Creative Camera Use

As we decided to make a music video for one of Lady Gaga's songs, it was important that we tried out lots of different techniques and were creative when filming. Lady Gaga is known for her unique music videos and we didn't want our music video to be an exception to this. When we filmed some of the night shots of Lady Gaga and the wolf and Dracula we decided to use a small handheld camera. We fixed it to a tripod to film some of the dance sequences and it created a really interesting effect. It was exactly what we had hoped for, as it created slow movement trails. This meant that each movement captured on film had a trail behind it creating an eery and spooky feeling, and the use of the small hand held camera gave it the look of an old horror film.

On the left is a still taken from my music video. It is a demonstration of how we changed the whole video into black and white. We did this because we wanted it to have an old horror movie feel to it. Similar to that of film noir and Alfred Hitchcock's old movies.

On the right is a still taken from our video. This is of the shadow going across the wall. This is a high angle shot of a shadow like Nosferatu's. We wanted this shot to be spooky and so we decided to use torch light to give off a mysterious light. We took it from a high angle so that it looked as though we as the audience were sneaking up on the monster. We wanted to plant the feeling of being watched and followed into the audiences mind. We did this by filming at a high angle.

We took this extreme close up and mirrored it. We wanted to create a more visually stimulating effect as we have a few mouth shot in our video we didn't want it to be repetitive. This is why we chose to experiment with flipping the shot back on itself to get this effect.

We tried to be creative with the angles and movements and shot types in our music video. Lady Gaga often makes really unique music videos and so it was important to use to experiment with all these different ways of using the camera, in order to get the best outcome for our video.

Lady Gaga has used this mirror image effect for her most recent music video- Born this way. The still image on the left is taken from Lady Gaga's video. This is an example of how we have tried to take into account the kind of camera angles and effects that Lady Gaga would use in her own music videos.

The still on the right is taken from my music video. It is a pull focus shot in which the camera starts zoomed out and quickly zooms in to a close up of Lady Gaga's face. I liked this shot because we used a small handheld camera on a tripod for this in order to create the effect of a movement trail. It gives a ghostly effect and was really pleased with the way the zoom linked in with the timing of the music.

The still on the right is also taken from my music video. It is taken from one of the dance sequences we filmed. I we filmed it at night also on a small handheld camera we put on a tripod. We were able to get this darkened grey effect on the whole shot and combined with the movement trails, it made a really spooky dance sequence.

Throughout the time we spent filming, we tried to experiment with different ways of using the camera. We often used tracking and panning as a way to create interesting shots. This was a good way to show establishing shots and we used panning for an establishing shot in the forest. This shot worked really well and once we changed it into black and white we were really pleased with the result as it had the horror edge that we had been aiming for with the whole music video.