Progress Review

ALSO, forgot to mention in my vlog..

 

As i was explaining how each member of my group has set things to do (mainly during our production process, when i spoke about Nawar recording on the flip cam, Saskie doing weather checks etc.), an another thing that is my responsibility is making all the slideshows for my groups blog! I am the group member with the photobucket account and therefore, all the pictures we take for EVERYTHING get sent to me so i can put them all together into a gif. I'm quite proud of where i am with this, (as shown to the left hand side of the screen shot, i have loads of different folders for all of our pictures), i always prioritise getting that done as my group and i think its really important to present our work visually as pictures can often explain more than words.

Production- Last day of editing

Looking for video transitions

Adding Filters

We decided to change the filters by making certain colours more obvious which would either bring out the background more (the graffiti aspect) or make our artists stand out which we liked and thought would be affective for our music video.

Adding text

We added our artists name to the opening of our music video. This because we got feedback saying that the way we started our video didn’t help with the promotion of our artists as it was a wall so we had to change it. 

Changing framing

Adding color block at the beginning and end

Editing on the beat at the beginning of chorus

Towards the build up of the chorus, the song becomes a lot more upbeat so we had to change the way we were editing it and speed up the pace so it would flow with the whole song and performance we put in place. 

Where we're at in the editing process.

At the moment our music video is coming along quite nicely, we finally have the structure completed from start to finish! There are still a few things that we need to tweak such as the order of a few shots and adjusting lengths and speeds etc.

 

The next thing my group is looking to move on to is adding filters and effects to our video to make it more relative to our genre and of course to make it look better overall as a final product. We've been watching loads of music videos on youtube to get inspiration for effects that we like.

 

The most common thing that i think is apparent in nearly all the dubstep videos that we've watched (mainly Katy B's and Chase & Status')  is the use of coloured filters and lights that flash in time with the beat to create a nightclub vibe, we've taken note of this however as our music video has a different narrative, such obvious lighting effects might not be appropriate.

 

 

 

 We also looked at music videos from other genres to have a broader idea of things we could do to make our video better, we looked at aspects such as different framing (as shown in the intro of Neyo's - So Sick) and the rainbow/bright lighting and scratch effects in Kid Cudi's - Just What I Am video.
There are a few other groups who are using similar lighting effects however when i asked them how they created them i was told they used the lights (lasers) in their actual shots, they weren't added in on FinalCut, only emphasised.

The next stage (which we're up to now) is getting onto FinalCut ourselves and playing around with all the different filters and effects to see which ones we like the most. Whilst doing this, we've come across a filter that gives a similar "scratchy" effect to the one from Kid Cudi's video, however, as well as adding the scratches, it changes the overall colour of the shot making it look really dull which doesn't match the style of our music video so we've decided to leave that one out and look for something else! Our aim is to not use too many different effects as we don't want it to look messy, just thorough from start to finish, the filter has to be the same throughout and we're looking for one which emphasises each shot and makes it bolder and doesnt necessarily change the colour.

Production- Inspiration for edits

 

Katy B - On A Mission

 

 

 

Ne-Yo- so sick

 

 

 

Kid Cudi-- What I Am

 

 

 

 

 Chase & Status - Flashing Lights

Production-Feed back on rough cut

We showed our rough cut to our peers to get some feed back, and their opionion on what they think the strengths are so far and some suggestions for improvements. The Rough cut Was no where near on how we wanted the final outcome to look because at this stage we had only layed out the structure and order on how we want the video to appear. As a group we know there needs to be improvements on our music video but a second opinion from our peers can benefit us.

Comments from peers

Angel- "I thought the Costume was nice, i felt that you put thought into it and planned it well"

Naomi-" The camera movements are good, i really liked the spinning and the panning that you did with the camera"

Jimmy- "The concept of the lyrics goes with the video, everything matched"

Billy- "The Locations were really strong and well planned"

Janie- "The graffiti shots were different in the locations which is good because you kept the 'urban' look"

Sasha

Overall we were really happy with the feedback because we was about worried that our viewers wouldnt understand it. Anoother thing was that they noticed the different locations that we used because we planned and thought about it carefully.

Skills Development - Production & Editing

Last year, as i was using new equipment for the first time and the project (opening for a thriller film) was much shorter, it was more about experimentation and editing to a new found style. For the AS work, my group filmed everything in college and the whole concept of our opening was quite basic as our idea was to not give too much away in the opening.

 

 This year, the whole idea for my music video was the complete opposite, apart from the fact its much longer, my groups aim was to make it look as good as possible through strong costume/location etc and the first thing we all said was that we were NOT going to film anything in college because from what we saw when watching the previous A2 students work, using footage from college makes the final product look quite amateur and gives the impression that there was no real planning/effort put into it.

 

In terms of production, i've had to do a lot more this year in the sense that we've spent a lot more time paying attention to detail and recording everything we did when we were in our production stage, from behind the scenes footage to makeup and costume pictures for every day that we went out. As well as that, this year we all had experience using the equipment therefore our technical skills were much more advanced and we knew how to set everything up on our own.

 

As for editing, personally i think my work this year has made me much more confident and skillful with the FinalCut process. Where last year all i did was change my thriller opening into black and white and add a few sketchy filters, this year's editing has been much more complex because of course the video is for a whole different purpose. I had to play around with all sorts of different effects and coloured filters to finally settle for one that suited the footage & genre. I also had to try out new things such as layered framing, fading in and out, and looking for a suitable typeface for the title.

 

Something that i would definately say was challenging was trying to nail the structure by making sure we had a rough version from start to finish of how we wanted it to be. I think the main reason it was so complicated was because we edited to the beat and as none of us had ever made this type of video it took us really long, especially because we had nearly 200 clips to go through which again was a massive change from AS.

 

However, one thing that i learnt from our AS year that we didn't use in our music video was foley sound, mainly because i didn't feel that the sound needed much emphasis and it was better to focus on the image.

Skills Development - Planning

Compared to last year's AS production work, I believe that there as been a huge improvement. In terms of organisation skills and the amount of blogs done during filming has been a lot better this year. However the skills I picked up last year such as how to edit whilst using final cut pro and so on, I did take with me through to A2 and took that into consideration.  

My group and I made sure that we planned before hand what we would do in every session whether that be filming, editing or discussing. We tried to keep the blog up to date by posting what we planned to do and video's from the behind the scenes from filming. Despite having problems logging into blogger I think this helped, because if one of us were off for that lesson we would have had a run though on blogger so we could catch up.  

I think we spent our time wisely and communication within our group progressed as we kept in contact to tell each other where/when to meet up to film. Although it took us some time to get into the flow of filming and get the exact shots we wanted, in this situation bringing along our story would have helped us as sometimes we lost track of what we wanted to incorporate within our filming; whereas last year we took our storyboard with us for every filming session. Also at the beginning of our planning process we were very worried and didn't have a solid direction for our music video. 

However I still strongly believe that in terms of planning especially there has been a big development, and if we keep on track for finish our editing -we can end up with a successful outcome. 

Rough Cut

As shown above we were only able to edit up to the first chorus. Although the editing for the first verse was successful we had difficulty when it came to the chorus because we didn’t have many basetracks of our artist singing the chorus. Originally we wanted to have illustration (mainly acting) in our chorus of when the two characters see each other but this didn’t take up enough time for it to fill the whole chorus as we though it would. Therefore we had to rush our editing and try to add different shots for it to fill the full time and for us to meet our deadline.

Skills Development - Planning

I think i can confidentaly say that this year my planning skills have been 10 times better than in my AS year. As everything was filmed in one of the meeting rooms, we knew that if we missed anything out or needed togo back and re-film some footage we could easily do that, however this year that wasn't the case and so when making our plan for every time we went out to film we had to know exactly what it was that we were going to be doing on that day.

 

The first bit of real planning that had to be done was a thorough storyborad which even now, months later, is very close to how our final music video came out, even we thought that it would just be a rough idea that we could use as a starting point but we ended up sticking to it which i feel makes our video a lot stronger as it was planned properly.  In our story board we included every shot from beginning to end including camera angles/movement, timings and locations and we followed through with all of it which was one of our strengths.

 

Apart from the story board, it was my responsibility to plan the costume for every location, when doing this i had to take into consideration what kind of backgrounds i was going to be performing against to make sure the costume stood out and that it was clothing that would look good on camera, i also had to make sure the style was consistent.

 

Overall i think i've done quite well with planning, i have definately improved since last year and worked on sticking to initial plans and paying attention to detail.

Production- skills Development

Skills Developed

Compared to my As production work there has been a huge difference in how i approached planning the production.  Skills i learnt last year was taken into consideration and used to help me to plan our production process. 

However there has been a big development when it came to planning, for example each time before we went out to film i did weather checks to make sure it was suitable for us to go and film and it it matched our mise en scene and the overall idea of the video. Another big difference to last year planning was that i made sure that we planned exactly what we aim to get done at the end of each filming session. when we planned for each filming session it was easier for us to get straight to filming and not to waste time, also when filming sessions didn't go as planned we would immediately plan to go back another day and do it without wasting time.

Another thing i thought that was planned really well during the production process were the timing of my groups meetings. We kept in contact with each other and made sure we planned to meet at a decent time so we can get as much footage before it started to get dark.

However i felt that during the production process we should have used the story/animatic to guide us and to refer back to it because i felt that we slightly lost track of what we originally planned and the exact shots that was needed. In contrast to my As work we used the story board as guidelines each time we filmed.

Production- Plan for day 3 of editing

Plan for day 3 of Editing

This would be our last filming session before our rough cut is due and we have more editing to be done so we are planning what exactly needs to be done so know exactly what we are going to do. we also feel that we have gone off the main ideas tat we have put in the animatic so before we do any further editing we all have to look back at the animatic.

1.  we are still not happy with the opening of our video so we have some changes to do
2. one of the main things that we have to do in this lesson is start cutting into our clips so it looks more like a music video and shows continuous order
3. The choruses in the song is meant to have repeated clips of the artist and her perfect stranger so we have to add in the clips so our video shows both illustration and amplification.
4. we need to put markers on where we want to edit on the beat so its easier for us to cut when editing the clips.
5. The ending of our music video is meant to be similar to the opening of our song so we have to add simlar clips at the end but there would be a slight difference. the artist would see her perfect stranger

Production- Day 2 of editing

Second day of editing

Today was the second day of editing for and there was a lot to still be done, especially with our short clips since we had less base tracks. From the last editing session we suggested to put a filter for our final music video. This was suggested because while editing last session it was pointed out that some of the clips look bland and some was bright and colorful, so a filter might make all the clips even and accurate. However we will add the filter later on in the editing process. Before we started editing we had to transfer more clips from our memory card from our last filming session in west end to the video drive.

Steps

1. The shorter clips was added on top of the base tracks. But we also marked the short clips so the lips sync will matched. Another thing that was done at the beginning of editing was that we decided what location/clips of the artist that we wanted in the first verse, chorus and second verse so its continuous.
2.  while editing we faced the problem of the lip syncing not matching so we had to move some of the markers around
3. we also tried to include as much of different camera angles as possible in the order that we put our clips in.
4. As a group we was not fully satisfied with our opening and we also had space to fill before the first verse started. we also faced problem with the opening clips because we was told it did not match the mise en scene so we cut to cut down the clips, change the order and reset the timing to also fill in the gap.

CHANGE OF PLANS!

So the initial plan for today was to go out and film some "balloon shots" as that is pretty much all we have left to do, however, we weren't aware that the rough cut deadline is on Monday  and we haven't started watching any of our footage let alone putting it together!

We've had to scrap the plan of going out to film and start working towards our rough cut instead by watching near to 150 clips that we've filmed to see what we are going to use. since we had not looked through our clips it we decided to stay in and look at all of them properly and start our editing process. we also felt that we had enough clips to make our music video so going out to film was unnecessary at this point.

EDITING FOR ROUGH CUT!

First day of editing

Today as a group we sat down to begin or editing process. The first thing that we did was watch all of our clips and decided which ones we wanted to include and to make sure the clip was right and matched what we wanted. i.e making sure the framing of the shot was right, the angle of the shot was appropriate etc.

Once we chosen the clips we wanted to keep we went onto to final cut pro and put in the original Katy b song so we can put in our clips to lip sync.

Steps

1. we wanted to sort out our opening of our song and and introducing the artist. while doing this we agreed that we wanted the very opening of the song (instrumental) to be of the smoke.
2. for the opening we realized that some of the clips was too long and took up too much time so we either had to cut it with the razor tool or change the speed by fast forwarding.
3. the next step we did was added all our base tracks and marked the verses and choruses on both the original song and our clips so the lip syncing matched

During editing we had a situation with our base tracks. we had more clips than actual base tracks to edit. we have 4 base tracks and 100's or separate clips of shots of the artist singing so this would mean we would have a lot of clips to add on top and more edits to be done.

Production- Weather check for day 6 of filming

Production-plan and aim for day 6 of filming

Tomorrow will be our final filming session and  we will be filming in Angel, however we have not chosen a specific location (as in road) so we will have to find somewhere that we feel is suitable. We will be shooting the balloon shots which does not involve the artist so we will get our peers involved in these shots.

The Aim

1. Draw on balloons before we start shooting (A question mark to symbolize stranger)
2. At least 10 shots of balloons flying off in the air

Production- day 5 of filming- Behind the scenes

Production- Updated Production scedule

We had one more filming session and we had planned to film on Monday 12th in Portobella market, however we recently found out that there will be no college and no access to take out equipment. We decided to change the date and location for our last filming session so it suits everyone in the group.

Thursday 15th- during media lesson

Location- Angel
Actors- Emily and guests (balloon shot)
costume & props- casual wear, balloon's, string and pens
Equipment- camera, fig rig, flip cam and still camera

DAY 5 OF FILMING PICTURES - WEST END (CARNABY STREET)

Filming Day 5 - Costume, Hair & Makeup

Production- quick weather check for day 5 of filming

Just before my group went out to film, i decided to check the weather on my phone just to make sure it was suitable to film. The weather was predicted to be bright but still abit cold. however we also had to keep in mind that it started to get dark early so we had to ensure that we had enough time to film before it gets dark by leaving early. We don't want to film our shots in the evening when it starts to get dark because its not part of our scenery and mise en scene, also all our other shots are bright and during the day and we want all of the footage to match.

Production- Plan and aim for Day 5 of filming

Today we plan to film in west end Carnaby street during our Media lesson. Today's filming session will be the last footage we will need of our Artist Emily walking past her perfect stranger (Louis)

The Aim

1. Get a bace track of the artist, especially the ending of the song so wee will have good shots to edit
2. Get both the artist and the actor Louis to do point of view when their walking past each other
3. Get a long shot of the artist when filming, because reflecting on our other shots we mainly have a close up or mid-shot of the artist
4. Do a short time lapse of streets and cars in west End

Production- Practicing 360 shot

Production-Behind the scenes on day 4 of filming

Production- UPDATED production schedule

Thursday 8th November

Location- West end
Actors- Emily & Louis
Costume and props- Casual wear, ballons
Equipment- Camera, Tripod, Flip cam, Still camera, Speakers


Monday 12th November

Location- Portobello market
Actors- Emily
Costume- Casual wear
Equipment- Camera, Tripod, Flip cam, Still camera, Speakers

Production-Plan and aim for day 4 of filming

Today we will be re-doing the shots in the ally way near DalstonJunstion that we did on Day 2 of filming. The plan today iss to re- film all of the shots that we did on Day 2 of filming because we was not satisfied.

The aim

1. Do a longer basetrack of the artist because the one we did previously in this location was not long enough because we didnt get the full song.
2. re-do the vey opening shot of the artist during the instrumental because the costume is different .
3. Re-do the shot of the artist walking past the stranger again both Emily and Louis have on different costumes from Day 2.
4. Do more experiment shots with the smoke

PICTURES FROM FILMING DAY 4 (RE-DOING DAY 2) - BACK TO DALSTON

Filming Day 4 (re-doing day 2) - Costume, Hair & Makeup

Production-review on filming so far

Production- Day 3 of filming-behind the scenes