Shooting the pop promo: Studio footage

Kira and I met in the morning and made our way down to college quickly to get on our way with shooting. This was the first material we were capturing for the video so were equal amounts excited and hoping we'd thought everything through.

Getting to the studio, we wasted no time setting things up. There was a large black frame at the far end wall which was perfect for draping our fairy lights onto with black insulating tape. It took quite some time to get them all positioned fully (there was a lot!) but it payed off because once the lights were off, they looked really effective- especially on

camera when we shifted the focus.

Setting the lighting up was the next job, we roughly set up three point lighting and put orange gel filters on both the key light and fill light to give the location and band a nice golden glow - we chose to keep the back light the original colour as this provided a really nice flare into the camera and things were looking really good. After we'd perfected the three point lighting after positioning Kira in front of the camera, we had to work out the depth of focus to ensure the band were in focus whilst the fairy lights were completely blurred out which proved to be quite difficult as the cameras were letting too much light into the lens and insisted on autofocusing - in the end we reached a compromise though. Luckily, we hooked the cameras up to a large moniter so while we were performing, we could see ourselves and could make sure we were always in frame.

With two cameras, we did about 4 takes all the way through each, then about 3 of the chorus and two choruses with both Kira and myself in shot. We used my iPad connected to a pair of portable speakers so we could ensure that the lip syncing was perfect and that the cameras picked up the sound too. We then shot about 20 minutes worth of the lights going in and out of focus whilst panning and zooming which looked fantastic. Last of all, we filmed about 15 minutes each of dancing and posing in front of the cameras which was really beneficial as it looks great in the edit.

I'm really happy with how the shoot turned out - although were instances where things could have turned problematic, the way Kira and I worked through it proactively definitely payed off and we were left with some fantastic footage to work with.