Group: Brighton reccie

Where did you go and what were your aims?
We visited Brighton and were designated a large area surrounding the pier to shoot a range of different shots, as well as some footage of a One Direction music video which the whole class colaborated on. For our group personally, we wanted to try and test out shots we wanted to use for the final music video production; for us this was predominantly things like close-ups, changes in focus and time lapses. We felt this acted as a decent preliminary task to help us prepare and plan for shooting our final production.

What did you achieve?
We managed to capture nearly an hour of footage in total whilst in Brighton, which we found very helpful. We also managed to find many interesting locations whilst exploring Brighton, some of which we would like to revisit when shooting the music video, or even use some of the footage we got on that day to use in the music video. Not only did we manage to gain a better incite into how we should shoot and frame each shot i.e. camera positioning, what to include in the shot, length of shot etc. but we also learnt more after filming - in the editing of the footage. From the research on music videos we had already done, combined with our footage we put together a small promotional video of what we recorded that day allowing us to gain further knowledge into the editting techniques we should use, for example changes in saturation, fast cutting rate and so on.

What problems/obstacles did you encounter?
One large problem we had was that we took too many shortquick shots i.e. close-up shifts in focus. Although this wasn't necesarily detremental or a huge obstacle, it would have helped for us to take a few longer and different shots to break up and add diversity to our promotional video. Not only this but we realised lighting was very important to create an upbeat video such as ours, at the start of the day the weather was very poor and when filming the shots looked quiet dull and uninteresting, but when the weather improved and there was more natural light the shots looked much nicer and even more professional. Even this however had its problems, sometimes the light was too bright and items wouldnt focus properly as the shot was too bright - this is something we must learn to combat when filming our final piece.

What did you learn that you can take into the next shoot?
We learnt a great deal from our Brighton reccie, we must be sure for our next shoot to take a wider range of shots - to give the video more diversity, the more content the better. We also learnt more about the actual functionality of the camera, how to use it to it's best ability i.e. changing frame rates and shutter speeds, brightness etc. and what effect it can have - how it can help us. Brighton being quite a diverse town in itself helped us, seeing as this type of environment is what we want for our video it gave us a taste of what shooting the final peice would be like. We certainly learnt a lot from the Brigthon reccie, on both the editing and shooting side of things.