Production: Filming

There were a number of issues we encountered when it came to filming the project. Getting animal costumes proved difficult, whilst the weather was a major factor given that we were filming outside for large parts, and needed the video to have a feel-good factor to the video, as it was made for a kids song. We knew we needed to film for three seperate days, in order to shoot the different aspects of the video.

Filming: Day One
This was when we needed to film the introduction to the video. This required a number of different shots from different angles, of the main actor, Elliot, and the three judges. This section of the music video needed to portray the reactions of the judges to Elliot's dancing, as well as giving footage of Elliot. In order to get the shots we filmed Elliot's dance from a number of different angles, ranging from side views, and front-on mid-shots to close-ups of Elliot. We then needed to film the judges reactions which included a group shot of the three judges giving their feedback, and close-ups on each singular judge. Filming the dancing was particularly difficult as the dance was spontaneous and therefore slightly different on each take, which made the editing of the footage into a series of match-on-action clips much harder, however, the shots we acquired from Day 1 of filming were successful and meant that we could have a proper introduction to the video.



Filming: Day 2
Day 2 was when we wanted to film the animals in town. It was filming this particular footage that proved to be most difficult, as the factors of costumes and weather went against us, and this meant that we could not film on the days that we had originally set out and had to change our plans. We eventually got to film our animals on a Saturday in town, which meant that we needed to enlist the help of three willing actors, Gary Coward, Michael McCallum and Will Robinson, to dress up in animal costumes. The shots we needed to get for this footage was simply a series of group shots with differing back drops. For this footage we focused mainly on mid-shots of the three animals dancing, however, we also looked at using close-ups and high angle shots to offer some variety in shots within the video.

Filming: Day 3
This was when we needed to combine the dancing of Elliot with the animals, and therefore went back into town to get footage of Elliot with the animals. The shots we choose to take were similar to that of Day 2, in that we used a number of group shots and focused on getting all the characters into one shot a lot of the time. This time however, we used a much wider variety of angles and views, and used a number of low angle shots looking up at the actors. This footage was crucial as the video needed to combine the introduction with the animals, and therefore getting the footage of Elliot with the animals was integral to the continuity of the video. As in Day 2's filming we filmed in a variety of locations around the town centre.