Production Log: Day 2

 Day 2 was very busy and eventful for us, because we did all the rest of our shoot on this day. 

Lighting and Equipment

We used natural and indoor light, as well as phone flashlights as an improvisation for some shots. We also used a tripod for steadier and still shots.

Technical Stuff:

The footage was shot using a Canon 5DS R, with a 24-70mm lens. I used a different lens than we did on day 1 (50mm) because, even though that one gave us great quality footage in low light, a 24 70 is just an all-rounder lens, and since we had more varied kinds of shots planned for day 2, it was a much better option.

The videos have a dimension of 1920 x 1080 pixels and were shot in 24fps.

Camera, Shots and Angles

We used a variety of angles and shots throughout the shoot, Mainly mid shots and medium close ups because we wanted to emphasise on the artist/actor's expressions and body language which translated a major aspect of the narrative. The angles were mostly eye-level.

Location 1: Bedroom

We had first set up the room and added some elements that went with our music video. The main elements in our mise en scene included movie posters for Flight Plan and Portrait of a Lady on Fire, and the Virginia Woolf "novel" Orlando, which we placed on the bedside table. 

We had to film Khadijah from a top angle as she lay in the bed lipsyncing. Khadijah did her makeup from home because none of us in the team are particularly good at styling, but we instructed her on the amount and type of makeup she would have to - i.e. minimal that doesn't stand out on camera. Her outfit was also a loose striped t-shirt which looked comfortable and not forced.

Tucking her into bed was a little awkward and after 5 minutes of random bursts of laughter from someone or the other we finally decided to maintain our professionalism and begin shooting. Awkward moment part 2: standing right on top of Khadijah and praying neither I, nor my very oddly-positioned camera and tripod fall on her. The tripod was there to minimise the camera movement as much as possible, and placing it straight on the bed and tilting the head downwards wasn't giving us the right angle.

Here, we included Andrew Goodwin's theory about the notion of looking as she breaks the fourth wall and looks directly into the camera. It also added to our performance part of the video. Breaking the fourth wall is a characteristic that is conventionally seen in indie videos, and generally in music videos in the performance category.

For the next shots, we had to film her rolling over in bed, pulling up blankets, just laying there zoned out - apart from the ones in our shotlist we tried to get as many shots in good angles as we could because that's rule #1 of shooting (unverified but seemingly valid fact by Director Hira). In these shots, the natural light from the windows was a bit too bright, and since it fell on only one side of her face, it cast shadows that obviously did not look great at all. So, we used phone torches (refer to image above) to get a more even lighting and reduce those shadows.

Here is me struggling with a tripod that felt taller than myself

After this, we filmed the scenes where she picks up the journal from her bedside. We shot this from three different angles, including an over the shoulder angle, because we specifically wanted a match on action at this point. Since our video already hardly has any continuity editing, we did not want to risk running short on shots and so, we kept it in mind to take additional shots after covering those on the shot list.

This shot above, in particular, is a very unconventionally shot scene, because usually there aren't any zoom ins or zoom outs while filming. However, our research into lofi indie music videos did expose us to an array of unconventional camera work very similar to this, and we felt that since that is what we were aiming for, we should include a few such shots.

It took a lot more takes to get the lipsyncing scenes right than any other scene, because the movement of the mouth had to be close enough to look legitimate and there were of course minor hindrances such as slips, mixing up lyrics, forgetting to hit the record button. 

Location 2: Suburbs and Parks

This location wasn't hard to decide because all of us live in suburbs. Because the indoor shoot took place at my house, we conducted this shoot within my residential colony as well.

Since we wanted some of the scenes in the suburban setting to be filmed around the evening and the rest at night, we started off at the right time. However, we slightly underestimated how fast the sun would set and so I had to rush a little through a lot of the shots. Since these shots were supposed to be a little shaky I didn't have to carry around dreaded daddy long legs(-5) with us. Also, since almost all of these shots are supposed to be played in the music video for not more than 2 seconds each, and mostly around 1 second, the shakiness was thankfully never an issue to begin with.

We had Khadijah wear a red sweater with plain blue jeans because it contrasted well with the evening outdoor setting and was also symbolically important because most of the scenes were flashbacks to her past where she was in a happy and healthy relationship (red connotes love, warmth and similar positive emotions). The outfit is pretty simple and plain which is a common characteristic in indie genre

We got our second model, Haadiyah for these scenes because they were supposed to be flashback memories of the main character. These videos were also supposed to have a handi-cam effect - not very high quality, handheld shaky movements, and a lot of point of view shots. We'll be further editing this footage to have a more grainy and vintage effect. 

Location 3: Living Room (Party Scene)

These scenes are one of the main narratives of our music video and also a symbolic one. The visuals of this scene also matched well with the lyrics of our song, in accordance with Andrew Goodwin's theory about the relationship of the visuals with the lyrics. 

We had Khadijah smudge some of her mascara and mess up her hair to look as though she just woke up.

We were pretty tired by the time we got to this part, but we managed to get all the shots on the shot list as well as some additional footage. We filmed this part of the footage in my drawing room at night. The mise en scene for this scene seemed like a hard task as we were supposed to show the aftermath of a party. We had to drag around some furniture to get a well-framed shot. However, besides that it just took a confetti popper, four bottles of malt, a couple of glasses, and boxes of the pizza we'd just eaten. It looked pretty artistic if you ask me (my mom would have a slightly different opinion). 

Major take-away: a popper takes more strength than you would expect. Unless you're Khadijah. In that case it bursts as soon as you touch it.

After Hira and I took on the temporary role of art directors, we got started with the filming. For these scenes, we mostly just used eye-level, stable shots. Since the tripod was higher for this task, even at its shortest height, we just used drink cans to stabilise the camera. As for the lighting, we initially wanted softer, dull, mellow lighting so we used yellow indoor lights. Towards the end of this scene, when we show the model dancing, we switched off all indoor lighting and used pink lighting, just enough to make her form visible.

So, on an very exhausted note, our shoot finally came to an end. There was a question mark hovering in the air constantly, until the end, and even after the shoot, even though we had managed to gather all, or even on a strict evaluation, at least 90% of the shots on our shot list. I suppose that's because we wrapped everything up in basically a day and a half. What I am sure of though, is that the editing phase will be a lot better than the production phase, because that will be when everything falls into place and it's also easier to point out the flaws that need to be fixed. 

One of the strength for our production day was that we managed to get quite a variety of shots, most of them really good, our mise en scene turned out better than we had expected it to look, especially for the last scenes. However, two issues we faced were the error in time judgement for the outdoor shoots, and an unforeseeable stroke of bad luck - the pink fairy lights, which were working fine a day before when Hira tested them, blew up so we had to struggle to get some coloured lighting, which we did by using laptops and phones but the result was of course slightly underwhelming. Some shots could also have been a bit more stable as well.