VHS Shoot And Review - Development

Our second shoot was located more towards Central London, around Brick Lane and the Shoreditch area and eventually China Town.  We took the tripod, despite the fact we rarely used it on previous shoots, and again recorded the day on both a HD and VHS camera. We had the route set up, and met up at Liverpool Street Station, where we then proceeded to film through the streets towards Shoreditch and Brick Lane. After collecting the footage from these areas, we began travelling towards China Town.

A map of the route we took around Spitalfields Market and Brick Lane

The journey between the two locations gave us ample time to review the footage, and we soon realised the majority of footage was that of Louis or Gina from behind. We had tried to get a range of shots before and the fact we had too much footage from the back of the couple had been mentioned but not properly addressed. We decided on review, that we would make more of an effort to shoot from the front of the couple as they walked as well as from other angles. The footage overall was what we were looking for though, as we needed shots of Louis and Gina being happy, which we got plenty of walking around the stores and throughout Brick Lane's shops, however not too many outwardly happy shots, so we also decided to try and get a lot more silly and laughing footage.

Once in China Town, we tried getting all the shots of Louis and Gina which we had missed in the previous location. We got some footage of the two running, laughing and browsing the Chinese tourist gift shops. These were all vital shots, as they showed the couple being happy and having fun together which we knew was essential to the narrative sequence of the video.

Looking back at the footage from the day's shoot, we managed to get some really cute shots of the couple which is exactly what we looking for. We ended up with about 12 minutes of footage for the whole day, with about 4 costume changes and 3 location changes throughout. This was a really successful shoot day, as it meant we had captured a large majority of the VHS shots in one go, which was really satisfying. We noticed that the camera we quite shaky when walking, so decided to try and get more static shots next shoot, still handheld as to keep the home-video effect, but static in order to make the footage easier to watch.