Filming Day 5- Projection

Projection Trials

 We had planned to use projection in our A2 music video therefore we thought that we'd have a practice session before filming the actual footage. We all decided to project these images in the photography dark room as this was the environment that we were guaranteed complete darkness in order to achieve maximum colour/brightness. I am glad we made this decision as this setting turned out to be the perfect place to trial the projection and we would definitely use it again in the future for our actual filming. We firstly selected different types of images to use, we stuck to our more nature based theme by choosing sunsets, flowers and crystal blue water and printed these out onto acetate after colour correcting them on Photoshop to accentuate the bold impact they will create.

We experimented with the images once we had individually put them on the projector. We immediately rejected the floral and water photographs as they had a lot of detail to them which was immediately lost once placing them on a figure- this therefore meant that they looked distorted and ineffective, if I were a viewer I wouldn't know what the image was of! 

We found that the sunset image worked most successfully, the colours were vibrant which linked to our theme of summer and nature- this was an important factor as it would bring consistency to our video. Also, due to the nature of a sunset, the fact that it may have looked slightly distorted didn't effect the quality of anything as a sunset is mainly based on colour so it works perfectly as a more abstract concept.

We also noted the fact that a black top didn't work with the projection. It meant that the images didn't show up at all and therefore did not look professional (we are aiming for our video to look professional). We then got our artist to try on a white top (as pictured above) which worked much better as the projected images appeared sharper/brighter. Saying this, our artist then posed with the images projected onto her bare back which looked most fitting and natural, we all agreed that this was how we wanted the shots in our actual video to appear- it also introduced elements of innocence and beauty and thought it would be a unique approach.

From carrying out these trials, we decided that we would definitely like to use projection in our final video as we can already see how effective it looks.

Filming Projection for our Video

We wanted to have more creative and 'arty' visuals in our video, therefore had the idea of using a projector to project images which we had printed out onto acetate onto our artist's back.

Our reasoning behind choosing a sunset image for our first projection was that it would link back to a sunset establishing shot in which we had previously filmed in Faversham. This would therefore provide more consistency in our video to make sure that, visually, it flows well.

We had our artist pose with a bare back so that the photograph projected clearly without any interruptions or distractions of clothing- I believe that this worked successfully as it made sure that our footage remained of a professional quality and also proved that our idea was well thought out, planning around any hurdles which could have faced us during filming.

We set up our filming on location in the dark room. This location was successful because it guaranteed us darkness so that there were no light interruptions during projecting the images. A reason why this photograph worked so well was due to the fact that the colours were striking and could therefore show up/stand out on Nova's back. Also, as it is a conventional natural landscape image, we didn't have to worry about any possible distortion when projected onto the curvature of her back- this meant that it would still be recognisable to the audience and wouldn't look odd in any way.

We decided to reject this image that we projected onto her back. The idea was to have her ex boyfriend presented to the audience. We felt that it would introduce him to the viewer and may reinforce the idea of the fact that the song is about a breakup. Although I felt that it achieved all of these factors successfully, when reviewing the footage we all agreed that it looked a little too comical which was not good when we are aiming for more of a serious music video.

The type of camera work we used was mainly panning up the artist's back as she posed to clearly emphasise the image projected. Nova would then occasionally look over her shoulder which I felt looked successful as more direct eye contact was involved between her and the viewer so not only does it mean the audience can familiarise themselves with her but a personal connection also remained which I believed to be important.