The background to our performance scenes

For the performance scene, we initially planned to have a white background and have red

flower petals falling. However, when putting this idea into action, it did not look how we

had imagined it to. Also, there were not enough people to make this happen as we required

people to constantly pick up and drop the flower petals. Therefore, we changed the

background to a plain white one.

<Our initial idea

We changed our background to a plain white one after analysing music videos of Beyoncé’s

songs that are similar to the song ‘Brown Eyes’. Here, we discovered that she uses light

colours in her performance to slow, ballad like songs. Some examples are shown below:

Taken from ‘Halo’

From the examples provided through print screens above, we can see that Beyoncé tends to

use light and/or white background colours for her lip syncing parts. This is why we decided

to stick to the codes and conventions of her music videos and have our actress, Hilary,

perform in front of a white background.

Taken from ‘Best thing I never had’

Taken from ‘If I were a boy’

How we achieved this:

Firstly, we used white duvet covers as our background. We ironed it so that our background

doesn’t look creased.

Next, we used sticky tape to hold the duvet covers up.

There was a stack of chairs behind

the background which showed

through the covers. To stop this

from showing, we had to move it.

After we removed the stack of chairs, we noticed that the background was really creased as

it wasn’t tensed out. The only solution to this would have been for two people to hold the

duvet covers and stretch it out. However, this would result in the background moving which

would not look attractive. Therefore, we had to put the covers up elsewhere.

We decided to put them up in the living room, on top of the curtains. We achieved this by

paper-clipping the duvet to the edges of the curtains. Through this, we saw a massive

improvement.

In order to make spcace for the tripod and to gain the correct camera framing we had to

move the ojects in the living room around, as shown in the images below.

When framing the camera, we realised that the duvet was not long enough and we were

able to see the wall when filming a long shot of Hilary. To solve this issue, Hilary had to

stand on a chair so that she was taller and as a result, she was fit into the frame with the

white background.