Lights! Camera! Action!, My Experience Filming a Stock Music Video On Placement

I have to admit, filming is always a daunting experience. However, filming a stock music video that could be bought and consumed by thousands globally is at another level entirely.

‘Reflective practice can give strategies to bring things out into the open, and frame appropriate and searching questions never asked before. It can provide relatively safe and confidential ways to explore and express experiences otherwise difficult or impossible to communicate.‘ [1]

Like Bolton and Delderfield express, reflective writing can help to express learning outcomes from situations that may be confusing or hard to articulate. This blog will utilize Gibb’s Reflective Cycle (1988) to structure my thoughts and feelings as well as learning outcomes when I was preparing to shoot the stock video and how it unfolded on the day of filming.

[2]

The Prep

A big misconception about filming is that you show up on the day and work magic. But this is far from the truth. The amount of preparation and planning you do will directly affect the final outcome of the project. Jennifer Moon expresses in her book,

‘There is often a tendency to assume that others see events, people and organisations in the same way we do. Engineering situations in which people can share attitudes enables the possibility of recognizing the range of view that can exist.’ [3]

This scenario occurred when Loraa and I sat down to plan a new stock video. Loraa expressed that she wanted to do something with a musical instrument as there was no content with instruments on the site. I was able to use this scenario to express that I felt a guitar would work best as it is a popular instrument and it would be easy to shoot. Loraa agreed and remembered that her family had an old white electric guitar that we could use. I remember feeling a sense of accomplishment at the time. I felt as though I had helped to put forward useful ideas. We concluded that Loraa could get at least three stock videos from the footage we would gather.

Around this time we began to start planning what props were needed and what the actor/actress would wear. It was decided that in terms of costume, Loraa would provide a teal suit and a black fedora because this would give the vibe of a musician. It turned out to be a good decision as the teal was striking on camera and stood out against the locations. For props, the guitar was set but Loraa decided that she wanted a chair for the actress to do a dance piece on with the guitar.

But it could not be just any chair, it had to have character. It also would have to be lightweight and easy to transport. I have to admit, this did worry me because I knew we were getting closer to shooting and I wasn’t sure where I could get a portable chair with character. But luckily, I remembered that I had black metal garden chairs with a lattice pattern. And do you know what else? They could be folded up! The relief I felt was paramount and sure enough, they got the ok to be valued props on set. I felt proud of myself for helping to solve a problem and come up with a viable solution. The final prop would be a speaker provided by Loraa.

In terms of location, Loraa and I came up with nine possibilities these included, the umbrellas at Cathedral Quarter, the fish, the subway and Primark Building in City Centre, Harland, and Wolff at Titanic Quarter, the skate park and both the MAC parking lot and NCP parking lot. The theme was industrial and Urban and we felt that the graffiti and bold colours in these places would contrast with the white guitar and costume.

Once the locations were set I began to work on the shooting schedule using a template Loraa used for shooting music videos with customers. I wrote a brief description of what would happen in each place and gathered some photos for reference. It was agreed that we would film on the 23rd of December 2022 from 10am to 5pm. Logistically travel would take an hour so we felt that if we narrowed it down to three to four locations these could be shot in six hours. The chosen locations were Cathedral Quarter, the NCP Car Park, the skate park, and the subway.

One glaring problem we had was that we still hadn’t secured an actor/actress. Originally Loraa wanted a male musician or dancer because most of the dancers in her stock videos were female and Loraa wanted to try something new. I suggested some family members of mine who were musicians but they couldn’t dance. This proved to be a roadblock for a while but eventually, Loraa managed to contact a dance studio and asked if one of their dancers would do the stock video in exchange for the rights to one video for their portfolio. Eventually, the last thing to do was to charge up all the equipment and pack it into a small suitcase. Although I knew we had mapped it all out, I still felt apprehensive in case anything would go wrong on the day.

Filming Day

So on the morning of the 23rd, I met with Loraa and the actor at 8.30am in the office. Loraa gave the actress the clothing to change into and Loraa showed the actress how to perform with the chair and guitar. When the actress felt confident we then traveled to our first location in Belfast, the skate park. Once there we had multiple issues, the first was that the light kept changing and sometimes it would be bright and then suddenly go overcast. This meant that I had to change the lenses over constantly to accommodate the natural lighting. Eventually, the light settled and we were able to get enough footage with one lens. The next problem was that the blue speaker wouldn’t connect to any of our phones. We wasted about half an hour in the freezing cold trying to resolve the issue with all of us turning our phones off. It transpired that it had connected to a passer-by and this was why it wouldn’t work for us.

Despite these teething issues, we managed to capture beauty shots, gimble shots, and wide shots of both the actress dancing in one part of the skate park and with the chair in another. I helped with some behind-the-scenes videos so that Loraa could post these on the business’ Instagram page.

Unfortunately, Cathedral Quarter proved too busy to film in so we had to move to the subway. Walking to the subway was arduous with so much equipment and the chair but we managed to get there. Something I didn’t prepare for was interacting with rude members of the public. In one instance the actress got catcalled by a man walking by and I felt so useless at the time because I just wanted to scold him. I ended up talking about it during lunch with the actress and we both managed to laugh it off.

The filming ended up coming to a halt in the subway when Loraa was called into a business meeting. The actress and I were entrusted to pack up any spare equipment and head to lunch. I used this opportunity to bond with the actress and relax before the final location. The final location was the NCP Car Park. Filming at this location was swift and although it was cold we had no technical issues and were able to do multiple gimble shots because there was so much space on the top floor. The other nice thing at this location was the paneling on the windows in a different shade of blue. This added dimension to the shot and worked nicely with the costume.

Outcomes

‘As many teenagers know, music videos portray meaning. They provoke, sell, promote, and tell stories through densely textured images and sound. They are exciting, drmatic forms of art that are in their own right an excellent source of learning as well as a provocative link to more traditional artistic forms.’ [4]

As Pamela Taylor writes, the music video we were making was provocative, bold, and to be used in a commercial setting. I am happy to say that the dance video is now available to purchase on the Budget Music Videos website under the ‘Music Video Maker’ section. It has also been posted on the company’s social media. Whilst this makes me feel a sense of accomplishment I do think I would do some things differently. Firstly, I would’ve kept the filming for the dance video and the chair video separate because I think the dance video did take up a chunk of time, especially with the speaker malfunctioning. The other thing I would do would be to buy heat packs for the actress or bring a blanket because I felt bad that she was wearing a loosely fitting suit in the cold. But overall it was nice to be on the set of a stock music video and I have learned skills that I would not have been able to grasp from theory alone.

References

[1] Bolton, Gillie and Delderfield, Russel (2018) Reflective Practice: Writing and Professional Development [Online]. Available at: https://www.perlego.com/book/1431622/reflective-practice-writing-and-professional-development-pdf?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&campaignid=17551311347&adgroupid=136714405606&gclid=CjwKCAiAr4GgBhBFEiwAgwORrbAOCU4HhR31w8P6lh-gyLQjaMTGMUkHnipIi2vfDKLtIXarIlN4ZxoCugYQAvD_BwE (Accessed: 27th February 2023)

[2] Gibbs, Graham (1988) Learning By Doing, A Guide to Teaching and Learning Methods, Thoughts Mostly About Learning, 5th Edition [Online]. Available at: https://thoughtsmostlyaboutlearning.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/learning-by-doing-graham-gibbs.pdf (Accessed: 28th October 2022)

[3] Moon, Jennifer A. (2004) ‘Strategies for enhancing learning from everyday experience’ in A Handbook of Reflective and Experimental Learning: Theory and Practice, Oxfordshire: RoutledgeFalmer, pp.225

[4] Taylor, Pamela G. (2007) ‘Critically Contexualising Music Video Visual Culture and Art Education’ in Studies in Art Education, Vol. 48. Columbia: National Art Education Association, pp.230

Bibliography

Bolton, Gillie and Delderfield, Russel (2018) Reflective Practice: Writing and Professional Development [Online]. Available at: https://www.perlego.com/book/1431622/reflective-practice-writing-and-professional-development-pdf?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&campaignid=17551311347&adgroupid=136714405606&gclid=CjwKCAiAr4GgBhBFEiwAgwORrbAOCU4HhR31w8P6lh-gyLQjaMTGMUkHnipIi2vfDKLtIXarIlN4ZxoCugYQAvD_BwE (Accessed: 27th February 2023)

Gibbs, Graham (1988) Learning By Doing, A Guide to Teaching and Learning Methods, Thoughts Mostly About Learning [Online]. Available at: https://thoughtsmostlyaboutlearning.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/learning-by-doing-graham-gibbs.pdf (Accessed: 28th October 2022)

Moon, Jennifer A. (2004) ‘Strategies for enhancing learning from everyday experience’ in A Handbook of Reflective and Experimental Learning: Theory and Practice, Oxfordshire: RoutledgeFalmer

Taylor, Pamela G. (2007) ‘Critically Contexualising Music Video Visual Culture and Art Education’ in Studies in Art Education, Vol. 48. Columbia: National Art Education Association