Construction Post 2: week 2 production

In our second week of production, our focus was the narrative shoot, which took place on the Saturday. In the days leading up to the shoot, we also did some good work on our digipak, designed our logo and got our location promo shots.

Digipak:

The first step we had to take when creating our digipak was to take our promo shots. We had two sets of promo shots we wanted to take; studio shots and location shots. Below is a plan I drew out of some of the inspiration we gathered before taking our promo shots.

This is a mood board of where we got inspiration for our location promo shots from

Getting Our Location Promo Shots:

We did a lot of research into where we wanted to take our promo shots because we wanted the photos to have an edgy, urban feel to them to fit in with our artists' personas and overall image. Pru suggested  'God's Own Junkyard' in Walthamstow, a location accessible to all of us. After researching we all loved the location; it is an exhibition featuring a huge number of neon lights scattered accross the walls, floor and ceiling of a small warehouse in Walthamstow...

We were already imagining photos we could capture of Jack and Ella and agreed immediately this would be the perfect shoot location. We went ahead on Friday after school to get our shots, with a camera from school which was not a DSLR but still had a high enough quality to capture interesting images. 

Here are a selection of our best shots taken on the day:

Studio Shots:

We planned to take our studio promo shots during our filming week because the lighting would be set up already. We had four outfit changes planned for both Ella and Jack and knew we definitely had to take a close up of each of them (for the front panel). 

Designing Our Logo:

we also designed our logo this production week. Our logo is fairly simply but incorporates the male and female symbols into the letters MJ (standing for MiraJax) to create a visually united duo. 

our logo

We used the mouse to draw and connect lines on photoshop (using the line tool) to create the outline of the letters and then filled them using the paint bucket tool. 

Narrative filming weekend:

In the second week of production, we allocated the Saturday to getting all our narrative footage. We'd already done a test shoot for this so we knew:

• our locations - Finsbury Park, Alexandra Palace, Southgate station and Ella's house
• the outfits - 

Mira's outfit

Jax's outfit

We decided to keep Jax's outfit the same but we changed Mira's outfit due to practicality issues (it was way too cold to be wearing a mini skirt). 

• and, the shots we needed to take:

our OLD shootboard

the NEW and IMPROVED shootboard

Instead of filming earlier, at 3 o'clock, we started filming at 6pm because we wanted to make sure the sun had set. We had a portable over-head light for our cannon camera which attached where the microphone would go. This way we didn't need to carry with us any big studio lights.

the light we used

The main issue we had with filming in our test narrative shoot was the argument scene. We struggled to find an appropriate angle to film from in order to achieve continuity. 

Before:

After:


We were a lot happier with how the second try turned out. I like how it's more to-the-point and as the door shuts, that is the cue for the track to begin.

Overall, this shoot day went to plan and we overcame any complications on the day efficiently. When we got back to school on the Sunday we put all our narrative shots into their rough position on adobe premier pro, ready for the studio shots to be put straight onto the track timeline.