Location Scouting

For our music video, we need to consider various locations in order for our mise-en-scene to work successfully with the narrative of the song. Location is an important aspect to consider towards music videos because you need to make sure the surroundings set the mood of the song and make sense to what the song is about. Doing this planning on locations will help us make our music video look professional as we will be able to organise what locations will work well for example where they could got on dates etc. This will also help us organise our time better so we know what places we can film on the same day that are near each other. Some locations may need permission so organising it now will give us the chance to ask if we can and set a date. We need to consider what will be in the surroundings and what sort of lighting we will need / will be in the location. We also need to consider what time we are filming as we might want to film during the day or at night.

Now that we have organised the scenes we wanted to film we can choose where we want to film. We went location scouting to see what we could find and what we thought could work well for our project. For the first scene our ideas consisted of trying to find a place that had we could easily adjust the lighting from making it a black out to as much light as possible. We thought this would allow us to be more flexible with how we want the light to look in the shots. At our school we have a studio that matched our expectations because it has black out curtains and huge windows to let in a lot of light. We thought we could use the windows in this room to created the silhouette effect for our shots by placing the actors in front of them making them appear dark as there is no light on them. We also filmed the shots of them singing together in microphones in this room but changed the lighting to no natural light and subtle artificial light to set the mood for the shot. This room is quite a good size for shooting in as there is a lot of open space making it big enough to fit the actors in the shots without having objects in the background that we don't want. We got this inspiration from a cover music video that someone else made of the same song. This will be used for performance sections of the music video. 

Studio

These are pictures of the location we chose for our performance scene. The microphones would be in front of the glass / black curtains with them standing side on in front of the camera facing each other. We will organise props, decorations, and lighting around the actors.

We had to start considering where we wanted to film for the flashback scenes representing their dates and memories of when they were together. Our first idea was to film in a cinema. The cinema that responded to us the quickest that is nearest to us was Odeon. We asked permission if we could use a screen room for 10 minutes to see if the location would work effective with lighting as we knew it would be quite dark inside. We did some test shots of them inside and noticed the lighting wasn't much of a problem. However the shots didn't look great quality. We used torches from our phones directed onto their faces as they are white likes which then made it look like the screen was on.

Cinema

Here in these shots it shows that the lighting was decent. The clothing we chose for them wear, was quite smart and formal to present to the audience they were out on a date night.

On the same day we visited the next location. This was at Hylands Park which is the place where we are hoping to film the final scene. This represents the scene where they meet after walking in the split screen shots and letting out emotions while lip syncing to the song. We will film the walking shots surrounding this location. This location will link together with the narrative as it is the moment where they are confessing their feelings to each other. We have an idea to cause a cliff hanger for the last shot in this scene as it will be the last shot in the music video.  The camera will be lifted up towards the sky as the two characters walk towards each other so the audience don't see what’s happens, leaving them unknown to what happens and let them decide themselves.

Hylands Park

These are photos of the location we will be filming in. We liked the lighting so we thought we would make sure to film at sunset as it really brought out the colours and set the mood for the scene. This pathway is where they will be walking along as they come to meet from opposite directions. We chose this part of the path as the sunset will be directly behind them. 

Pizza Hut

We decided we wanted to use a meal date as another flashback. We called up a few restaurants and many didn't allow it. We then called Pizza Hut which they gave us permission and set a date to film. We went to Pizza Hut and chose to film using a table next to the window so there would be a view. The restaurant had great lighting as we were filming against the window which let in a lot of natural light. We also made them wear formal clothes to portray the realism of their relationship as they were on a special date night.

Ice Rink

We also filmed at the ice rink (Riverside) for another flashback scene. We thought this would be quite a different sort of date to use and could create a lot from it. We chose to film on a disco session so the lighting would be colourful and suit the happy memories they had. The lighting worked quite well even though it was dark as the coloured lighting looked effective in the shots we took.

Doing location scouting and planning our setting for our shots will help us when creating our music video as it has allowed us to consider many locations that might work and that might not work, we can then assess which ones have the best lighting and want will fit our mise considerations. We can see what shots work well and we now have time to adapt on these shots if they don't work and need improvement. We now have more time for filming and won't feel as rushed because we will know what to film and where to film it as well as we know where we have permission to film.