Our original vision of the band scenes were set in a derelict barn, to create a grungy, old, run down mise en scene for our punk/ rock alternative genre of music. If we were doing a pop music video we'd have wanted the setting to be pristine white or black so the focus is completely on the artist to fit with that particular genre. Yet the punk/rock alternative genre relies on a dark/ mysterious setting creating the perfect atmosphere for our band.
So we set out to find a place we could film in, that was both safe and big enough to set up lighting and band equipment. After finding the location, we went to check it out in terms of safety and doing a risk assessment. Finally a few days before our planned shoot, we agreed that it would not be suitable, due to broken glass on the floor and the actual structure of the building was not deemed to be safe.
Luckily, I knew someone that owned a barn with electricity that could be a possible location for our shoot, so after phoning him up to ask permission and a little visit from Eddie to check out the setting, we agreed that this would be the ideal place to film our music video.
We spent the Sunday morning clearing out the corner of the barn, using fork lifts and brooms to sweep the dust away. We loved the background of the old, dusty walls and uneven surfaces which helped create the mise en scene that we set out to find.
As you can see there is also a large circular hole in the side of the wall, which was originally covered up by a wooden board, but after some discussion with the owner, Eddie and I agreed to have it taken down as we feared it would ruin our mise en scene. This actually turned out really well with our shots and helped out later on in the night with our shot symmetry and rule of thirds, by having a circular light on the opposite side of the screen.
As you can see by the shot on the right, the two circles create wonderful symmetry that made me very happy when taking the shots!
What we did next was to set up our filming equipment, which included; lighting, cameras, dollys etc.
We moved the lights and cameras constantly throughout filming to create the ideal lighting atmosphere for each shot.
Then the band equipment had to be set up, which included; a drum-kit, microphone and stand, amps and decking for the equipment to be situated apon.
Behind us we also had a car which we played the 'Wake me up when September ends' song through, so that our actors could play and sing along to it, in order to get the right timing of the song.
The car had to be moved later on in the night, so we could do a 360 degree shot of the setting and we needed for the actors to be looking into darkness.
Once the the day turned to night, we could finally see how effective our lights would be in the setting - and after a workshop at school on lighting band equipment, we chose to use two LED lights on the red colour setting to light up the drum-kit. The colour red was inspired to us both by the genre of our music and by our colour motif in representing blood throughout our music video.
The first shots we were filming, we meant to be on a basic background just lighting up (Ollie's) our protagonists face in a warm glow light. We originally found an empty container to film the shots in, but decided the lighting wasn't good enough for the shots we wanted, so instead used one of the back walls of our barn to create the ideal, rustic looking background.
This was then well lit by having to lights on either side pointed at each other on a dull beam, and a footlight pointing up at the face and guitar.
I particularly like the fact that one side of the wall is paler than the other, as I feel it creates a good contrast and theme of light and dark, good and bad.
The pictures below shows our protagonist (Oliver Trivett) lit up by the three lights we used for our first shots and Angus Hilton who assisted with our transport and general assisting demonstrating the light effect on his face, during light and with a slightly colder lighting.
PERFECTED WARM RUSTIC LIGHTING DURING THE NIGHT
(OLIVER TRIVETT)
ORIGINAL TESTER WITH COLDER LIGHTING DURING THE DAY
(ANGUS HILTON)
