Set Building and Lighting Design

We chose a theatre as a set. This is however not very cheap and hard to create in the studio but it is worth a try was the conclusion we drew from the conversation with our set designer. He as the set builder and lighting designer knows what is possible and how a certain atmosphere is created. We were listing typical characteristics of classical theatre and objects that connoted a theatre like atmosphere. Things like Red-Chairs- Red heavy curtains and of course a stage came into our minds. Because of the fact that our video is divided into two layers we have to create two different sets. One is our main set where we have just the stage this allows us to shoot from a wider angle. Our other set is just the theatre chairs and a green screen in front of the wall where we can project on the footage which we shot in our main set. Lighting wise we thought of a warm golden wash which establishes the theatre like world. We also decided to bring spotlights in which is typical for theatre work.

We are trying to confuse the audience by making them think that the action takes all place in a theatre but it is actually a cinema with a huge screen. In order to reinforce this bizarre world we although thought about the “Ames Room Illusion” which is an optical illusion that creates false depth cues and causes perceptual mistakes. It was an idea that we came up with in order to make the audience doubt the usual expectations. Unfortunately we wound out that it is to hard to build so we decided not to use it. Even if our idea is not very simple to explain after several examples talking him through the whole video he understood our objective and our main aim. After this we talked about the cast. We are planning on 1 main actor and 3 actors in the background dressed as pantomimes. We choose a English-Italian female student for our main role. the reason for this is she has a very exotic and interesting quality, works on camera, can dance and speaks french fluently. These characteristics are perfect for our video and help us to establish the character in greater detail. However the problem with that was that she is very busy person so we had to match shooting days to her schedule. Our three pantomimes consist out of 3 boys. This gives a visual contrast to the singer. One of the can drum the other one juggle and the third one can dance. Here we have 3 visual elements that make our pop video watchable and visually more interesting. Of course this process did not occur without any problems, but we so those as challenges which were proving individual and group abilities. For example we had to over come the problem relocating the pop shoot which needed a lot of planning. We perfectly suited the time schedules to be as productive as possible. Everything we do is like little puzzle piece and will add to the final picture!