Risk Assessment

The most significant risks in our music video include:

• The "fall scene"                                                                                                                           In this shot, our actress falls to floor as if she has tripped whilst running. This could obviously be problematic and potentially cause a small injury. Unfortunately, there is little we can do to avoid this.  We will make sure that the place where our actress will fall will have no sharp objects or obstructions in the way so that her landing is as soft as possible and have her fall in a brace position. We will also make sure we shoot this scene in very few attempts so she will not have to create further risk for herself.

• Sparkler Scene                                                                                                                                We have two scenes where we will be featuring the use of sparklers, which will be filmed in one go.  This obviously means we will have the usual risks involved with handling the sparklers plus having them near to the filming equipment.  Fortunately, the shots we need do not have to be very long and will not be difficult to film, so the risks will be minimum and we will control these risks by keeping the sparkler from a safe distance from both the equipment and actress.

• Strangling Scene                                                                                                                             In this scene our actress will need to appear like she's being strangled, which we will want to look realistic but we do not want any harm to come to our actress. We will film this by having our main male character have his hands relaxed around the back of her neck but tense at the front, so that it appears a lot of physical effort is going into the act when no harm is actually being done to the actress. We also cast our actors knowing that they would have to do this scene and were fortunate to find two people who were close enough not to feel uncomfortable filming this scene, so that they would not be affected emotionally, 

• Smashing a frame                                                                                                                           This scene involves throwing a picture frame at a wall.  The glass in this will need to appear to have smashed on contact to be realistic but this could result in glass shards falling around the bedroom setting, potentially causing our actors to tread on glass in later scenes and causing cuts on their feet etc.  One way to avoid this would be to take the glass out of the frame when it is thrown so it can not smash, and then carefully smash the glass afterwards in a way that be contained and easily cleaned up.