P4(d) Following Production Processes

Meaning and purpose

 In this section, I am going to talk about some shots with using which camera and lens by showing some screenshots example from my video.

Diary

Once we knew we have a chance to film a music video advert again, we felt excited about it. However we cant find the same actors in our unit46 music video as they finished A-level course and studying at university currently. This means that we have to find other actors which matches the characters in this film. We wrote down a list that are the ones as our first choice. Luckily, they gave us a good response of joining this crew. We found Marco, Gladys, Bill, Bosco to build up the three stories about Starbucks.

During the process of filming, we found out that the biggest issue was the time schedule. We are all different years of students in school, which means that we are not having lessons together, then we have to fund ways to make the filming process go smooth. In order to build up a schedule of filming, we have to find out our manual study lesson to finish the scenes that are able to film in school. Then we have to go ask the staff in office for booking out the place for us to film. She gave us a few possible timing and looking forward to see the result of the advert. We also spent our weekends in our town's Starbucks for the rest of the scenes done. Perhaps there are issues that caused them not available on that day, they told us one or two day before the filming day that we planned. Molly and I will then discuss together and figure out when is the next possible time which convenient each other. This is all about decision making and time management.

Starbucks coffee cup is the most important prop in this music video advert, it gives the menaing of Starbucks and it is the main product that we are selling and doing advert with. It is difficult to ask the staff in Starbucks to have empty cups without purchasing. However, they are cooperative and nice to us. At the end, the filming section went quite well as we made a rundown before and told them what should they do in the certain shoot day. They read the plot and planning that Molly and I did. They digested it and performed well in the advert.




Camera settings and details - How do I use them?

This is a Canon 7D with a 50mm f/1.8 lens which is a lens for filming close-ups. As you can see the image that I screenshot from my advert video. It is easier to film racking shots and close-ups by using this lens to focus on the object that we wanted to. As we doing our filming, we are always using two cameras (medium shots and close-up mostly) to make sure we have caught the angles perfectly by our mind plannings. We also decided that to use the handheld on filming the close-ups because I am able to film with a better position and angle instead of using a tripod. During the filming of racking shots, it is vital to managing the time of turning the inflow or outflow camera lens in order to keep the object or person that we wanted during the process. Therefore I have to try a few times to make it becomes perfect. Focusing on the phone is a good example here, it is difficult to film close-up shots while the cast was walking, that took me a few times to keep it stays in focus at right places.

This is a Canon 760D with sigma 18-205mm f/3.5-6.3 lens which is able to film all the shots that we mentioned in our planning. We used this camera on long shots, medium shots, establishing shots, but mostly medium shots, which is like a human eye to watch all of these happens. Sometimes, we need to use a tripod to help the camera to stay stable when we have to film pan shots and it allows us to set the height and angle as we set up before we filming. It is also important to make sure that we have locked the camera with the tripod or else the camera may drop on the floor.