Test Shots and Transitions

Hi everyone!

Something I learned last year was to have trialled as much as possible all the shots and transitions before filming, so as to know what works and what doesn't. Last year there was one shot that did not work at all because it was a transition where in the first shot, the light source was behind the character and in the second shot it was in front of the character so what should have been a smooth transition became patchy and even with post-production, I couldn't fix it. Therefore, this year I made a point about trying out the transitions before I wrote the more specific transitions in the storyboard, I tried them out.

Here are some of my test shots. I do have many others, however, they are not presentable for the blog. Nevertheless, all the mirror transitions can be summed up into the one that I will show here which is the culmination of the previous work.

I definitely found this very useful so I hope you enjoy this post!

xx Natalia

---

Location Scouting and Test Shots for the Digipak:

I went location-scouting with my sister to try out how some shots would look in different locations, which is where I found the graffiti I used in the digipak.

The natural setting is pretty and rather nice with the trees.

I also tested the rolling shot of the first chorus, realising how important the gimbal was for it!

---

Mirror Test Shots:

The mirror transitions were the most important ones in my video because they were there to add another dimension to the climax of the song, but they had to be done well and I wanted to make sure I could do them before I wrote them down on the storyboard.

After many tries with shots that I cannot show here, unfortunately, I arrived at this video of the one shot I wanted to carry out in a circular fashion through the mirror.

The most complicated thing about this shot is not being seen in the mirror when filming it, which is also why the gimbal (in the real thing) helped me keep my balance whilst I crouched to not be seen.

---

Transition Test Shot:

On the day of the filming, I also filmed this transition shot several times to make sure it was going to work, just in case I had to find another alternative on the spot. I have taken this idea from another music video that I saw last year, and I think it goes perfectly well with the lyrics of "lay myself down and hope I wake up young again".

What is important about this transition is cutting to and from black to make it smoother, although another way would be to cut to a similar colour, such as in my other transitions where I use a grey lamppost to cut to a grey sweater, or use the sky to cut between two shots.

And here is a video of how I filmed the real thing on the park!

Keeping my balance and reaching a black shot on the narrow bench was a struggle, but after a couple of shots I finally did it!

---

Something special is coming soon- I have already filmed most of my footage, so stay tuned to find out more!

---