Thursday 24 October 2013

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. 
  •  
     

Monday 21 October 2013

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.

Wednesday 16 October 2013

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.

Monday 14 October 2013

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

  • 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.

Friday 11 October 2013

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.

Wednesday 2 October 2013

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

Tuesday 1 October 2013

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.