Music Video Filming Blog: Filming Day

At the time of writing this blog, December 2, our group has completed most of our filming. It was a rough time to figure it all out, but we eventually got it. Our group had lots of trouble figuring out when we were going to film due to our very busy and conflicting schedules and our lack of organization. The original plan, as discussed in the first filming blog, was to film at the beach on the Sunday before Thanksgiving break, and this did not work out. We tried to film again last Wednesday, the first day of break, but ultimately called it off because we didn't have our prepared props and costumes for the music video. We then tried to film on the Sunday after Thanksgiving, which was yesterday. This fell through because again we didn't have our stuff. So we decided that we had to get this filming done before class on Tuesday. We agreed to film on Monday, which is today, regardless whether or not we were prepared for it props and costume wise. So today, after school, we all met at 3:45 at Fort Lauderdale beach, lifeguard tower 1 and filmed.

Only three (including me) of our four group members were able to make it to filming. This was because one of our members was still on a trip in Rhode Island. This fourth group member also had the camera, which it might not have been the smartest idea to give him the camera, but remember our original plan was to film on Wednesday when he was still in town. We also didn't really have our props and costumes together. The toy lobster that a group member was supposed to bring actually ended up being a toy crab. The lobster costume we were supposed to get was not bought so that was not good either, because they were two crucial parts to our music video. At this point it seemed as if filming today was just gonna be pointless. Then I had an idea: we could tape the word lobster to the toy crab and the word lobster on to me (I was supposed to play the lobster). We figured this was a good improvise and could also potentially be a funny aspect of our video. On the bright side however, we had all our other props such as a beach towel and water bottle with the words "Rock Lobster" on it. 

At 4 we started filming, and since we didn't have our camera, we filmed on my iPhone 8, which I then changed its camera settings to film in 4k at 60 fps. This would have to make do, and the camera quality was actually pretty good. We had to film quick because the sunset was supposed to be at 5:28. I filmed all of the scenes on my before my appearance as a lobster. I made sure to get different types of angle and shots. These included a low angle, a POV shot, a tracking, and many more shots and angles that we learned about in our AICE Media Studies class. Halfway through the video, I would appear as a lobster, and therefore one of our other group members took on the duty of filming. Most of our scenes were filmed on the beach by the water. We also filmed at the play ground nearby as well. I felt a little bad because there were a lot of small children nearby and I thought we would be bothering them but some of them actually came up to us to talk. At the playground we filmed at the slide and my group got a take of me doing the "lobster dance" for our music video. Overall, it seemed as if this was going to be stressful, but it was actually very fun to film our video. Hopefully we edit this all together in class and make a well crafted amateur music video.