Equipment

When filming my music video I used a range of equipment, which included; a camera, tripod, studio lighting, a strobe light, coloured acetate and musical instruments. The camera that I used was the ‘Canon 70D’, I decided to use this camera because it was my own which meant that I would have full access to it. I have also used the camera previously for filming and taking photographs therefore I was confident on how to use it. This camera has changeable lenses, but I decided to use the same lens throughout the production process. This was the 18-135mm lens; this lens made it easy for me to experiment with different zoom lengths. It also has automatic focus which was very useful when filming. With the camera I used a tripod so that I could keep all of the footage level and not shaky; this was to make the video look more professional.

When filming, I originally only wanted to use one studio light. However when doing the test shots and first day of filming, I realised that it wasn't enough. Therefore I decided to use two, I placed one to the left of the background and one to the right. However it took quite a bit of readjusting to make sure that the lights weren't making the black background grey. When zooming in to create an extreme close up shot on the actor, I had to move the lighting slightly so that it was more on the actor; this was because the camera struggled to focus. 

I used the strobe light sometimes when filming. To make the white light appear coloured, I placed small pieces of coloured acetate over it. This effect worked quite well. From the test shots I found that just using the strobe light on its on wasn't very good for the camera; it kept going out of focus. Therefore I decided that I should ld leave the studio lights on when doing the strobe light, so that the camera would remain in focus and the colours would be clear. This worked much better and enabled me to have more footage which was in focus. I also played around with the position of the strobe light. I thought that at first it would be best with the actor holding it underneath them. However this only cast the colour over half of the actors face. Therefore I decided to place it on top of the camera.