Filming: Monday 6th of February

Filming Rearrangements

Due to our main actor Luke (the clown) being unavailable on Thursday 2nd of February and possibly unavailable on the Friday after, we scouted around college too find someone of a similar standard and someone who would fit the brief, after being unsuccessful we received a phone call from Luke saying he would be able to film on Thursday and Friday after.
So with our free time, we decided to get organised and arrange what shots we had to get, what makeup we should do and all the little things that would hold us back when it came to filming. After doing all of these things we shot the opening and ending scenes on Friday 3rd of February and now things are under way. 

Risk Assessment and Location Shots

We have discussed as a group locations that we think will be suitable for our video. Ideally they will be somewhere we can all get to easily and that will look authentic. The main location of our video is the theatre our clown is performing in, we have chosen the Ludlow Assembly Rooms as it is a professional theatre that suits the style of our video.It has a large stage and dressing rooms and our group has links with the people who run the theatre, which is important as we will need permission to film and possibly some technical help. We had a meeting with the stage manager at the assembly rooms and he gave us permission to film, as well as emailing us information about when we should schedule our shoot.


Our other locations are around Ludlow town centre, outside a cafe, a jewellery shop and by the river. We have decided on the places in town we wish to use and we will ask permission from shopkeepers on the day, as we are only shooting outside their shops and we can easily find replacements if necessary.
When looking for locations we took note of any health and safety problems and then wrote our a risk assessment table.

	Potential Danger	Potential Outcomes	Actions to Avoid Outcomes	Comments
Assembly Rooms	Tripping on cables, equipment backstage	Minor Injury	Clearing the spaces we will be working in
	Falling on backstage stairs	Serious Injury	No running backstage
	Hurt using Diablo or Spinning Plates	Serious Injury	Act sensibly when using Diablo etc. Give actor plenty of space.	Make sure Luke is comfortable using the equipment, don’t attempt anything too difficult.
	Dropping the Camera	No Injury, Serious Damage to Equipment	Check camera is secure on tripod, use camera strap
	Falling from Balcony	Very Serious Injury	Act sensibly, don’t lean far over the edge
General	Hit by a car	Very Serious Injury	Act sensibly when crossing roads etc., when filming make sure you are well on the pavement	Very Unlikely
	Pedestrians tripping over tripod	Medium Injury	Have someone watching passers by, don’t place the tripod in very busy or small pavements
	Tripping in High Heels	Minor Injury	Don’t run or walk in unsuitable conditions
	Falling in the River	Serious Injury	Don’t run or walk close to the edge

Final Costumes and Props

Narrative Theories

There are many theories about how narrative can be used in any media, and in this post I will analyse some of these theories that relate to our music video.

The first theorist is Levi Strauss, he believes that in media there are 'binary oppositions' these include:

• Good & Bad
• Rich & Poor
• Eastern & Western World
• Love & Hate

Two of these opposites have a role in our music video. Rich and poor are featured throughout, for example the clown has little money and has to perform to earn, whereas the rich man is very sophisticated and smooth, and steals the girl away from the clown, instantly making the audience side with the clown. the fact that the audience know who to feel sorry for also backs up Strauss' theory. As a result of having rich and poor featuring in our video, the opposites of good and bad subsequently take part. The audience get to know who is the 'good guy' and who is the 'bad guy'.

Another theorist that links in with our music video is Barthes. He believes that there are 5 conventions of how media gets the audiences attention. 7

These are:

• The enigma code-audience is intrigued to solve the problem
• The action code-audience is excited to solve the problem
• The semantic code-audience is directed towards an additional meaning
• The symbolic code-audience assumes characteristics based on costumes
• The cultural code-audience finds a meaning in the words/text/lyrics

Our music video has three of these codes included in it. The first code is the enigma code, when watching our music video the audience will want to know what the ending will be, whether the girl tells the clown the truth, and they would be excited to see what happens if and when she does, this also includes the action code. The last code that fits our music video is the sumbolic code, the costumes will play a big part in the video, as the clown will be portrayed as poor just from what he is wearing and the props that he has, the rich man will be dressed in a black suit showing that he is the 'bad guy', and the audience will see this and expect them to act in a certain role.

Focus Group

To get more feedback about our concept we held a focus group with people we think represent our target audience. Our target audience are all digital natives and so the easiest way to communicate with them and organise an event is by using social media. To organise our group we created an event on Facebook and invited people we thought were suitable, this included a time and place to meet us.

Overall the feedback we got was very positive, the group thought we had a very creative and original idea. They agreed that it was something they would watch and wanted to see our video when we created it. They think the video will suit the style and genre of the song and although they did comment about the female singer and whether this matched the male lead actor. The song does also have a male singer, though we will have to make sure that is it clear the male character is the focus in the video. Again there were concerns about how authentic the video would look, in particular the setting, though they thought the Assembly Rooms were a perfect set.

Time Management Update

Today we held our focus group in the library at the college. We invited members of our target audience and asked them questions related to the concept and visual presentation of our music video. We also filmed this to be edited and posted on the blog soon.  We have arranged the actors for the video and are now trying to organise when the best time to film will be. 


We have updated our Outlook calendar to show when and who we will be filming with. The calendar also helps us to plan our time well. The next step for our group will be to finish our posts on Monday and start our filming on Thursday afternoon.