Real Shoot - Thursday 27th September

Ok last night (wednesday 26th september) i got a call from Josh who said that this mysterious burnt down house plan was going ahead. Apparantly another group who had tried to book it hadn't heard back from the owner quickly enough so moved to a different location. We however were desperate for a place to shoot our band shots and we pounced at the chance.

The plan was:

• Get the band and instruments
• Pick the band up at 10
• Drive to the location for about 11

What actually happened:

• Get our band - we called round frantically to all our friends to see who could be the band. Fortunatly two of my friends who are in a band with me agreed to come and play drums and bass guitar. This was brilliant because Josh could be main singer and then we're done. I managed to rustle up some instruments from them and we were due to meet them at their house to pick them up at 10.
• We get to there house at about 10:30 and leave almost immediatly after. We were making good time and although our directions were on a map which was on the screen of a digital camera, we had high hopes. However, the camera started to lose batteries and our two cars got seperated along the way, setting us back 30 minutes.
• We finally arrived in the area of the location but it was so carefully concealed behind some houses that it took us and hour and a half of driving round in circles before we finally found it. It was hidden up someones front drive and although we were in constant contact with mrs b who was feeding us directions, we were totally lost for what felt like days.

However, when we got there it was worth it (i think). The place was beautifly destroyed by fire and there was ash, brick and glass everywhere. Brilliant! Although most of the roof was destroyed and we were practically outside, this gave us natural light and we hardly had to use the light pack we were given.

We were quick to shoot and set up the instruments and leads around to make it look like the band was actually playing. I'd informed the band members who could actually play the instruments they were using to learn the song to make the stage look even more authentic. Our only set-back was that none of us had printed the lyrics sheet and we spent some time listening to the song on the i-pod speakers before we were able to shoot.

I think what we shot was quite good. We got in nice and tight on both the instruments and the lead singer's face and repeated the song over and over to get as many possible, usable shots as we could. I think we'll be able to cut them together successfully in the edit suite to make it look good. Two camera's was once again a good idea because it makes continuity editing so much easier, as we found with our first shoot on sunday. Once camera was static for most of the time and the other one was zooming around the different band members and going in close on their instruments. What helps us i think it that our actual performance shots aren't the main focus of the video and we will probably only be using little snippets in our actual thing. Therfore the footage we got doesn't have to be that great.

One problem is that we are unsure how to link the band shots to the action. Fortunatly the woman who let us use the house said we can use it anytime and we should definatly come back to finish the shooting. Our teacher suggested that we make the gorilla chase the banana into the house for a climax and we're going to discuss this option. However, today we were too frustrated from the journey and tired from shooting to continue much past the band performing and although we had the costumes, they didn't leave the boot of the car.

ALSO, THERE WAS A DEAD CAT IN THE GARDEN WHERE WE WERE SHOOTING. ROB PICKED IT UP WITH A STICK!!!!!