Filming Day 1: Epping Forest

Date: 19th September 2010

Location: Chingford Plains (Epping Forest)

Time Filming Started: 10.30am

Preparation:

The day started early for me at 8.00am. I had to get up early in order to make sure that my hair, make-up and costume was right and ready for 9.45 (the time Sophie was coming to pick me up). The first decision of the day for me was my costume for the day, as we were shooting the ‘forest’ scenes I only needed to select one outfit. We had previously agreed that we would go for a casual look here, whereby we look feminine and presentable but have a look that’s obtainable and realistic. In the end, i decided that a pair of denim jeans, a beige winter jumper, my bright multi-coloured scarf and a pair of ankle boots. We had decided not to plan exact outfits, and just to wear something we felt would look right on us, as we feel that The Saturdays often look quite different to each other although maintaining the same theme. Next, I decided to wear my hair down and straight; this look was simple and sweet, and felt nice with the tone of the song. In terms of my makeup, I decided on a simple blushed look with relatively dark eyes; I did this to try and make them appear bigger on camera as large eyes are more striking.

(This is Vanessa, the Saturday that I am taking the part of).

We had all previously agreed that we were going to bring various props to the scene, these included things such as umbrellas, rings and hoody’s.

Filming:

We decided it was best to film one girl at a time, as we were all in separate locations for our shots. Firstly, we shot my scene, which was based around what looked like a fallen down tree. We chose this tree because the way it was laying made the branches appear in an interesting position; this is good for us as we wanted to use nature as our main prop, so in this situation it worked nicely. We filmed the same verse I sang around 4 or 5 times from different angles, to ensure that we could add some variety to it. We included some low angle shots, full body shots, and most importantly to our video, close ups. Jodie bought her portable speakers along with her, so we played the song on it through my iPod; this was beneficial as it really helped us with the lip synching aspect of it as we could almost just sing along. At first, we thought we’d have to practice the lip synching because we suspected we may at first be nervous and perhaps laugh our way through it. Surprisingly, I adapted to it quite well and found that I was quite easily able to lip synch without feeling embarrassed. I believe that this is down to the support of my group, who took it all very seriously which helped me to feel more relaxed about the process.

(This is Frankie, the Saturday that Charlotte is taking the part of).


Next, we decided to film Charlotte’s verse, and hers was the longest. For this shot, we found a lovely foot path in the middle of the forest which was a red colour. In this pathway we positioned her between two trees that were on opposite sides of the path, and this acted as a well framed shot. For her verse, we experimented using the camera zoom to close in on her face as she was singing. This actually worked quite well, and even though it is a simple shot to use for one entire verse I feel it worked perfectly as the actor’s performance was done very well (this meant that the risk of it looking boring and awkward was eliminated). We then filmed her with her back leaning against a tree for her to sing the chorus; this is one of my favourite shots of the day because again it is framed so well. At first we filmed this from the side, and then we filmed it again from the front so we have the option to edit it in that way if that’s what we chose to do. The pathway shot was a good one, but it did take us a very long time to shoot due to people constantly walking through it with either their children or dogs.

After Charlotte’s scene, we moved back into the forest to film Sophie’s two lined verse and her chorus section. We came across an interesting tree stump in a location that appeared to be brightly lit, so we thought that we could use that as our prop for this particular scene. Sophie perched on the stump and we filmed her from several angles, mainly at a medium close up. We didn’t feel that it was essential to get many other camera angles because the lines are in fact not very long at all. For the chorus, we had her standing up by the stump. We filmed full body shots from about 3 different angles, so it does not look boring if we decide to focus on her for a longer time in the chorus. She was able to lip synch very well, and to help her feel more comfortable we all lip synched with her behind camera. We found that this technique was very helpful for us all to feel more at ease with the situation.

(This is Mollie, the Saturday Sophie is taking the part of).



We carried on walking through the forest, and at first we were nervous that we was not going to find a location for Jodie’s verse lines and chorus shots; this is because we felt that we had got the most variety out of a forest that we possibly could, and we were running the risk that our scenery was going to look very similar. However, as we got to end of the forest (which actually turned out to be the entrance) we found a tree that had very low hanging branches. Straight away, I saw this as an opportunity for another natural prop. I proposed the idea that Jodie could walk slowly towards the camera with her hand lightly holding on to the branch. This worked well, however we had to spend a while trying to find a suitable angle to film from as the background did show a large black sign for the forest and a car park (which didn’t really fit with the tone of the video). Jodie was the most nervous out of the 4 of us in terms of lip synching, so to help her we sung along with the song ourselves instead of just lip synching with her. This worked well and as a result enabled her to lip synch to high standard. We used a lot of close up shots for her chorus scenes, as we felt these were most appropriate due to the background we were working with.

(This is Rochelle, the Saturday that Jodie is taking the part of)
Throughout the duration of the day, we filmed chorus shots. Each girl filmed themselves separately singing the chorus (as previously mentioned) but we also decided to film group shots of us performing it all together. Firstly, we used the tree that I used for my verse shots, as it was big enough for us all to position ourselves on it. We had to film this shot around 3 times due to us making mistakes with the lyrics (and Jodie falling off the branch half way through one take). This shot worked well as it is really nicely framed; I feel that we used the space well. The only downside about it was the fact that it couldn’t be a close up shot, purely because we wouldn’t fit all of us in the shot. This therefore meant it was up to us to be extra ‘performance’ into our lip synching as you are unable to see our mouths all that clearly from the distance of the camera. We then filmed a walking scene in a very enclosed part of the forest. This shot was particularly good in my opinion because it was a very pretty part of the forest; it had tall trees with fallen leaves and gave it a real autumnal feel. It took us a fair while to film this scene properly as we had trouble with our positioning, we seemed to keep missing someone out of the shot with each take we did. Eventually, we managed to position it just right and filmed us walking towards the camera singing the chorus; we had placed a log as a point of reference for us all to stop there and continue singing on the spot. This worked well and we thought fit the criteria of things you would tend to see in a music video of a girl group. Finally, we decided we could add a bit of minor choreography to the film. This was a last minute decision, as we initially ruled this out as an option because we felt uncomfortable with the idea. However, we talked about and decided we didn’t have to do any difficult or technical dance moves, just movements. So, we quickly put a short routine together for the chorus, and we managed (after around 3 takes) to film it to a decent standard. We are still undecided whether or not to use it in our final cut, but we thought we’d allow ourselves the option as we identified this as an important part of a girl group music video in our pitch.

Conclusion:

In conclusion, I feel that our filming day went relatively well. We managed to obtain all the shots what we wanted, and I feel that we managed to pick some interests camera shots and camera angles. We all put in an equal amount of effort in terms of filming, whereby we all involved ourselves in each shot but only one of us filmed (and then we alternated who was filming). I think that it was successful as we managed to create additional shots/scenes that weren’t in the original plan, and these may actually help the video to look better.
The one thing that I would say doesn’t work as well about our videos is our costumes. We thought at first it would be a good idea to not really prepare anything specific and just turn up in what we felt was appropriate so we all looked individual. This was fine, but we ended up with two very similar looking outfits, one winter outfit and one summer outfit. This, of course, doesn’t really look so good. There is nothing we can do about it now; we just need to ensure in the next shoots that our outfits are more carefully planned.