silhouette which gave a portentous message to the audience, warning them that he is fragile and in a dark place.

This footage of the female character was edited so that it would show in the midst of all the chaos whilst he is drunk to re-iterate the fact that this mysterious female is the reason behind his alcohol dependency, once again the female character is shown in even darker light to spark questions as to whether she is a ghost or not

filming the bottle

The footage of the bottle rolling on the floor was used as one of the repetitive clips that appear in the bridge of the song that is played four times. This shot needed to have a robotic feel to it as it was meant to represent the fact that his actions have almost become robotic because they are happening day in, day out. The first angle in which we attempted to film the bottle was ineffective as the camera was too distant from the bottle. We found that once we placed the camera on the floor it created the look that the bottle was rolling towards the camera, the second footage of the bottle rolling from side to side was one of our best shots as we felt it immediately drew focus to the bottle, being that the camera is on the same level of the bottle, it’s the main focus of the screen. 

filming male character on a bridge

filming male character drunk 

In this footage, you can see the drunken male character staggering towards what was meant to be the mysterious young girl. We filmed the footage from behind her to remind the audience that she is not really there, he is simply hallucinating. We found that the first footage didn't really work well as the male model couldn't act a drunken character very well which meant it wasn't creating the impact we wanted. The second shot worked a lot better because the model starting getting into the character a little bit better, swaying and staggering in the way a drunk individual would. You can see that as he gets closer to the female character he attempts to take hold of her but his body then blocks the shot, indicating to the audience that he will never get to physically hold her as she is not real. We decided not to include these shots in our music video, because we felt that the concept of this footage wasn't being clearly portrayed. The footage also lacked in terms of lighting and the garden setting didn't match with the rest of our video.