Shooting our film

Wow we managed to shoot our film in one day in the studio. It was hard work and we also had some difficulties but we managed in the end. It was so nice to see all our ideas and hard work and creations come to life and see the finished outcome on what we had in our minds on what we wanted to film.

Our make-up artist turned up and she was amazing. I am so pleased I knew her and she was able to help out as the make-up really made a difference of the costumes and made our promo look so much more professional. She left though as soon as she had finished the make-up, I feel we would have benefited if she had stayed longer, as we took so long to finish filming the make-up was started to ware off. Also because we had to drink, around the mouth and lips was the worst. But we made sure to do the close ups first because of this reason.

I feel because we were never able to find a second dancer and I had to fill in, I was not so much able to have my input in what the camera angles looked like, etc. But I was still helping to direct it as Kis had lots to do.

When James came in to help our styling he was great help and really let our imaginations open up and not hold back. I learnt to be more adventurous and trust myself with being completely out their with the styling as after all that what our designer Emma Bell is all about.

I have included some setting up and ‘in the process’ photos. Also some stills a photographer took while we were shooting the film. You can see how amazing the make up and costumes were, also the wigs just finish it off. I also feel how both dancers were the same heights made this loads better, and really helped.

I am pleased with the outcome of the day, and we will show raw footage to Dennis today. I am pleased. But did not think how long it would take to film. I thought we would only do a couple of takes since we had all three cameras at different angles running at the same time. But took much longer, as sometime either dancer would make a mistake. Also overcoming the lighting was difficult as we had problems first even getting hold of lighting, and then when we had it, it was not bright enough so we had to experiment and we managed to get it bright enough. We had shadows which was not the idea and plan in the beginning, but I liked it as the huge Afro shadows behind us helped create the humor more.