Editing 4

Today, we have somewhat encountered a small problem, we seem to have overwritten our filmed and edited storyboards, and now we do not have them nor the original drawn out version. However, because we had very much moved on in our editing process and we actually realised we did not need them, nonetheless it would have been useful when it came to evaluating the product and reflect on what we did differently.

Editing 3

We decided to just battle on and try and work through our problem, even though it was beginning to really get us down. So we continued to just getting the sequences down on the timeline in the correct order, however, we were somewhat just seeing where it took us rather than having an exact plan. We knew the general direction in which we wished to take our video, and how it was to be split up into three sections -it was just getting that perfect balance of these, and getting the pace of the editing in the correct position. Although, another problem that we were beginning to encounter was the lip sync, both our actors did not know their lyrics very well, this made it very difficult during these editing sessions, as shots we wished to use we couldn’t in the end because the singer was obviously singing the wrong lyrics, and this would jeopardise the overall look of the video. Therefore, getting the right shots with the singers singing the correct lyrics was becoming a very lengthy process, as were often having to cut in and out of more shots because of this factor. Nonetheless, it was making the video look all the much better as it was so much more precise.

Editing 2

Once we had a basic structure down on the timeline, we actually realised that our initial idea of having a more narrative driven pop video was not actually working very well. Therefore, we decided to scrap this idea and start from the beginning, still keeping the same themes in place but now using a more of a montage effect. So we started to place things down on the timeline, however, myself and another member came to great difficulty in finding the actual beat. This was making it very difficult to cut in time – this was a great struggle that we defiantly had not over come quite yet but we are trying to get better. We wanted the pace of editing to be spot on and we wanted the right mode of address to be conveyed to the audience, so our slight technical problem was evidently becoming more and more difficult to over come.

Editing 1

For our first few sessions of editing we began by taking the rushes, cutting them up and putting them into sub-clips. This was to make it easier in collecting the exact shots we wished to use, as they would all be titled and in separate bins which we had created. Once this was done we already had our filmed timeline in place, so we decided to just put the somewhat relevant clips in their correct position on the timeline. However, this proved more difficult than it sounds, as some of the shots we had drawn for our story board we had not actually filmed, so we just placed what we had down to give us a basic structure. Moreover, we found it very difficult to all cooperate at first, as there was a continuous battle to get on the mouse, so eventually we decided on just two people to move on with this, whilst the others got on with completing the background.

Account of Shoot Day

We arrived at the studio about 9 o’clock in the morning. We wanted the day to be as relaxed as possible and for our performers to feel comfortable. However, we soon realised that Jess had left the storyboards at her house, this was potentially a huge problem, but luckily we knew what a lot of the shots were to get going in the morning. Fortunately, her mother brought them into school so we had them for the afternoon. However, we had to get going regardless, so we begun the day by getting both our female and male singer ready, we wanted our look to be fairly of the norm and simple. Both our stars wore jeans and white tops; this look was simple yet really showed who they really were and their organic, natural approach to music etc. However, Melena wore some slightly kooky make-up, this was used to enhance her individuality and show that she is a bit unique in her style. Once the duo were all set and ready to go, we just put the music on repeat and let them both get into the mood and play around with what kind of choreography they felt comfortable doing. We wanted them both to feel relaxed as this would make the final piece look so much better.

Nearing 10 o’clock, we begun filming – we just did a few takes of the whole song, from start to finish in wide, as this would be the basis of our performance element of the video. However, once we got underway we realised that the positioning was not quite right, so we began to rearrange the performers in order to gain the best shot possible, placing William further the centre of the shot. Also, once the cameras began rolling Melena found it quite difficult to move and sing directly towards the camera, because we wanted this sequence to look extremely natural, it was very important that we got this in the end, and she did really up her game, but still at times she was very unaware of where the camera was positioned. As, we only had a day to shoot this we had to move on fast, as we all knew roughly what we wanted to be shot. Once we had filmed the wide shot of the performance section we moved onto close ups of the instruments. Again, this seemed to take a lot longer than it should have, as ‘William’ (Callum) cannot actually play base, in the wide it was not noticeable that he was not actually playing but in a close up it was very. Therefore, we had to spend a little time going through some of the basics, although this put us behind schedule a little; it enabled us to get the shots we needed. With Melena, it was fairly simple – we just wanted to shoot close ups of her singing really at this moment rather than on the keyboard. Although, we again encountered this problem of not looking directly into the camera, but we had to work with what we got.

We realised we were running on a very tight schedule, we still had more shots to film in this setting before we took a break for lunch. We hoped to break at 12.30, but that did not happen – we broke at 1pm, as we had to shoot the more ‘fun’ side to the duo, the shots of them messing around the leaves and Melena wandering up and down the tree trunks. Around this time, my group had a little argument, because one of the members of our group wanted to try out this new shot she had thought of, we were all willing to go along with it, however, it was not going as expected and this person would not give up until she got what she wanted, but this was being proven very difficult. Cutting, the story short we were just all trying to speed up the process, saying how it was necessary to move on as we needed to complete the filming in our time scale. Eventually, she did give in and we did move on – but as we were approaching our lunch break it was a bit of a mad rush to finish all these shot in time, it was impossible. In the end, we broke for lunch without quite finishing what we had anticipated. However, this made us all come together as a team during our break and realised that we had to just get on and not waste any time in the afternoon.

We came back for 2 o’clock, and we had set ourselves a task of getting these shots completed in fifteen minutes, all we wanted was shots of William sitting on the bench singing whilst Melena danced around him – although we wanted to experiment with angles we had to just get on with it and shoot what we could.

Around half past two, it was vital we moved on. The next set was ‘the bikes’. Both the bicycles were already set up on the platforms ready for us to begin shooting. We positioned them into the centre of the studio. We wanted to create a windy day scenario, so we had the fans blowing from a short distance away to make sure it was not over powering as some leaves were blowing across the shot. We decided to just get on with the following footage, for this set we mainly just needed to go through the whole song a few times of them singing, performing and ‘cycling’ and most importantly having fun. After a couple of takes, our female performer had a small accident and fell off the bike, thankfully she was completely fine and just laughed it off, although we were all quite worried it would knock her confidence and then not give us the performance we really needed from her. However, we took a quick break to boost up her energy and then continued with this set. Throughout this set it was easy for our group to take turns being on camera and be creative with the shot types as the set was quite simple etc.

After about an hour of this set, we realised we had to move on and move on quickly. Our final set was ‘the boat’; this meant we had to completely clear everything in the studio. We got everyone involved, ensuring all the leaves were swept up and put back into the black bags. Once everything was clear we were able to bring in the wooden waves and place the material along the studio back wall. All in all, this took about thirty minutes to set up and then we were ready to shoot the final concept part of our pop promo. By this time, everyone was beginning to get tired but we all picked ourselves up and tried to make the last hour as fun as possible. Our wooden waves were very large, so we grabbed a few friends to move them to help create the moving wave effect we wanted. Again, the shots we needed were mainly in wide of the duo just joking around and having a laugh, so again we were all able to take turns filming on the camera and on the playback, all being able to get involved was really good as we were able to get a feel of both being on camera and also just being involved in terms of creativity and getting our opinions and ideas across. The last hour of the shoot day was however very fun as we all knew it was drawing to a close shortly and we wanted to get the best out of the day. Both our performers were very relaxed by this time and were really able to go for it to finish off the day.

About half past five we finished, our time frame was up and we had completed our shoot day. We then had to clear out the studio, to allow the following group to set up.

As a whole, I felt our shoot day went extremely well. There was a very relaxed atmosphere throughout the day and it allowed everyone to feel comfortable and for us to really get all the shots we wanted. However, obviously there were some moments which were fairly tedious, either our group were having a disagreement in the shot types or the performers were lacking energy and we were just pushing on at them to really deliver. But all in all, I defiantly believe we have a wide variety of footage, and hopefully we can now edit the footage successfully in order for our pop promo to be of a high standard that we wish to achieve.

Day before Shoot Day

At 4pm this afternoon, we were able to begin setting up in the studio in preparation for the following days shoot. By doing this it enabled us to go on tomorrow being ready to get going straight away. Also, we established that if we had not gone in tonight we would not be able to shoot very much tomorrow. As we soon realised that we had no where near enough leaves to cover the entire studio floor – as this was part of our set it would have set us greatly behind if we had not sorted out the minor problem this evening. Between two of us we went and collected another 12 black bags of leaves, even though this was a mad rush to get it all set up and ready by 6pm, we did achieve this. We spread the leaves across the floor and placed the tree trunks, amp and keyboard into position so we were able to get on shooting quickly in the morning.

Lighting Plans

Below is a list of the different lighting ideas we hope to have for the different sets of our pop promo. Now we have completed this it is will be easier to discuss with the lighting designer when he comes in in the future.

As a group, we also decided to just draw up a couple of examples, to help show more clearly precisely what we wish the set to look like with the correct lighting etc. Below, is the performance section - this shows clearly the layout of the set and the ideas for the lighting too.

We also just sketched out the 'boat set' as we wanted the lighting for this to be quite specific and felt that drawing it out would make it a lot clearer for everyone to understand, because although the set was made to look theatrical, we needed the lighting to oppose this idea and make it look more realistic etc.

Running Order

8:30AM
Meet C&S-put in costume and make-up.

8:50AM
Meet in studio- begin dressing the set.

10:00AM
Start shooting wide performance shot. (all leaf scenes)

12:45AM
LUNCH BREAK

1:15PM
Resume shoot.
Close-ups of Leaf scene.
Storm dancing in leaves+ flowers + logs

3:00PM
Set up and then shoot Bike Shots.

4:00PM
Shoot Boat

5:00PM
Run over time (extra shots)

The Set

Today, we begun creating the set. We had all discussed exactly what we had to create it just was now getting on with it.

We had to make the waves, as the rest of the set were things we were able to bring in or buy. We bought some large pieces of chipboard, and spent the afternoon, with the help of some of our friends, cutting out the shape of the waves with an electric saw. With paints used from the schools art department we got on with painting them. The waves were quite large, they were around ten metres in length and about one metre high, and we made three of them, as they had to fit the studio. We wanted the set look theatrical, but also have an artistic creative spin on it to reinforce the bands creative flare. Between about six of us in all, we painted all three of the waves and got them looking exactly how we liked.

Also, we had to re-paint the platforms for the bicycles. Luckily, our school had things of the sort that we were able to adapt and use for our music video. So, we ended up finishing off the day by re-painting the existing platforms and getting them prepared for our shoot day.

Storyboarding 5

Now we had our storyboards filmed, we began editing it. We have spent about two lessons on it, today and yesterday and we made a rough cut of the order and the shot lengths. As this, we felt would give us a clear vision to work with when it came to filming our finalised video. We used Final Cut Pro to edit our storyboard – we put all the clips down onto the timeline and then broke it up and made sure we put the right clip to the right piece of music. We used our timeline, which we had previously made to help us with this as we were then aware of when the three different sections were. As this was only a rough cut we did not do this too accurately as we were aware that after our filming day our shots were going to be very different so it was just an initial outline as to what we wanted our pop promo to look like.

Storyboarding 4

Today, we filmed our storyboard – as this showed us a rough cut of all the footage we wished and in the right order. This will then be really useful when it comes to editing our final piece as it will help with getting the right shots in the right place as well as for the right amount of time. Although, it is likely many of the shots will change on the shoot day. Jess and I set up the camera JVC 1500E, we pinned each shot up and filmed each one for approximately 20 seconds.

Storyboarding 3

In the lesson today, we just began to make the finishing touches to our storyboards, going very them with a fine-liner and adding some colour to help give more of an idea as to what we want the shots to actually look like. Then we began to organise them into an order, the order in which at the moment we want our pop promo to look like. As this way we can immediately begin filming our storyboard in the correct order in tomorrow’s lesson.

Storyboarding 2

We set off straight away today with a discussion of all our own ideas, as this helped with letting the whole group have a general direction as to where we all wanted to go. As one of our members of our group was away we split up again – each choosing one of the three different sections to our pop promo. I concentrated on the middle section, which was ‘the bikes’. In this, I just drew out a number of different shot types, ranging from mid to close ups of both the male and female singer. Also I drew close up shots, of different things to make the shots varied, e.g. a close up of the handle of the bicycle. Again, we set ourselves a goal of completing a certain amount of different shots; we each did between fifteen and twenty so we then had a good amount of shots to work with for our shoot day.

Storyboarding 1

Today, we began the process of getting our ideas down onto paper to help us with our shoot day as it will give us more of an idea on the day as to exactly what we wish to shoot. Since this is our first lesson, we each sat down alone and just started drawing out the different shots we felt we wanted, this was just to help get us into the right frame of mind and put us onto the right track. This way by doing this individually we could do whatever we wanted, as this was just our initial ideas. We each set ourselves the target to complete between ten and fifteen shots each so that next lesson we could begin with coming back and discussing our own ideas, and that way it will trigger and generate more innovative ideas and be more progressive next lesson.

Costume Plan

Above is the costumer list we made, which was pinned up on our wall (where we kept everything). As you can see we have used costumes that are very on trend and therefore should be easy to get hold of.

Initial Props and Locations

Props:

• Casio White Keyboard
• Bass Guitar
• Amp
• Logs - tree stumps
• Leaves - enough to cover studio floor
• Roses
• Front of wooden rowing boat
• 2 bikes
• Wooden waves
• Fabric - blues and whites to make waves
• Pasasol
• Gold refelectors
• Face paints

Location - Studio

• Set 1 - Performance element. We want leaves to cover the studio floor and logs diagonally across. We want a naturalistic setting.
• Set 2 - Bikes. Again we want to keep the leaves covering studio floor with 2 bikes on a platform infront of a blue screen.
• Set 3 - Boat. We want to create this fake but real setting, using fake waves and a boat to make it look as if out on a sunny day. The waves being the width of the studio and the boat slightly bobbing up and down.

Perfomance Section

Now our timeline is in place, we are now discussing the performance aspect of the video. Seeing as the band are relatively new we feel that we are going to keep their perfomarnce quite simple and keep it very clearly focused on the two of them. However, we want their style image to be clearly portrayed, for example, the pair are quite natural, therefore choosing their performance to be set in a studio but transforming it to look like a more natural setting, even though it is inside. We have decided to do this as we feel it is likely to captivate their target audience and show the duo off as themselves, keeping it authentic.

Timeline

Below is our timeline.
Firstly we split our timeline up into 30 second sections. We then went through the song and picked out the key lines of lyrics. Once we had done this we went through the song again and picked out the different instruments which are used, and slot them into the timeline, stating when they were used and when they were not. We did this so we can make clear choices so we could decide where to place key images. Secondly where best to highlight the performance and thirdly where best to emphasise the concept and the star image.

We then disscussed what imagery we should or could use for our pop video and which would be most effective and fit in with the style of our track and the star image we are trying to create.

Track Choice

My group have decided to use the track 'Bruises' by Chairlift as our bands debut promo video. This song we feel will show off them as a band and appeal to their target audience. The duo are quite down to earth and want to keep true to their roots, therefore this song really fits into the genre they wish to be in and also it is a song that directly targets their target audience. Chairlift are signed to Kanine Records, however, in the lesson today, we have decided that Faulkes would be under Polydor records which is a subsidiary of the Universal Music group. Polydor was originally set up as an independent record label before become part of Universal, so it has to ability to handle more of an independent style band but to make them a huge success allowing them to have bigger budget for music videos, performances etc. Also, the track is very catchy as it is quite repititive, so thereofore, for a debut promo video this song is a perfect choice.

However, we did have some other track ideas that were brought up and discussed in the lesson. Another track was 'Not Nineteen Forever' by The Courteeners. This track would have meant though that our band would have had to have changed as they will be more of a rock bannd. Although, this track has been put into consideration.

Although, because we liked this idea of having a band made up of just a boy and a girl, we considered covering a song by 'Everything but the girl' - 'Missing'. As this song fits the genre aswell as they style we wished to achieve, and also because it was in the nineties it is quite likely that it could be covered again in the present day. They were signed to Virgin Records, this would be useful for us as Virgin Records is part of Polydors franchises and therefore would be easy to cover the song. Also, Absolute Radio which was once Virgin Radio would play this song, so it will help promote the new band.