GCT - Brighton 'Reccie'

This week Cameron and I went on a trip to Brighton for a shot ‘reccie’, we also used this opportunity as practise to familiarise ourselves with the camera equipment, practice our time management skills and practise our shot framing and composition. We both feel that we have benefited from the trip greatly and both feel we have learnt new skills. We also formed many new ideas for our music video whist on the trip.

One of the first ideas that we came up with was when we saw some light shrubbery growing from a wall, if you looked at it a certain way it would look like it was actually the ground. We came up with the idea that you could have someone leaning against the wall and if the camera was positioned correctly it would look as if they were lying down, then if you tracked the camera out it would become apparent that they were actually leaning against the wall. Below are some photographs of this idea:

As you can see here, it looks as if Cameron is lying down.

Once the camera tracks out it is apparent he is just leaning against a wall.

Another idea which we formed whilst on the Brighton ‘Reccie’ was to have the camera positioned inside a hole, this would give an interesting angled shot and because of things in the foreground add to good composition. Here is an example of the idea below:



We also had an idea which we could not test out because it would have invalidated our risk assessment. We found a area of stone slightly off a pier which waves were crashing against, we believed it would have a made a very interesting shot in a music video to have someone on the stone singing whilst waves crashed around them. Unfortunately because we did not state this shot on our risk assessment we could not shoot it. I did however take some photographs as reference to the idea when we come to plan our music video which are shown below:



The Trip was also a good opportunity to find new locations so here are some of the locations which we found and believed would be useful when making our music video.



Brighton Reccie Video:



Video Evaluation:

From filming on our shot reccie to Brighton, Cameron and I have learnt some key skills for when it comes round to shooting our real music video. By making mistakes in this shoot we can learn from it and ensure that we don’t repeat these mistakes in our music video. The first mistake that we made was to have the tripod screw done up to tightly, this meant that when panning it was quite stiff to move and lead to a jerky panning shot instead of a smooth one which we were aiming for. This is apparent in almost all of our panning shots, including our 360 pan. The next mistake we made was that we didn’t pay too much attention to the spirit levels on our tripod. Because of this a lot of our shots look as if they are tilted to one side, you can see this in our medium long shot which pans across the beach. Next time round we are going to make sure that the spirit levels on the tripod are set in the middle at zero degrees. One shot which we felt we had mastered was the POV Handi-cam shot, we are very happy with the outcome of this shot and feel that we do not need to change anything if we use it when we film our music video. Another skill that we need to improve on is zooming on the camera, the zoom is very sensitive and therefore hard to control, we both need to practice using the zoom before filming our music video. One shot where you can see how we struggle to use the zoom feature successfully is in the first, first person mode of address shot where Cameron walks down the street. Here we zoom out very quickly before stopping and zooming out again. This is also apparent in the last experimental shot. Another shot which we feel we had successfully captured was the second first person mode of address shot, here we strapped the tripod to Cameron’s chest so that it would always be locked onto his face whilst he walked around, we will definitely consider using this shot in our music video. Although we believe the time lapse shot works successfully we both see room for improvement. Because we had positioned the camera in such a way that people were walking towards it and also across it, it made the people walking across move very quickly and the people walking towards move not so quickly. If we were taking the shot again we would find a location where people would only walk in one direction, either towards the camera or across the camera, but not both.