Experimental Video Takes

Long before I had came up with a storyline/plot for my video project, I experimented for weeks beforehand with different sorts of 'experimental shots', as I called them, to capture the scene and characters and give a sense of atmosphere in the final film outcome from my project. What this means is experimenting with all the key features of filming - from close-ups to long shots, using different angles, dramatic shots and open shots, crane shots, tracking shots (that follow a character's movement), panning shot (which are useful for looking over landscapes, of which I did quite a few) and using techniques such as the Kuleshov effect to give a sense of character (showing the character first, then what he/she is looking at). Needless to say, I won't be using every single piece of footage in the film, which also part of the creative process when putting together film on Premiere.

They would also be used to slow the pace of the film down, due to the mood of the film, which is rather mournful and sad, yet expressive. I also wanted to film to be rather abstract in a sense, so although there is a story at the centre of the film, I wanted to leave it open to interpretation.

The reason for getting many random shots is to illustrate flashbacks, and swapping scenes to illustrate different feelings in certain situations - it's not all in one place at a time. There is a fan made video for the same song Star Shopping by Qvliy on YouTube that is a great example for the style of video I'm trying to imitate for this song. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0KtW7J_d4c).

In the video you can see that the location is always changing; it's not set in one place, yet the main difference is, it focuses more on the actual artist and how he felt - rather than telling a unique story - my own story - which is what I'm aiming to do.

I shot hundreds of short videos, as you can see in the screenshots of my phone above, with no particular storyline. These are just a sample of the number of videos I took in my camera roll, which would take ages to go through and screenshot individually.

In the first and third images above there are a range experimental shots of Natasha (the actress playing the character in the film) doing a range of different stereotypically 'girly' things - such as putting on her makeup, flicking her hair in the mirror and brushing her hair. She also had an idea to do a few short videos of her playing the piano, as it may work well in the film when there is a piano-type part of the music playing. I also have quite a few scenic shots I experimented with, which are often of filming the sky/horizon in the dark, which is linked to the song itself 'Star Shopping', which is about a night sky and falling in love etc. I filmed random things too like a train passing by, simply walking past the campus building or around when it is dark.

Normally when real life music videos/films are shot, there is not this experimentation on the cameras they use as they are obviously rather expensive and hired for a fixed amount of time, but since I intended to use my iPhone to shoot it (as the quality of the camera is obviously very good by itself) it was always available to me, so I had that freedom.

In the second and fourth images there are screenshots of videos of myself, singing the song. As a perfectionist it took me many times to film something I was satisfied with, even though they were experimental. However though there are so many, I will probably only end up using a few of them in the final outcome, as I intend to focus to be on the character and what she is doing, rather than myself singing. Below I have put together a short video with some samples of my footage.

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/c3a0a6_8c840c8e7b6a4cd98e7d2a1d358c7bd9/1080p/mp4/file.mp4

Reference list www.youtube.com. (n.d.). Lil Peep - Star Shopping (Music Video) 2018. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0KtW7J_d4c [Accessed 21 Apr. 2022].