The Use of the Camera and Movements Within Our Video

Using a professional camera or even just a normal video recording camera can be something that can take a lot to get used to, especially considering that we as a team are not entirely experienced in using technology such as this. As modern day young adults, the only real experience we have in producing videos is through the use of smart phone cameras and posting videos onto apps such as Instagram. Therefore it means that we have a lot to learn and develop throughout this process in actually how this technology works and how to use it to the best of our ability.
As you can see here, this is a picture of myself (Lauren Bolton) trying to work out how the camera will be held when filming and the best way to make this work. We are using a shoulder stabiliser when filming, as you can see, and this is to help gain a steady shot and make sure that we can get this video looking more professional than it actually is. It is tricky trying to learn how to use equipment like this, especially when you have had no prior experience, and because I will be the 'camera man' on the day it means that I have to be very comfortable with what I'm doing and that I can be sure that I am generating the best angles and shots that I can because at the end of the day it will be me that could be held responsible for an 'off shot' or something that does not look as good.
A way to make sure that this doesn't happen though is to be practicing like this; it would be stupid of me to get there on the filming day and have no clue in what I'm doing or how to actually hold the camera and shoulder mount. Throughout this development and also this crucial practicing stage that I am doing, I have realised a lot of ways of how to do things and as you can see from the images above I have been testing a lot of motions and movements in how to be achieving certain shots and perspectives.
It is not too long until we actually get filming now and it is a scary prospect because we are all so passionate about this project and we all want to be making sure that we are giving it our all on the day. I feel the most amount of pressure because I am held responsible for all of the shots and how, essentially, the video looks. This is why this post had to be made and why I had to practice with the camera because without this time and development in knowing how to use this technology then I would be feeling very lost on the day.
We have a lot of ideas in what shots we want to be doing and as we discuss more about the song and what we want to achieve then the more the video develops into something that we as a team are getting very excited about. We actually want to be producing a lot of abstract and slo-mo sequences and shots and this is achieved by both the filming and editing process; I would say that I feel very strongly myself about doing this kind of thing, as we all are, because we want our video to stand out and be something that is admired. However trying to achieve these abstract shots is something of a risk because you don't really know how they are going to turn out until the editing process and that is something that instills a lot of fear into our group. Although, without taking this risk we won't know how well this idea would have turned out and considering that we can just redo shots accordingly in the process it means that this risk is worth taking.











The photos above are what we actually took on the day of filming our music video, as you can see everything looks a lot more professional in this situation

Advice from Music Video Director: Lucy Needs

This is my email that we sent to the music video director, Lucy Needs. We felt the need to send an email because we were struggling to form ideas, and even though we feel as though that we have finally reached a point where our idea for the video is coming together and we have a reasonable idea which can be very successful; we still wanted to get some advice and clarification of what to do with our idea. We decided to contact the music video director, Lucy Needs. She has directed the videos for the majority of Slow Club's songs, including one song off of the first album, two songs of the second album and currently one song off of the third album. The song used from the most recent album, Complete Surrender, is a video that we find to be very inspirational in both style and substance. So I asked her if she had any ideas as to how to go about creating the  vision and style that was seen in the video. As you can see, she recommended to create a slow mo throughout the video. This seems like something we might be interested in trying because of the fact that it is a very professional thing to do and we would be interested to see how that effect might turn out. Obviously this is something that we would have to consider quite strongly because if it goes wrong, bearing in mind that we have never made a video or used this technique before, we have to think whether it would actually be worth it or not because if it does go wrong then we might be producing a rather lacklustre music video. However, in saying this, I think it could be a technique that could be really beneficial to the look and feel of the music video and we want to make sure that we are pushing ourselves to our boundaries.
She also said about editing with the use of lights, to all of this this sounded like a really interesting technique that may actually be something to think about when creating our video. As we are making basically a dancing video, it would be good if we could get it to look like a one shot video because then that could really add an experience to the video and the use of light to essentially cut that would be something that would be very useful to use because we would be able to get the feel of the one shot video but we still would be editing and using cuts which is definitely beneficial to this particular video. We found this experience and the advice that Lucy gave us back to be so completely helpful because to hear how the professionals do it makes everything sound like it makes sense rather than our group going forward with this project with no clue how to make this. The interaction with Lucy is something that is going to inspire us all throughout the process.

Camera shot inspiration