Arina & Noor roles:
Arina and I share all the roles of this music video production: director, editor, camera person, actor, planner.
However, Arina took on the main role in editing and I have gathered the ideas and created storyboards for our filming.
First filming
Date: 09/09/2022
Location: Great Wall of China
Planning: We had no specific plan for this filming except for an underwater shot of me falling into the pond which we would then edit to be in slow motion. We also managed to borrow a drone from our teacher which we would use at one of the towers, and since the part of Great Wall we went wasn’t one of the hot tourist spots, it was perfect because it would be flooded with people. We didn’t create a storyboard as we wanted to freestyle and absorb inspiration from nature.
The Great Wall ruins
Arina and I arrived in the afternoon and went to one of the Great Wall ruins (the ruin we went was safe) later that night. We used fluorescent lights to light up the tower and experimented with angles, lighting as well as camera movement. The main focus was lip-syncing and so we filmed a range of close ups as well as a high-angle shot of me reaching for Arina’s hand creating a vulnerable and desperate feeling which was used in the final music video.
The second day we went at noon to the water reservoir location and something very unexpected happened---there was no water, it was completely dried up (global warming…)! This has never happened before; each year there was a lot of water, so this was a factor I didn’t consider. We decided not to be defeated so we did some filming, I filmed Arina’s silhouette on the reflection of a thin layer of water. This shot was finally used as part of the teaser videos for my social media page.
We then climbed the Great Wall (which was very tiring) to reach the tower. When we were setting up the drone, another unexpected incident occurred---we forgot to bring a type-c device to connect to the drone. My super supportive mother came to the rescue and brought her phone which used a type-c charger. When waiting for my mother to save us, we filmed some other shots that explores my character’s initial purity innocence (as Billie Eilish’s intention, the purity illustrated is in terms of knowledge and experience in society, not sexually) by incorporating the arched entries as the framing. I also interacted with areas of shades and sunlight within the architecture as symbolism for fluctuating between darkness and hope, with sunshine symbolically representing happiness and good. However, when I sit in the ray of sunshine, the gestalt of sunshine at this point could be exposure—exposed to all the shades of society.
The drone filming went quite smoothly, at first it was a bit tricky to get the drone functioning but after some research both from the manual and online, we managed to get it starting. Because I had to face the sun, it was very blinding and I couldn’t really open my eyes but then the sun set down a little and I got used to it so I managed to not squint my eyes or stare in a scary way at the drone. There weren’t many tourists on the tower but there was one child who was very curious to what we were doing and so continuously entered the frame. After communicating with the child in a friendly way, he began to understand and at the end, we managed to have two fantastic footage of the drone dolly back from a mid-shot to a wide shot showing the entire tower.
Second filming
Date: 28/09/2022
Location: Harrow Beijing swimming pool
Planning: Because we didn’t get to film the underwater shots at the great wall, we decided to try at our school’s swimming pool. The plan was to film a mid-shot of me collapsing into the water, another footage of me in the water looking numb then suddenly opening my eyes as if being activated, creating an eerie, scary feeling. We also had a vague idea of me interacting with the camera (breaking the fourth wall, reaching out to it).
There were a few bumps during the filming:
1. The lighting and setting were not ideal as the space only had a few white LED lights and the floats in the pool felt not neutral enough and might draw the audience’s attention to the swimming pool background.
2. I couldn’t sink down to the bottom of the swimming pool so I kept on floating back up, I was then reminded by our PE teacher that I had to let out all my breath in order to sink down.
3. There was also a time when the Go pro didn’t record the full video, so we had to export some files and change the batteries.
Overall, this filming wasn’t that successful but we did use the footage of my reaching my hand out to the camera which than transitions to another shot with Arina for the final music video.
Third filming
Date: 26/12/2022
Location: A professional underwater filming set
Planning:
These series of underwater shots were inspired by the photoshoot 'mermaid' by Jvdas Berra
The storyboard planning was very helpful and made the filming process extremely effective and efficient as we challenged ourselves to film within one hour to both economize time, energy and money. I couldn’t find a puffy white dress that was minimalistic enough so instead I strapped some white mosquito nets which created an ideal effect, although at times it was hard to prevent it from falling off or tangling my ankles together. We first filmed the shots with the white fabric and then added the red mosquito net to create contrast to the monotonous colour tone, the red seemed more powerful due to the juxtaposition of the white and symbolized emotion and passion.
This filming was very successful as we managed to get great footage and all within the one hour limit which is definitely a record for Arina and I.
Fourth & final filming
Date: 27-28/12/2022
Location: My home—bathtub and bedroom
Planning: I have collected an ‘album’ of inspirations I saw on social media or at exhibitions, this definitely made filming more smooth and efficient.
-To prepare for the scene, I put some synthetic lotus leaves and seaweed in the water to create a setting of the pond from the ‘Ophelia’ painting.
Inspired by Nicole York
Bathtub---Ophelia
When filming for this, we put a small stool in the bathtub so that Arina can lay her head on so she may lip-sync without stretching her neck. I also had to make sure that the sides of the bathtub weren’t slippery or wet to prevent me from slipping which would be catastrophic as it would ruin the camera.
This filming took around 40 minutes to 1 hour which was within our planning range.
Holy room scene
I created a simple storyboard for this scene:
To prepare for the scene, I clipped a black cloth on the rail of my bed so we could have a clean background.
We then moved on to filming this shot:
I clipped a red transparent plastic sheet on the light and turned off the other lights in my room so that all we can see is the red background and my silhouette.
At first, the red light emitted wasn’t blood red which was our intended colour, so we switched the warm tone of the light bulb to white which was better and we also decided that the colour tones would be adjusted during the editing process.
The area of red light wasn’t as broad as we expected so I had to limit my original arm moves to my hands and fingers.
Our last look with the black cloth:
The makeup was inspired by makeup artist 歌雅Geya from social media and we chose this look because we wanted to look a bit other-worldly and also the circular shape is an element we intended to depict as it represents infinity and wholeness, connoting that the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ in a person functions as Yin and Yang.
Arina and I embody this idea through physical theatre; Arina covering my mouth and controlling me with her hands only, illustrating the unknown, mysterious source of this new energy dominating my character.
Ikea:
We went to Ikea, at the ground floor within the storage stacks and this scene was very much inspired by this photoshoot by Tim Walker for 1999 Vogue Italy, the sense of objectifying and treating an individual as commodity just as Billie Eilish sings ‘they’re gonna treat you like a souvenir, just to sell you in a year’. Hence, I thought it would be interesting to use a ribbon to block my eyes and strap around me as if I were a gift. I then also considered the recent topic about Britney Spears’ case which reminded me of the post she posted years ago of her with the yellow shirt holding yellow flowers calling for help. Therefore, I got a yellow flower and held it in my hand, calling out for help silently. This explores the power of society and in particular the media, how it can destroy but also save someone’s rights, this is a topic explored in GOLDWING---it discusses the public’s influence on an individual especially one in the musical industry and how harmful those opinions and ideals may be.
This filming was successful, however if we had checked the footage right after filming it we would have realized that we could adjust the lighting slightly as there was a lot of noise, but considering the guards were asking us to stop filming and leave, we did a good job in managing to get the footage we were hoping for.
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