So here I will be covering all my test and BTS shots, talking about the various areas I used, the equipment, and camera settings, what went well, what didn’t.
Locations –
Okay so here we have the locations I used, the first four being in my own house, I put Jack there as it was me, these are also test shots too. The area in the house had lots of space for wires and the lights, along with the tripod. So there wasn’t any reason for any accidents, but I made sure that all wires were out of the way. I wanted different seats in the house because it just doesn’t look good when I am sitting in just one area the entire time. It gets boring.
As you can see, I also used a wood area close to my house, this area was just random after filming, I originally was just going to film it all in my house, but then realised all my footage is in that house, so for all the random scenery shots of my photos in different locations was all filmed in here, I put them in trees, bushes, grass, anything I thought looked good I put it there, just to add more footage, also helps for context in the video itself.
I also used another outside location, which is my back garden, I thought of an idea to use the interview and a scene of me out there but didn’t like the footage, so I just bailed on that idea. The reason I put it in here is because I wanted to show that I thought of some locations but didn’t use them, and to make sure I properly think of locations in the future before a video, make sure that I like it enough to shoot in.
Equipment –
As you can see here, I didn’t use a lot of equipment, which makes sense for the video I am shooting. I had a standard tripod for the static scenes, I didn’t really tend to use it that much, as I wanted most of it to be handheld with a bit of shakiness to it, but the tripod did help at certain scenes.
I also used a Canon 700D camera, very similar to the one I used before for the Usher music video, which really helped as I knew how to change the settings faster. There was this occurrence that happened that the settings wouldn’t show on screen after awhile, and it wouldn’t allow me to use any of the buttons either, but since I used a similar one before, In knew how to fix it.
I also used my own lights for this, the main reason is because the lights I used for my advert were such a hassle to use, since I travel by bus I had to bring them with me and they were very heavy, so I wanted to save that hassle and just buy these soft box lights, which work really well for standard, non visible lighting in videos, it makes it look softer. I also got them because they were really good for us in the Usher music video, they were very light, bright and just a very convenient thing to use.
For the microphone, I used the standard radio mic, which was the only mic I could actually use since all the other ones were booked as I forgot to order one. But it turns out this mic was probably better off for this type of video as I was able to hide it a bit with my black hoodie (which is why I wore it) and it has a more clear voice pick up. There are times in the footage where it fuzzes up a bit but that part of the clip won’t need any audio so it worked out fine.
The last part of the equipment I used was my own PS4, which is what I use for virtual photography, so I used it for shots of me just taking photos on it. also I used it while filming to record game play footage of me for the video itself.
Camera Settings –
I used various camera settings for each location, although most are pretty similar, they all worked very well with the certain lighting we had through-out different areas.
The main one I used was 200/400 ISO with around 60 aperture and 5.5 shutter speed for the indoor parts, they changed a bit through-out but this helped to get some of the natural light within but also allow my lights to get in there too. It makes it look more realistic and setting anywhere higher would’ve whitened the face a lot, which kept coming up a lot.
For the outside, I lowered the shutter speed and aperture to allow little light come through as it was just pure white, I changed the ISO to 400/800 to test what it looked like, but it looked pretty good through-out. As I went into the woods area, I changed it to 400/200 ISO as it looks very dark, which helped bring out some of the green in the video, which is what I want.
Other BTS shots –
These are just some random shots of me recording the scenery shots of my photos, I wanted to use various areas in random places that I thought looked cool. One thing I was trying to do with some shots is that the main colour pallet of the photo itself to work with the other colours in the background. I found this brown bush in the first shot which I thought looked cool, but also picked out a photo that had a brown-ish tint to it. I also had some ideas to make some colours completely different, to make a contrast which also worked very well.
TV and Film Production 