TH DH Evaluation Question 3

Conforming to the genre, we decided the target audience for our music video should be teenagers and young adults, because of this we only took opinions from other people at school. This also had the added effect of making it easy to get responses and have the opinion of other media students.

We asked for feedback at several parts of the planning and production processes, and got some very useful information after our practice video and album cover for `memory lane`. We watched the video with our peers and found that the lip-syncing of the video was not very convincing, because of this we made sure to get this perfect in our final piece by playing the music loudly and ensuring the performers were actually singing.

The next audience feedback was received orally from our peers again after presenting our pitch, we received a huge amount of comments from this, the most important was that the song did not work well with our style of video, as a result we decided to change our song from `Short Change Hero` (The Heavy) to `What Happened to Your Band` (McBusted). This information was very important to the final outcome of the piece, and the fresh viewpoints allowed us to get a better impression of our piece.

Before filming we used Survey Monkey to distribute questionnaires on conventions of the genre, the inclusion of performance, digipak colouration and other difficult aspects. This allowed us to affirm our ideas before completing the storyboard and beginning the filming and digipak/advert production. We found that people liked the idea of performance interacting with narrative, as well as the inclusion of multiple band members on the pieces. The colour scheme of red and black for the digipak was also decided through this questionnaire.

Audience Expectations:  https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/PCQVL73

 

After we finished our video we shared it and the digipak on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter before sending a new Survey Monkey questionnaire, asking what people liked about them, whether they conformed to the genre, and if they worked well together. We also specifically talked to people and did an interview.

Promotional Campaign Feedback: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/ZMFSYMF
 



 



Do you think the materials are conventional of the genre? 

What do you think were the best shots in the music video?

The interview was more useful than the questionnaire as it allowed us to direct inquiries, asking specific follow up questions and stimulating discussion between interviewees.

Overall the feedback was very positive, most people we asked liked our slow-motion shots and the end sequence the best. Everyone we asked thought our campaign as a whole was conventional of the genre, although a minority said some small aspects were not, such as the front pane of the digipak. They found the digipak, advert, and music video all linked well due to the inclusion of the band and recurring themes such as colour scheme and font.
There was a clear interpretation of the narrative, the preferred reading was that the band had difficulties in their group relationship, but solved their issues, however the exact specifics were open to interpretation which was as we had hoped,

DH Editing Digipak (4)

The digipak is almost complete, however our ideas have developed we have made some small changes. We have the disk pane, the reflection, and the red guitar, while the last few we are still tweaking. It was suggested to us that with the cymbal image it was not clear what the coloured object was. Therefore on the 26th I took some new images of the cymbal and a drumstick and at the same of the band for the front cover. I used the same techniques as before, creating a black and white effect with a mask layer, adjusting and darkening the background and increasing the contrast.
We had a few variations of the front image but we decided on one of the band simply in a line, slightly behind one another. due to the constraints of the square frame, I had to move them slightly closer together in Photoshop. After this I created an abstract background and used blend layers to make the band members colourful. In order to make them stand out from the background I used a clipping mask with the background and created a background copy to which I applied the posterize effect and. Finally I added the album/band name in the font `impact label` with a white square behind to make the text white, after experimenting with different areas and angles we decided on its final position.

DH Editing Music Video (3)

We have very nearly completed the music video, however it has evolved slightly yet again. The main change Tom and I have decided to make to our piece is that we have footage at the end that breaks the fourth wall, and we show some of the production of the video, with the band messing around with one another. We did this in order to make the theatre footage more interesting, since everybody moves around in these shots, and also to show the friendship of the band, as opposed to just the argument and performance. One other thing it was suggested we change was the cutting rate, which has greatly increased especially towards the end.
I personally have been mainly grading the footage, for most shots we have increased the contrast to make it bolder. However to differentiate the performance from the narrative I have been experimenting with the contrast/brightness, colour (hue, lightness, saturation), and tint effects. We have not yet come to an final effect we are happy with though, since bleaching the colour can also reflect a lack of energy in the piece which does not work so well with the tone of the song, meanwhile it still needs to be contrasting with the performance and new footage at the end.

TH Editing Music Video (5)

Today I completed the timeline. This involved some slight additions to the video at the end.

As is evident in this first screenshot, the timeline was full with the exception of a small section towards the end:


The approach I took to filling this was firstly by inserting some more performance that corresponded to the song. But, the gap was about ten seconds long, so filling this just with random clips I found did not seem the strongest way to complete the video.

In the storyboard, there is a ten-second segment near the end that we had planned to include a small summary of the video with a fast cutting rate. Therefore, I thought I could adapt this somehow and incorporate a montage sequence of clips that we did not intend on making the cut - bloopers in some ways.



This worked very well in the end, after applying some effects such as reducing saturation and increasing lightness in the HLS colour balance menu. The clips used include band members breaking the fourth wall. I believe that this has worked very well and powerfully for the end of the video as the audience will feel a connection with the band; the first paradox in Dyer's theory of  the artist being close but far from the consumer.

In conclusion on what may be my last editing post, I believe this addition has improved our video quite a lot.

DH Editing Digipak (3)

Disk

The disk pane has changed quite dramatically from it's previous concepts. Firstly I interlocked individual words from the song lyrics in the album in slightly different shades of red. Towards the centre of the image the words tend to be smaller, this is to draw the eye to the middle. When I was happy with the text positioning I merged the layers into one, duplicated and then inverted one of them. By then changing the blending effect of the inverted layer to overlay and moving it slightly off-centre I was able to create a three dimensional effect on the text.
However I still had to make the disk clear, to do this I created a disk shape, lowered the opacity of the layer and changed the blend effect to colour. Through this I was able to clearly differentiate the disk from the background without keeping it completely separate.

TH Reflection on Rough Cut

The rough cut that we exported from our project was peer reviewed yesterday. We received a lot of feedback from this session and it was quite useful for us.

-People were really enthusiastic to commend us on our lip syncing and instrument syncing. They believed that both of these crucial elements were addressed very well in the editing process.
-The whole performance part was received very well. The performance was very believable according to our peers.
-The contrast between the narrative and the performance lines of action was apparent; they flow very well separately and do not clash.

-One element of the performance that was highlighted by our peers was that perhaps there is a noticeable difference between the lighting in the shoot at the Oast Theatre and the one in the drama studio. This will have to be addressed by either incorporating less clips from one shoot or by altering the contrast and brightness of some shots.
-While the argument scene was well received on the whole, some thought it might be too confusing.
-Some of the earlier shots were too long; the cutting rate was an issue for our teachers in particular as they thought we could include more shots with a faster cutting rate.
-It was suggested we use effects to colour grade the footage, and we agree, because of this we want to experiment with having a lower saturation or tint on the narrative footage in order to show a clear contrast with the performance. If we have time we also want to increase the contrast on the whole video to make it more visually appealing.

We are at the stage where finishing touches are the main priority. With almost all of the footage on the timeline, visuals synced with audio and a linear progression all complete, making the video appear most professional is at the forefront of work in lesson time.

TH Editing Music Video (4)

In today's double period lesson, our video was reviewed by our peers and teachers. From this, Dan and I received some very useful feedback - this will be included in a separate post.
From the feedback, I continued editing and made some alterations to the timeline.

I only added one clip to the video, the first shot of the titles in a puddle. Other than this, nothing has been added or removed. What has been changed is the appearance of the timeline; I have separated the one line of footage into two lines on the timeline. The layer on top is the collection of footage we would like to use/definitely need to include and the layer underneath this is footage that we do not necessarily have to include and may exchange for other clips.

This has been a practical development in the editing process - we can now visualise what needs to be done before the deadline on Friday. Thus, we hope we can now get the video complete even quicker.

TH Reflection on Shoot 3

Initially, we had only planned for two shoots. During the editing of our video, we have been instructed to do one more shoot and capture a number of CUs of the lead and backing singers. We did this yesterday in the drama studio at our school.

First of all, we had to maintain a continuity between the first shoot's performance setting and this one. Costume was not a problem, as I wore the same clothes and Jack did not need to wear the same because we would just be filming his face in BCUs.

Making the lighting in the studio appear identical to that of the first shoot was next. Dan had access to the lighting system in both locations and so he made sure the lighting maintained continuity. The colour and shadow of what we achieved yesterday were both very similar.

Filming went well. We quickly accessed guitars and amps, one mic and stand, a camera and tripod. We filmed the whole song through once or twice, before filming BCUs of myself and Jack in parts we had gaps on the timeline.

My favourite shot is probably a worm's eye view shot of the lead singer, including the guitar, lip syncing and lighting on the rack all in frame.

I believe on improvement that could have been made in this shoot was the use of more equipment, such as the track or the jib. Unfortunately we did not have access to these as yesterday was also a filming day for the year below.

DH Reflection on Shoot 3

On the 18th November we filmed in the drama studio at school, our aim was to get some more close-ups and more dynamic shots. We had found that there were not only very few close-ups in our footage but there were also some gaps where we had moved narrative sections to fit with the music better and make nicer shots more prominent.

Due to the plays on at the Oast Theatre we were unable to use that location again however because of the lighting system in the drama studio it was fairly easy to recreate the lighting style.

My role was camera and lighting again, it was fairly easy to use the lights in the drama studio and our closer proximity meant we had a lot more control, and allowed me to get the lights in frame. However framing was very difficult in some respects since I had to work hard to make sure the background was not fully visible or it would contrast too heavily with our other footage. I filmed both Tom and Jack, Tom throughout most of the song in various close-ups and Jack playing guitar and singing backing vocals, something we had not really included in our first shoot.

One of my favourite shots was an arc shot, I really liked its use in the music video `Someone New` however due to the position of the lights and the shadow created, it did not turn out very well in our first shoot.

I was very happy with how this shoot went and Tom and I are now confident we have all the footage we need to complete our music video.

TH Call Sheet and Risk Assessment for Shoot 3

Shoot three is going to take place tomorrow in the drama studio at school. This is an updated call sheet/risk assessment post for the final shoot.

 

DH Editing Digipak (2)

Original

 I have been experimenting very thoroughly with the digipak in our  lessons, I recently finished the guitar image. In this image I  removed the blemishes such as hair, dust spots and unwanted  reflections using the healing brush tool, I found a large soft brush  worked best for most areas, while a finer but still soft brush worked  well on very small areas. I then tried out two layers with zero  saturation, and used mask effects to decide whether the body should  be in colour or not. In the end I decided it should because it fits  with our red and black theme.

The disk was more awkward to edit in some respects and we have still not decided which we prefer, both feature lyrics from the album however the format is slightly different. In one the text is in a block across the disk, we have also considered other variations but found that we preferred to differentiate between the different songs. 

In the the other I placed four blocks of text, slightly misaligned with one another. This makes the pane appear a little more free form but still gives the impression of large amounts of text off the edge of the image. 

TH Examples of Lighting from Shoot 1

This video is a short section of our project timeline that I have exported to illustrate the type and colour of lighting used in our first performance shoot. We are filming again tomorrow to capture some more CUs of performance.

TH Editing Music Video (3)

More progress has been made in the editing of our music video. We have included most shots that were filmed in 60fps, we have almost filled the timeline too. All that is left to do is incorporate the last footage we will film (shoot taking place on Wednesday), and add some effects/make some adjustments in Adobe AfterEffects.

Today, I made two additions to the video...

Firstly, Dan suggested we could make some of the clips filmed in 60fps slow-motion shots. This was a very good idea, because we then realised that the improved frame rate for these clips would mean that reducing the speed of them would not introduce any reduction in quality or jumps.

To produce a slow-motion effect, Adobe Premiere Elements has a 'time stretch' tool. This allows the cursor to drag the clip in a similar manner to the cutting tool. The further I drag the cursor, the slower the clip becomes (shown in the screenshot below). This has resulted in a number of smooth slow-motion shots that we are very pleased with.

The other adjustment I have made to one or two of the 60fps shots is cropping. As mentioned before, these clips are of better quality in low lighting in comparison to the 25fps shots of our camera.

Therefore, using the crop and movement tools that Elements includes on the preview screen (seen on the left in the screenshot below), I can zoom in on the shot and crop out anything that may make the shot previously unusable.

Here, I have zoomed in on the shot and moved it slightly to the left to make Jack centre of the frame. This tool has been a very important part of the editing process.

TH Editing Music Video (2)

An important update to editing processes is the incorporation of some footage we filmed using a different camera. The camera in question was actually a friend's iPhone. The camera on this has capabilities to film at 60fps, as well as capture film of a good quality, in low-key lighting.
While I do not have lots of footage filmed using this camera, I have enough to place into the performance sections of the video where there are gaps.

There have been advantages and one arguable disadvantage to using this footage.

The most obvious advantage is that the footage is very high quality, crisp, and provides us with very nice mid shots of the band members performing.
Another advantage has been that these clips can be cropped without losing as much quality as other video files in the project. This makes the footage more available to use because if a clip contains a member of the filming crew somewhere in the frame where they are not wanted, the clip can still be used as a result of cropping them out. Therefore, I can use really good pieces of film even if something like this is a problem.

A disadvantage has been the process of rendering these clips. This has not created any major issues, it is more a setback in time consumption as the editing programme requires more time to render so many frames.

Other than this, I have been continuing editing the whole video even more. When reviewing the timeline (the section along the bottom of the screenshot below), it is relatively full of footage. There are unused clips of performance I have still not included. These will be put in place and when we have reviewed what we have altogether, we can make an informed decision as to whether or not there is a need to film more performance in another shoot.

TH Editing Digipak (2)

I worked on this in today's lesson:

A screenshot of the finished piece

This image is a prototype design for the back cover of our album digipak. There is a shot of the band together 'backstage' at the gig. On the right is the track list for McBusted's deluxe debut album.

I first imported the original image (above) and applied a few simple adjustments to it. These included a filter of a red tint. Then, I reduced the contrast in the image but increased highlights ever so slightly. All of this has left a warm colour that should hopefully correspond to the rest of the album's palette - we are intending on making reds and blacks a theme.

After the image looked this way, I had to remove the unfortunate placement of a hand in the bottom left corner (seen in the original image). The image is not a square and so it will be cropped again, but in spite of this I thought that getting rid of this obstruction would be worthwhile nonetheless. I initially tried to use the clone stamp tool to attempt to reproduce the wall behind it. This was not very effective. I therefore decided to just crop the image using the image adjustment tool and zooming in on the picture - making sure to zoom in ratio to the whole thing, rather than distorting it.

Finally, I had to include the song titles because this image was designed to be a contender for the rear pane of our digipak. The font seen in the finished piece is what I first selected; there was no need to search for appropriate font styles as Dan and I have already decided that this font will look good on the digipak. It may not be the one we end up going with but at the current stage in our project, we believe it will conform to the album's metanarrative and band image. I typed up each song name individually and placed them individually but after this I linked each of their separate layers together to form one layer. This means that when using the Photoshop project again, it will be a much simpler job moving them around as one layer. I have not included track lengths, I may do this later on if we decide to go with this image for the digipak.

DH Editing Music Video (2)

Today Tom and I swapped focus again, with him working on the digipak and me on the video editing. It was very interesting for me to get a proper opportunity to run through the film and see how it was looking. I am really pleased with what we have so far, however I agree that some more close-ups would be beneficial. Another problem was that some of the cuts were very long and so at several points I found myself cutting down sections such as the phone call in order to make it more dynamic. I was able to fill in a lot of gaps in our sequence with various sections of footage, as there were plenty of shots that we had not yet used, such as a shot with our bass guitarist silhouetted against the lights. I had to play around with the framing on this one since other people were in the shot, but since it was slightly higher quality than most of our shots this is not noticeable.
Some things I would like to do now or at least experiment with is getting some more footage, possibly using stills for the shots of the song lyrics and trying out some sections in slow-motion.

DH Print Development (2)

TH Editing Digipak (1)

While I have been mainly working on the music video, I have made one image for the digipak so far.

This is the image, depicting the headband worn by Paul, the drummer of our band.

The first thing to do was to make the canvas square, so that any editing I did on the photo would be in the right proportion for the panes. This also got rid of any of the background we did not want in the image, such as other parts of the drum and the floor. I zoomed in on the image and cropped out the unwanted parts.

I removed clutter in the upper right area using the mask effect tool. The tool essentially got rid of the background colour and I made this black. This made it easier to go between layers because I could clearly differentiate between coloured parts and greyscale parts.
I increased the contrast in the black and white layer, as the lighting on the symbol was quite nice. The coloured layer now stands out more too.

On the top of this layer, the whole picture was added again with everything cut out apart from bandana. This is how the two different elements of the image stand out so well without interference between layers.

DH Editing Digipak (1)

Image 1

Image 3

Photo Choice 

Image 2

We took these photos on our second shoot focusing on the artist's reflection in his instrument, these three were the main variations we liked. I decided against the first image because although it had interesting details it focused on the artist making the image look like it had been added post-production. The third image had a bag in the background and even when cropped to square was still seen. My favourite photo and the one I used was the second, since it had the screws at the top stopping it obscuring Tom, as well as this it had nice composition, having the corner of the metal out of shot.

Editing

I tried out two forms of this image, firstly creating a hue/saturation layer and lowering the saturation to 0% to create the black and white image. I then added a mask effect to this allowing me to designate areas of colour.

The first version (left) had colour only in the reflection which was interesting but a little too subtle. Therefore I tried the opposite, making the guitar in colour but the reflection in black and white, I much prefer this effect.

Once I had done this I increased the contrast with a brightness/contrast layer in order to make the image more vibrant. Then I used the healing brush tool on the image to remove any dust and hairs as well as reducing the reflection in the guitar's body.

I have gained a lot of experience in photoshop so far, for example I realised how useful mask effects were. Before, I simply used the eraser with which it is impossible to add any image back in once erased, and does not allow you to invert the effect.

Finished Pane

While I am happy with the piece we will need to review the whole digipak once finished and make sure all the panes share a similar theme, especially since we want a red and black theme for the album.

TH Shot List

As mentioned in our concept development, we have decided to make some alterations to our performance's structure. During the process of storyboarding, we intended on having a lot more long shots than we now think we need.
Therefore, we have made a shot list of things we think we now need to film to replace some clips and incorporate some new distances and angles; primarily CUs of the lead singer.

-CUs of lead singer, low angle/high angle, tracking inwards
-Low angle MS of band tracking shot needs re-doing
-CUs MCUs of band members interacting with each other
-Backing vocals shots where the lead and back-up singers are shown in one frame

We will also take some photos of the band. We have enough photos for the inside panes for the digipak but a shot of the whole band together would be really nice for the front pane.

DH Concept Development (3)

We have spent the last week editing our digipak and music video, however we have come to the conclusion that we do not have a wide enough range of shots for the performance, our footage mainly consists of long shots. Unfortunately due to a play at the Oast Theatre we are unable to film there. Therefore we have decided to try and film in the school's drama studio.

While not as interesting a location, we would have access to lighting in order to recreate that in our first shoot. Since we are primarily focusing on close-ups, we should be able to either black out the background or even if we cannot, should look similar enough not to cause any issues.

We have not decided on dates yet, however we will start filming soon in order to finish off the video.

Until then we will continue editing and working on our digipak.

DH Editing Music Video (1)

Video 

Most of the video editing we have done so far has been fairly standard. At this stage we have transferred all our footage to the computer's D drive. We are using Premiere Elements for editing which is perfectly adequate for our needs. When I edit I prefer to preview the clip and cut it to it's rough size before placing it onto the timeline. If it requires lipsyncing I match up the audio as best I can otherwise I delete the audio immediately since it is not needed. Then it is a simple matter of the finer cuts in order to make sure it all flows. My skills at editing video have definitely improved since my AS piece, mainly because of practice, and I definitely feel more at ease, even with the daunting amounts of footage.

Audio

We decided that we wanted to cut out the one swearword in the song, however there are no radio edits of it available, therefore I had to do it manually. To do this I used the free program Audacity. I identified the section and used the vocal remover effect to try and remove the section, of course as a preset effect it was not completely effective, so I downloaded a bleep sound effect from freesound.org and added it as a new layer over the top. After working out the levels I exported it as our censored version of the song. We then added the song to our project as the base, in order to simply add video over the top.

TH Editing Music Video (1)

I have been predominantly working on the music video, with Dan developing the digipak's various panes.

Editing the video has been a fairly straightforward process. Before anything, I had to set the Premiere Elements project to the correct format setting; with a screen profile of 1920x1080i. The second task was to import all video files and song file from the computer's D Drive. After this, I placed the song on the audio track of the timeline and used this as my underlining constant throughout the timeline's length.

Trimming clips down to appropriate sizes is more difficult than may appear for a music video's performance. As we had filmed numerous, long, locked-down shots, some clips were in excess of three minutes in length. This meant that finding the correct parts to match the parts of the storyboard, and finding parts that were viable to use in the video was a long process. In spite of this, it allowed for any trimming, cutting and extending on the timeline to be done efficiently and accurately.

I have personally found that matching actions on screen with the music is quite easy. Finding elements of clips that correspond to parts of the music is not planned during storyboarding, unlike matching lip-syncing to lyrics. Thus, when finding a match between a flare on screen with a change in key in the music, or a cut at the exact same time as a loud beat from the drums in the song, it is a very rewarding feeling. Music videos feature these similarities between visuals and audio very frequently.

Finally, I have developed my ability in trimming and organising clips this year. During the editing of our AS piece, I remember finishing the film and feeling I had missed out some shots that could have been better than existing ones. I did this because I could not find the right part of the video for some clips, or I could not find parts of clips that we wanted. Experience has meant I now efficiently cut-down clips and have produced a succinct, smooth-flowing music video rough cut in the past week.

A view of the preview section portraying a CU of a guitar, with the timeline full of clips and the constant music file underneath, and a list of video files on the right-hand side.

This screenshot depicts a mini-preview window. It portrays a shot that appears early on in the video. This shot is an example of a shot where an event on-screen corresponds to an element of the song. The bass guitar's tuner flashes with the red light as the drums commence at the end of the intro.

DH Storyboard

The storyboard was a time consuming, but ultimately very useful task. I was responsible for drawing it while Tom took photos and edited the animatic at the same time, although he obviously contributed with ideas. It effectively allowed us to clearly work out framing, shot content and match up events to the music. While we used many of the shots we were able to take some liberties with it for the performance since we decided that much of the shooting may as well be spontaneous as it would give us a wider range of shots to work with, and allowed us to be more fluid with editing. However for our second shoot because continuity was more important we followed the storyboard more closely.

 



DH Print Development (1)

Our album panes focus on each member of the band in turn through something iconic to them. We took a few photos on our first shoot, they utilise the hat used by the main singer and the bandanna of the drummer and are meant to be some of the minor panes. We were planning to experiment with a mixture of black and white, and colour, to create a more visually stimulating image. However we were unhappy with them they use the location in the music video meaning they have no relevance without watching the video.


We were much happier with the photos taken on the second shoot, in this we experimented with reflections in the guitar,
linking the main artist with his instrument. This is our favourite and we have decided to use it as one of our frames. We have therefore decided not to use the first two photos and instead take some more focusing on the instruments of the band members.

DH Reflection on Shoot 2

The second shoot took place on the 28th October at Tom's house, it was far easier than the first shoot since it was just us two, and we did not have much equipment compared to before. We took a video camera and tripod, a normal camera, the track and dolly, and a guitar, as well as several photos we had taken at the previous shoot of the band.
Again, my role was to direct and film, we filmed the narrative parts and because continuity is important to these, the storyboard was very useful and I followed it closely.
One of the challenges was space, specifically, the tracking shot of the door. The doorway here was just slightly too small for the track to pass through, so I took one side of the dolly's `H` frame off, we discovered that this actually gave us a much smoother shot, as there was more resistance when pushing the camera. Another issue was lighting, because as we filmed it got darker, because the narrative sections take place over some time, I simply had to make sure we took shots in order, however we may need to brighten or darken some shots in post production so they match.
We had not planned any digipak shots for the shoot however we discovered that the reflection in Tom's guitar created a very interesting subject, we took several versions and we think we would like to put this as one of the digipak frames.
The next step is to review the footage at school to check for any gaps in our piece as well as finish taking the digipak photos.

TH Reflection on Shoot 2

For our second shoot we filmed at my house, in particular my bedroom and garden. The only character present was myself, with Dan filming everything bar one or two shots such as the POV shot of me picking up a photo.
Filming in the afternoon/evening provided us with similar lighting to that in the performance section of the video. This was important because we want the two separate lines of action to connote they take place in different time periods (the performance in the present and the narrative in the past).
This shoot only involved using the camera, tripod and track and dolly. My two guitars were already at home, as were some other props used, so this made time management easier.

My role during the second shoot was almost identical to that in the first shoot. As the protagonist, I am present in a considerable amount of the shots during the narrative. I did help with logistics, such as setting up the locations, directing, and working on cinematography in the locations we filmed in.

The storyboard was more important in this shoot than it was in the first, because the narrative is quite a linear sequence of events, in a continuity sequence. This is unlike the performance shoot where we filmed random shots to form the montage sequence at the theatre. Very few changes were made to the shot list for this reason.

My favourite shot has got to be the tracking shot that moves from outside my bedroom to inside it, showing the protagonist on the bed. This establishing shot is the first we see of the location and for this reason I think it compliments our video a great deal, looking very professional.
I also like the high angle shot in the garden of the protagonist sitting down on the bench.

I think the least successful shot was probably the shot in my room where I was practicing the guitar. It is not very important and does not exhibit any special filming techniques. The most problematic shot was the tracking shot outside where there was not a lot of light and not a lot of room to film, so the tracking appears quite slow; we may not have room in the video to incorporate it. 

There were not many other challenges. One thing that we did have to deal with though was the track and dolly. Last year this was our biggest set-back and it has been difficult to master again this year. This time, the track would not fit in my bedroom door; the space was too narrow so both wheels could not fit between. We overcame this through unscrewing one of the wheels off and laying the dolly on the track. It allowed us to track through the door and, perhaps more importantly, it actually provided us with a smoother shot.

We did not intend on taking any photos for our digipak during this shoot and in the end did not need to, we have a few photos from the first shoot and will most likely take some more in the coming weeks.

We had initially planned to embark on two shoots. These have taken place, and we certainly have more than enough footage to work with. We may have to go on one more shoot at the theatre if some footage is not as good as planned, whether that be because of lighting problems or not enough close-ups, we will conclude upon during editing. The only task outstanding at present is to collect a number of photos for the digipak. First and foremost however, we will begin editing.

TH Reflection on Shoot 1

The first shoot we did was at the Oast Theatre for the performance element of the film.
All of the band members were present - Altu, Jack, Paul and myself - so filming involved shooting from the audience, with the stage and band in frame. Filming was carried out by Jeremy and Dan was in charge of lighting.
The shoot itself took about three/four hours to complete as we had to set-up not only the stage but also the drumkit. Moreover, directing everyone was a little time consuming and keeping accurate to the storyboard was too.
We used the camera, tripod, track and dolly, and Dan's DSLR camera for some photography for the digipak. All other equipment were used as props; the three guitars, leads, amps, microphones, drums and sticks.

My role during the shoot was to perform as the lead singer/protagonist. I was present in most shots, singing and playing rhythm guitar. I had to act in the earlier shots where I enter the stage and meet other band members, but other than that I just had to lip-sync accurately and appear as a convincing, confident artist.I did film a little; some close up handicam shots of the other band members' instruments and facials were filmed by myself.

The storyboard was certainly very useful. It allowed us to place every actor correctly on the stage, as well as the location of the drumkit. We filmed in chronological order, too; this was possible because of the storyboard.
As with our AS piece, we did have to stray from the storyboard a little. This was not for any particular reason but more because of practicality. Some parts of the location were not the same as they were during the recce, as a play had been on recently. We did not make any major changes to the shot list; we did some tracking, some long shots from the audience and close ups of the band members.

 My personal favourite shot from the first shoot is the first shot in this montage; a handicam shot following the protagonist entering the stage area. I really like the smoothness of the actions in the shot, and the lighting. It could have been nicer as a tracking shot perhaps, but this may have made it less significant.

We filmed the whole song as performed by the band while tracking, but a fair amount of this footage is quite shaky and so cannot be used. There are small parts that appear quite professional though, at a low angle just in front of the stage.
The lighting of the theatre made some of the shots appear grainy. This is to be expected with low lighting and so there is not a lot that can be done about this.
Some CUs of the band members' instruments were problematic to film because the cameraman's shadow can be seen; a production of the lights in front of the stage. We overcame this problem by filming at a slightly different angle.

Another challenge was the set-up of the whole stage. This occupied at least an hour of our time there. There was nothing we could do about this but as soon as everyone was at the location, we managed to work quickly and efficiently as a group.
The size of the stage was not ideal; more space would have meant we could shoot more CUs and a greater variety of camera angles/movements. We adapted to this by filming all shots of instruments from a higher angle and spacing the band members further apart from each other so that the cameraman could access more places.

As Dan had already been to the location a lot - and had carried out a thorough location recce - we knew where we would take photos. There are a few photos we actually took to be used elsewhere in the film, but these have turned out to look really good and so we will probably use one or two for the album digipak too.
One problem we encountered in this department is not having enough time to get a photo of all the band on stage together. A similar problem occured in Brighton, where we only left with one photo. This was not such a problem there, as we only needed one pane for the album. However, here, we need at least four photos for the panes.

As I have just mentioned, we definitely need to plan how we will get more photos of the band for the digipak. We left with a few shots for the internal panes, and possibly the back pane. Nevertheless, the front pane is vitally important so capturing that is a priority on the list of tasks yet to be completed.
In relation to filming, the next step is filming the narrative section of our music video. This will be taking place at my house on Wednesday 28th October.

DH Reflection on Shoot 1

Our first shoot was on the 26th October at the Oast Theatre, it will probably be the most challenging shoot, since we had a long setup time, had to use lighting, and we had to direct four other people. We took the video camera and tripod, a normal camera, and the track and dolly, in order to get a range of shot types and start getting images for our digipak. We also transported a drumkit, two guitars, a bass guitar, two microphones, and a speaker, all to set the scene and play the song.
My job was directing and camera and also to control the lighting as I had experience with the equipment, while I did this one of our friends was in charge of the camera but we made sure to restrict the amount of shots out of Tom or mine's control.
The storyboard was useful to a degree as there are multiple shots we had planned thoroughly such as the beginning, end, and argument scene, however the rest of the time I decided to focus on getting a range of interesting shots.
One issue we had was the location since the set for the next play was already under construction, however we solved this by putting up a black curtain, although this restricted the stage space, it actually gave a very nice backdrop. This lack of space made it difficult to get close-ups however by moving people and equipment out of shot we were able to create room for me to stand, we also used the tripod so I could stand off stage and still get the correct level.
We took several photos for our digipak, however time constraints and location differences meant we did not get them all, and meant they were slightly different to as planned.
The next step is therefore to plan our next shoot, as well as take the rest of these photos.

TH Call Sheet and Risk Assessment for Shoots 1 & 2

TH DH Animatic

We have edited our storyboard together into an animatic to give us a visualisation of our music video.

In terms of our individual contributions Dan focused on the storyboard, drawing it out and fitting it to the music, meanwhile Tom took photos of the storyboard frames and edited them together into the animatic.

The process has been very beneficial for development as it has shown us how much content we need to fill the song length. It also was very useful to help us visualise the shots we hope to use, while they are bound to change a certain degree it helped to show whether there were too many planned shots of certain kinds too close to one another. One thing we found was that some of our ideas did not quite fit with the music and we either had to move sections around or add new ideas (such as showing the band's breakup). Another thing we were interested in was transitions, this was something we had not really thought about before unfortunately it is difficult to judge their effectiveness from just the animatic.

The whole task was a little more complicated than our AS piece. This was partly due to length, while our AS piece was a little over 2 minutes, our current coursework will end up just under 4 minutes. As well as this, we had to constantly listen to the song and highlight key sections in order for the shots to exactly fit the tone and lyrics of the music.

TH Logistics Planning

Cast and crew
-Tom (Guitarist and lead singer)
-Daniel (Filming)
-Jeremy (Drums)
-Altu (Guitar)

Props
-Guitar
-Drums
-Microphone and stand (we will be borrowing this from the music department)
-Costume (smart casual clothing in performance, normal clothes for narrative)
-Lyrics on paper
-Photos of band members (we'll take these before shooting)

Kit
-Camera (with SD card and two batteries)
-Stills camera for promotional photos
-Tripod
-Track

TH Audience Research Results

TH Storyboard and Animatic Development

Today I started to construct the animatic for our music video. I have made some changes to times that are not stated on the actual frame. Here are some screenshots of frames we have done and progress I have made in the project so far...