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Filming Session 3
Yesterday we managed to achieve an awful lot more than we thought was possible.

During period one, me and Amy had a free period whilst Sophie and Rhys had a lesson. We used the time to:

• collect the camera and tripod and check that it was all good to go
• get Amy's bag of clothes for filming from her car in a nearby road
• get Amy changed into her first costume as she'd travelled to school in uniform
• do her heavy makeup (to suit her character)
• share my plans of what we could fit into the time and contextual factors and should therefore do that day
• make sure that we were fully prepared for the start of period two to make full use of our time
• film a section on the bench that didn't need anyone but us involved in

At the start of period two, we were supposed to meet Sophie and Rhys in the common room. Rhys showed up first so we explained the rough outline of the storyline and locations we'd be using today. Then he went off to get changed into his first costume. He'd brought jeans, converses and an american-style t-shirt which was suitable for his part. He phoned me after almost ten minutes saying that there were younger students in the changing rooms so he couldn't get changed, so I said to just get changed in the boys toilets as we didn't have time to wait. By this time Sophie still wasn't in or around the common room, and after asking around, nobody had seen her in school at all. Rhys came out in his costume, and with Kelsie who also had the same frees and wanted to take part in our media piece. We said yes as we could use an extra anyway, and she would fit in the car. Amy said that Sophie wasn't answering her mobile, but perhaps she'd forgotten we were filming and would be in our media class, so we went up there. She was there, so we got her and explained what we wanted to film and where, and said that we'd film random things as extra footage along the way. Sophie then took the camera and filmed me and Rhys walking down the stairs together in case we could use that for something. From watching the footage after, it was obvious that this part had been spontaneous, as the lighting was terrible.

As we were leaving the school grounds to walk to a local side road where Amy's car was parked, Amy and Sophie took turns in filming random footage of me and Rhys with the intention of converying a 'harmoneous' relationship. We talked through possible editing techniques and effects we could use to enhance our work - jump cuts to add to the post-modern feel, and increasing the saturation to provoke a warm, summer/love code.

As we got to the car Amy and Rhys got in whilst me and Sophie found a suitable lampost for me to walk into, which allowed Amy's car able to also be visible in the shot.

We soon realised the difficulty in what we were about to do. As we were outside without any prepared means of playing the track, I had to try to get the timing of the line purely from memory. Also, as it was a backstreet with cars parked on both sides of the road, it was narrow for Amy to get through so she couldn't go much faster than 5mph, we said that's okay as we could speed things up in the editing phase. We filmed me miming words walking towards the camera with the lampost in the foreground coming from one direction, closely followed by Amy and Rhys driving past, however it wasn't ideal. Amy and Sophie said that we could approach it from a different angle, so as Amy reversed back up the road, I switched to the other side of the lampost and we re-filmed that line. Although it went okay, I wasn't convinced it would work - it wasn't know I'd pictured it anyway. The others said it would be fine though, so we continued. Sophie filmed a bit through the passenger window with Rhys having been told to "look uncomfortable" by me, in the foreground and Amy looking pleased with herself behind him; driving. Sophie then filmed from Amy's window and then from infront - through the windscreen, for a wide variety of shots we could choose the best from. I pointed out that we'd have to speed up the shots as Amy couldn't drive very fast at all so as to not hit Sophie with the car - so it's important that Rhys and Amy don't make any sudden movements otherwise our editing would be obvious, and although we're constructing a post-modern music video, we'd rather this part was smooth so that we could feature a fast mixture of varied camera angles and effects. Finally, Sophie recorded me walking into the lampost. First of all i naturally put my hands out infront of me as i did it which of course didn't look realistic, so we figured that although it would be painful (and was!), I should actually walk into the lampost. After doing this a few times it wasn't looking right, because I was looking in the wrong direction. We then did it a few more times with me looking in the right direction.

Next, Amy drove us to Ray Park, about 5 minutes from our school. To get to the part itself we had to walk down a long path, so along here we filmed random shots of the greenery and eachother to have as back-up material. One clip in particular I thought was good, was recorded as I was walking along talking to Rhys. I suddenly had the idea to film him talking to me and messing around, as we do normally, but with the idea that Taylor would be filming Guy - I thought that we could put the red border around the image with REC in the top right corner, to add some postmodernism as well as realism, to remind the audience that it is of course a text, a music video, but to make them buy into the storyline more. It's important to be different and engaging from the start.

When we got to the park there were a few children in it, so to avoid complications we stayed outside of the park and filmed in the opposite direction, clips of me and Rhys playing "it", etc.

After a short while, all but one child left, so as the park was large we could easily record in one corner of the park without affecting anybody else at all. We managed to record on some outside gym equipment, baby swings and a seasaw. We saw a roundabout and swings that would be ideal to use, but two more children and their guardians arrived, so we felt it would be necessary to ask their permission to film in the park, highlighting the fact that their children wouldn't  be in our recordings at all. The first parent was 100% fine with it, however the second one didn't speak English, and kept saying "no". Although she explained she didn't know what I was saying, I couldn't get the message through to her so we had to accept "no" as her answer, and left the park.

When we got back to school we filmed a spontaneous piece on an abandoned armchair, left outdoors at our school, surrounded by rubbish and a giant mound of dirt. This we thought would make interesting mise-en-scene and suit the main character's state of mind - a mess basically. We recorded me sat on the chair, jumping on the chair in anger and then grabbing Amy and going to shove her face in the giant pile of dirt (but stopping just in time). We realised that it would be hard to make this look convincing, so we both tried to exaggerate our facial expressions to make them as obvious as possible. I think we pulled this off.

After uploading the new recordings in class however, our teacher disagrees with what we think, and stated that she decoded Amy's facial expressions as happy and laughing. I know Amy and can read her facial expressions and body language, and know that that's how she reacts when she's scared which is why we'd seen no problem with it, our teacher however doesn't know Amy that well which is why she took the negotiated reading. Other viewers of our music video may also take our teacher's view when watching it, so we'll have to carefully consider this when tweaking it - whether we just cut part of it to avoid confusion, or refilm it, or even to scrap it altogether. To do this I've suggested asking around in our class to see what everybody thinks, but we'd have to be subtle in order to not influence their answers by mistake.