Teacher feedback on overall project

Feedback on our website:

• Branding needs to be throughout, a picture of the band on the banner needs to be added
• Photos need to be edited to make them interesting/quirky
• Replace Behind The Scenes photos with Promo Shots and only put Behind The Scenes photos in a Behind The Scenes gallery

Video:

Narrative-

• Scene of the person trying to buy the guitar is not clear, possibly cut that out and simplify the storyline

Performance-

• More Close Ups of Shobnam
• Cut to Shobnam before narrative shots
• With the shot of the mum coming in for Daniel's narrative, show Daniel first

Further feedback on the Music Video:

• Many of the band shots have too much space around the members, crop the shots
• First vocal shot needs to be big, maybe from the front, let the shot last longer
• Grading takes time so we need to allow time to grade
• Start the guitar shot earlier

Photoshoots

Our group had two photoshoot days. The first one went well we decided to categorise our shots into: Group Shots for shots of the entire band, Duo Shots: for shots of two members of the band together and Solo Shots: for individual shots of the band members. But, after gaining feedback from our teacher we saw that the group shots and duo shots had too big a gaps between the members. So, we organised another shoot day and printed out copies of some of the shots from the previous shoot so that the members could do the exact same poses but closer together. The feedback on our solo shots from the first shoot was really good so, we didn't focus on them.

Here is an example of a group shot from our first shoot that was too spaced out:

Now here is the improved version of the shot:

There is a real difference in the two shots as in the second one, the three of them have the visuals of a band and seem more united than the first one where Daniel was more distanced from the others.

Here are some other successful shots:

The last one is the band posing for the album cover. We wanted to make the look of them staring up "defiantly" and we tested out purposefully having space between them.

Narrative shoot feedback

Outdoor shoot 2:

After we had finished our second outdoor shoot, we came across the following issues:

• Lack of realism with busker seeing posters - Audition posters would usually be pasted all over a wall, not one randomly on a fence. This had to be re-shot the following week.
• Narrative sequence with someone trying to buy the guitar isn't clear - We simply didn't use this sequence and (Spoiler Alert) made a much simpler one of the busker just looking at his lack of money and looking dejected. 

Bedroom shoot 1

This test shoot was more a lighting test. The indoor lights were quite dim, and the natural lighting was not enough for our shots, therefore we used a portable lighting kit. The shots were successfully lit, however the narrative was slightly off as we did not have access to a drum-kit as we wanted.

Bedroom shoot 2

The lighting had already been decided and we had also decided to use an "imaginary" drum-kit to add to the meaning of our music video about the character having the dream of drumming. We also played with this footage and the actual performance drumming to convey this message. Furthermore, Aidan's mum was prepared to act as a parent in the video, and gave a realistic parental performance. We all directed the shots, giving her feedback when needed and the shots were realistic and successful. The feedback was:

• Well - lit
• Portrays meaning well and makes sense
• Good performance from both actors

Solo shoots

At times where all our group members were not available, we stuck to filming solo performances.

The hardest thing to keep constant was the lighting. Even though we had a lighting map and the colours and intensities of each and every light noted down, sometimes they did not look the same as before.

Performance shoot issues/Feedback

Some of our shoots were double booked, so we had to re-book or work around this. This meant that we had less time than we had originally though, so we had to work quickly. From previous performance shoots, we'd received the feedback:

• Lots of camera movement - good
• Improved performance from all 3 performers
• Better group dynamics
• Good lip-sync

We often experimented with handheld, and the result was shaky footage which we ended up using as it looked very conventional for music videos, especially of the rock genre, which often has very shaky fast-paced footage and editing.

Some of the targets we received were:

• More CU shot types (both faces and instruments)
• Too much distance between characters
• Lighting too dark at times
• Characters not lit properly (or dark faces)

In the end, we took all this into account for further shoots, and most of the final edit footage is from these later shoots.

First shoots

Here are some snippets from our shoots:

We started off by filming our solo parts in the music video. Sometimes, not everyone in the group was available for a shoot due to other A2 lessons, therefore we had to work around this.

Everyone filmed equally, and we encouraged each other's performance. Aidan and Daniel were especially keen to drop a beat.

Also, all of us have had experience setting up both our lighting set-ups using the lighting deck, electronic controls, and manual positioning.



We have an official The Defiance Drum decal!! All of us were quite keen to get started on performing.