Location Scouting (Recce) and Experiments of Visual Ideas

When I went to search for the location that I would film my actor in, I went into the Norwich city centre and found multiple places which would work with my ideas. 

This location has some aesthetic and interesting buildings which I can film my actor near.
There are many examples of deterioration and life such as the more dirty or run down areas in the city centre in comparison to the very green and well kept parts of the city. Additionally I think the street style of the city will work well in reflecting the chill out genre to audiences.  

These are some of the photographs I took in the Norwich City Centre which show my experimentation with some of the techniques and aesthetics I will be using when I film my actual footage. 
There are shots with signs of living in such as plants as well as shots with more objects of the opposite such as debris or brokenness. 
I took shots of architecture which had interesting colours or shapes which made them stand out from the other buildings. I also tried the blurring technique, zooming my lens to different zoom distances and using the focus of the lens to make it out of focus.

Similarly to the street style I want to achieve in Norwich, I will also be going to central London to film footage for my music video which be primarily of various patterns, colours and lighting. I will film at night as this time is very contrasting because of the vivid lighting which is present in London.

These are the photographs from when I went to search for good material
to film, I went to Longwater at night as I thought
this may be a good place to go as there are many light shapes, colouring 
and shadows.

I tested out some of the ideas I wanted to have in my music video 
such as intentionally having the camera out of focus to create
different coloured rounded light shapes which looked very energetic.

Secondly I set my camera up on a tripod to time lapse the traffic
passing by down the road on the hill.
I researched into how to speed footage up in After Effects and also how to make the vehicles light streaks look longer.
After I learnt how to do this, I sped up the footage and added a 'levels' effect to makes the blacks look more rich to emphasize the overall effect. I then added the "echo" effect to the footage which echoed the vehicles lights to create longer light streaks to look more lively. 





I tried another way of filming the traffic coming down the hill using the focus on my lens to focus as close as possible as it could making all of the lighting change into coloured spheres, I thought the non sped-up footage looked the best for less intese parts of the song and then I could use more time-lapse for the main built up sections of my song I am using. 





I took some photographs with my phone of rain on the window of a bus I was on, these photographs show the sort of idea I want to recreate using filming, preferably I would use a narrower depth of field to emphasize the effect and lighting blur and distortion in the background. 

These are some of the location shots in my village Easton. I thought this would be a good location to do visual filming because there are a couple of fields for sunrise, sunset or cloud filming.

(The two photographs on the left are of a separate field to the two photographs on the left)

Here are some photographs of the types of lighting and clouding that can occur in Easton. The vivid orange with darker pink and purple colour tones look very energetic and would work well with my music video in showing liveliness.

In Easton there are additionally various artificial lights which light up the village, such as street lamps and lights on houses which I could use at night time to get the best effect. I would also film using a blurred focus to create colourful orb light effects which I have practised in Longwater. The look of Easton at night would suit my music video because it is very quiet and almost has a typical street style to it, which would juxtapose with the busy city centre to work with the calmer parts of the music.