Account of the first shoot day

Last Thursday we began shooting the music video for KOAN Sound’s “Trouble in the West”. We began setting up the equipment and moving around our props at 8:50.  As we realized later

 later that morning, some of the props we were planning on using were unavailable, for example the old TV and the fur for Mr. Fox was hard to get hold of. By 10 o’clock we were ready to shoot our Cave Rave scene with Brandon and Zander. For the first hour of shooting, the crew concentrated on getting the shots of D.J decks and the “Kid foxes” which was very successful. In my point of view, the deejaying looked very real as Gil taught them the basic technique which definitely helped. Then under the direction of our set designer Scott, we filmed the scenes under variety of lights and smokes making the location look like a real party scene. By 11.30 we brought in some extras, dancers to fill in the rave. We dressed them up in hipster, grunge looking clothes to give the audience a more stylized feel. This was effective as it targets our potential audience and projects the artist’s image better. By 1 p.m. our crew was done with the location number 1. It took us about an hour to set up location 2 as we had to bring in completely different props and make that space look homey and cozy as it was the “Foxes house” scene. This location was essentially meant to be filmed outside in the forest to give it a “wild, rural” effect but due to poor weather conditions it had to be changed.  As we found out later during an editing session, using green-screen is way easier than shooting outside so this decision was for the better. For the location number 2 we had to bring in new characters like Mr. Fox (Hendrick) and Mrs. Fox  (Arabella). Shooting our establishing shot on that location was extremely difficult due to the lack of big shooting space and so that needed to be changed from a full wide shot to mid-shots of the kid foxes, Arabella standing by the fridge and Hendrick reading his newspaper. At the end, it looked alright and made sense when cutting it in the editing suite. I especially liked the light coming from the fridge once Arabella opens it and her reaction shot to it being empty. This location took us some time as that time more main characters were involved and directing them and framing the shots was getting more complex. By 16:00 we were done completely with location 2 and were ready to move on to the table scene. The table scene was especially fun to film as we got to use the tracking technique for the camera to which I wasn’t introduced before and our props were also very “yummy”. The last shot we got of the “never-ending table”, the bosses head and Mr. Fox lighting up a cigar was particularly well-made as it truly captured the mischievous and dark atmosphere of the music video. That day we finished shooting by 18:30 p.m. and even though we were exhausted, the results are worth all this hard work!