Architects (the band who's song we want to use in our music video) were shooting their new video for the track "Follow The Water" off of their new album. The video is a performance based video so they sent out a request to any fans who wanted to be involved to just turn up. It was a very interesting and fantastic experience.
When I arrived Architects were mid way through shooting all their band shots on the stage. The first thing I saw was a huge light behind the building shining through the back window (which was stained glass as the venue used to be a church) from outside. When inside, you could see this was done to create some really cool light effects that made the whole back wall glow and gave the whole room an orange tint. Before going in we had to sign consent forms basically saying that whatever happened was our fault not Architects, who weren't to blame if any injuries occurred.
Before going in I saw the guitarist Timothy Hiller-Brook who I've had previous encounters in from buying his guitar earlier in the year. I talked to him about our A2 coursework and how we were planning to do their song, and his and the fellow band members reply was that they thought it was a brilliant idea, and that they had absolutely no problem with us using their song.
When inside, we as a crowd did 3 takes of the song, 2 where the band were miming along to the CD and one where they played the song live. However there were about 6 or so different cameras in use so that from those 3 takes the crew got lots of shots. The crew consisted of a director, a director of photography and two runners as well as the venues sound and light team. One camera was placed above the edge of the stage on the lighting rig facing directly down to get a complete birdseye view of the band performing and the crowd responding to them. Another set up used was 3 cameras on an arced piece of metal to get three different perspectives of the same shot. There were also 2 handheld camera rigs that the runners were using just roaming and filming the band and the crowd whenever they thought something suitably interesting was happening for close ups.
Also, when the band performed their live set later, the camera crew came on and got lots of random footage to montage in. They could do this by just making sure they never showed guitarists actually playing specific riffs or the vocalist singing lyrics etc.
However, by far my best achievement of the day was managing to talk to the director after the shoot, Stuart Birchall who has directed many other videos of the hardcore genre. He was very helpful and I managed to get his email off him, after telling him also about our A2 media coursework, which he said he would love to help out with if we have any questions or specifically as I asked, help finding a location.
I asked him mainly about the band shots earlier in the day. He told me these things;
- The crew got to the venue at 9am and the band got there about the same time. They set up for 2 hours and started filming from 11am until 5pm, where they got the crowd in and did another 2 hours of filming.
- He took about 40 different shots of the band of which about the same amount of takes were taken. He said they did this to save time on the shoot, as with that many different shots it would be quite easy to throw out any rubbish footage.
- To plan the shots, he drew up some storyboards before hand for his ideas, but also made the band run through the song first to see what they were like as performers. He then took notes on important factors (how they move, exciting riffs to watch, drum fills) and planned out more shots that would relate to the band as performers.
- They took 4 different wide angle shots of the entire band performing the whole song.
- For each band member they took 2 different "Beauty Shots" (it was nice to hear familiarity in the way he talked and also how Jake has talked to us, seeing a mutual understanding of filming between directors) of each band member, focusing on their faces, not only in CU but MCU and MS also, for which the band performed the whole song.
- Each member also had 2 general roaming shots of them taken where the camera would follow them as they performed from different angles.
- The 3 camera rig used in the crowd shots was also used here. Stuart said that at some points they had all 6 cameras mounted on the rig for what he called "Bullet Shots" which I will have to research some more. He did they to get 6 different shots of the same performance at one time, especially useful for the drummer as he can focus on certain drums when they are being used, and with Dan Searle having such a big kit and large number of drums and cymbals this is very important.
- They used the lighting to reflect the moods in the song. During the heavy first half of the song the light is a very harsh orange/red with strobes to give it a very harsh feel. However when everything drops out except the guitar and the song slows down, the light suddenly changes to a spotlight on the band with a slight blue tint. When the rest of the band drop back in, the lighting returns to its previous state.
- When asking Stuart about grading I asked if he was going to grade it similarly to Adam Powell's Architects videos in which there is a ver contrasted low saturation grade. He said, not only did he want to make his video stand out, but he wanted the grade to reflect the energy of the crowd, and therefore would use a very colourful grade for impact and energy, really making contrast between all the different colours.
- I asked him whether the whole video was going to be performance and he told me that he was doing two cuts. A directors cut with a narrative in and one video which was solely performance. He would then show both to the band and they would decide amongst themselves which they liked the best.
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