Filming: Spotlighted Performance

Today we filmed Gideon, our main actor, singing using spotlight effects. We used the panasonic HD camera for this to catch the light more effectively. As the location was a school hall, we had to make sure it didn't actually look like a school hall as it wouldn't work with our genre. We did this by using different lighting effects to highlight only the actor. Before starting to film, we were shown all the different lights we could use on the computer. This picture is showing me setting up the lights how we wanted it to be. Which was a blackout with a single spotlight on Gideon.

After choosing the lighting, we filmed Gideon singing. We filmed this shot several times but from all different angles, so that we can edit it all together so that it's not just boring from one angle.

We wanted to try another kind of lighting after this, which was just the same spotlight but strobed so that it was flickering quickly. This quick paced lighting went well to the music and also connotes the artists lifestyle as a bit busy/mayhem. Again, we filmed this from all angles to keep the audience interested when it's edited together. This is a short clip of what the long shot strobe lighting looked like. I recorded this on my phone while this scene was being recorded properly.

After this, we did the scene we planned to do of Gideon falling on to a sofa, which we then want to reverse using Sony Vegas. For this we used a blue spotlight which almost silhouetted Gideon which worked really well. We went for the blue light here because we wanted a bit of colour in the video to keep it interesting. But we didn't choose pink or red because those colours connote too much of mixed feelings that don't work well with our genre. This (unfocused) image below is one of the blue light and sofa.

We wanted to do some high and low angle shots too. Low which we could do easy connoting the actors big ego making him look powerful. And high which we wanted to do higher than the actual tripod would go. So, we pressed record and put the tripod on a table looking down while Gideon was singing. This worked well with the strobe lighting too.