A2 Media coursework

1. Behind the scenes
07/12/16 + 08/12/16

2. Alice’s makeup
I was in charge of makeup, and this is
makeup that I put on Alice (our actress) and
I recreated on the second day of filming.
This image was taken on the second day of
filming, and the makeup wasn’t as good on
this day. We didn’t have the same makeup
as the day before, however the eye makeup
was kept the same. In our filming, however,
it all looks the same, and it caught the light
well.
With the makeup we went a bit grungy on
the eyes, with dark colours from the Urban
Decay Naked 3 palette. I, then, gave her
natural face makeup, with a light bit of
bronzer. I put just a neutral pink lipstick on
her lips as to not draw attention away from
her eyes.
Alice’s hair was kept natural, however we
volumised it slightly for the shoot.

3. Background
Our set was in the photography
department in our school. This had a role
of white paper that we pulled out and
used as a backdrop for our set. This
white background ensured that we had a
clean background that would be neutral
and pick up shadows easily.
Shadows were important in our filming as
it created an interesting aspect with
different shots and the lighting.

4. Off-set
This is an image taken across the set.
We kept the instruments all in the room
when we were filming other people’s
parts, and the instruments weren’t
required.
You can also see our two actors who
played instruments – Kieran (left) and
Hassan (right).

5. Changes
Initially, Kieran was going to play the
drums and so we started filming all of the
parts with him.
However, we later found out that Hassan
literally has no idea how to play the
guitar, so Kieran – who can play the
guitar – swapped with him and we had to
re-film a lot of the parts.
The drums were relatively easy to play,
so it worked a lot better with Hassan
playing them.

6. Set up of the drums
One of the main instruments that we
filmed was the drums.
Hassan was our drummer in our music
video, and he was wearing neutral
clothes so it kept up with the genre.
When filming the drums, we gained lots
of different angles of the same beat so
we could use it throughout the video.
The lighting that was used here (and in
all shots) was one LED light, as it created
a direct, halo-like, light that looked very
good on camera.
We filmed all shots on a tripod to keep
the video looking more professional and
steady.

7. Filming shadows
To gain shots of Hassan’s shadow
drumming, we turned his drum side-ways
and aimed out light directly at the drum.
We angled the camera slightly to the side
so we could gain shots of just the
shadow, without the actual drum in it.
These shots created a different
dimension that is unconventional to the
genre.

8. Backdrop
When we filmed Alice, we initially
mounted the sign we made to the paper
roll. However, it looked very amateur
(which we were trying to avoid) so we
took it down.
Instead, we filmed the sign by the
focussing and un-focussng the camera.
We thought this could go either at the
end of the video or at the beginning as a
title.

9. Filming Alice
The main part of our filming was, obviously,
Alice doing her lip-syncing.
We gained lots of different shots and
different angles, close-up and long shots, so
this ensured variety.
We had the LED light connected to the top
of the camera, like what can be see in the
right hand image.
She also was filmed with a microphone
every time.
These images show the general set up of
every one of Alice’s shots.
We filmed all of our shots in the dark, other
than the LED light because it made the light
more intense and direct. It also ensured that
we had more control over the lighting.

10. Starting to edit
On Thursday, before we did our second
set of filming, we downloaded our shots
to a school computer to check what we
had and what shots we needed to gain
with that evening’s shoot.
Nadia downloaded Final Cut Pro (30 day
free trial) on her laptop so on Friday we
could sit and start editing what we had.
Our editing process will involve putting all
of our shots in order as to how we want
them to look and then start colour
correcting and trying out different filters,
etc.