Construction

I went and did my filming at the Jersey Opera house theatre. I used both the main stage and dressing room to help create the musical setting and 1950s era that i have tried to emulate. I had my storyboard with me to help remind me of my ideas and what i needed to capture yet I found that i had to be very open minded to all the ideas given to me by the technician and my

teacher as well as being willing to learn new things and adapt my original ideas as it was all a new experience for me.

I ended up dimming the audience lights to the minimum and mainly having one general spotlight on the middle of the stage, building a strong contrast of dark and light which was enhanced by the black back drop. This strong contrast and keeping the lighting simple made the footage look more realistic and professional and decreased the chance of it looking tacky, this was also enhanced by changing all footage into monochrome once i had uploaded it. This lighting created a silhouette of the figure on stage. I filmed this same lighting and silhouette from three different places including the Gods getting a high angle view, the audience’s floor level giving an off-angle mid shot and directly behind the spotlight on stage again giving a mid-shot yet from a different angle. I found it hard shooting from the Gods as it was far away, therefore i had to zoom and with the limited lighting it caused the footage to turn out slightly blurry. I was originally worried about this but once i had put it in monochrome with the rest of my footage it ended up looking effective and reflecting an old fashioned style.

The stage was simple with a retro microphone in the centre of the spotlight and a grand piano just visible on the left of the stage. My actor who was emulating Frank Sinatra wore a simple black suit with a white shirt and thin black tie with the main accessory being Sinatra’s signature trilby hat. I used the trilby hat a lot throughout my piece to help rein-force the era and style and i feel it really helped to add more of a story and personality to the opening.

The second shot was taken from the back left side of the stage filming the edge of the piano yet with a strong depth of field still capturing the spotlight, microphone and audience as well as Sinatra walking towards the camera. I brightened the audience lights for this to create greater distinction of Sinatra and his actions. This new shot introduced the extra props including the whiskey bottle and glass enforcing new themes,symbolism and deeper context to Sinatra’s life. This shot starts as a medium shot capturing Sinatra walking of stage towards the camera and picking up the whiskey glass.

Once i had completed the on stage footage i moved to a different setting in the dressing room, capturing a stereotypical dressing table and mirror with a boarder of spot lights. Here i focused on capturing the depressive/addictive side of Sinatra’s nature, opposite to his on-stage confident charm, by having the whiskey bottle as a main prop. I asked the actor to contrast with his on stage performance by acting tired out and slightly aggressive which i showed through him leaning on the mirror, holding the whiskey glass up to his head and then slamming it down - showing a temperamental personality. I simply just used the lighting from the mirror to create a warm and dark atmosphere which i ended up changing into monochrome. I had to change it to monochrome because of the pink blind in the background which contradicted both the modern and 1950s eras.

Once i had got all my footage i imported it in to i-movie, once it was all imported i started splitting it up in to six different sections and sharing them as quicktime files ready to add into after effects to start my timeline. The 6 sections all show a sequence of events from an intro of the piano being played, a concert and a dressing room scene.

Here are some images i took whilst i did my filming.

After importing the individual scenes into after effects i had to combine them using a dessert backdrop constructed in 3d studio max. This then was ovverlayed with the six scenes however the harshness of the edge of each piece of footage didnt work so i used a feather on each clip in order to blur them which worked well. I feel that this helped along with the timeline effect to tell the narrative.

above are some photos taken on the day of filming, which closely resembles the feel of the photo below