Filming diary (3)

male character burning photos

We chose to feature photographs of the female character towards the end our music video because this answers the audiences questions as to if the mysterious girl was alive, the fact that there are photographs of her confirm that she once was a living human being. We chose images of the female character that would show that she was a happy, normal young girl when she was alive, you can see her smiling, cheerful and pulling silly faces.  We chose to include a photo with the female character and the male character as it shows that they were closely linked whilst she was alive, he made her happy and comfortable, you can see she has no make-up on, the audience may even go as far as to think they were boyfriend and girlfriend. In this photo she is wearing her school uniform, alerting the audience that she was of school girl age when the incident which is not made clear to the audience happened, this also links back to the beginning our video in the running scene.

We chose to have the male character burning the images of the two together towards the end of the video to show the audience that he is finally coming to the realisation that he needs to forget about her, move on in order to get himself out of this depressive, alcohol dependent state he is currently in, and the best way to start doing this is to destroy images he has of her alone and them together. 

We did two over the shots so that the audience could feel up and lose and personal with the male character, almost as if they are there looking at the pictures too, feeling sympathy for him. The camera begins to zoom into the image when it is set alight and begins to burn, enlarging the photo of the female character. The way he drops the photo adds a dramatic effect, making the audience aware of his sorrowfulness and desolation.

We tried a variety of different angles, including ones like the one below which make the male character the main focus, as opposed to the above footages which makes the female character the main focus. These angles were useful when showing the emotion on the male characters face, alerting the audience of just how difficult it is for him to burn these photos and forget about this mysterious girl. 

the clock

The clock represented the fact that as time was wasting away as he drank himself into this alcohol related dark mental state he was in. We filmed the clock at three different times 12pm, 3pm, 6pm and 9pm to show that this was his daily routine and it had almost become robotic, hence the repetitiveness of our hook. The clock appearance of the clock re-iterates that his day begins with alcohol and ends with alcohol.

Filming this clock wasn't right because it didn't have the second hand which moved round and that was the main feature which would make the audience visually see time passing by. Although we left the camera to film for an hour, so that we could later test how speeding it up would improve the way we saw the hands filming, it didn't work due to the silver school plaque placed on the bottom of the clock which ruined the vintage, unsettling look which the camera had.

After we decided that this clock wouldn't work, we tried to look for other clocks which would go with our video. Cally found two clocked and messaged it to the group chat we had set up earlier, where we discussed which clock looked better. Even though the first one was similar to the one we had already filmed, we felt that the white clock would work better as it had a manlier look to it and we would be able to control lighting which would frame the white face of the clock.

We created this dark frame around the clock by turning off all the lights in the corridor leaving the area in complete darkness; we then used a torch from a left direction to illuminate the clock whilst leaving a shadow which cast a shadow that went to the right. Another method we tried in order to give the clock scene a more chilling, haunting effect was to push the clock slightly so that it would move back and forth in a systematic motion. Filming this whilst we had set the time to 9pm in the night was due to the fact that this is the time when people are more likely to be seen drinking hence the clock swaying back and forth to signify the fact that she was drunk. Another method we tried to was to zoom in to the clock hands whilst the clock was moving back and forth to show that the male character is running out a time to get out of this state, if he keeps on drinking it could potentially end up fatal, time is ticking and it’s out of his control. We didn't include this footage in our video because we felt that in actual music video footage, members of the audience may not understand that its clock hands as the camera is so zoomed in. 

male character at the bar

In this footage we start by seeing the make characters face as he drinks, when he puts the bottle down the camera then zooms into the label of the bottle. We left the room to be filled with natural daylight so the audience could see this it was only the middle of the day yet he had already begun drinking. His hand gestures were quite important in this shot, we made sure that his hands were left in the shot as you can see his hands are in fists to begin with, then go on to start tapping on the bar making it quite obvious to the audience that something is there is a problem and bothering him. Filming this shot was hard due to the fact that there was a mirror which was at the back of the bar, we overcame this problem by placing the camera on top of a chair and relying on zoom to ensure the mirror didn't show up in the shot, however this still didn't work, hence why this shot is not included in our music video. however This setting was highly controlled and easily accessible to us because it was actually the bar at the male models home. We chose this setting because for our video it would show that even at home the male-character can’t stay away from alcohol because he has a bar in his house. The black bar with the red chairs along with the black clothes work well together to portray the message of our video as it connotes danger and fatality.

We began with the male characters face at the beginning of the shot however the main focus of this shot was the bottle, we zoomed in on the bottle whilst the male character made a fist with his hands in the corner of the shot to set the tone and to indicate the fact that he is frustrated with himself for not being able to stop drinking.

 Here the male character looks at the bottle then looks back at the clock to show that he knows that he is aware that drinking at this time is not socially acceptable. The camera then zooms into the bottle whilst his fingers move down the bottle.

Here we see the male character look down at the bottle then drinking whilst he is closing his eyes indicating that for him drinking to this point is a way of escaping his thoughts about this mysterious girl. We then see him place the bottle back on the counter and shake his head almost as if his method isn't working. He then looks at the clock, and the scene ends with him putting his hands together in distress, frustrated at the fact that the drink isn't taking his troubles away. 

re-filming of male character

We re-shot this footage because in the original footage that appears when the song says ‘headshot’ it slightly looked like the male character is smiling, which takes away from the seriousness of our video. Whilst re-shooting this headshot footage we covered the windows Cally held a thick cover over the door frame as there was no door that could be closed in order to make the room appear darker. We made the model sit in the same position as the last footage (on the floor) however this time he was placed in a black shirt because black connotes anguish and depression. 

We attempted to film a panning shot, however the setting just didn’t work due to the fact that it was surrounded by gym equipment which was visible in the shot, this would have worked well with the video as it would have shown how his mind was spinning due to the fact that he was confused and drunk, but unfortunately this was the only room we had available to us which could produce a dark enough image as Cally had moved houses by this time, so we couldn’t use the same location as before. There was also no way we could position the camera that would take the gym equipment out of shot or even move the gym equipment. As well as that, the mirror in the background of the shot meant that you could see Cally as she circled him with the camera which gave a very unprofessional looking finish to the shot. We decided not to use either of these two shots because after watching both of them again, we realised that for the first shot it would be a continuity error to put that in our video as he is wearing a black shirt, whereas in the rest of the video he is wearing a white shirt and the setting in the second footage just wasn’t professional.

the bottle in the pool

We felt that it would be fitting to film footage based on a swimming pool because the song is called ‘Swimming Pools’. The empty beer bottle is thrown in the swimming pool because we wanted to give the impression that the male character had drunk it all then thrown it away, visually this footage works well with our video because although it looks calm the message it reflects fits with the dark message of alcoholism in our video 

We threw the bottle in the pool and attempted to capture it when it splashed against the water, this links back to the bath scene where both our male and female model grab the sides of the bath making the water splash out of the bath tub. The physical effect of the bottle splashing against water draws a parallel with the physical effect that the bottle has on the male character. When editing the video I slowed this footage down not only because it looks better in slow motion but it also eliminates the fact that it looks as if we have calculatedly thrown the bottle in, rather than a drunk individual just randomly throwing a bottle.

In this footage the bottle is floating on its side on the surface of the water making it clear to the audience that it is an alcohol bottle. The bottle then begins move up and down and sink as it begins to fill with water, giving us a different angle to work with, without us actually having to move it, giving a natural finish that works well with our music video.

male character passing out