Planning a re-shoot

To improve the quality of our footage further, we have been planning to work with the media technician Mr Convery to give us tips and  advice on how to film the apples scene more artistically and successfully rather than just having a purely functional shot. In order for us to capture the apples smashing apart in high quality we are borrowing his camera which will be better for this kind of filming.

We have been emailing him this week in order to arrange a date when we are all free this week off to film. Bellow is the thread of emails organizing a date:

Sounds like a plan!

Make sure you still use the time you have this week though!

On 30 October 2013 15:09, Reece Higham wrote:

Yes that's probably a better idea in which case we will just speak to you on Monday about it and possibly go up one afternoon during that week?

Sent from my iPhone

On 30 Oct 2013, at 09:13, Nick Convery wrote:

I don't get back from this trip until 3 on Friday so even 4 is a bit of a push. Might it be worth doing this through next week do you think?

On 29 October 2013 20:06, Reece Higham wrote:

Cool, is there any chance you could meet us a little bit earlier in the afternoon? Just we are concerned about the amount of time before it gets dark

Sent from my iPhone

On 29 Oct 2013, at 12:31, Nick Convery  wrote:

Sure thing! Meet on the bridge?

On 29 Oct 2013 12:13, "Reece Higham"  wrote:

Hi again 

Friday seems to be the best day for us all so can we meet you around 4ish then please?

Sent from my iPhone

On 29 Oct 2013, at 08:56, Nick Convery  wrote:

Hi Reece,

Things suddenly got busy! I'm out of school Thursday and Friday and there are groups in today and tomorrow. Like I said though, Jesmond Dene is near where I live so I could come down if you're there in early evening (4ish)tomorrow or Friday.

Sorry, I had anticipated having a lot more spare time this week! If needed, I can probably get away with joining you for an afternoon in term time.

-Mr C

On 28 October 2013 21:31, Reece Higham wrote:

Hi what day if possible would you be able to film with us this week?

Reece

Sent from my iPhone

--
-Nick Convery

Media/English Support Assistant
Whitley Bay High School

Sent from North Tyneside's Learning Platform
(www.ntlp.org.uk), an educational virtual learning environment.
This email may not reflect the views of the organisation.

It turned out that due to other commitments and the daylight time shortening due to the time of year, it would not be realistic to get enough time to film this section of the video well enough in this week off so we  have decided to film this section once back at school but use this week off to focus on other sections needed to be re-filmed instead.

Pulp Fiction Inspiration

I read an article about the filming of Pulp Fiction and one of the things that stood out to me was the seen where Vincent stabs Mia with the adrenalin needle was filmed backwards so Vincent actually pulled the needle out of Mia's chest. Then the footage was played backwards so it looks like he is stabbing her.

I thought we should try this technique in our filming when Reece's character leaves the room after the fight seen.

We will film it both backwards and forwards to see wich looks better. 

SD cards

When we went to collect the camera to take away for half term, we noticed there wasn't an SD card big enough, either in the camera or in the media department, for us to use. As a result, we are borrowing a 4gb SD card from Mr Convery and switching it with the SD cards we have at home so that we still have enough storage space to be able to film what we planned originally.

Today's filming

Today we filmed 2 more scenes that we hasn't tried before to help fill up content and make our video even more fast paced and exciting in parts.

The first of these we filmed was the arcade scene. This was initially planned into our story board but we didn't have time to film so we just filmed artistic shots of the lights for the band's projection video. Today we filmed the couple playing on the machines having a laugh in different Artistic angles, we are particularly happy with the shot filmed through the glass of the claw game machine. Including these shots in the narrative will therefore make the link with the performance stronger because of the arcade projections we had already used. We are filming shots like this to contrast with the slightly creepy and dark criminal scenes to show the couple in good and bad scenarios in aim of building a story long relationship to the audience as couple sometimes are in indie music videos. 

Next we bought some red spray paint and went to tildas house where she has a grubby white wall in her back yard which we thought would look great on camera to fit in with our dull, desaturation theme. The couple sprayed the words "dull life" onto the wall to link into the song title and to show them as a rebellious edgy couple. We got various shot types for artistic effect for example when Reece's arm comes slowly into focus whilst spraying.

Next we all got on a metro to town to film the bridge scene where the couple shout at cars from a height to show them separating themselves from society. By this time it was getting dark which we wanted because the lighting of the street lights and the traffic we thought would light up the shot and make it look interesting and artistic. When filming we did get a few good shots but we had a few technical problems with the camera meaning we couldn't change the exposure of the camera so some shots are more grainy than others, we will look at the footage when we are back at school and decide weather or not we should refilm it or not.

Improvement ideas after the rough cut

From our audience survey we found that to improve the strength of our storyline we need to show the two main characters doing more rebellious and/or illegal things. As a group we quickly brainstormed some ideas, we came up with;

•Drinking -we could put water into an empty vodka bottle.

•Drug abuse -we decided agents this.

•Starting fires -we could do this at night on the beach but weren't sure on how the lighting would work.

•Setting off fireworks -this would probably be too dangerous.

•Smoking -we thought the smoke from the cigarettes would look really good on camera. 

•Spitting 

•Swearing -this would be hard to show with no sound.

•Slashing car tyres -we couldn't make this look effective without actually doing it.

•Graffiti 

Superimposing Clips

During one scene, we faded between two different clips. To achieve this, we have to alter the opacity of the clips on the timeline and put one on a layer above the other so you could see one through the other.

Using the same clothes for the actors

Although the narrative in our music video could potentially be set over a number of days, we decided to keep the outfits the same for the two main protagonists. As well as good continuity, this helps to give the effect of a dream-like scenario which is what our video is all about.

Half term weather forecast

The deciding factor for when we refilm over half term is the weather, as we need it to be very specific: blue sky with clouds. So, as long as Mr Convery is free to help us film on one of the occasions, we will be able to film on Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday this week.

Bridge Scenes

We came up with the idea of a scene involving the bridge overlooking traffic. There are two potential bridges we have in mind both within about 500yards of each other. They overlook the motorway section of the A617M going through Newcastle.

Rough Cut Feedback

Today we showed our media class our rough cut video and handed them all questionnaires which we had made in order to find out what needs to be improved to get a better grade in the final cut. Bellow are all the responses we gathered:








General findings from this research reveled that the band performance was noticeably out of sync with the music at times so we will need to re-film this in order to get enough shots for this to work  also the lead singer needs to sing louder in certain parts to match that of the singer in the song's voice. As well the band members where critisised for looking monotone in places despite this being a deliberate idea to fit into this typical indie stereotype like artists such as The XX. Despite these comments we will include more close shots of the other two band members to get a personality across to the audience that they felt they have missed.

Many also said that we need to have more narrative than performance to help with any confusion about our plot so we will re-film parts we have already and make them more clean cut and clear as well as film new bits we planned originally but didn't have time to do for the rough cut such as shouting at cars from a bridge. By filming more narrative and upping the ratio, this will enable us to have faster cuts which is another point many of out target audience said they wanted to see. They will also get to see more rebellious action from the characters which is what they wanted also.

We are also wanting to re-film some of the starting shots at the cafe because in places Reece (the male character) looks like he is in darkness because the camera was on the wrong setting when we first began to film and also we experimented by filming into the natural light (the window being behind Reece) to see if it worked but our audience didn't think it did.

A few people have also mentioned the possible need for a different singer than in the narrative, as a group we disagree because of our indie genre the videos are typically lower budget and the artist's often appear in the narrative as a way of helping their fans get to know them in a form of art as appose to not having any involvement in the narrative at all. Examples of  indie artists who are in the performance and the narrative are: Hurts, Marina and the Diamonds, Peace,  Florence and the Machine etc.

Editing the speed of a clip

Using the speed tool was incredibly helpful to liven up the fight scene and make it look more choppy so it kept up with the pace of the song. We often sped clips up to 130% so they were Lacey enough, without looking over the top or cartoony.

Rough Cut

Editing The Landscape of a Shot

During the narrative scenes of the first chorus, we decided to flip the skateboard shot horizontally so that the camera was 'facing' to the left in streamline with the other clips. This however caused a continuity issue as the lighthouse, which was present in the background of all other shots, was not present in this shot. We attempted to digitally add this back in using After Effects.

Song Structure

Key: B Minor
Time: 4/4
Structure:
Intro

Verse 1

Chorus

Pre-Verse

Verse 2

Chorus B

Bridge

Chorus (with Adlibs)

Outro

Things we need to refilm

- the Rendezvous establishing shot

- Shots in Rendezvous with guns

- sirens

- time lapse outside Smokey Joe's

- scene shouting off bridge

- scene in the amusements

Editing problems

Since we now have all the footage we need to beginning editing properly, it's becoming increasingly more difficult to interweave the narrative and the performance together. We realised that we have way too much footage to fit into the slower bits before the song kicks in, so we're being very particular with which clips will make sense. The negative effect of this is that we have spent so much time cutting and rearranging these clips so that they fit perfectly in the build up to the chorus.

When doing some editing in my free today, I accidentally clicked close project instead of save and I temporarily lost the video. Luckily I just had to double click on sequence 1 and it returned, but from now on I know to be more careful to avoid such problems in the future.

MP3 Dynamic Compression

One issue we had with the MP3 of the song was that there was a very wide dynamic range between the quiet opening and the loud choruses. While this is how the song was designed to sound, it could be quite frustrating having to constantly adjust the master volume during editing. To fix this, we created a dynamically compressed version of the MP3 for editing purposes which made the entire song the same volume throughout.

Original:

Compressed:

Props/disguises/equipment for filming on Thursday

Props

- pink bubble gum (Tilda)

- skateboard (Reece)

- cricket bat (school)

- apples (Tilda)

Disguises

- blonde wig

- fox mask

Equipment

- camera

- camera charger 

- tripod

Editing

During our recent lessons we have been editing what little footage we've got, and renaming the performance clips and organising them into folders so that it will be easier to find the clips that we want to import into Premier Pro. The techniques we have used so far in our editing consist of:

- Cutting Clips

This means we can take the footage we have and 'trim' any wanted footage from unwanted footage.

- Speeding Up/Slowing Down Clips 

This allowed us to change the playback speed of specific clips. Speeding up certain clips helped make the action more faced-paced and fitting with the music while slowing down clips allowed for 'slow motion' shots. In certain clips we would speed up part of the clip but not the other to allow more freedom with the speed of the action.

- Cutting Between Clips On The Beat

This was the process of ensuring clips transitioned on the 'beat' of the music allowing the editing to be smoother. The song is in 4/4 time.

- Creating Action Matches

This was the process of cutting clips between two different objects in which are graphically similar.

Keeping the camera charged

Due to the camera losing charge after 4 hours of refilming the performance on Tuesday, we knew that the charge wouldn't last us all day today. So, on Wednesday we ensured to pick up the battery charger as well as the other equipment so we could charge it on the go. It turned out to be really easy to charge because for two times during the day we were in houses where we could put the battery on to charge whilst we had a break and planned what we were doing next and how we would film it.

               Having lunch at Tilda's

Weather

We were lucky that the weather on the day that we wanted to film was bright and sunny- but with clouds. It was ideally similar to the weather on the day we filmed the opening scene at the Rendezvous so the continuity was great, which is what we wanted.

17/10/13 Sticking to the filming schedule

When writing the schedule for filming the narrative I think we underestimated how much time some parts would take to film; and overestimated others. For example, the first scene we shot of the fight in Reece's room took a lot longer than we expected, leaving us an hour and a half behind schedule, however the shots on Whitley Bay sea front took less time than we thought and so we began catching up with the schedule. In the afternoon, despite not closely following the schedule , was planned out well. We were strict with ensuring we weren't messing around and got the shots that we needed. In the end, I think the day turned out better without the schedule because we used our time wisely whilst we still had the natural light. Although we missed out a couple of shots towards the end of the day due to the sky getting darker earlier, we have rescheduled to reshoot them over half term, when we have will have plenty free time to be at the locations at the exact time that the sun will be going down, and then we will be able to fit it into the finished video in time for final cut.

   9-11am

   12pm

   1pm

   3pm

   4.30pm

   5pm

Refilming the performance

We decided to refilm the performance today in the drama studio because we all finish the school day early. We wanted it to look the same as last time, so we ensured to book everything in advance. When the rest of the group were in lessons during 4th period, Bev gathered the equipment and put it next to the drama hall so that it was ready to set up once the lesson inside was finished. When the bell went Tom, Reece and the band set up whilst Bev and Tilda sorted out Tilda's hair and make up, before helping to set up the laptop and projector. We filmed the performance fully through at least 10 times; each time from a different angle; we tried: high angle, mid shot of the band, movement using the crane, close ups of the guitarist and drummer using the dolly, close ups and extreme close ups of the singer and shots from down on the floor of the singers feet tapping and stamping.

                    Close up from side

                           Close up

                     Extreme close up

                        Midshot

There were a couple of problems during filming which were out of our control. Firstly, part of the drumkit which had been borrowed had to be returned within an hour, which limited our time greatly. When it was time to return it, we replaced the missing equipment with the pieces we originally booked out, despite some of them being broken and without stands. Secondly, the battery ran out approximately 4 hours into filming, and luckily there was a spare battery that we could borrow from the media department to complete the filming. We have made a note of this so that we will remember to take the camera charger out wig is when we film on Thursday so that the camera doesn't run out. 

Digipak idea

Aot of the indie bands we have looked at tend to have an artistic image on the front that is not nessessarilly the band itself and you first see the image of the band on the inside left cover. For example the Yeah Yeah Yeahs album 'It's a blitz' has an image of a hand smashing an egg and the Kings of Leon album 'One by the Night' shows sections of the band members faces morphed with that of wild animals, the inside disk has a night vision camera image and this wild life at night theme is continued throughout.

These features make both bands appear mysterious to the fans which is what I want we want to do with our band. Whilst using the projector and the lights in the studio I had an idea of a technological theme for our album graphics and name the album something like 'White Noise' for example. My idea was to have an image of a smashed up tv screen on the cover with the band names and on the inside cover an image of the band in black and white, all wearing black and white clothing with tv colour bars layered translucent over the top like when the tv loses signal.

On the rear of the album could be an image of a smashed up satellite dish with the track listings cricked around.

Face paint

We had an idea to use white and blue face paint on the two male band members to make them stand out and look unusual. However, we had no influence behind it and decided that it wouldn't fit in with the overall look of the video.

Projection Influences

Projects are very common in modern music videos, particularly in Rihanna's We Found love and Ariana Grande's The Way. Though not part of our music genre, we thought the aesthetics of this feature gives more energy to the performance. Our projections are more literal than the ones in their videos, as the lyrics to the song are presented by the band, and shown through the projections so everything is linked together. Whilst filming our projections we were wary that the majority of them must be light and colourful, so they wouldn't cast a shadow over the main singer, as we need to see her face. 

Spending update

Tom - fox mask £5.50

Reece - siren lights and blonde wig £12

Tilda - apples and glitter £5

Bev - tiger mask and black wig £3.68

- some of these props/costumes we aren't using in the video 

Filming on our day off

When we found out we were off school on Thursday 17th due to a strike, we booked a camera and this is when we will film the majority of our narrative storyline. We will meet before 10am at Whitley Bay sea front to film the section after the scene in the cafe, then once finished there we will move to Jesmond Dene where the light will still be good, to film the end section of our video. After this, we will film in town outside Smokey Joe's, ensuring that the light is still bright enough so this scene can be edited before the scene at Jesmond Dene. Below is a schedule of our day to use our time wisely:

I have colour coded the different locations and taken into account travel time between each place. Also I have written a list of props to remember.

Arranging The Performance

In preparation for our second run at filming the performance we had to work out an available date and time when both members of the band, Tom and Michael would be available. We have agreed upon tomorrow night after school except this time we have decided that all members of the band will wear white shirts to enable the projections to display more clearly upon them. We also confirmed this with the members earlier:

Filming at Reece's house

Today we all went to Reece's house to film the bedroom scene where the couple are relaxing reading a book in their room and later when it cuts to them having an abusive fight showing the ups and downs in their relationship.

Mise en Scene

In order to give the couple a dull but retro appearance we stripped back the room so there was barely any furniture to show they have little money, also we filmed on a bare mattress to make them look even more grotty as if they barely spend any time at home. Also the vintage headboard and mattress tie in grate with our retro indie theme.

We had a few problems filming the fight scene as neither of us are professional actors therefore found it hard to show the raw emotion needed for the shots, after running out of time before members of our group had to leave we decided it was best to choreograph it so both actors and camera users know what is going on.

Here we found a music video which shows a very short fight but this is just how we want to show ours, we have taken note of the close ups and action matches etc. and will use them when we re-film the shots on Thursday.  

Hurts- Blind (fight scene)

Despite not being able to film anymore we experimented with the police sirens we bought for the final part of our video, we held them behind frosted glass as if outside to give the effect that the characters were under arrest without having to act out the arrest and we decided the lights work very well.

Flashing Lights

Apples

Today we got the apples for the music video. We decided to get red apples because red is the colour of danger, lust and rebellion and we thought that linked in with our narrative well. They will be a prop of the female protagonist to portray her as the femme fatal stereotype.

Filming Time Table

To keep organised we made a Filming Timetable for the next 4 scene we need to film. We will print it off and fill it out as we go and then up lode it to see if it has been helpful or not and what changes (if any) we need to make to it so we keep on top of all the actors, locations, equipment and props that need to be coordinated.