Woods Filming Plan

By Myself and Matt Dickinson

Filming in the woods is going to be our first shots for the music video. Therefore it is key that we plan it well. The inspiration is very broad as a wood scene isn't the most original of places but we still had a base of concepts and ideas we want to meet when we go out there. As a group we realized that a wooded environment had a lot of potential as there was a wide contrast of colours, terrain, shapes (in terms of trees) and also it is very spacious which could give the us license to use a wide range of shots.

Looking around on youtube at past videos people have submitted on youtube and came across a video shown. The music is nothing a like but the way the video is shot is very artistic. For example when we looked at the video 'Into the Wild' by The Maccabees, the whole video is centered around artistic and picturesque shots which feature the protagonist as well as showing off the 'beauty' of nature. As the character is topless throughout, it gives the idea of a back to basics and natural feel which is not seen so much these days with very dramatic scenes such as car chases and explosions alongside of a performance becoming more regular. We liked this idea as it is not as common as some directors may view it as limited and dull - we see this the opposite. By using many different shots described in the pitch and use the light through the trees as seen in The Maccabees video we can portray this artistic approach.

As we are shooting in the winter the woods aren't as picturesque as they would be in the summer and the way he counter acts this by shooting in black and white but doesn't lose the quality of the picture by mixing the high quality slow and close ups. The Steadi-cam is used really well in this shot tracking and following the characters movement and it feels like the us as the viewers are gliding through the air. Although if we shoot in snow it may give our video an edge and something that is quite dramatic yet beautiful at the same time. The start song says "We are young and naive still" so we as mentioned want to go back to basics and portray this young 'innocence' so snow may help convey this.

Crops from 'Into the Wild' video (above)

The location by my house (Luke) is quite dull with the ground covered in dead leaves, shown in the images from location research and with the fact that we don't want to film in black and white we are going to have to experiment with colour correction to bring out the image more, making it more "life like". By colour grading it we can make it appear more aesthetically pleasing and professional. It almost needs to look idealistic.






One of the most basic things that we had to think about was actually the temperatures. As it was winter the temperature was freezing cold outside adding in a windchill factor as we were filming in the middle of the woods. As it was so cold and we wanted the actor to wear specific clothing which weren't exactly designed for the cold it was important that we did something to keep each other and especially her warm so that we could film for as long as possible. Therefore i ordered some hand warmers 50p from amazon which lasted 10 hours so were highly efficient and were small enough to fit in pockets or gloves acting as small radiators.





The other problem with being in the middle of the woods was the lack of power options. This means that if the battery was to die then there would be no where to charge it up. On the other hand if the camera was full then there would be a problem with changing thing removing the memory. To deal with this problem we made sure we brought an extra battery fully charged for each camera (4 in total) and we both brought our laptops out to clear memory cards if they got full. Also we brought an extra memory card just in case something was to go wrong with one to cover all possibilities.