How to produce a fashion film ?
As Christina had never produced a film before we decide that she should take on the role of creative director, having a say in what it looks like, who the models are, how the edit looks. Leaving me as the kind of director but i call myself more a videographer as i wasn't essentially directing the model more my main focus was getting all of the pre production work done correctly and the shot types and camera set ups.
Although a simplistic studio based film the pre production work at first stumped me as we did not have time to see what the movements of outfits were going to look like until on the day. This meant i had no idea how they would cut or look together.. how ever working this way is similar to something we had done before... DANCE FILM. Despite not liking the idea of dance video at the being of second year the skills we learnt from it and fun we had making it have actually made it the most useful unit to me. Like in our anxiety dance project we had no idea what the movements were going to be therefor we had to break it down into what we did know would happen and what we wanted to see.
I know that were was going to be one model and 4/5 different outfits, there fore when creating the shot list and schedule all i had to do was film it like we filmed the dance project. Put on out fit 1 do all the un known movements and some statics from a wide shot, the a wide from the different angels, then mid etc etc. Simple. After sending the rough plan to Christina for approval i then went on to battle the music.
Christina wanted to use this song for the project :
Which is all well and nice in theory, it sounds good, works well with the style... but is very much copyrighted. After a lot of google searching and emailing various people i managed to track down the bands management how ever they said they wouldn't agree to use being able to use the music until they had seen the finished film. In one sense this is great as we could get to use it but in the other it means i have to film and edit it and do all the after effects on it spending it weeks to get it finished for them to then turn round and say no we can not use it.
Despite this christina still wanted to use this as the sound track for the film. However, knowing all the problems that could come along with using copyrighted music ( i could argue the right of fair use as the film is none profitable and were only sampling a small section of the song, but that again is alot of hassle) i decided to collaborate even more and got in contact with my good old friend, the student at the music college in guildford.
For our second year dance film we managed to get a really great soundtrack from a student at that university and i decided to try again. A lot of people were put off by the fact the we was not paying them to create music, which is understandable, but one guy said he would create something for us as he just likes making this style of music.
This is a great back up as it means we will have copy right free music, how ever not having the song we wanted in the first place could change the mood of the piece and i would have to re edit and re make the whole film in a short time to match his song after wards, piling a lot of work back on to me.
Hopefully we get the song Christina likes, if not hopefully the musician can create something really similar so i only have to ripple trim a few clips.
Cinematography : What am i doing
So everything sounds well and good dosen't what am i learning from this project? Well as the ONLY member of film crew on this project i actually have to do something i haven't actually done in the whole 3 years of being at university and thats hold the camera! Thats right in every project we've ever done ive not actually touched a camera. There for on this project all thought im not exactly learning something new i am doing something new. With it being easter the day we film i couldnt get equiptment out of stores as i would not be able to return it from epsom in time, this meant i had to beg borrow and steal every bit of equiptment from my freinds.
Using my cannon DSLR , lucys lenses, chalies steady cam, marcos tripod, and the studios lights i some how gathered together a decent film kit for what i needed. The main thing for me to remember is that filming on a dslr requires me to not only just set the frame rate etc but i have to adjust the shutter speed iso and all those other things you would do like taking a photograph. I also had to keep an eye on the lighting continuity. But wait laura if you havent used a camera before how do you know how to do all of these things. Well again another thing we learn in 2nd year that has actually be really helpfull is the photography lesson. In there we learnt different lighting setups and how to program the camera to make them look the best. So all the stress and tears of second year have actually been really helpful in making what could have been a stressful project actually really easy.
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