Construction Post 2: Rooftop Shoot

Preparation
In between our studio shoot we have a number of evenings scheduled for our performance shoots up on the rooftop in Central London. Following on from our test shoot, we have listed a number of things we aim to resolve; with many of these issues arising in response to the studio shoots we have completed so far:

This is one of the setups we added
after our test shoot

• As we didn't have our drummer in the test shoot, we will need to make sure our lighting setup that we used in the test shoot will suffice. We will set aside fifteen minutes at the start of our shoot in order to ensure that our lighting is alright.
• Again, we wanted to introduce a wider range of shots to add some more variety to our video. An example of one of the setups we have decided to introduce is a side-on shot of the whole band, whereas previously we had only taken a side-on shot of Luke.
• Finally, we wanted to think of a way to converge our two elements together, as our rough edit has made us realise that the performance element and conceptual element of our music video are largely separate. Therefore we have organised a range of props to demonstrate this convergence of themes.

During the shoot:

As planned, we set up and adjusted our lighting before beginning our shoot to ensure that our shots. In contrast to our test shoot, in which the lighting was a little bit too bright, we were able to flood our lights more effectively. This is a comparison of our lighting from the test shoot and our main shoot.

Our lighting from the test shoot (top) compared to
the lighting from our main shoot (bottom)

I was behind the camera for
most of this shoot

As I was the only member of the group who wasn't in the band, it was my responsibility to shoot every shot that required the whole band. I also shot some of our shots of individual band members, though those setups were some of the only opportunities for the other members of the group to shoot some footage.

Beyond shooting footage, I was in charge of keeping our shoot within the time limit we had set ourselves. This proved especially important, as we were not able to leave all of our equipment in the building, so the extra time allowed us to pack away efficiently.

If I had the opportunity to do this shoot again, the only difference I would make would be to the settings we had on the camera at the time. Unfortunately, some of our footage from the rooftop is a little bit out of focus, though this shouldn't be too much of an issue as we have a lot of footage to choose from. Below are some examples of the shots we were able to get.