MERAL ZAHID
SHoot schedule
//This post was assigned to Zahra Aslaam; however, due to her not being able to meet the deadline, I have written a filler post below.
We briefly discussed planning the first two days of our shoot to be held in school over WhatsApp, which I presented in this Canva post. The last day of the shoot for the streetlight shots was done separately by Noor and Zahra, yet they followed the same shooting schedule for their respective days as we had decided.
PRODUCTION DAY 1
INT ROOM 5
We started the shoot right after our media class, running towards the bathroom for a quick wardrobe change into the MV outfits.
The multi-media was unavailable today, so we focused on getting our non-projector preliminary shots out of the way. By that, I mean shots for the memory clips needed for projector scenes and a clip for mixed media effects that I would need to print out. Unexpectedly, the title cards scene took too long to shoot, so we delegated the task to Noor.
Zahra wrote our permission letter, and while Noor went to get it signed, we continued filming in an empty room. However, our actress Maryam needed to leave when we were done filming the memories scene.
Our tentative actress, Dua, had also just gotten free from her Law class, so our schedule matched perfectly to squeeze in a couple more shots. Since there weren't any classes in the A-level Computer science lab after two pm, we managed to get the red net shots with a blue background in there, and then we wrapped everything up by three since the school closed then.
The only problem we encountered was finding an empty room, which we eventually overcame.
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Here is the original plan I had texted the group at 8 am
PRODUCTION DAY 2
INT ROOM 7
Our shoot days constantly clash with school events; this time, we make it two, though we still push through so we may finish our work. Maryam, our actress, could not make it to the shoot day since she was out of the city, so we had to bring in someone similar to her who might substitute her. Thankfully, our mutual friend Mizan agreed to help us out.
Our shoot schedule was sandwiched between the morning council announcement (compulsory attendance for me) and the Rang Day activity. In the morning, we decided to spend time filming, with only a short break for me to give up my post to another kid. Still, Noor could not come on time, so I spent the hour with Zahra printing out the mixed media PDF and editing the memories montage, which I just remembered that I needed to do the night before since I was prepping the print material.
After the assembly, Noor brought a projector from her home, yet we were unable to find a wire that could give it a power supply, so not to waste our production day due to technical issues, we resorted to filming in room 7, known as house OPF's oldest projector with many technical problems as well. To our Suprise, it worked perfectly fine; as a computer science kid, I was in charge of operating the laptop, connecting the wire and setting up all the tech stuff while the others went over the shot list to tick off shots that were filmed and numbering scenes so we could film them in order.
Our event that all of us were part of was supposed to start at three pm, but it got changed back due to our school always wanting to come in the way of the shoot, which wasn't a surprise anymore. With only a fifteen-minute warning, we quickly finished the shots we needed and ran off to join the fun, destroying our outfits with colours.
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Here's me prepping for shoot day, anticipating our needs.
PRODUCTION DAY 3
EXT STREET
For our opening scene, coordinating a day for a shoot at Zahra's place was getting too tangled up with our schedules not aligning and us losing days till we had to show our MV to our teacher. This meant it was cutting my editing time, so we decided to roll with filming the scene ourselves. Initially, Noor was going to Zahra's house for the shoot, but the plan failed, and Noor shot the clips in her neighbourhood. However, the clips had their flaws, so Zahra volunteered to reshoot them.
On day two, I had a detailed discussion on how I wanted the shots to look. Before reshooting by Zahra, I went over that again so that she may improve on Noor's mistakes, such as instructing her to take stable closeups of the TV so I may create a green screen overlay on it without worrying about the footage being too shaky and try and get more dolly in shots.
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NOOR'S VERSION
ZAHRA'S VERSION
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Improvisation
//This post was assigned to Zahra Aslaam however due to her not being able to meet deadline, I have written a filler post below.
Throughout production, we improvised with lighting, using bookmarks to create an orange glow and using my phone flashlight while shooting the title cards. This stylistic lighting would enhance the look of the title cards as a homage to the old Hollywood title cards, adding more warmth to the shot. However, we ended up still discarding it, not because of the look of the footage but the overall cohesion with the entire music video. It deviated a little too much from the tones of the music video, and colour-correcting the footage would give me a slight difference from one taken with standard lighting, so I ended up using footage with bright white light instead, which's the highlights I could work around with, the fake the effect to the degree it works with our music video. Alongside, on shooting the day three scene at a random street near her house, Noor improvised with lighting using car tail lights to add to the dramatic effect of the footage and further enhance what seems a simplistic shot.
We ran into several Technical issues due to technology being technology. With the outdated projector not brought to school, the cable available to us by the school wasn't the right type as it used VGA cable instead of HDMI. This was a significant obstacle since there are only a few places in our school where the projector is available. We could not afford to put off shooting since we would have to re-schedule with our actresses, who won't be available any other day of the week, thus extending it by a week without considering any other clash of events. So, on the spot, we split up, and each covered a different floor; both the O-level and A-level It lab and Multimedia rooms were occupied, leaving us with three other classrooms to check. Finally, we found Room 7 to be free and using my experience as the tech person of the team, I hooked up my computer to the projector, which did use an HDMI cable and figured out the wiring and how to turn it on without any accidents which might get us kicked out.
Finally, improvising upon Noor's footage of day 3, I noticed a few problem areas. The mis-en-scene was not precisely what we had envisioned. The table used antique Victorian style, and the chair was simple plastic, causing incoherence in the frame, overall clashing with our modernistic, sleek look of props from the dresses to the title card design. The camera work was hard to work with as the shots had too much movement. In contrast, smoother and static shots were required, so I went into more detail about how to get the shot with Zahra since I quickly realised there must have been a communication gap. I told her to focus on taking Dolly in and out, shooting at different speeds and angles. Hence, I had a variety of footage to choose from since it is better to have more footage at once than to reshoot it later. I also specifically re-iterated a millionth time to her to take multiple closeup shots of the TV with a stabiliser or try to be as still as possible to have footage I could use green screen masking. Another crucial factor was ensuring no other house was in the shot to take away the focus, and with those improvisations pointed out, Zahra got the shots we needed. Now, it is time to sit down, grab my coffee, and return to my crab posture while editing.