Construction post 2: Rooftop shoot

This week was a lot more hectic than the studio shoot as we had to transport kit from school to Soho and the lighting was a lot more difficult to achieve our desired effect. In order to make this week a lot less stressful we looked back at the test shoot for the shots on the rooftop and decided what we needed to change.

After our test shoot week I decided to look at female guitarists and copy some of their guitar moves for inspiration. Lita Ford in her music video Hungry was very influential, not only for her guitar moves but also for her attitude and passion for her music. Blumer and Katz state that performance shots are important for the audience to develop a relationship with the band members. We also used the guitar as a symbol of the rock genre. 

Here is one of our updated shootboard pages. 

We changed;
- The starting time so that we had enough time to get ready as last time we were pressed for time.
- We added in little boxes for us to tick after we had done fairy lights and bokeh separately so that we had enough of both.
- We allowed 10 minutes for each shot so that we knew we weren't rushed and had the best quality footage we could attain.


Before the start of our shoot we all stood in position so that Alistair was able to take a still photo of us and check that the lighting was right and no shadows were cast across anyones face.

From our rehearshals we had practised the jump at the chorus many times so when recording it on the rooftop we were all fairly prepared, as shown in the video below.

However one problem that we had not anticipated for was that Amber's guitar strap kept breaking and we had to stop filming on quite a few occasions so that she was able to fix it.

What I found challenging:

- Keeping a straight face when performing shots with Luke - during my performance shots Alistair or Amber would often shout 'Be angry!' or 'Keep a straight face!' to help me stay focused.
- I wasn't sure of where I should be looking but I found that staring straight ahead or looking at my guitar looked best on screen after reviewing the rough cut.








As both of our media teachers thought that we should exploit the bokeh and experiment with it a bit more we decided to use our surroundings and the lights from the city to create some interesting and quirky effects. This suited our aim for our band to be anything but cliche as this technique is quite uncommon. My only concern is that in post-production we must be careful to not over use the bokeh.

Here is a video I took when we were waiting to begin filming which I also thought could be useful for our website to put on our videos page.

Filming Sebastian from an over-
the-shoulder angle.

Throughout the rooftop shoot I made sure that I was involved by;

- Filming whenever possible.
- Setting up the lights and ensuring no shadows were cast.
- Performing in the band.
- Keeping track of the shootboard and ticking shots of the list.
- Amber and I also went out to get food for the everyone whilst Luke and Seb were still performing.
- Making sure everyone knew the health and safety rules.

Everybody in our target audience really liked the idea of performing on a rooftop as it gave our music video an edge that most others would not have, our main worry was that it would not look right with our paper scene or that it would be too unusual for our alternative rock fans to enjoy.

U2 - Where the Streets Have No Name

Lost Prophets - Rooftops

Above are two major rock bands with huge fan bases who have music videos shot on a rooftop, one with well over 13 million views on YouTube.

Blumer and Katz' audience theory of personal identity meant that shots of central London would gratify our audience as they can relate to our band's regional identity. If our audience is not from London it means that they will be gratified with a diversion from their everyday-lives and can 'escape' to London during our music video.

Here is a video after our last take on the rooftop.