Fashion Media

Today was our major day of filming where we shot the main narrative for our film. We moved all our equipment, garments (re-pressed from the day before), makeup, lif and tripod to our Newtown warehouse location where we had chosen to shoot the main narrative of our film. We chose this location as it provided a really urban atmospheric backdrop for our clothes, however was still quite plain and as such would not overpower the garments. The styling of the clothes was the same as the second green room narrative however we simply swapped which model was wearing each look. This in turn showed off the unisex nature of each look and supported our concept of gender performativitiy.
We also decided to make the makeup more natural/smokey as we thought this gave both looks more of a commercial vibe and was more appropriate for the main narrative of our film as we were branding the commercial diffusion line of Barbara I Gongini.  

After watching both some good and mediocre fashion films in class from previous years it became apparent that attention to detail and finessing the appearance of both the clothes and models could make or break a film. Due to this I took it upon myself (as the 'makeup/hair artist') to make sure the slick hair remained slick throughout the day and that collars and lapels were sitting as they should. I even taped the inside of Sarah's hand with duct tape at one stage so the knuckle ring in one of the close up shots was sitting correctly!

To counter act the shakiness of filming on an iPhone (which would be fine if it was part of our concept) we created the most ingenious dolly in the industry. A shopping trolley with a tripod set up inside with cardboard boxes to prevent the tripod falling through the gaps, and finally my iPhone taped to the tripod mount. I'm not going to lie, I was quite nervous at times that my iPhone would get some battle wounds from the exercise, however our dolly proved reliable and my phone no worse for it! This device allowed us to film walking sequences and panning shots with minimal shakiness so we could achieve the professional smooth frames we desired.
 

Our next issue was lighting, as the warehouse had a sunlight on one side of the space, such that as the day progressed the lighting inevitably changed as well. We did anticipate lighting in a foreign space could be problematic so we brought with us 4 flood lights however due to the nature of the space and a lack of power points in the areas that needed extra lighting they were not really that useful. Luckily the door leading to the street was on the side without the sunlight so we opted to have that open as the afternoon progressed to try and counter balance the moving sunlight. 

Our last obstacle was shot alignment. One of the main concepts within our narrative is a series of shots back and forth between the two characters walking towards each other. This meant that it was integral for each frame to line up correctly in regards to the level of the floor, the depth of field of the subject walking and the distance from each subject. Limited by materials and equipment at hand we made do by marking on the group with tape both where each subject started and where we (the ones filming) were standing. This gave us a rough guide for go by for each time we re shot the sequence (which was many!) Whilst this was a good starting point, it did not prove accurate enough to satisfy my slight OCD tendencies, which led me to create a sort of make-shift grid using duct tape on the iPhone screen. This was a stroke of genius and made the following shots after this invention a lot easier and more accurate.