When deciding to use 'Carter's Steam Fair' as a possible location for the shots whereby the protagonist was chasing the girl, I had a vivid vision in my head of our actor following the girl round a fairground at night, where the multicoloured LED lights of the rides shone and glistened with a shallow depth of focus. I believe that filming with these lights will provide the music video with a dreamlike quality/mise-en-scene, and in particular the visuals could match the audio as this resonates with the lyric 'somewhere there's a light.' If I captured shots of rides spinning around in HD, I could reduce the speed of the visuals using optical flow, which would look particularly captivating. The following images depict what I envisaged shots of the lights to look like:
For research I watched two short films that were primarily shot at fairgrounds to decipher how they framed their shots and utilised the lighting:
'ANNA':
The first film 'ANNA', included several low-angle shots of their protagonist's on a spinning rollercoaster, from behind the scenes photos it is evident that they strapped their camera to a rig on the ride. However, as we do not have the budget or technology for an expensive rig to protect our camera (limited means), if we were to film on a ride we could use a GO-PRO. Go-Pro's have many accessories, including a durable head-strap; this could be placed on the head of our DOP who will sit opposite to the protagonist on the ride, filming them. This close-up shot would be more personal and disorientating, allowing the viewer to believe they are too on the ride. This may be particularly engaging for our young target audience who are commonly referred to adrenaline seekers, who enjoy rollercoasters. This could be evidenced by the concept that the prime customers of the nearby theme park, Thorpe Park, are young people aged 17-25. Many of the close-up shots have a primary focus on the actors and a shallow depth of focus to display the bright fairground attraction lights in the background. This is a feature I would like to incorporate into our music video, as displaying these bright LED lights would adhere to the convention of iconographic LED lighting usage in indie music videos, whilst appearing aesthetically pleasing and almost dreamlike to the viewer. At the beginning, there was an out of focus long-take shot of the disorientating lighting.
'A NIGHT AT THE FAIR':
The second film consists of time-lapses of the fairground and its hub of activity. From this I have deciphered that I would like to include several establishing shots of crowds of people, in particular POV left to right pan shots of the crowds, to display that the protagonist is unable to find the girl in and amongst the crowd of people. A quick pan from left to right with a quick cut of a pan from left to right shot of the lip-syncing band would also make the perfect transition between a shot of the fairground to the lip-syncing shots. I like that throughout this video, the frame remains static, whilst activity occurs within the frame.
TEST SHOTS:
After collating all of this information, I went to a travelling funfair and took a multitude of test-shots that will be used within the 'Bright Lights' at the funfair montage. I experimented with depth of field and in particular, took many shots with the foreground in sharp focus, but the twinkling lights in the background out of focus. I also took a POV shot on a ride.
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