Fish Eye Lens Shot

When filming the narrative to complete our music video, we decided to film the main protagonist from behind and from her point of view to gain a better sense of perspective of the story. This looked very effective and came in very handy, as the camera set up to film the scene from the front was out of focus, so we couldn't use the footage. We really like the sense of perspective this has added to our narrative.

Filming the Narrative

We came up with a shooting schedule in order to film our narrative scenes in our music video before we went out to film, so that we could manage our time efficiently whilst on location and to make sure we got all the shots we needed, as this was the last time we could film.

Tara, Stef and I managed to stick to our plan and get all of the shots we needed when on location, which made it easy to get straight back to school to upload our footage and begin editing again. We were amazed at how adding the narrative scenes into our music video enhanced it, and we are all a lot happier! Now we plan to spend all of our free time editing until the deadline... 

Filming Day 2

For our second session of filming we decided to go to Brick Lane to shoot some abstract shots of the scenery around the area and to film lip syncing in places we thought would fit well with the feel of our music video, our song and our genre.

The aim was to film as many artistic shots as possible in the time we had. However, as we found the perfect location to film in near Shoreditch, we realised that the plate that attaches our camera to the tripod was missing, and it was too windy to film as the camera wasn't steady enough. We tried to find a camera shop around the area that could sell us a plate for the camera so that we could be as productive as possible, but we had no luck.

Even though we did manage to film some of the shots we wanted, we didn't get as much footage as we needed and ended up in a coffee shop discussing aspects of our band brand whilst we were all together. Heres a vlog from our day:

Filming Day 1

During day 1 of filming we shot the lip syncing and performance scenes. We originally planned to have our performer singing into a microphone, which is typical of many performance based music videos, but when we arrived on location (the drama studio) we spontaneously started playing around with just lip syncing with different lighting on Stef (our performer's) face. We also played around with Stef lip syncing into her reflection in the mirror, which looked really effective when we uploaded it to iMovie to edit.

Filming (Day 1)

My group began filming while I was unwell, and they managed to film and edit the first line of our music video. They used stop animation for the iconography of the Rolling Stones t-shirt, for the lyrics "He's got a Rolling Stones tee, but he only knows one song".

Richard Dyer's Star Quality Theory

Richard Dyer is an English academic currently holding a professorship in Film Studies at King's College London. He specialises in cinema, queer theory, and the relationship between entertainment and representations of race, sexuality, and gender. 

Richard Dyer's star quality theory is the idea that icons and celebrities are constructed by institutions for financial gain by being built up to target a specific demographic. His theory is broken down into 3 sections: Audience and Institutions, Constructions and Hegemony:

1) Audience and Institutions-
This is the idea that stars are used to for the sole purpose of making money, and the institution modifies the celebrities image around the target audience.

2) Constructions-
The idea that the star is built for an audience and is not an actual person. They are then built with a certain signature to them, making them stand out from other stars. One example of this would be Lady Gaga's loud and fashion sense which separates her from other celebrities.

3) Hegemony-
This is the idea that we relate to the star due to the fact that they have a certain feature or quality that we admire about them or share with them, which then develops an admiration which turns into idolisation. Some people may then replicate what they like about the star, which can have positive or negative consequences.