Construction Post 3: Week 3 video and photo shoots

The third week of production was mostly finishing planning for our outdoor promo shots, and then carrying out these plans, all in the span of the one week we had allocated for this. This presented its own set of challenges in comparison to the studio promo shoot- while we no longer had as strict timing for when we could take the photos, we were also no longer using a controlled environment in school. We thus had to plan just as much as with the other promo shots, just for different reasons.

Our Challenges

We had to get permission from our teachers to leave school during a lesson, and then stay out of school through the end of that lesson into some shared free periods which we had scheduled for media use back at the start of the project. Then we had to get permission from the school office in order to leave the premises during school hours. We thus had to make sure we got everything ready quickly and efficiently so we could do everything properly and officially while still having enough time to take a variety of photos. We arrived to school in most of our costume, as the costumes consisted of normal clothes designed to look like something our characters would wear, and I provided the photography equipment as I do it outside of school as a hobby- this meant we had one less thing to organise in school and sign off for, as we didn't have to use any of media's equipment. We then used the area around the school as the location for our first shoot, since we had London streets, a park, and a bus stop to work with just a couple of streets away from school at max. Thus we overcame the challenge of staying on time even with all the extra preparation needed but still getting all the photos we wanted.

Our second challenge was finding a wider variety of photos to get. We decided to use the weekend to go to Whitechapel, an area further into London not too far from any of us, and then take photos with our phones instead of dedicated cameras, to mimic the look of the band going out. This came with its own challenges, such as organising ourselves without in-school meetings, and travelling into London, but we overcame these and reaped the benefits of more photos, which were more candid than our previous pictures, all in a new location, and in the evening too, and we even had the chance to get Tom in some more photos, as he could not attend the previous shoot around the school in Edmonton. Thus we managed to get a very large variety of shots across both shoots in the span of a week.

A candid 'selfie' taken by Noa as Casey with the rest of us acting as our characters too. This kind of shot is important as it further reinforces our band's identity, shows them as real people going out into London like any group of friends might, and includes Tom who up to this point had been slightly underrepresented in the photoshoots. Click to enlarge.

My Contributions

I contributed to this stage of the project as I have done for all stages. I was an actor in all of the shots, both by myself in solo shots and interacting with Noa and Jack (and later Tom) as their characters for further characterisation and interesting promotional shots. I took a lot of the photos, as Noa was in more photos than either me or Jack as she is the main personality of the band, and thus required one of us to be using the camera, and because Noa and Jack were often in photos together as part of their sibling personas, necessitating myself being on the camera. I also provided my own photography equipment for group use as a way of saving some time and effort by bypassing the need to use the media department's equipment. I provided two lenses, and got to learn how to use the second lens which I had only recently acquired- I used it to take some interesting headshots of both Noa and Jack, that were very different than the standard shots and which were unattainable in the studio shoot or with the other lens, and which I learned how to do while out shooting. I of course also helped plan and organise everything.

A shot of Noa and Jack at an Edmonton bus stop, taken by me. We needed a lot of photos like this, as they are important in playing up the relationship between their two characters, and thus I had to take them as the remaining group member. Click to enlarge.

A photo I took of Noa using the second lens I had, with a blurry background effect unachievable with my camera's standard 'kit' lens or in one of the studios. Shots like this are an example of how we pushed ourselves and learned how to experiment with the equipment more when doing our first ever outdoors shoot. Click to enlarge.

Audience Feedback

Our audience told us to get some more candid shots than were possible in the studio- this, combined with teacher advice to get more candid shots that we had already received, lead us to doing the Whitechapel shoot, which was a benefit to us as it provided a lot more and varied material to work with.

We were also told by some target audience members to play up the personality of the front of the band, which for us is the singer. This is one of the things that lead us to taking lots of pictures of Noa acting as Casey, as well as lots of pictures of her interacting with Jack as her character's brother, to further her personality.

Our Progress

Overall I think this week was a success. We expanded on the success of the previous photography week by getting another swathe of images, very different to the last week's images, and different between both of this week's shoots. While we could have found more opportunities in Whitechapel, we still managed to best the darker conditions and take some good nighttime photos to supplement our Edmonton photos. We responded to the unique challenges of each shoot, while adapting based on our own ideas and audience feedback, and obtained a lot of material for the website and, crucially, our band's social medias, where outdoor shots will form the majority of photos posted instead of studio shots. We ended up with a large variety of shots to serve us well in the rest of the project.