Music Video Experimentation

Charlie Derham
Apr 3, 2019
2 min read

Today we had a workshop on filming techniques we may want to use in our music video. We already had a few thoughts on what type of shots we would like, including some dolly pull shots which we re-created today, as well as some morph shots where we would create a transition through one of our actors’ eye.

Other than this I also have a few shot ideas for the project and equipment I would like to use in the film. I want to capture most of this film on a Steadicam as I love the smooth feel it provides, it is also a very versatile bit of equipment, but, if overused the shots can look bland and boring. Therefore, I would love to include some more creative shots in this project making the most of all my equipment. For example, for one of the shots, I will duct tape my camera to the bottom of my Steadicam so that the lens is pointing downwards, I will then spin the Steadicam in the opposite direction of the record spinning on its player. The spinning record shot we will use to transition back in time from our senior men shot to their younger selves. I will also try when shooting the music video to capture a range of other high and low angle shots using my cameras, this should make the video seem like it is of a higher production, this with my attention to detail when it comes to the smoothness of shots, I believe we could be onto some good stuff here!

Other things I would like to include in the music video, is various lighting techniques with my bi-colour lights to enhance the facial features of our actors and make them easier to see in some of our night scene shots. I would also like to reproduce some shots I captured in my documentary using only natural light to make an image stand out. Therefore, I would love to capture some shots of the Morgan (car) driving against the sunset with our actors inside of it (this scene will be captured on the Mendips).

Most importantly, however, is the fact our shot list is almost complete, we have a range of shots included such as the ones I have talked about, as well as others that will undoubtedly show off the skills that I have learned over my time so far behind a camera.

The whole group editing the project will only aid these camera techniques we will use; this is something new to me as I used to be the only one editing with some help from others. We have plans to include a whole range of effects including our experimental transitions and colourful colour grading.

Below are some shots and edit effects that we recreated in today’s workshop, please bear in mind the dolly shot will be much smoother in the final production of our film as well as this the framing of our characters on the eye zoom shots will be corrected to show their whole head!

Video 1