'Mr.Megabyte'
is also known as Leslie Wai and he is a Multi-Genre Composer who focuses mainly
on electronic music, which he produces and performs himself. As well as having
a music career, he is also a freelance Visual Media Artist specialising in
Editing, Visual Effects, Motion Graphics and Sound
Design. During his spare time, he likes to create five to ten second
videos consisting of shots of certain clips put together and uploaded onto an
application called 'Vine'. This ‘Vine’ application can also be linked to
Facebook or Twitter.
Over the
Christmas period I was struggling to get work experience within the television
industry. The companies that got back to me were either too far for me to
travel to, or the work would not start until after May time. Every Christmas my
family and I would go to my Uncle's to celebrate, and I was talking to one of
my cousins about having to find work experience for my final year and he
directed me to his cousin, Leslie Wai. I contacted Leslie and he told me he
needed a runner to help him with his new music video that he was shooting in
London. The music video was shot all around London's iconic places and was
directed and produced by himself and Huw Samuel.
On the day of the shoot,
we arranged to meet at 11:00AM at Leicester Square underground station, this is
where I met both Leslie Wai and Huw Samuel who took part in the music
video. Throughout the day, I was helping them carry the equipment and
props all around London. As we met at Leicester Square, we started to film
there by the China Town car park, where we set everything up. They filmed using
a Canon 550D mounted onto either a tripod or the stedicam and the props that
they used consisted of an old fashioned speaker with an iPod Classic, a bag of ‘Mr.
Megabyte’ leaflets and a suitcase. We travelled all around Central London to
get different shots of the Capital City, as this is where Leslie grew up. We
were also talking to members of the public and handing out leaflets to help
advertise ‘Mr. Megabyte.’ whilst creating the music video. We travelled to
different places by foot, by bus and by tube, which I thought was very
convenient seeing as we were only based in Central London. One of the shots
towards the end where Huw joined Leslie meant that no one would be behind the
camera, but seeing as I was there to help, they asked me to step in. I just had
to make sure that the composition was right; making sure the shot size and
angles were correct. I offered to help them get some lunch and snacks, so it
saves them time to go and buy it whilst they can still carry on with the
filming.
In my opinion I thought
the filming went smoothly because there were only three of us, keeping the crew
to a minimal amount, so that it would be easier to get around to different
areas of Central London. We separated the equipment and props between us, which
was just about enough things to carry between us. As all the locations were
around Central London we didn't need to travel very far and could just get the
tube, bus or to even walk! We managed to spontaneously get a few members of the
public to join in with the music video, since we wouldn't know how they would
react with Leslie dancing around London trying to interact with them.
The majority of the time they reacted with a positive gesture. This video was
mainly to help 'Mr. Megabyte' advertise one of his new tracks that he'd
produced, talking to different members of the public and giving them
leaflets about him and his music. Travel was not a problem for me, as I
live in London; it took 30 minutes for me to get into Central London by the
underground. The weather was not a problem, the sun was shining and it was
dry all afternoon. The music video was all shot in black and white, meaning
that the weather didn’t really matter as long as it did not change drastically.
Leslie and Huw were very well organised and managed their time very wisely, as
they had everything they needed from equipment to props and they also kept to
the scheduled plan. I thought the locations they chose were definitely
suitable. Seeing as Leslie is British born, his Capital City is London, so for
his first music video he wanted something that would represent himself and
using London's most famous iconic places worked really well. He had a high
angle shot of the London Eye with him positioned just in the centre of the
Eye, which was a pretty nice shot and the shot with Big Ben in the
background, whilst Leslie and Huw dancing in front of it. The shots were simple
and it still made a brilliant video, they used a brick wall and plain wall to
get a mix of different backgrounds.
There was not much that
went wrong during the shoot; the only major problem was that one of the crew
members pulled out last minute, who was originally helping with the shoot. We
were initially going to shoot on his GoPro Hero 3+ Silver Edition
but unfortunately they couldn't make it. Leslie wanted to use
the GoPro to get point of view shots of him handing out leaflets and shots of
people watching him dancing around London. We couldn't find a GoPro to
replace at such last minute, which was a shame. This meant we had to change the
shooting schedule round a little bit. There was one shot I didn't like, towards
the end of the video there’s a low angle shot of Leslie dancing, casting
a silhouette of him. This shot was slightly different to the rest of the
shots, as the whole music video was well lit apart from that silhouette shot.
Seeing as it is an up beat music video, I thought that this shot did not fit
in. Being in Central London during a sunny afternoon means that there is going
to be a lot of people. Filming when it was busy was quite stressful at times,
as some people were getting in the way whilst we were filming.
We couldn't really do
much about not having the GoPro camera; we just stuck to the one DSLR camera
and cut out the point of view shots we were going to include. There was not
much I could do about the silhouette shot of Leslie but to just tell him
that I didn't really like it. Seeing as he was the one who produced the video.
Patience was key, as the Directors decided to film in Central London but some
members of the public were polite about it and waited for us to finish the shot,
where as others would just rush past.
On the day of the shoot,
we arranged to meet at 11:00AM at Leicester Square underground station, this is
where I met both Leslie Wai and Huw Samuel who took part in the music
video. Throughout the day, I was helping them carry the equipment and
props all around London. As we met at Leicester Square, we started to film
there by the China Town car park, where we set everything up. They filmed using
a Canon 550D mounted onto either a tripod or the stedicam and the props that
they used consisted of an old fashioned speaker with an iPod Classic, a bag of ‘Mr.
Megabyte’ leaflets and a suitcase. We travelled all around Central London to
get different shots of the Capital City, as this is where Leslie grew up. We
were also talking to members of the public and handing out leaflets to help
advertise ‘Mr. Megabyte.’ whilst creating the music video. We travelled to
different places by foot, by bus and by tube, which I thought was very
convenient seeing as we were only based in Central London. One of the shots
towards the end where Huw joined Leslie meant that no one would be behind the
camera, but seeing as I was there to help, they asked me to step in. I just had
to make sure that the composition was right; making sure the shot size and
angles were correct. I offered to help them get some lunch and snacks, so it
saves them time to go and buy it whilst they can still carry on with the
filming. In my opinion I thought
the filming went smoothly because there were only three of us, keeping the crew
to a minimal amount, so that it would be easier to get around to different
areas of Central London. We separated the equipment and props between us, which
was just about enough things to carry between us. As all the locations were
around Central London we didn't need to travel very far and could just get the
tube, bus or to even walk! We managed to spontaneously get a few members of the
public to join in with the music video, since we wouldn't know how they would
react with Leslie dancing around London trying to interact with them.
The majority of the time they reacted with a positive gesture. This video was
mainly to help 'Mr. Megabyte' advertise one of his new tracks that he'd
produced, talking to different members of the public and giving them
leaflets about him and his music. Travel was not a problem for me, as I
live in London; it took 30 minutes for me to get into Central London by the
underground. The weather was not a problem, the sun was shining and it was
dry all afternoon. The music video was all shot in black and white, meaning
that the weather didn’t really matter as long as it did not change drastically.
Leslie and Huw were very well organised and managed their time very wisely, as
they had everything they needed from equipment to props and they also kept to
the scheduled plan. I thought the locations they chose were definitely
suitable. Seeing as Leslie is British born, his Capital City is London, so for
his first music video he wanted something that would represent himself and
using London's most famous iconic places worked really well. He had a high
angle shot of the London Eye with him positioned just in the centre of the
Eye, which was a pretty nice shot and the shot with Big Ben in the
background, whilst Leslie and Huw dancing in front of it. The shots were simple
and it still made a brilliant video, they used a brick wall and plain wall to
get a mix of different backgrounds.