In three hours the set was ready. The following morning our group met in the editing suit, all excited, and started to instruct the arriving performers. We were well organised, however one of the back vocal singers had a different size to the dress that we ordered for her, hence we started fifteen minutes later than intended as we had to find a substitute. The other actors were present at the earlier rehearsal and knew what was expected of them, so without much discussion we started rolling.
I think we did quite well in creating the image we needed for our concepts. The set design was similar to what we intended when we came up with the idea. The stage looked realistic despite the limited space we had and by correctly positioning people at the tables we managed to make an impression of a crowd, although in reality it consisted of four people.
As a director I called the shots and answered the questions the actors had about their performance. Nevertheless, I attempted not to interfere with the production process if there did not seem to be any issue requiring my attention. By keeping the process going rather than striving for perfection our group was working efficiently, without spending time and energy on unnecessary aspects. As a result, we finished filming the band scene right on time and moved on to the other two elements.
I also did some camerawork and assisted the filming process by moving the equipment, holding the playback and doing the general administrative work, which means organising the actors and making sure that the crew does not fall behind on the schedule.
The first problem that we encountered when shooting was that our punchbag was left in a boarding house. The original plan was to go back and bring it over to the campus over the lunchtime, but we were now short on time to do that. We decided to use what we had on the campus instead. We borrowed boxing pads from our school's head of sports and asked our Media teacher to play the role of a coach.
Filming the ballerina was probably the most successful part of the shoot, since despite the limited timeframe we managed to get multiple quality shots. This was mostly due to the high skills of the performer; she carried out everything we asked of her and also provided some improvisation.
Overall, I think we were very productive in our work. I wish we had more time for the boxer; although we got all the necessary shots we did not manage to use the dolly. However, for that to happen I would had to pace the crew, maybe ask people to miss the lunch, which means the process would be stressful and greater tiredness could cause technical mistakes; for example the cameraman could miss the optical focus or lights could be broken as people would drop them from lacking concentration. This would weaken our cooperation and we would not be able to keep up the teamwork that we managed to construct.
Our actors did very well, especially the lead singer and the ballet dancer. They required minimal information from me to understand what they had to do in each scene. The performance element included the most people and needed the most direction, thus I found filming it the most enjoyable.
I hope that Kristien kept in mind all the editing features that we discussed, such as matching the movements of the boxer and the ballerina. It is also important to time the appearance of the boxer and the ballerina right, otherwise the audience will be bored by the excessive shots of them. I am looking forward to seeing how the three actions will be correlated in post and viewing the overall campaign, which was made in the same style with the music video.
One thing I learned is that, as a director, I sometime have to take action independently from the other crew members in order to set the best conditions for the group work. For example, I could have started to deconstruct the set myself, but because I first wanted to settle all the aspects of the upcoming scene with the rest of the crew I wasted the time which we could later use for additional shots of the boxer. In the future shoots I will make sure to do everything possible to guide the production process more firmly to make it more efficient.
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