Rought Cut Filming

We experienced many difficulties whilst filming our video in 3D, such as lighting. We found that one light did not work as the shadows on the objects standing closer to the camera were cast on the backdrop and make the video look unprofessional. We therefore tried to add a second light, but further difficulties came when our own shadows were effecting the video, this we could not prevent. In addition to lighting problems, our props were difficult to manage due to gravity issues. The Milkmaid was held up by strings, and the other objects stuck down by blue-tac. We found that the additional objects in the background would fall over, and were not strong enough to hold themselves up or support other props which were being held against them. The Milkmaid's strings were tangling often and would fall off. Hanging objects such as the sun and pales would twist and turn backwards which made them look less effective as all artwork was done on the front. All of these problems proved very time consuming and it was difficult to shoot one section of the video in one lesson. To try and overcome them all would be virtually impossible and we therefore came up with a new idea, to shoot in 2D. This meant putting the backdrop flat on the table with the camera facing down onto it. The props could therefore rest against it and shadows would definitely not be a problem, except our own. The props are much more easily movable and capturing it with istopmotion made it look very effective. This also gave us the opportunity to add more scenery such as trees and grass, and this added more depth to the video and they were not drawn on, but glued on. This proved to be much easier as we were not restricted to the box, and it was more stable. By shooting it in 2D we were given more versatility and came up with some very effective ideas that you can see in our Rough Cut (e.g. the moving musical notes).
To demonstrate the issues we experienced filming in 3D, here are a few videos of what we filmed.



As you can see, the problems we experienced stood out and would take time to fix. The shadows are extremely obvious from both the props and us handling them, even with lighting. There were many jumps between the different actions which would have meant that it was not smooth, which is what we consider a convention of music videos. The strings are easily visible and at one point one of our hands is visible. Problems like this were hard to fix because we would have to delete all of the footage afterwards in order to film it again as everything would still be moving. Timing was more difficult to predict as we tried to capture everything we were moving as quickly as possible. By filming in 2D, we can watch it back as we are shooting and decide whether we need to make the current action last longer or shorter.

Overall we have made a group decision to film the actual video in 2D. Although this will compromise the effectiveness of the video, we do not have the time to try and fix all the problems that will occur by filming it in 3D. We also think that because there are so many problems with 3D, it would not look as visually striking because the audience may be distracted by the errors. Therefore we are happy to film it in 2D because of the added versatility it gives us.