SHOOT DAY 9/11/10

Tuesday 9th November

On the morning of the shoot, everything was ready to go as we had finished the set the night before. Cat and I took the dancers to get ready and went through the basic choreography of the dance sequence, whilst George and Tom got the band ready and were practicing in the space, with instruments to the music. We were all very happy with the band choices band, as luckily each individual that we chose, had experience with the instrument that they were playing - many actually learnt the song on the bass and drums :) this made the process much easier, as it looked realistic. Both the dancers and the band members were very mature and easy to work with, and I'm glad to say that we didn't come across any problems.

First, we shot the band performance room. This set was plain white walls, with the instruments. The contrasting colours of the white surroundings, with the black walls made the room very simple but effective. We managed to get through this shot in around an hour and half, with a wide variety of shots.

Then Cat and I began painting the dancers in the UV paint, we wanted to do a mix of patterns (with a tribal feel), under the UV light this looked incredible, much better than initially thought. We shot the dancers individually, in two's and as a group. The dancing consisted of the set dance sequence, and then the rest were freestyle movements. Some dancers had the ability to do tricks such as jumps and backbends, which looked very effective. I wanted to take part in the shootig process of this room, but i also had to direct the dancers. So i managed to do a bit of both. Once again, this room worked well, and we had not major problems.

After lunch, we began with the laser room. In order to re-create the laser look the entire set were shining laser pens which were rebounded against mirrors. We shot this with the lead singer (felix), and then again with one dancer (Yulia). The effect that this gave was a club/party, with the silohuettes of a body. This was the one room that I was slightly concerned about, but it worked very well.

Next was the green screen room, that was one big green wall on a platform. For this we just used Felix and asked him to improvise moving objects/pictures round on an electronic board. This was fairly simple and worked well. Cat was on camera and we did a variety of wide, mid and close up shots, so that we would have lots to choose from in the editing process.

The last, and final room was the dry-ice room. Earlier on we had from problems with the delivery of the dry ice, as it was initially supposed to be shot earlier, but it wasn't too much of a problem. Once again we shot the band in this room, and then the dancers. To be honest this was my least favourite room, as it wasn't as exciting as the others, but it still looked good. We had some waiting around in between the band shots, and the dancing shots, as we had to wait for the dry ice machine to heat up.

The parts of the day that I would like to have gone back on is just overall checks on the technical aspects, as we had some delays and complications with lighting and deliveries of dry ice etc... therefore this moved out intended schedule around. But luckily we managed to work around this, and when the delivery and malfunctions were fixed, we were able to do this last on the day. I personally would have also liked to extended the choreographed dance sequence for a bit longer, as the group sections worked well together.But everything else such as costumes, body paint and routines were already set and done, therefore we could continue at a steady pace and work to our intended timings.

Overall, I was very happy with how the shoot went. As a group we worked collectivly and well together, I felt that we were all well organized, and prepared. We each contributed our own ideas and own skills. We finished in good time, and are now ready for the editing process to begin! :)