Shoot Day 4 - 10/11/14

On this shoot day we started midway through lunchtime, and shot the ice with a rose frozen inside being shattered by a hammer. We also took the shots with writing on my back and the first take of Yssy holding the rose and wearing the blue jacket in front of the black backdrop.

Above is the shootboard we planned for this day, organised in a group meeting. We were quite well organised for time so we managed to fit in the back-shots, thinking smart on our feet and using time to the best of our ability since the spotlighting and black background setup for of this day's shots were reasonably similar

           

Footage from the Canon 5D (left) and the HF G30 (right)

The rose in ice shot was first, and was part of the concept aspect of our video, representing the destructive nature of the love that she experiences.

I prepared the rose in ice, which took time and effort to prepare - to freeze ice and keep it transparent I had to boil the water in a pan and once putting it in a container and into the freezer it had to be shaken gently every half hour to remove air bubbles. The result was very visually appealing as the rose had accidentally dyed the ice pink, which actually looked good. I brought the ice in a box by car into school so it would not have time to melt and we started shooting straight away, making the most of the moment by shooting it with GoPro, the Canon 5D and HF G30. This gave us a variety of angles, frame rates per second and image quality. Josh, Harry and I each took charge of a camera while Yssy smashed the ice, as you can see above. The main problem was that the only the GoPro could film footage designed to be shot in slow motion as we desired, but the angle we shot from with it showed the tarpaulin laid out on the floor as it shoots with such a wide lense.

Despite the effort needed to create it, this shot did not make our final cut as the 5D's footage had too low a frame rate to use in slow motion, even with its image quality. We also could not find a place in the video where it would work well and not seem like a random and irrelevant shot.

Next were the back shots. I was the most comfortable to act in this shot, and there were no objections so I was happy to take on the challenge of conveying emotion solely through posture. Before setting out the lighting we prepared my makeup:

Since I have quite pale skin the tonal makeup was necessary, or the spotlighting on my back would have reflected too much light, as you may be able to guess from the image above and to the left.

I wrote some of these words down with Yssy on a notepad during a group meeting where we planned the back shot, allowing us to save time and delve straight into shooting it:

Some footage of my group writing the emotional words over me in the semi-permanent tattoo marker we bought:

          
The shot was designed to very literally express the countless emotions Roza feels in her relationship. I came up with the idea for this shot in an early group meeting when we were listening to the song and coming up with conceptual shots to work with the lyrics. I had a quite arty vision of how to interpret SZA's song and this is one of the shots that made it from idea to screen.

Until 5:30 where our studio time finished we tried some practice shots of Yssy holding the rose and wearing the blue jacket, so we could save time shooting it properly in terms of knowing the best way to configure the lighting. We wanted to spend more time getting it right and with greater variety of takes and framings than we had the time to shoot on this day, so practicing it was a useful way to spend our time.