Finally finished all my shooting and editing work. I have been shot three times for this project here is my reflection of this project.
Actually, this final video is not the one I want to shoot initially, my original brief idea is based on having fixed light and showing the actor’s moving through these fixed light. Because it is so hard for me to find a place to satisfy all y conditions especially the permission and distance, I took my second best choice which is shooting at home. One of my apartment’s bedrooms has sliding door with matte glass and I can shoot the changing of shadows on the glass as people moving in the bedroom. I did use in my second shooting and the reason I deleted in my final video is if I used this part in my video it did not connect from the room to the living room. Because the shadows only show by lighting in the bedroom but dark in the living, which will obey the next scene which has the light in the living room.
The first part in the video was shooting at building 9, which is the classroom we used to have classes. And the idea for shooting this part is from my favorite Korean video “Eyes, Noses, Lips”. The whole music video is shooting in one shot and I think it is so cool, especially form time 1:50, the background light is blinking slowing and slightly showing you the surroundings with the mist which gives me a visual enjoyment.
I really wanted to try to shoot with this feeling, of course, another place problem I needed to face and finally I used the class room which is not big enough but is bigger than my apartment.
Here is my story board and I used the method —-Rule of Thirds in my first shot which can make my composition better.
The sliding light shot is my only two favorite shots in all the three shooting time. As the same, I found the initial idea from a Chinese music video called “The Key” from JJ Lin. I got the idea from time 1:44. Only a section of light is on his face and when he moves his head, his head goes to the dark and shows up. Because of the equipment limitation, it did not success neither this time. I borrowed the LED panel which has too many small bulbs in the whole panel and cannot combine the light in to one, I think if I want to shoot like this, I need to borrow the single bulb light. Luckily, because of the plenty number of bulb, it made the light is sliding on the wall which is sooooo cool. I think I will definitely use it in my next music video shooting.
Another my favorite shot has been deleted in the final video which is been shot in the second version. When the actress is standing in front of the video camera, I moved the LED panel below the camera’s frame, the lights changing on the ceiling and the actress is like falling into a fantasy atmosphere. I think it is good to use this shot in a love movie with pink lights, which will give the viewers the feeling of falling in love.
The final shot is about the smoke. Firstly, all I want to show is putting the light on the smoke and as the smoke moves, all the space that the smoke goes will be brighter. However, my smoke machine is not very follow my words and sometimes it performs worse than testing time, which took me a long time to shoot and did not get the feeling I want to show.
The biggest change in this final version is I used two actors (the boy is wearing all black and the girl is wearing all white) to made a contrast, the duration those two showed up in the full version is almost the same, but I used the girl’s shots more in the 30 second version is because I just want to use the all black shots as a transition and played a collision effect to the following white.
To be conclusion, I am still lack of shooting experience and I need to collect more life inspired elements during my lifetime and also need to improve my professional tech skills. Meanwhile, I can feel I started my shooting too late and next semester’s final project needs to be started earlier to leave more time to improve.