Film shoot for the music video

Saturday was my first "film" that i directed which is very exciting for me. I think that the whole shoot went very well. our group met several times during the following week to setup and plan out our shoot and it definitely showed when we were on set. The band we fimed is called Wax Lips and they are a popular wilmiongton band. I am friends with the drummer Xander who is defiantly one of the coolest people i know. We filmed at his house and set up a fake party scene with the band playing in the living room. we first filmed the band playing as we waited for more extras to arrive. the band is now a 3 piece and we positioned them in the corner of the room with their banner hanging in the back. Brian is our grip and lighting guy and he was able to get us some good lights from UNCW since he is in the lighting class. His expertise was a big help with setting up the lighting and the gels. without his help i think our project would look crappy on film. Lauren was a big help too. she is the production manager and my right hand when it came down to organizing. she was there telling me when we need to wrap up scenes and when we need to start others and setting up shot lists. We did go over time when shooting the band but we were able to film the party scene fairly quickly and it balanced out. Alex and I had to work closely on this project since we were the oneces who ere going to be capturing the look of the film. Alex is a bit strong minded when he gets into filming mode and there was a little tension between us at some points but i feel there was an ok balance. I allowed him to have some creative freedom when filming but sometimes he did start to get out of line and start to try and direct some of the actors and move lights. As the director i took in what Alex and Brian sudgested about lighting and camera position and went with what I thought would look the best. Towards the end Alex and I were starting to think on the same wave about how to film certain shots and ultimately i think it was a good pairing. At about 1 we stoped for an hour and half break for lunch. we orded pizza for the crew, actors and band. this was a good time to relax after an intense few hours of filming. the next shots we filmed were the band drinking and goofing around. Xander had a minibar and they took allot of shots. The bass player was a bit wasted after that scene so thank god we did not need to film him anymore for that day.lol we had to wait a bit for one of the extras Suraya to come back with a few friends to finish up the party scenes at the mini bar. after that we headed downtown to film some flashback sequences at the river. these shots looked great because we got there at about 6 when the sun was setting. Later that night I had to go to work and I let Alex take over as they filmed the night shots of the band about to start their show at Lucky's. I gave specific directions to Alex and Lauren and let them do what they thought was right. we filmed about 6 rolls of film and hopefully it will come out good.I talked to Lauren and she told me at the end of the shoot Xander told her how impressed he and the band was with our project and he did not expect the professionalism of how well we were able to shoot the film. Wax Lips is very excited to see the final cut of the project and they are interested in having us put together another music video once this one is complete. Overall i think this is one of the best times i have ever had making a film and i know that everyone in the group was pretty happy with the results too.