Final Print Work

Advert:

Digipak:

Finished Music video

• This is the final cut for our music video, we are pleased with the outcome, and have had very positive feedback from fellow media students, teachers and friends.
• The strengths of our video we believe was the narrative. We had focused a lot on the mise-en-scene of the video, making sure the location, lighting and weather was all appropriate for the video, and that it would work well in contrast with the performance, which we made sure to film on a sunny day, so it appears hyper-realistic, and conforms to Dyers theory, making the performer appear extraordinary.
• Other strengths of our video include the balance between the performance, and the narrative. it was acknowledged that we had a good cutting rate between them, and made sure the versus were focused on the narrative, but had a deeper focus on the performance during the chorus of the song.
• Some weaknesses of our video included the fact that we could have had more singing from the performer, as we only had a small amount of it, people felt that it needed to be clearer that she was the singer and was trying to represent the artist.
• Another would be that we could have used more locations to keep it entertaining for our audience by changing the surroundings, or possibly even cross cut between the narrative, and manipulating time between the anti-social actions.

GC: Editing development

• Today after having all the clips lined up, it was clear that the performance needed some differentiation from the narrative. So in order to achieve this effect I placed a lens light leak clip over all the performance shots on video line 4. I then set the opacity of each leans light leak clip to about 35% before taking it down to 25% after playing the footage back and realising that the light leak footage was too dominant over the performance.
• This done, Andy created some title text using Adobe Photoshop which I then imported into the Premiere file to use as text overlays on some of the opening shots to be used as titles for the video. It was as simple as dragging the image onto the timeline on top of the desired shots and setting the opacity to the right level so as not to make the text appear too dominant but still enable it to be easily legible.
• Once all this was done it was simply a job of tweaking the video to iron out any minor faults. This included one lip syncing performance shot which had been nudged one or two frames out of time and cutting down one narrative shot before time stretching another very slightly in order to ensure the visuals cut in time with a drum beat on the track.

Filming shoot reflection

• We did our final filming shoot on Sunday 8/12/13. During which we filmed the ending of our video, making sure we had the complete narrative and that the video had an ending, which we believed would be fitting, but at the same time be the climax of our video, which is when the video becomes controversial by including death, and breaks the stereotypes of the characters, and makes you challenge the ideologies of people. It will then allow the audience to decide for themselves who they believe were the victim in the video.
• The strengths of the shoot were that we managed to film a convincing narrative, with a wide variety of movement and angles. We made sure it had a thrilling ending, and believed it related well to the narrative we wanted.
• The weaknesses of our shoot, were the time restrictions as we were busy that day we had to film early and try and make sure we had enough footage filmed in the time we had. We managed to achieve this, but some shoots could have been re-filmed or shot from a different perspective or angle.
• If we were to film again, I believe that it would be very similar, however we would make sure to plan in detail, and know exactly what we need to get done. We could have also attempted in filming many different ending to the video and see which one we believed worked the best, so we could have edited them a bit more and maybe combined a variety of shots, to increase the cutting rate, and make it appear more dramatic than it was.

GC: Editing development

• During the past few days, I have developed the video significantly. First of all after the final shoot (strangling scene), I simply selected the usable footage and dragged it onto the timeline in order to roughly cut it up and see the order in which the shots went. After this, because it filled up so much of the timeline, I was forced to cut it down further in order to make it fit.
• On top of this, I then re-arranged all three scenes (shoplifting, car theft, strangling), into order. This was important as these three scenes were the basis for our video. After positioning them I had to select some of the weaker shots to cut out in order to make all the scenes fit in. Also, where there were some cuts that did not make complete sense, I had to mark where these were on the timeline by dragging the two shots up onto the 'video 2' line so I would know where I absolutely had to cut in performance shots to ensure the narrative made sense.
• Also I used marker points on the timeline in order to mark where the key turning points in the track were, such as where singing started/stopped, and where the music dropped. These markers were helpful as they enabled me to line up appropriate shots in order to help sync the visuals and audio together to enhance audience understanding.
• After Andy had lined up all the lip syncing for the performance to the music, this allowed me to easily see where I needed to cutaway from the narrative to include singing to the camera shots. This in turn meant I didn't spend time editing the clips around the track only to find out I had missed out on a chance to intercut performance.
• I used the 'video 3' line to display to singing parts of the performance and then the 'video 4' line in order to display the performance shots that were not singing. This made it easier to identify which clips I had left to cut in, and also it meant that I could drag the performance shots over the top of the narrative without having to cut the narrative footage to save time.

GC: Print work development

• Our final versions of the print work are slightly altered compared to the last development post. Firstly, we were happy with the overall look of the advert except for the fact everything was over on the left hand side. So in order to counteract this, we came to the decision to stretch the text that said 'With Myon and Shane 54 feat. Tove Lo' out so it reached the other side of the page. Not only did this make the advert feel less like everything was on the left hand side, it also made the text slightly more legible.
• Another minor alteration to the advert was the font of the text that said 'Strangers'. In order to link the advert to the digipak we needed to have a consistent font between the two. We used the same font we had on the digipak and applied it to the advert. On top of this we then reduced the opacity down to about 50% as having the text dark black made it stand out a bit too much and ruined the leading line.
• A minor adjustment to the poster as a whole was that we moved all the text up slightly to fill out the space a bit more and to help make the 'Seven Lions' text stand out more as it was contrasted against a darker background due to the gradient at the top.
• The digipak had a little more work done to it. We added another pane which included our performance actor which we felt helped relate to both the video and the advert. We enlarged it and used the contrast/brightness tools to give it a black and white effect. The enlarged size along with high contrast and brightness meant that we were easily able to add a short paragraph of text about the artist which we wanted to include somewhere on the digipak to help promote artist image as someone the audience could relate to rather than constructing a hyper real star like we did with the performance aspect of the video. This is also another reason we decided to turn the image of the performance actor into black and white: so as to maintain the hyper real star image that is given to her in the video and advert.
• Text was added to the back panel which included a web link to the artist Seven Lions along with a track list and copyright information. We didn't want the copyright information to alter the leading line of the back panel so we used the character adjustment tool to make the text much thinner and reduce the spacing between each letter in order to condense the writing to fit in-between the barcode and the record label logo. We then changed the font colour to white to make it visible over the background image.
• The Soundcloud link was placed at the top of the page so as not to interfere with the track list. Also to aid this a different font was chosen to help further differentiate the web link from the track list.
  
• The track list its self used the same font that was used to state the featuring artists to keep the theme of the advert and digipak going. This also allowed the white space created by adjusting the brightness of the background image to be filled easier as the font used was tall and skinny.
• The last change was the sleeve we added between the front and back cover. Because the two images were similar but used different colour alteration techniques, they clashed when they met and the back cover image looked out of place. We feel that the white sleeve broke them up enough to not make the back cover look too out of place. We decided to just put the main artist and the song title on there to stop it from looking too crowded as there was not much room on the sleeve. We then put the Seven Lions logo in the middle of both pieces of text to help separate them both.

Group: Rough Cut and Print Work Developent

• Here is the almost finished work of our print work, showing our advert, which we believe to be almost finished, and our digipak which is still currently in development.
• Our advert needs a few points adjusting before we believe it is finalised, one in particular we believe that the typography used for the word 'Strangers' needs to be changed to something more fitting for the advert, and that relates to the digipak and music video.
• The digipak is still being made currently, and we are positive that the front cover is finished, as we have had numerous praises of it, and are confident it links well with the posters as well as believing it comes across as a realistic album cover. The rest needs improving, but we are confident with our print work overall, and believe it will be very successful. 

• Our music video is still in production, and are about halfway through the editing, we have gathered all of the necessary clips, and are left to edit them together and make it appear conventional of a music video.
• We have the middle section of the video in our rough cut, some needs altering such as the performance aspect which may need switching out, but the narrative and cutting rate we believe is working well throughout.

Feedback rough cut

Not able to give any boys as the video and print are not here. No posts on the blog since Tuesday either?

Group: Rough cut feedback

• The rough cut we presented to the rest of the class included the shot idea where both characters are pictured walking away from the camera using similar framing in slow motion. This idea went down well, but one suggestion was that we use this as a closing shot to the track instead of locating it near the beginning. To expand on this thought, we have decided to use this advice and consequently film a prequel sequence to the car theft whereby the chav actually gets in his car to make the narrative clearer.
• Another comment we received was that the meaning of the juxtaposition was not yet clear. On top of filming the prequel to stealing the car, the group has decided to try and include more shots of both characters in frame to exaggerate the meaning of the contrast between them both. With these plans and the shoplifting shoot coming up we are confident that the meaning will be presented clearly.
• We received a lot of questions regarding if there was to be more performance aspects incorporated into the video. Our re-shoot last weekend answered most of these questions though as we did not put many performance shots into the video.
• Another concern was the length of some of the clips - it was suggested they need to be cut down and we took this on board. The clips shown in our rough cut were not fully cut as we would have liked them to be so it's just a matter of getting round to cutting them to a shorter length.
• On the positive side, a consensus response was that we had incorporated lots of A* camera shots along with lots of camera movement to keep the audience interested. Responses also said we had fulfilled the mark scheme criteria of using a tripod when necessary and showing a mix of long range to close up shots. On top of this, the few seconds we had properly edited showed we had a done a good job of balancing the narrative alongside performance and filler shots in order to make the video seem less like a documentary.
• Something else as a group we thought we excelled in was that, compared to another group who were doing a performance video we felt our performance shots looked a lot more convincing, in the sense that our actor looked like she matches the grain of voice heard on the soundtrack and that her lip syncing worked effectively: it was in time, and she put enough emphasis on her mouth movements to ensure the audience believes she is singing rather than mouthing the lyrics.

Group: Shoot feedback 19/11/13

Strengths

• On this shoot we got plenty of shots: every action we filmed, we managed to capture multiple angles and not only does this mean we have enough footage to fill up the timeline, but it allows us to be flexible when editing as we have a range of angles or camera movements to chose from whilst deciding which shots to use.
• We managed to get a lot more done in a much shorter space of time during this shoot because we had planned ahead thoroughly and we knew exactly what shots needed to be filmed and how much of the total timeline this scene was going to fill up.
• We maintained continuity in all of our shots and made sure any unwanted mise en scene such as litter was out the way of the framing in this shoot. 

Weaknesses

• Only two of us shooting made it tricky to include many shots with both characters present without the shots themselves being filmed from a static tripod - this is something that is hard to overcome due to availability of others willing to get involved with our project.
• Despite us doing everything we could to ensure continuity was kept, we could not help the fact that one car left midway through our shoot and another parked next to the area we were using for filming. Although the car that left could not help being present/not present in the remainder of our shots, we feel it will not be noticed by the audience as they will be too concentrated on the meanings behind the narrative and the actual characters themselves to notice. We did well to not include the car that parked next to us in any of the shots we had left to do although this did limit our choice of angles and camera movement somewhat.
• There was only one location we filmed in - excluding the few outside shots of the rich character walking into the car park. However, we feel we used a good variety of shots and a good quantity of camera movement to make the singular location more exciting. Also this single location problem should be overcome during post production when we have footage from more locations to edit in as well to the track.

Group: Campaign - Band Image

• The brief was to create a magazine advert and digipak in conjunction with the music video in order to create and promote a cohesive band image.
• We chose to design an A4 portrait right hand page advert for EDM (Electronic Dance Music) magazine. This suits the genre of the track as the track itself is dubstep/edm, and the main focus of the magazine is edm. Also therefore will relate to our target audience of predominantly male 13-30 year olds.
• Use of visual motifs seen throughout the print campaign such as the stars image reinforce the juxtaposition between the two characters as the stars signify the space between the two personalities of the characters. Another visual motif used in the print campaign is the Seven Lions logo/text. This is used to remind the audience of the artist and therefore help promote the artist himself. This seems to be a common theme seen through his previous digipak covers as the leading line is always the Seven Lions logo and we are aiming to replicate this in our print work. The leading line therefore in both our digipak and advert will be the Seven Lions logo/text.  
• The back cover is a section about the artist (Seven Lions) and includes; a barcode, record label logo, and the white/black contrasting theme. The picture of the artist will hopefully be replaced by a picture of the girl who lip syncs to the video if we can get an appropriate photo.
  
• The front cover contains the leading line (Seven Lions text/logo), along with other included artists and the Strangers title. The group is undecided over whether to take a picture to put on the front or whether to invert one half of the pane to fit with the half and half contrasting look.
• The extra panel is simply an image we took during our first filming trip in Brighton and contains the stars edited in to maintain the theme of stars throughout the digipak.
• The CD panel contains the Seven Lions logo along with the image of stars which keeps the theme of stars/space going whilst promoting star image.
• The left and right inside panels will contain photos of both characters in contrasting locations. The chav in a rougher area with a graffiti wall behind him, and the richer guy in a more up market area. Both will be looking at the camera to challenge the audience who consume this digipak - as if to say that the issues raised in the video could happen to anyone, even the audience.
• In both the digipak and the advert black text can be seen on a black background with a white box behind the text to make it visible. Not only does this link the two pieces of print work together, but it links the print work to the video in the sense that both characters contrast each other, just as the black and white colour scheme contrasts. The prints and video are also interlinked to create a cohesive artist image through the image of stars. The stars are used to signify the space (or distance) between the two characters showing that they are opposites to each other i.e. Strangers - which is the concept both the video and print work are based around.
• Dyer's star image is constructed in the fact the artist is present but not present in the print work. The fact his logo is on the advert and digipak, and the short paragraph about him is located on the digipak helps construct audience awareness of the artist and raise his profile. But at the same time he is not present as no images of him are shown on either the advert or the digipak, (although there is one present on the digipak at the moment, this is for demonstration purposes and will be removed for the final product). This present yet not present effect leaves the audience wanting more of the artist - so whilst being satisfied with his presence in the form of logos, the audience are left ultimately unsatisfied with the lack of actual presence of him through the use of images.

GC: Digipak further development

• So far we have the digipak planned and have been attempting to get to grips with Photoshop and learning the techniques needed to produce the look we want. Also we have decided on the fonts for both the Advert and the Digipak. The screenshot below shows the current stage we are at with the digipak - having got the CD panel completely finished, and the front cover partially finished, (all we need now is a photo from our next shoot).

Group: Filming preperation

• We are planning our next couple of filming shoots for Saturday 16/11/13, as well as Tuesday 19/11/13. We have decided that for some of the shots it would be efficient and useful to film within Tunbridge Wells, as it means it is easy for us to access and film some quick shots which we can add to our video.
• On Saturday, Rochelle and I will be filming the performance aspect of the video. I will focus on getting as many as different shots as possible, highlighting first person mode of address predominantly, so we are able to cut between this and the narrative. I will use a few long shots to establish the location, but focus on the close ups, as these are the meat shots of the video. I will try and include some movement as well while filming to make it conventional of a music video, and try to use as little static shots as possible.
• The Tuesday filming, George and myself will film some more of the narrative. We will be filming in Tunbridge Wells as well, as we will be filming during lunch and afternoon of the school day, so it is much easier to access by doing this. We will visit various areas around the town, places which fit the scenario for each character, and we will get the bulk of the shots we need to bring the music video together. By the end we should have more than enough shots, but if any are missing, or need re-filming, we can do this easily by revisiting the location.

GC: Digipak development

• Following our lesson today, we have attempted to blend an image of stars into the photo we took of the sea in Brighton using Adobe Photoshop. However, with each of us having limited experience using the program, we found this task not to be so simple. Eventually we decided using the blur tool along with the burn/dodge brushes in order to effectively blend the sky of the beach photo with the bottom of the starry photo. Below we can see that both images are very different colours. Alongside this, we noticed that the sun reflects over the middle of the sea causing a big light patch in the middle. Considering we plan to edit the stars over the top of the sky, we will need to find a way to get rid of this light patch and darken it in order to make it blend in with the rest of the sea.

• Also during the lesson the group decided on a font to use for the part of the  title that says 'with Myon and Shane 54'. The font we chose was Movie Letters (seen below), as we aim to replicate the layout of text used in another of Seven Lion's album covers, (also seen below).

GC: Digipak inital ideas

 

• In regards to the 6 sided template for the digipak, we have decided that the digipak will focus around the strangers concept. The group wants to promote band image on top of the half and half resemblance of strangers. For this reason, we have come to the decision to include the seven lions logo on the side where the CD goes, as not only does this help to construct band image but it fits well with the circular shape of the CD. We have decided to promote the digipak as a single rather than an album as this will allow us to focus on the strangers concept of the singular song as opposed to having to create a whole album image and therefore stray from the strangers aspect.

• For the overall look and feel of the digipak we have taken inspiration from the actual cover of the single (right) - with light, glowing/wispy sort of effects. We aim to create a weightless, magical look whilst maintaining the half and half concept that our video is based on as not only does this link to the video, it also links to helping maintain artist image further. Another concept we took from this single cover is the use of stars - we feel this is a theme that could be carried on into our own design as it makes a visually pleasing backdrop but also keeps in tune with the magical/wispy theme.
• So far as actual images go, we took a few pictures during our first filming session in Brighton that are usable to incorporate into one or two of the panels. We still need some more but we plan to capture some more during other filming sessions or take stills from the footage if we don't take a picture we find suitable. Both of these images we feel we can use but feel they will need heavy editing to go for the magical, wispy look we are aiming for. We were thinking to maybe edit some stars into the sky of the photo of the beach, and cut out the graffiti from the picture on the left to use on the cover somewhere.

• We could not find the exact Seven Lions font shown on the Strangers digipak above, but we have been able to find a similar font called Eagle Book. This font contains similar N's to the one's found in the Seven Lions font, but the S's don't look the same. With some editing and resizing we believe we can make an accurate replica of the Seven Lions font to include on our digipak. In the image below, the original seven lions font is on top whilst Eagle Book font is shown underneath.

 

• So, for the template its self we have roughly decided the following:
• Inside Centre: Seven lions logo
• Inside Left: Graffiti picture with chav character
• Inside Right: More posh area of Brighton with rich character
• Extra Panel: Beach sunset picture with stars edited in
• Back cover: Paragraph about the artist (possible picture of Rochelle the performance actor, edited to look similar to that of the girl on the original Strangers single cover)
• Front cover: Half and half picture of Brighton or 50/50 page split including characters inspired by Sliding doors, (see rough draft to right)

Group: Feedback From First Shoot

• Our first filming shoot was a good experience for us as a group. The main benefit from the shoot was that we got a sense of what we wanted to include in our video, and were able to plan shots out effectively, and collaborate as a group to decide upon what our narrative will contain, and how it will all piece together as a whole.

Strengths:

• We got some effective shoots from the shoots, and now have a rough outline of our narrative, with some ideas with what we can film next time, and what shots we will film on our next trip. We have also got enough filler shots to use from the trip, and we are confident we have an effective and strong opening to the video that will fit in nicely with the music.
• From the shoot, we also took a variety of photos which we believe are good enough to be able to use in our print work. We have decent location photos which can easily be manipulated to fit our poster or digipak, we need some photos of the characters in the video now, and then we will have enough to edit together and begin working on the print work.

Weaknesses:

• The weaknesses from our first shoot, was the availability of the people involved. It was difficult for us to find a day or time when all members were available while simultaneously filming on a day where the weather was decent enough.
• We also had the problem of deciding on what would work when we filmed, and how we should do it best. We struggled to find the best locations, where it was quiet enough to film and also a good location to use which would be effective in our narrative.

Improvements:

• The improvements we plan on making, are ensuring that we film the majority of the day so we can make sure we have enough clips to use when it come to editing. We will also re-film a lot of the clips from different angles with different movements, to be able to cut between the shots.
• We will also make sure we have a more detailed plan when going to the location, and being confident with the places we visit, knowing that it will look good when we go, and fit in well with the narrative.
• We have also planned to go on our next filming shoot on the weekend, to have some of the performance filmed. This will allow us to begin editing a lot of our footage together in the following week, while also being able to start on the print work, as we will also photograph during the day.

 

 

Group: 5/11/13 Concept and Development

• During the course of the lesson, George uploaded all the clips we had filmed during the holidays onto the computer, backing up the copies of the files we had. We then together began looking through the clips highlighting the ones we thought were effective, and what ideas we could come up with, in reference to how they would fit in our music video.
• We also then went through the photos as well, and came up with ideas, of how the digipak might look with some of the photos might look incorporated in.
• I also did a reflection the first shoot, and how effective it was. From doing this I believe we can now highlight our weak areas and hopefully improve on them during the next shoot, making sure we film the required clips, and  plan the trips more effectively.

Group: Call sheet and risk assessment for trip to Brighton

Group: Film planning

We have prepared for our film, and have organised everything ready for the trip we will undertake on Monday the 28th of October.

• We Have agreed to drive down to Brighton on the day, bringing with us all the equipment that is necessary to bring, which will also allow us to use the car for any tracking shots we wish to use on the day, without the hassle of setting up and bringing a track with us.
• We have booked out all the equipment necessary for the day, picking it up on the day before half-term, and will be returning it all the following day. we need to however get the call sheet, and risk assessment filled in before we go to make sure we are all aware of the problems and issue that may arise or be faced with.
• I am also going to bring my own camera to take some photographs of the location, and of the cast. We will then have some pictures to use for our print ideas on location, and see how well they would link in with our video, and start thinking of some ideas we could go with when we create it.
• The people involved are all ready and prepared for the date we have agreed. The people who will be going are George (Actor/Camera-man), myself (Camera-man) and Rochelle (Actress).
• We plan to spend the whole day in Brighton, filming for the majority of it, trying to get as many clips as possible as to be sure that we are not short when it comes to editing it all together. The locations we will visit primarily are the lanes, where all the shops are, which will be useful to be able to use the crows as part of our filming, and use them as extras. We will also visit the beach front, where we will be able to use the location to add to the mise-en-scene when filing the performance aspect of the video.
• We hope to include a wide variety of shots in the video, but focusing mainly on close ups and movement shots, to make the video conventional of a music video. We also do not want a lot of similar shots, so we want to include such shots as 360 pans, low/high angles, canted angles etc.
• There are a variety of problems which may come into effect on the day, predominantly one being the weather. If the weather is bad on the day, it may lead  to the whole video looking boring, and would involve a lot of work in post-production to make it look good, which would involve a lot of colour correction, and colour grading. Another may be the reliability of the crew, we have all agreed on the day, but if someone becomes ill on the day, we cannot carry on with the shoot. 
 
 

Group: 21/10/13 Concept and Development

• Our animatic is now synced with the music, so the storyboard clips now are in time with the music, all we require now are some secondary research to improve our clip, so we can prove we are using evidence from our research to try and replicate it for our final production.
• We have decided that we will film in Brighton over the half term break. We have organised all the cast and have the equipment we need all planned out, and we have decided that we would get a lot of performance shots as well as narrative to make sure it is clear it is music video, rather than purely a narrative of someone's life.
• We are preparing the details of the filming trip, and the outcome will be delivers as a blog post soon.

Group: 18/10/13 Concept and Development

• We continued to work on the animatic in our lesson, by importing the clips filmed in class onto Premier elements. We ordered them on the timeline, to make sure they are in the correct positions we needed, however were not the correct time frames so did not reflect our idea yet, as they are not in time with the music.
• More storyboards were also drawn to add to the animatic, as we found out that we needed much more CUs during our video, as they are the meat shots in our production, we also made sure to add a variety of angles and movement into the shots to make sure that it would be interesting to watch, and we highlighted the key aspects of the production.
• We also researched into other music videos of the same genre, so we could find similar clips to what we need for our music video, which we could add into the animatic, to make it more multimedia for the audience.

Group: 15/10/13 Concept and Development

• In the lesson we began the making of our animatic, by filming our storyboard. While filming we made sure to include the movement of the shot, so it is an accurate representation of what we are trying to achieve with the actual filimg.
• We also set up a premier elements timeline for the storyboard, we then imported the clips of some of the storyboards, as well as some of our brighton footage, which we were planning to use as some of the opening shots, and filler shots.

Group: 14/10/13 Concept and Development

• In today's lesson we began storyboarding our individual shots we hope to use in our music video. We began to draw our shots in chronological order, setting out the distance, angle and movement.
• We also used some secondary research from other music videos we have found of the similar genre, and selected shots or techniques used in them which we could recreate in our video, and would be effective for the appropriate part of the video, such as the slow motion used in the Modestep video 'To The Stars'.

Group: Pitch Feedback

Group 4 pitch

More PowerPoint presentations from Andy Cooper

• The feedback indicated that our performance part might nort match the actual vocals on the track. The main concern was that the girl might not look like she owns the voice so to speak. So to solve this we need to get some practise shots of the girl lip syncing. We plan to do this in the near fututre in southborough just in school uniform or something.
• Another problem was that the actual acts performed by each character might not be enough to fill up the whole track. We have thought of some more acts to convey through the video. This was our initial problem before but we decided to combat this by using lots of filler shots just like the Danny Byrd video from last year. Also the narrative will fill this up nicely.
• The other main focus was that we weren't sure about the ending of the track. We had a final shot decided on which tied in to the opening one but the rest of the class was not convinced about the rest of the ending. We had this in our minds but we need to find a way to convey this clearer to our audience.
• Overall we did get a green light although some aspects of our narrative were not clear to other class members. Our advertizing/digipak campaign was one of our stronger points though as the idea is simple and not only ties in with the title of the song but with the lyrics too.

Group: What we learnt from our Brighton trip compared to wilderness woods

• More experienced when setting up to make it more efficient
• Had the shots planned out this time
• Trying to do something creative with the shot rather than just pulling off the shot
• Different angles even if we liked the shot
• More aware or considered of the misé en scene i.e. framing
• Link between practise and actual brief
• Took a lot more footage than we needed
• Planning, using time more effectively
• Urban location gave us a range of shots and settings to try out
• More ambition

• The group is pleased with the production this time round because not only was this a good opportunity to do a location reccie, but we managed to get some footage we might use in our actual production. The finished product showed us that we needed to get way more footage as we only managed to fill up the first third of the track, and even though we thought we had rather a lot of footage we only ended up using about half of it. Although we did not practise any performance or narrative in this trip, we did however film a few scenes with people (the group members) in just to get a feel for the sort of framing we want to use and what type of camera techniques we would want to use for the performance or narrative side of the video.

AC: Deconstructing a digipak

Group: Narrative concept development

• As a group, we collected some ideas together to help decide what our we would involve in our finial production music video. We have kept a similar idea that we have had since our treatment, as it was verifies by other students that it was good idea, which could be developed well and be very effective if executed creatively. 

 Opening:

• We will begin the video with establishing shots of some of our existing footage from Brighton, like the shot of the graffiti or the waves. We will then use 3 title shots (Seven lions with Myon and Shane 54; feat. Tove lo; Strangers) on top of the clips to introduce the song.
• A few more establishing shots will be used, we will film the up-market shop fronts, so the audience associates, wealth and higher quality with the man, which will then lead on to the next few shots of the rich man walking out of the Rolex shop and down the street.
• Jump cuts of filler shots of graffiti and criminal damage in the area, which then leads on to shots of the 'chav': The camera is positioned directly behind him, the audience see he is crouched down over the graffiti covered electrical box, we see his arms moving, but his body obscures his actions, audience associates the character with deviant behaviour.
• The next shots, the camera is at eye level of the character, framed in CU so we can not see what he has done to the electrical box.

Main Section:

• After the characters have been introduced briefly, we will have them perform an action to further reinforce stereotypes people will have of them. So for example the 'chav' visits a pub and has a drink, whilst the other man may go and buy a nice item of clothing?*
• We will then have the characters meet, by bumping into each other as they walk round the corner of a street, and they move off in their separate ways. Shot in a MS from a low angle, as we are able to see their expressions as they pass each other. The 'chav' is apologetic however the rich guy gets slightly angry, and storms off.
• This then leads into the characters performing their actions which differ them, with the 'chav' taking part in good deeds eg. giving money to the homeless, picking up litter etc. The other man however will take part in bad actions eg. a mugging, littering, stealing etc.

Ending:

• Towards the end of the video, we will have the characters meet/ see each other once again, but this time they are portrayed as different people, and the audience can see the differences between them visually now, and can see that the stereotypes from the beginning have now been broken.
• The two characters will now be associated with what their personalities are truly like, not what their exterior appears to be, so the shots of the location and fillers will be the opposite to the beginning.
• We will also revisit how the music video began, but instead we see that the rich guy had in fact caused damage to the property, and the poorer looking guy, was actually sat with a bucket of water and a sponge trying to clean up the graffiti, working for the community.

Performance:

• We have two girls in mind who we may be able to use as the singer in the performance part of our video
• We would cut up parts of the narrative with some performance parts, use the performance aspect of the video mainly as a filler in between the narrative, as it is possible that it may be hard to maintain a strong and entertaining narrative throughout otherwise.
• We would use a first person mode of address for this part, having the girl sing into the camera, as this is very contrasting to the style we would use for our narrative, and would be much more intimate for the audience, and give them the feeling they are involved in the video.

Issues:

• We have not decided on the main character roles to play the two contrasting men, we need to ask a few people if they would feel up to acting in the video.
• We also need to decide on the actions the characters will do to differ the two of them, and break their initial stereotypes.
• We also need to decide on a location that we could possibly use for the performance based aspect of the video, with the female singer.
• We need to also be certain on what actions each character will do, which will show the audience that they break the the stereotypes, but are rather opposites to who they appear to be from thir external apperances.

* - To be decided

AC: Mainstream and Sexist Music videos

Francis Lawrence
Lady Gaga- Bad Romance
(2009)

• This song is to show Gaga’s fear of relationships she will encounter due to her fame.
• An oppositional reading of the video may suggest that it merely shows sexism, representing woman as slaves for men, being bided on.
• The video is a white background which may represent purity, but is juxtaposed by the idea of the video, which is is focusing on the topic of prostitution.

 

David Rosseau
Pitbull- Rain over me
(2011)

• This is a stereotypical music video, involving two guys in the middle of the desert, forcing the audience’s attention upon the singers, while the camera performs different shot distance and movements such as a panning LS on them.
• It occasionally has a shot of a woman, which is evidently placed there just to make the video more appealing for the target audience of a predominatly male audience.

Anthony Mandler
Taylor Swift- I knew you were trouble
(2012)

• The music video is focused mainly around her as the lead singer, and involves her expressing her emotions, through screaming and shouting.
• There are lots of quick cuts between the shots, and cross cuts to different locations.
• There is alot of first person mode of address which she sings into the camera, making it more intemate for the audience, as it is more appealing for them to watch, feeling that they are getting involved.

Group: Response to Rudimental track

1.How did your creative process develop, improve from film opening to music video?
From our film opening we have developed some new camera techniques, by experimenting with a range of angles, distances and movements. We had been very focuses on stationary shots from our film opening and creating an enigmatic mood, and setting up a story, however with the music video we had to get straight into the action, making us use much more interesting and adventurous shots to make it entertaining.

2.What cinematography skills / experimentation did you develop further during this project?

During the filming, we became more experimental with all shots we were doing, by using much more movement shots than ever before to try and make it entertaining for the audience. We also made sure to retake a lot of shots until they looked right, and also from different angles, so when it came to editing we could cut between the angles a lot more easily, making it more interesting than only seeing it from one or two angles.

3.List editing techniques and effects that you used in post-production. Be very specific and include detail.
The types of post production effects we used involved fast paced editing, so lots of cutting was used, to make the clips short and cut quickly between one another. We also used some colour grading, to make some of the clips stand out a bit more, along with editing some of the brightness, making it clearer. We also made sure to cut with the music to make the cuts invisible, this is good practice for our practical where we will need to focus on this carefully.

4.To what extent did you conform to the codes and conventions of music videos you have studied in your coursework productions?
We conformed to conventions of music videos, by by abiding to popular techniques used presently, which involves a lot of slow motion, which we were able to incorporate into our video, which worked very effectively at points in the song.

5.How does your production conform or challenge the artist’s style and representation? Refer to the band’s other work.
The artists representation prefers to focus on ethnic minorities, and have a meaning behind their videos, such as 'Not giving in' which is set in the slums. The 'Feel the love' video however was much more disjunctive compared to some of there other work, and did not have much correlation with the lyrics of the song, therefore in a sense our video was similar as they were both disjunctive, but overall did not share many similarities with the artists work, and instead we decided to be experimental, and practice some shots, and create our own idea, which contains some enigma codes.

GC: Music Video Technical Analysis

Rudimental - Not giving in (Starting from 00:45)

1.
Shot duration: 3 seconds
Camera: Extreme close up of character's face. Off-centre to the frame (rule of thirds), with slight camera wobble
Mise-en-scene: Beads of sweat clearly visible on the character's nose to indicate it's hot or he's stressed with the domestic violence occuring. TV flickering out of focus behind him to signify he's out of touch with his childhood. Dark lighting to reflect the darkened mood set by the domestic violence earlier.

2.
Shot duration: 1.5 seconds
Camera: Close up from a slightly lower angle than before showing the character's face in shadow. Slightly off centre with slight camera wobble again.
Mise-en-scene: Dark lighting again to maintain the dark mood with the flickering of the TV visible on the side of his head to remind the audience of his lost childhood. Character is backlit to cast his features in shadow to make him seem more mysterious.

3.
Shot duration: 1 second
Camera: Mid shot showing one of the brothers helping the other up. Camera is about waist height looking down on the boy.
Mise-en-scene: Lighter shot contrasted to the previous two which show the boys are happier together than alone

4.
Shot duration: 1 second
Camera: Mid close up shot with the camera at eye level. Boy crosses the centre of the frame.
Mise-en-scene: Dark lighting behind him compared to the light pouring through the window suggests he wants to be outside rather than in the house as it's not as horrible or depressing out there as it is in the house. Paint peeling off the window frame to signify the house might be a bit delapidated.

5.
Shot duration: 1 second
Camera: Close up again at eye level. Boy is framed in the right third of the frame.
Mise-en-scene: Lighting similar to last shot for the same reasons. Scars just below the boys nose to show he hasn't been cared for properly.

6.
Shot duration: 17 seconds
Camera: Starts with a high angle long shot of the boy leaning out the window. Tracks out to an extreme long shot whilst keeping the boy centred for the first 5 seconds. Tracks outwards even further and to the right, whilst shifting the boy to the very left of the frame. Maintains the same height throughout until the last 3 seconds where it peds upwards.
Mise-en-scene: This is an establishing shot so the slums are shown to alert the audience to the boys location. City is shown behind during the last few seconds to firstly give the audience an idea of the country and secondly to help contrast the harshness of the slums to the city behind.

7.
Shot duration: 1 second
Camera: High angle close up of the boys' feet. Camera tracks backwards whilst giving each pair of feet an equal half of the frame.
Mise-en-scene: Both of the boys' feet shown walking on a dirty floor with litter around to show this is still in the slums.

8.
Shot duration: 1 second
Camera:  Close up shot whilst tilting up and right. Each boy is centred in his own half of the frame again from the front.
Mise-en-scene: Boys' clothes can be seen to indtroduce their costumes to the audience so they are easily recognisible.

9.
Shot duration: 1 second
Camera: Eye line mid shot with the camera slightly canted. Boys' have their own halves again but from the back this time. Camera tracks forward with them as they walk maintaining the same distance away from them.
Mise-en-scene: The boys' shoulders are shown so the audience can tell them apart based on the clothes they were wearing earlier. Light source is infront of them to relate back to the boy going towards the light shining through the window: this time they are both going towards the light. This is emphasised by the dark shadows to the sides and behind the boys.

10.
Shot duration: 3 seconds
Camera: Eye level mid shot tracking backwards as the boys walk maintaining the same distance. Boys are centred within the frame.
Mise-en-scene: Boys are framed in the light this time for the first time, with the dark shadows behind them. This is why the boy on the right has his arm around the other, to show they are happy to be together and away from the dark lighting and therefore the dark mood associated with the dark lighting.

11.
Shot duration: 2 seconds
Camera: Mid low angle shot also tilted to the left as the camera slowly tracks forwards. Framed centrally with camera woblle.
Mise-en-scene: Bags hanging on the wall on the very left of the frame match those hanging on the wall by the boys in the previous shot. Little girl looking straight into the camera therefore appears to be looking  straight through the camera at the boys, judging by the positioning of the bags on the wall.

12.
Shot duration: 1 second
Camera: Mid canted angle eye level shot with lots of camera wobble this time.
Mise-en-scene: Boys have changed costumes this time to indicate a new day. Railway can be seen behind them to suggest they are not in the slums anymore. Boy with earring has that side of his head turned towards the camera to help the audience tell which one of the two characters he is.

13.
Shot duration: 3 seconds
Camera: Canted close up with lots of camera wobble.
Mise-en-scene: Boys are switched back to original costumes to show a different scene. Both laughing to contrast to the sad looks earlier on in the house.

14.
Shot duration: 3 seconds
Camera: Mid shot, camera tracks backwards. Boys go from the centre to the right of the frame.
Mise-en-scene: Still seen walking into the light areas rather than away from them. One boy has his arm around the other to show how the pair of them get on well.


15.
Shot duration: 1.5 seconds
Camera: Boys framed centrally in a mid shot. Camera starts to pan left towards the end of the shot.
Mise-en-scene: Again, the costumes, location and the lighting are kept different to help the audience tell which scene this is. Boys are in the light this time and seem to be enjoying themselves.

16.
Shot duration: 1 second
Camera: Long shot, pans left with the boys in the background this time, and framed to the left of the screen. Focus on a man in the foreground instead.
Mise-en-scene: One of the boys has given the other his hat to show they get along well and trust each other.


17.
Shot duration: 0.5 seconds
Camera: Mid shot that pans left with the boys going into the centre of the frame from the right hand side. No camera wobble.
Mise-en-scene: Other boy still has his brother's hat on.

18.
Shot duration: 1 second
Camera: Mid eye level shot where the rule of thirds is used to frame the boys and the shopkeeper equally over each side of the stall, with camera wobble.
Mise-en-scene: Boys shown laughing together to signify their shared personalities.

19.
Shot duration: 1 second
Camera: Stays stationary in a mid shot before the camera tilts down and to the left. Boys go off frame into the bottom left corner.
Mise-en-scene: Boys framed in a mid shot to allow room for the reactions of passers by to be seen. Both steal in synchronization to indicate that they are both alike.

20.
Shot duration: 0.5 seconds
Camera: Static mid-long shot of the boys. They are framed centrally.
Mise-en-scene:

21.
Shot duration: 0.5 seconds
Camera: Static worm's eye view mid shot. Camera frames below the waist only. Shot out of focus.
Mise-en-scene:

22.
Shot duration: 1 second
Camera: Mid shot as the camera slowly tilts downwards
Mise-en-scene:

23.
Shot duration: 0.5 seconds
Camera: Close up, pans right with lots of camera woblle. Boy moves from left to right of frame.
Mise-en-scene:

24.
Shot duration: 0.5 seconds
Camera: Pans left quickly, mid shot as the boys go from right to left of the frame this time.
Mise-en-scene:

25.
Shot duration: 0.5 seconds
Camera: Mid to long shot with camera wobble. Boys go from left to centre of the frame.
Mise-en-scene:

26
Shot duration: >0.5 seconds
Camera: Long shot with boy on right of frame. Camera wobble.
Mise-en-scene:

27.
Shot duration: 0.5 seconds
Camera: Camera wobble goes up and down in time with the boys' steps as they run. Mid to long shot as boys go from centre to the left third of the frame.
Mise-en-scene: The hat has gone from one of the boys heads which indicates this is maybe the start of their separation.


28.
Shot duration: 1 second
Camera: Slowly tracks the boys as they go down the stairs, keeping them in the centre of the frame in an extreme long shot.
Mise-en-scene:

29.
Shot duration: 3 seconds
Camera: Mid shot, camera tracks backwards and pans side to side, mixing up the framing of the boys.
Mise-en-scene: Boy on the left doesn't seem phased by being chased - which could be a hint to what he goes on to do later in the video, whilst the boy on the right seems to be getting a huge rush from it. Costumes have changed again to show this is another chase scene to the ones in the previous shots.

30.
Shot duration: 1 second
Camera: Close up of the mans shoulder as he runs past. Camera focused on the kids watching the chase.
Mise-en-scene:

Conclusion

• Seeing as this was a narrative, there were no shots of the lead singer or band.
• The shots are on average about 1 second long - coupled with the camera wobble and quick pans along with movement of the boys withing the frame, this creates effective tension and adds to the pace of the chase. This was particularly effective from shot numbers 19-28, hence the lack of notible mise-en-scene to keep the audience focused on the boys being chased.
• The transitions used are simple cuts, no fades or anything fancy. This helps to keep the pace up during the chase scene, but keeps audience attention on thenarrative rather than any complex editing.
• Pretty much the whole video is shot in slow motion - bar one or two shots. Throughout the video however, the slow motion is slowed down to various degrees, enabling a quick change of pace and therefore mood to go in sync with the music.