Reflections on Dance Shots

When put together with the footage I filmed of my sister, the shots I filmed of myself dancing using the tripod, they do not look how I wanted them to. Even though, using the tripod, I was able to position the camera exactly as I wanted, thinking this would be a good method, I wasn't happy with the footage in the end after I saw how noticable the handheld camera effect was in the shots of my sister and how it completely contrasted to the completely still shots that I cut to of me dancing.



By using my friend Chloe as my dancer now, it will allow me to see the shots as I film them and adjust them as I go along. I will also be able to move around with the camera rather than just staying focusing on one point for each shot. Now I will be including some camera tilts, pans, some tracking and some more handheld effect shots to create a variation and the exact look I want.

Relection on Cast

I found it easy to think of lots of dance moves to include, some routines for long takes and other short clips to fill spaces in the video. I also played most of them back in slow motion to make sure they looked how I wanted and I they worked well. I'm quite pleased with this section of filming and but am not sure how this will look all together with the slow motion tracking shots of my singer.

Knowing that my sister didn't know the song very well when we had only just started filming, I didn't try to make her lip sinc too much. I gathered lots of shots of her walking and moving, including various shot types and angles that I will cut to throughout and use to fill gaps when not singing. My sister did this very well, even though at points she struggled to keep a straight face when trying to take it seriously (right).
The outfits looked really good too so not only did it look good in the video, it helped her to feel confident and therefore she also looked good and did exactly what I wanted. Perfect.

Reflections on Locations

I purposely chose these locations because I was considering Blumler & Katz's theory of uses and gratifications, my favourite being that people use media to make personal connections and to find someone on the screen in a similar position to themselves, offering them someone to either judge or to aspire to and feel as if are similar to them. I did this by choosing a location that is widely populated, an urban environment that I think the majority of people live in, especially my target audience, choosing streets and alleyways that children/young people "hang out" in and would recognise as somewhere they spend a lot of time.

By filming my music video here, it puts a positive spin on the life that comes with these kinds of areas, council estates and alleyways that are usually populated with lower class/working class people. It supports the Marxist theory that the media, commercial companies full of the ruling class, attempt to make everyone beleive society is equal and that everyone is happy in their own lives. By having my actors dressed in glamorous clothes, dancing and singing as professionals and ignoring the fact that most people are scared to walk down the street in these areas, it fits into Baudrillard's theory that people often enjoy watching things like this that are hybrids of social realism but commercialised as it provides a hyper reality, better than their own.