Research - Live Performance

At school we were given the opportunity to film an up and coming band called 'Strangers' live in the Pit at school. We were given a group of about 5 people and were allowed to film 'Strangers' performing a song of our choice. I worked with Graham, Seb, Ned and Frankie. I feel this was a very interesting experience for me as it showed how difficult it is to film to band performing live in comparison to a planned music video. Unlike previously, we only had one take and so had to try and avoid making errors that perhaps, had we had more than one take, wouldn't have been costly.

We were given the time of 12:30 to be allowed to do our filming. Therefore, we decided during the previous period to plan out our ideas for our filming. In this planning, we sorted out the roles (e.g. I was in charge of filming with the dolly on the lower floor, Seb was the Director), and discussed our ideas as to what types of shots we were going to use. In the case of the shots, one of the factors we had to consider was that that the pit, the location of which we were filming, had multiple floors.
This meant that not only could we film a variety of shots, but also raised a potential issue in that Graham (who was filming on the upper floor) would have to make sure his filming did not cross paths with me and Ned, who were lower down. This is something that I had not thought would have been a major issue prior to the task, but it soon turned out that we had to take this problem strongly into account. We decided that Graham would signal to me and Ned when he was going to move, and as a result we feel the problem was solved to some extent.

Below is the Music Video for one of their songs - 'In Chaos', which was the song that we decided to film them playing:



In terms of my filming, although I was pleased with the framing of some of my shots (particularly the mid-shots of which we had discussed beforehand), I found it a challenging experience. The dolly proved to be difficult to maneuver and position smoothly at times, as I had to try and anticipate the movements of the band members. In addition, I feel that I found it difficult to get a variety of shots myself, as my lack of experience meant that sometimes I was not used to thinking ahead as to what shot I wanted to film. Overall, however, I feel this was a very useful experience for me, as it gave me an insight into the demands of filming a band live, something of which I think will prove useful when it comes to film our final video.