Account of shoot day

Thursday, 5th November was the day of the shoot for Shoop. The day before, we finalised our shooting schedual, deciding to shoot the three boys in the underground club set first, as it allowed the girls time to have their makeup and hair done.

However, it started slowly for us due to lack of time to finish the set build the previous day. Therefore, while Grace and Elisa picked up our main actor, Kemi, myself and Tyler began to put up our 80's music posters, patch up the brick walls, and set up the DJ decks on the tables and this went very well. Having finished this part of the set up, we got the three boys in, Jacky, Henry and Rob. Henry was particularly good on the decks, having experience in using them already, and Jacky and Rob began doing things in a slightly lower key to Henry, as instructed. On looking at this it was clear that it looked unatural with all three of them on the decks, therefore we had Rob put the boom-box on his shoulder and dance around, which added to the 80's vibe perfectly.

Here is a look at the underground club set:

Helen doing Kemi's makeup

Makeup

Make-up

Jacky

On filming this sequence, we began by shooting two wide shots, while the entire track ran. This was great, however we wanted to do a big hand-held camera shot, which was simply awesome to do and looked great.

Having shot the boys, the girls were now ready. We got them into the studio and got to have our first look at Kemi working with the rest of the girls. Kemi was great, and this was easy to recognise instantly. We again shot from wide, which is the only shot we did of them with the DJ's. This was good though, especially when Kemi came right up close to the camera.


Now we had shot this sequence, it was time to say goodbye to the boys until 15:30, and let the three main girls have a break. We got our backing girls in, who were Molly, Loa and Steph. Prior to this however, we changed the set, which involved taking down the flats and putting them back into the container out the back of the studio. Myself and Tyler then put up and secured the colour wall at the back of the set, and set up lights behind to shine through the squares. Once this was all ready and in position, with the lights on etc, there was clearly an issue in that the light was spilling out from the side of the colour wall, which wasn't ideal, and in a wide frame some of the set was very visible. To correct this we put up two black flats at a slight diagonal to the colour screen, which both contained the light, but also gave us a wider set, and therefore more space to shoot and for our actresses to move around in.

Once the set was secured, it was time to begin shooting. The girls were great, and we shot from a wide frame. They performed the dance, choreographed by Grace, multiple times. First with no front lights, which put them in a nice sillhouete. Then we shot it with front facing lights to show our girls more clearly. This also means that in our post production we can cut the shots from sillhouete to visible, which will hopefully create a nice strobe lighting-esque effect.

Having done this a few times until we were sure that we had what we were after, we moved onto the individual shots. First we shot Loa carrying the boom-box on her shoulder and dancing, next we shot Molly carrying it in front of her (it was too heavy to carry), and last but not least, Steph who swung it around in one hand very nicely indeed.
Lunch was getting nearer and nearer and everyone was getting hungry and impatient, therefore we decided to do one more shot before going for an hour's break. We decided to do the first of shots that involved the camera on the floor, with the boom-box in shallow focus and with the dancing girls out of focus in the background. After this we called for a break and went to lunch, ready to shoot our main girls in front of the colour screen.

Lunch was over, and at 2 o'clock we started shooting again. We repeated the previous process, shooting the sequence from a wide frame, and then focussing on the girls individually, while they danced alongside the other girls. Then we filmed Kemi dancing against the screen on her own, then Romany and lastly, Vogue. This all went very well, with the sequence ending with another shot of the boom-box in shallow focus with the girls dancing behind, out of focus. What we did differently with this one was that we had Kemi crouch down and say one line directly to the camera, which looked great. The line was:

I like what ya do when you do what ya do
You make me wanna shoop

Here is a brief look of our second set (the colour wall):

In the pictures either side you can see Loa performing part of the dance.

Our final set was our rooftop scene with all of our characters being on a sofa on a green screen and on the green screen we will put our roof top/ skyline idea. Everyone was put on the sofas and told to just dance really and the three main girls were singing the lyrics. We found it hard where to position everyone but by the end we were able to find positions were everyone was visible on camera and where they looked good. We did many shots of this scene as we kept trying to fins somewhere t put the boom box and in the end we decided on putting it on kemis lap who was in the middle of the sofa thus it would be the centre of attention. 

I feel that the overall experience of the shoot day was really enjoyable, as i was able to have a go doing everything such as playback and using the camera. I feel our shoot went well after the little issue in the morning and that we were able to work well as a unit and got what we actually wanted out of the experience. After looking at some of the footage in post production i think were all happy with what weve filmed and think it has the basis to be a good music video. Now all we've got to do is put it all together.