Filming Day 3 - Faversham

13th September 2015 - Faversham

For our third day of filming we decided to go to Faverhsam due to its more naturistic locations and calming vibes.

For the first part of the day we went to a lovely quaint creek that featured a long path that we thought we could taker advantage of for lip synching scenes. We decided that for the lip synching scenes her that I would walk towards the camera, with the camera moving backwards, tracking my movements - this would fit our video as we want majority of the scenes to be in the point of view of Nova's partner therefore, by having me walk towards the camera it looks as if I am singing to the partner. I personally, feel that the creek was an excellent location to film in as the greenary surroudning it is soemthing we would love to have as a running theme throughout our video, this will show good continuity, making our video look more professional. Also, the wide open space gave us a lot of scope for both, mid and wide shots.

We were eager to experiment with different angles and shots, especially with this location due to the amount of space we had around us, we were also excited that we had bright natural lighting to use, this gave us an opporutnity to get some lense flares within our footage, this will make our work look a lot more professional; throughout the day we managed to get a variety of lense flares so when it comes to editing, we will evaluate which ones we feel are best to use within our video. Whislt filming at the creek we found ourselves having to overcome some issues, one being that the tripod we had used had some parts missing, this is something we didn't realise when we booked out this equipment - to overcome this, Evie thought it would be a good idea to hold the camera still ontop of the tripod, this was so that we still had the height of the tripod; Evie held the camera as she has the steadiest hand out of the three girls that aren't in the video. We also had the issue of the battery life of the camers, it lost battery very quickly which is something we were unprepared for in a nature environment as, obviously, there were not any plug sockets to quickly charge up the camera. However, we powered through, making sure we knew what shots we wanted so we could film them without faffing about, wasting bettery. We also checked the footage afterwards to make sure we got what we needed. Unfortunatly, this did restrict the quantity of footage that we got as we ended up loosing power completely.

Fortunatly, Evie has some relatives that live in Faversham, only a 10 minute walk from the creek so we went and visited them so that we could charge up the camera for the next half of our filming. Evie's grandparents live on a farm, meaning they have a lot of open space, we decided that this would be an excellent place to film due to the greenary and open spaces. We were able to use this space as an advantage to get lots of intertesting scenes, including some on haybales, establishing shots of sunsets, and medium asthetic shots of me. I feel that this location was exceptionally successful as the natural lighitng created many lense flares and the amount of space we had to use allowed us to be creative and artistc without many limitations.

At this location we were able to build our own bonfire, we wanted to create a memory of the couple having their own bonfire, including activities such as lighting sparklers and dancing together. Despite using the bonfire to show some happy memories, we wanted to film some close ups of the flames to symbolise the burning love that Nova has for her (once) boyfriend, this could come accross as quite heartbreaking as she is still in love with a boy who no longer cares for her. Similiarly, fire is an intense symbole which can give of many connotations, making it acceptable for the audience to draw their own conclusions from the footage. The picture inserted to the left is a still from some of the footage we got on this day, from this you can see that the colours are profound, we feel that this adds range to our video as most of the colours we are wanting to use are soft blues and pinks so by having a harsh orange in our video, we feel that this could bring variety to it, making it more entertaining for our audience. One problem with having this difference, is that it does break continuity within our video however, during the editing process we can do some colour correcting to make it look more like any other clips used.

As we were filming a bonfire we had to consider the time of day we filmed at due to lighting, we needed it to be dark enough that the fire could be seen but also light enough so that the footage wouldn't turn out grainy. We researched what time the sunset for this day was so that we had the perfect lighting  - the time for this was around 8pm. From reviewing the footage, I feel that this was a successful time for us to film as the footage was not grainy and the fire also showed up. Filming a variety of shots such as high angles of the fire that panned up to me proved to be succesfull as we seemed to have created our own motif of panning up to me, this is something I feel that we should incorporate to our video so that we have our own personal touch.

Costume

For this filming day I had two outfits - one for the daytime scene and one for the after noon.

For the daytime scene, we felt that Nova should look comfty and farm like due to the greenary around therefore, I wore a grey cowl neck, bat winged jumper with black jeans and black calf boots - we wanted to stick with monotone colours as it fits in with the alternative genre and we felt that by having a slouchy jumper this would look comfortable and stylish.

Afternoon Outfit without the waistcoat

Morning outfit

For the afternoon, we wanted to stick with the 'farm girl' theme so I continued to wear the black boots however, I changed to dark grey jeans with a black crop top partnered with a long black waistcoat that had fringing on the bottom, this fringing gives Nova a boheemian look, which is something we want to incorporate into Nova.

Review of Footage

This is a short clip to show you one of the lense flares we managed to get. This shot is a wide off centre shot, you can see me on a haybale to the right of the shot, this is to match the lipsynching we done in Whistable. The lense flares in this shot work really well as they appear accross the whole screen, making the shot look more artistic, which is what we were aiming for - the flares are also red, this will help us symbolise both love and hatred, which are themes that come accross in our chosen song. I personally, cannot fault the collection of lense flares we got as I feel that is shows our skills both technologically and artistically.

This clip shows a tracking shot of me lip syncing part of the chorus - I really like this shot as I feel that it shows the audience a large part of the location as well as making them feel as if Nova is walking towards them, this is significant as it makes the audience feel as if they are invovled in the video and Nova's life. One thing that I do not like about this clip is that the lighting is rather weird, only one half of my face is in the light, I personally feel that this ruins the shot however, the rest of my group like this clip so it is more than likely that it will be used in our final poduct.