unit 12 Production

Filming Day 1: Thursday 8th February

My first day of shoot for this assignment was an evening shoot completing scene 3 of my shot list, which is the archival montage. This scene would take elements from the shoot at RGS High Wycombe during one of their music concerts as well as found footage that could be intercut. Ben allowed me to borrow his Sony 200mm lens that I could add to my camera. Although this was originally unplanned, it was far more useful for the variety of shots I intended to get as I could remain in the audience and hide in the wings during the performance, as to not distract the musicians. I managed to secure a variety of audience shots, wide shots of bands and close ups of the instruments. Throughout, I also tested some whip pans between music families as this is a heavy Chazelle technique. The lighting was the stage lighting controlled by my friend at the school Will. I was able to discuss with him the program of the night and the lighting patterns which indicated the best bands for me to film during. My consent from had been distributed previously and I offered students some of the footage in reel form so they could benefit from my presence. My priority was capturing shots of brass and percussion areas to bring about this big band jazz atmosphere. Another unexpected thing came when a few of the bands were wearing sunglasses. This is something I could play into the edit as my main musician adjusts and is accepted for his difference. Overall, the shoot went well with dozens of shots and options captured. However, there were a few unforseen elements like the lens and glasses which may have made the production better but I was shortsighted in not planning ahead with them. For future, I need to interrogate my camera setup in more detail.

Filming Day 2: Friday 9th February

The following day saw the majority of my filming shoot at college in one of the drama rooms. I was able to use this as Jacob was in the morning and I could piggy back off him for use in the afternoon. In future, I must make sure I secure a location previously as I did get extremely lucky with this. My luck continued in terms of costuming. When I was thinking about the scene, I imagined it with a white background and me in a black t shirt as the actor. However, the studio had a black curtain that fitting the film more than that plan although I would be lost in the frame. I was able to borrow a white t shirt from acting in Jacob’s video and used Korben’s black coat over the top at the beginning of the scene to symbolize a thought shift half way through when it came off to reveal white. Overall, this day proved that although I understood Chazelle’s work and colour theory in detail, I hadn’t worked hard enough to apply this to my scene. Fortunately, I was able to problem solve during the day and made the shoot work with assistance from my classmates. 

For the shoot, I acted and Korben and Ben together took on my cinematographers. I talked them through the film as well as giving them the storyboard and shot list, which they understood and could get to work. I believe this is a credit to the work and comprehensibility I put into those documents as the shots lined up to the original plan well. We took just over an hour to get all the shots on the list for scenes 1,2 and 4 and the process was simple. Korben, being a great cinematographer, was able to add additional shots of the instrument to give the montage more variety. In terms of blocking, I was able to lay out the chairs, music stand and table as planned from my storyboard. However, I should’ve drawn up a formal blocking script. This came with not confirming a location as I didn’t know the type of space I’d end up using. For my FMP, I need to make sure locations and props are secured in advance and bring this into my production documents.  

Editing Day 1: Saturday 10th February

With all of my footage in toe, it was time to move into post production. Overall, I was happy with the shots I had and began on a rough cut. Since I was filming in LOG format, I needed to go back later to colour grade with a LUT, which I discovered in my research, but for this day I simply wanted a rough cut. One of the issues I discovered early on was the sound as we could hear noises from the corridor in the background which would remain obvious as there would be no score in the opening half of the film. I did what I could with the atmos I collected to splice together an audio track that could work. For my FMP, I intend on getting the assistance of Mattie from Sound Tech to record as this is an area I’m not focused on but makes a huge difference. I was contempt with the range of shots I had available for my main montages and ended up cutting a few. It was good that we had an excess of footage that I could draw from. This is a common part of the industry. However, one area where I wish we filmed more was with the inserts of the sheet music. Many of these were unfocused or moving shots. Tracking shots for that were good but I also needed some static ones as it’s the combination of these that reference Chazelle’s style. I ended up referring to some of the opening shots during the music montage which instead brings the short together. Although I was still in LOG Format, I applied a black and white filter to give an idea of the finished product. To me, this element really highlights the theme and how different the worlds with and without the glasses are.

Editing Day 2: Tuesday 13th February

The second day of editing became more stressful. Having completed the first two minutes of my rough cut, it came to bringing in the cut down track of Rhapsody in Blue I prepared in my pre production stage. This track was 2.5 minutes and had been found from 16 minutes. Although this was great, I needed to cut it down further to fit a 3 minute assignment cut off. I also still had the archived montage with band shots to edit which I needed to source. After careful consideration, I decided to leave out the RGS band footage and archived montage in order to maintain a streamlined story for a 3 minute runtime. In future, I could return to this project and expand it to fully flesh out the themes and story. My worry with cutting this section was that the themes would be lessened but that was something to survey after completing the film. I believe the cut I ended with delivers on two out of three areas of Chazelle’s work that I focused on. Primarily, the Whiplash influence can be seen in this edit through the pacing and shot types while La La Land is seen through the palette and circular revolving shot with spotlight. I used a LUT to complete a base colour grade before exaggerating the blue and exposure to gain the effect I have detailed previously. 

On this page you can find the ungraded edit while the completed film is on the ‘Final Video’ page.

Shot breakdowns

Footage