Production Diary 9: Continuing research tasks and begin filming

This week I have again been very busy as not only am I coming close to finishing off the research tasks and most of the planning tasks, I am also planning and started shooting for my BFI short film, 'Title Unknown' - at this point. Today we actually started filming, and as I'm the cinematographer and it's from the point of a view, I essentially have to become the dog, so everything sorta relies on me, a very demanding and pressurising task! It was a long, tiring day however this experience has given me massive insight into what to do when preparing for my music video - I need to think about lighting, props, actors, call sheets etc - as with today you always need to expect the unexpected e.g. this morning was a bit of nightmare, as the calling time was 10am, the actors dropped out, the director's car broke down and the editor and supervisor were delayed by engineering problems, so in actual fact we didn't start till 11.10, which whilst may not seem like a lot, actually put us back an awful lot, especially as now at this time of year the light disappears very quickly - it was very handy that the producer noted the time of sunset so we knew what we had to work to.
As for research tasks, I have continued them and completed the following: Research into Artist, Research into Genre, and also the planning tasks of the Ancillary Task 1: The Magazine Advert. Researching to the artist gives me an idea of how exactly Gabrielle Aplin and her image are portrayed and to convey that over in my music video - how she moves, what emotions she shows whilst performing, clothes etc - I don't want to completely copy her but I did choose her and her song for a reason - because I admire her and want to portray her in my own way and style.
The Research into Genre task helped because it now lets me know what I should (and shouldn't) be including in my music video, the conventions of Indie Music. This is actually quite difficult because a lot of the time music genres overlap a lot and their conventions are similar.
And the Ancillary Task, of which I decided to create the magazine advert first, because I think this order will help me with the design of the digipak.  I created this magazine using the program Adobe InDesign as I have used it before and therefore won't waste time in teaching myself how to use it, and also I think it is the best suited program for the job. I based the design on previous students' work and also my own imagination. Overall it was actually very easy to do and the whole thing only took me about 30 minutes. I cannot do any further work until I have the image of the polaroid photos being set alight by the candle. I have put a Polaroid Camera (Impulse AF) on my Christmas List, so hopefully one will turn up on Christmas Day!

Here is a picture from shooting the short film for BFI to show me in action:

@EastsideLondon Never work with children or animals. Day 1 #bfifilmacademy Baby POV shot. pic.twitter.com/PtF38L3Ac2
— Bevan Walsh (@beanwalls) November 15, 2014