CH - Band shots reccie

Yesterday at lunch, Rosie, Josh and I gathered our band together for the first rehearsal in the form of a reccie.

We aimed to establish if our band worked well together; The Enemy have a very distinctive group dynamic that we wish to emulate, and to do so we need to ensure our own band works as a team.
As a group, we met in the drama studio; we did not consider costume or any larger aspects of mise en scene, besides basic props, because at this time in planning detail is unneccesary. We arranged the group as they will be in the film and took a series of shots, including CU, ECU, MS, LS, and considering panning/other forms of movement throughout.

What we have learnt thus
After half an hour or so, we begun to become accostomed to the practicalities and limitations of our scenario; for instance, the performance has to be believable and in-synch, something difficult to achieve without the song present. To the left was our most succesful shot; a low angle ms featuring sillhouette effect lighting. This gave a very pleasing overall effect, as well as being quite easy to shoot. We wanted to give our video an amateur but not 'shabby' appearance, in accordance to genre-specific ideology such as the juxtaposition of indie culture to the theories surrounding popular culture. For instance, the lack of Star image being created in indie videos suggesting they are purposefully denying the advertising elements of music videos, instead preferring to consider each video as art, without huge corporate-backed budgets. With this in mind, we also had to consider the 'family' effect that indie bands create around their band members; in accordance to our research, even if the bands themselves aren't present in performance pieces, they build a very relatable scenario, containing narrative fuzz that the audience are able to compare their own lives to (aiming for verisimiltude) so our performers had to act comfortable with one-another, as an 'ordinary band' would do, had they not reached celebrity status. This relates to the theory of being present yet absent, ordinary yet extraordinary; in this way, indie bands conform to some popular culture ideology, by doing things like breaking the 4th wall to appear 'present' to the audience. Thinking about this, we structured the shot above to resemble an 'ordinary' band, yet in a scenario with connotations of power and celebrity status (as they appear to be performing in a stadium, as the audience would read from the iconic row of staging lights.) In conclusion, the band reccie was considered very successful, and we are left with a good idea of the end aesthetics our video will encompass.