Performance Green Screen Filming 17/10/12 (Jonny)

This was our first filming day on our new music video project and despite a few set backs it went really well! We had chosen to film on Wednesday after school as all of our band members were free, along with the class room and the green screen. We borrowed the drum set and the keyboard from the music department and Mike (the guitarist) brought his own guitar. We filmed each member of the band independently with their instrument first filming a standard full shot of them playing the full song. We then filmed them a second time with a number of different close ups and angled shots. One of the main problems we
encountered during this process was that the band struggled to listen to the song being played over the top, this was especially a problem for our drummer Nicky. We overcame this problem by having him discreetly wear some in ear headphones connected to my phone which played the song straight in to his ear. This allowed his drumming to be in sync with the actual song.
After we had filmed each band member individually we then proceeded to film the band as a whole. Although we only intend to use them in the chorus, we made the decision to film them playing
the whole song as a contingency plan for any changes made along the way. When filming the whole band, we struggled to fit everyone on the green screen without peoples heads and arms coming off the screen. Josh and I were able to solve this problem
by strategically placing instruments so that all members could fit.
 Although this does block the view of the drums slightly, we felt that this was the most effective way of fitting the whole band in shot. Following this we took some shots of the band members without instruments 'messing' around and being silly as we felt this would be effective to go in along the chorus with other footage of them actually playing the song. Although a fair amount of our film looked quite stage, we did manage to get a few moments where the acting looked genuine and where they all managed to fit on the green screen.


Over all, I feel that Filming went well and that we achieved to get footage of everything we needed. We have looked through the tape, but are still to edit it, so we hope to avoid any major problems there. At times it was difficult to get the whole band
 to co operate simultaneously and film the footage which was frustrating and caused the process to drag out longer than we needed. However it was important to keep our band members happy throughout the process, after all they were the ones doing us a favor. Josh and I enjoyed the experience of directing and filming the performance with the green screen and had good fun with the band. We felt that this was a really good first filming session and hope that filming sessions in the future are this productive! Are next planned footage to film is the majority of the narrative which will involve us filming off location (date tbc).
We are looking forward to this greatly!