PRODUCTION: Filming Day 2

On Thursday 28th October, we began and finished our second day of filming for our music video, Howl by Florence and the Machine. Throughout the day, we had recorded approximately 26 base tracks all of which are at least 3 minutes 40 seconds long. The day started from 12pm and we finished recording well into the night beyond 9pm. Throughout this time, we were continually recording base track after base track to make sure when it came to editing, we had the shots we wanted and had a wide variety to choose from. Also, if we recorded a base track and thought it didn't fit into the music video well, we could easily substitute it with other shots we had. The day was tough, but we were glad we got all the the important tracks we needed within one day.

We began by meeting up at college by mid-day so from there, together we could all travel to the location we want to film in. We first all went straight to Poppy's house in North London to organise ourselves, decide what shots we're doing, how we're going to do it and then prepare for it (e.g. costume and makeup).

Once Poppy got ready with makeup and costume, we hit the first location; Queens Wood Park which was a short walk away from Poppy's house. This is where our day really begun.

This was the first shot we recorded of the day. As you can see by what I am wearing, the weather was quite chilly (hence the wooly hat), but that didn't phase Poppy and she gladly got straight into character to record the first shot. In most of the shots we recorded in the day, we tried not to use the tripod often as through research we found out that most music videos are recorded free-hand, which is much more effective than a static shot. This base track we felt would look horrible if a tripod was used as it would look boring, static and hardly creative.

We used a wide variety of shot angles from high angle close ups to wide distant shots. This was done as we as a group wanted as many different shots as possible so we could have a wide variety of shots to choose from during editing.

The one issue we had with free-hand recording is that as the song is nearly 4 minutes long, holding the camera out for that length of time constantly throughout the day without trying to shake the camera was difficult. On the right is an example of the difficulty we had holding the camera at certain angles for the whole during of the song. We had the tripod ready if holding the camera at that angle became difficult for Charon and/or if the shot didn't turn out to be as we expected.

Before we knew it, it had already become dark and after a quick costume and makeup change, we began recording our night shots as planned. This meant we had to use the spot-lights given to us by the college as without it, it was merely impossible to see even a few centermeters in front of you. We did use our phone camera lights to light up the area if we were moving around but we used the spot-lights when filming as it gave a great golden glow on camera. One of the best shots I feel we recorded on the day was while we were in the woods in the dark. Poppy was in a tree while me and Charon continually circled the tree to record the base track. Charon was holding the spot-light on Poppy while I was recording the shot and this was done as we constantly walked around the tree in pitch darkness. As the only source of light was on Poppy, me and Charon were unable see where we were walking and constantly kept on tripping over rocks and equipment in the way. However, Poppy kept composed, didn't laugh and we were able to get a 360 degree shot which was the most unique shot we recorded.

As we had recorded all the woodland shots we needed, we used the spare time we had left to record a few shots in Poppy's living room with a few fairy lights on her against a black wall. These shots offered something different to what we already had as the lighting from the fairy lights along with the makeup made Poppy glow on camera. These shots showed more of her innocent beauty which was more suited to the song rather than portray her than anything not related. We got close up base tracks of her lip singing, medium shots of her head and body and wide shots to get her entire person in shot. We used high angle shots as well as tracking low angle and static eye level shots.