our video!!!!!

Feedback on Final Video..x

Final feedback on our music video..

On our camera work, our feedback consisted of that we needed more shots as it looked as if we used alot of the same footage in certain areas. We were also told that our camera work suited the pace of the song as we had a lot of long shots. Traffic part of the video was a bit over used as well according to our class. We were commented on our editing, that the shots were quite long but went well with the music. The lip syncing was very good and so were the transitions. However it needed to contextualize the narritive more. The mis-en-scene, was good especially as the locations worked well, however didnt use many props, but also worked well with the music video.

Brief idea

We had a quick idea to make the music video in black and white, we did this so its more consistent through out the video. It also adds to the night time effect and makes it look more darker. :)

Progress-7th nov

So far our music video is turning out to be hard work. We finally managed to get our song edited and cut the way we wanted it however we are having trouble syncing up the footage to the song.
Another problem we are having is using the day for night filter, we are having trouble making sure the footage looks dark enough to pass for night without making it look too dark so you cannot see anything.
We have an issue with some of the footage we filmed, we discovered that we haven't got footage for some bits of the song so we are having to fill in the gaps with cut away shots of my character walking down the street or of the male character that our friend Ant plays.

Besides those small problems we our having some success with our music video. We love the beginning part of the music video where the traffic passes by whilst the beeping noise is playing, we think it goes great with the song :)
Were also quite pleased that we are almost done with our music video as its taken a long time and a lot of hard work and effort.

Feedback to teachers comments

We weren't quite finished arranging our music video when our teacher asked to see our music video and what we had produced so far, our teacher liked our music video and thought we had some good ideas. For example our teacher loved how we contrasted the beginning beeping noise of the song with the flashing of the traffic lights. She said they fitted incredibly well together.
She suggested the idea about putting an overlay of me (steph) in the car over the top of the traffic lights flashing, that way it breaks the long shot up and doesn't make it so boring.
At the moment our current focus is on sorting the footage out and mixing it together to fit with the music perfectly. Once we have sorted out what clips go where and in what order, then we will put effects in such as the day for night effect, making it look like its filmed at late evening time.

The track

We managed to get our song shortened with success. however when we listened to it, some parts had been taken out that we wanted to keep in, therefore we had to have it all redone again and we made sure that it was cut to how we wanted it.
:)

Next Lesson..

The plan for next lesson is to carry on editing our shots and putting more of it together.
Hopefully by the end of next lesson we would have finished the beginning and started the middle of our video.

Feedback to rough cut

The feedback for our rough cut music video came out really well, here our comments!

Camera Work -
* Good shots
* at the end where it goes to sky is well good
* variety of shots - like the editing
* good close ups of Steph's face when she is singing to show emotion and to match lyrics with visuals when it says 'one day i'll see your face'

Editing -
* Nice lip syncing except in garden
* Good lip syncing
* Lip syncing was very good
*Flyover work was very good also with speeding up the cars to match the tempo of the music
* Good lip syncing in car

Effects -
* None yet
* Could add some transitions in between shots - not just straight cuts

Mise end scene -
*Worked well, being in the car with people carrying on down the road

Performance/Genre -
* Good at beginning the rest is unsynced so cant tell
* Good performance
* Steph works really well as the singer

Continuity -
* Camera work isn't sturdy
* When walking along with actor camera moves in and out and looks silly

Overall Comments -
* Lovely
* Needs more but i agree with the above
* Car parts go with music well!
* Works really well - traffic shots are really good and work well with the beeping music! =)

Rough Cut.. Very Rough Cut!!

Our Final Footage

We managed to film our footage with some success. :D
We filmed late afternoon time just as it was getting dark so we only need to adjust the day light contrast slightly to give it that night time effect.
Some shots didn't come out to their best possibility, for example the shot of Steph singing in the car did not come out quite as we had hoped. It came out too dark so that we cannot add the day for night effect otherwise you would not be able to see me (Steph)
at all. Also when Lauren was driving the car, the road was slightly bumpy so it jugged the camera every time.
The best shot we came out with was the traffic passing under the fly over at night. That came out just as we had wished for :)
We sped it up in final cut to make the lights pass quickly just like we had seen in other videos that we studied. It looks perfect for our video and fits in brilliantly with the opening beeping noise of the song.

The lip syncing of the main character came out well, however because we had no possible way of playing the song aloud, I had to play it on my head phones and lip sync to that, making it more difficult to line up on final cut when it comes to putting it together.

Some mistakes were made during the filming that we did not realize at the time. For example when playing back the footage on final cut we realized we could see my headphones that was playing the track for me to sing along to.
Other mistakes that we made were accidentally filming some of the crew in the shots, we hope to work around this by doing quick cut shots to cut the person out completely.

Other then that we are quite happy with our footage and think it will look good in our music video!

:)

New idea

We decided that the song was far too long for our music video. It was 4:42 but we decided to cut it down to 3:34, that way we should not have a problem about not having enough footage for the video and it will not bore the audience because its too long.
We cut out some of the ending part where the female singer sings "settle down" constantly. We didn't like the repetition because after a while it became boring and a little annoying.
We hope by doing this it will make our music video more interesting and attractive to the audience, it will also help us to have a mixture of shots that wont be too long.
:)

Filming problems..

Due to the weather, we were unable to film the rest of our music video when we wanted. We were suppose to film the rest of our shots on Tuesday 1st, but it rained, which meant our shots which we filmed on the Monday would look different to Tuesday shots with the weather being rainy. We had to make the decision of what to do, and we decided to move our filming day to the following Monday. By leaving a week in between our filming days it gives us plenty of time to edit and work on the shots that have already been shot.

Hopefully the weather is good for us next monday, to allow us to complete our filming =)

Call Sheet

Locations :-
Trumpington fly over
Ants House
Harston Village
Lauren's Car!


Production Contacts:-
Producer/Directer : Lauren Doxey and Becca Nutt
Associate Producer: Stephanie Fretwell
Camera: Lauren Doxey and Becca Nutt
Actors: Stephanie Fretwell and Anthony Strandmann


Shooting Schedule:-
16:00 Monday 29th September at Ant's house
- filming all of ants parts, the scenes with the sky in it. In ant's kitchen when he recieves the text from steph.

16:00 Monday 6th October in Harston and Trumpington Flyover
- The fly over
- Steph walking down the street, joinig ant in the garden looking at the stars.

Feed back of our Blog

This is the feedback we received from the rest of our class, from this particular questions.

Q1- are there any types of post that you think are missing from the blog?
A1 - Got most of what is needed, good time line, good music analysis, need a shot list as well as a detailed filming pattern.

Q2 - is there evidence in the blog that the group has
1. completed background research?
2. organised personnel, locations and equipment for shooting?
3. developed ideas from the initial concept?
A2 - 1. yes, some album info
2. yes, lots
3. yes indeed they have developed there ideas from the start

Q3 - What could we add to the blog?
A3 - Its a good blog, music video analysis could have more, shot types and prop list.

Q4 - Overall if you were to give this blog a marking level what would it be?

Level 4.. excellent planning, 24-30 marks
Level 3.. proficient planning, 17-23 marks
Level 2.. adequate planning, 10-16 marks
Level 1.. poor planning, 0-9marks

A4 - 24, 23, 22, 21 and 19 marks

inspriation!!!

Once we had seen Leona Lewis's new song 'FORGIVE ME' we had some inspiration from apart of her video. At the begining and the end when she is sending a text to her boyfriend and he recieves it. we put this in our filming for our music video where she texts him to tell him shes nearly there and he recives it.

Research on The Band

It was impossible to find any information on the band called "Mr Dan" .
There was a brief bit of information that i found on the band however it was just advertising there Cd "How things work".









This was released back in the year 2001 and the genre was classified as Rock/pop.
The Cd includes the following tracks...

Titles on disc 1

1.: Sometimes

2.: Needles

3.: Together

4.: How Things Work

5.: Entropy

6.: Settle Down ( Our track for our music video )

7.: Bluebell

8.: Loca

9.: S+T

10.: Warzone

The record label for the band is Virgin - Distributor: EMI

Target Audience

Our target audience is for people of our age and early 20's. It will also attract a large female audience because it is a female singer singing a slow chill out song and the music video is of a young female character traveling home to her beloved boyfriend.
This is also another reason why we are keeping the costumes casual and modern, so that it attracts a young generation who can relate to the characters and feel like they can put themselves in the characters positions.
To make it easier for some of the male audience to relate to our music video we have added a male character to the music video, that way its not just a girly music video.

Plan for next week shooting

On Monday Becca, Lauren and Steph are going over to harston to film footage.
We are filming at Ants house and he is going to be one of the main characters of the music video.
Rachel is playing the main female singer so we will be filming her around Ant's house and the area that he lives.
We plan to film it all during the day and then use a day for night filter to create a dark night time effect. This is because we are unable to film at night because its too dark for the footage to come out.
The main female singer character will be dressed in casual clothing, this will include a long dark coat and a pair of denim jeans.
Ant will be playing the male character of the music video and will also be wearing casual clothing such as jeans and a t-shirt.
We plan to do shots of the drive way and the garden at Ant's house for our music video.

Tuesday we will be filming the scenes at the train station. We plan to film the female character walking around the station and on the train. If worst comes to worse and we are not given permission to film at the station then we shall film in Laurens car and change the story so that the character is driving home instead of traveling on the train home.
As usual the characters will be in the same clothing as the previous day, this is so that it does not cause confusion for the audience and it will look right when we add the footage all together.

Test Footage

This is a practice shot for our night time footage, we are going to be filming during the day and then using the day for night filter because we don't think that filming at night will give us a clear vision of what were shooting.

Next Week

The plan for next weeks lessons are to shoot and film our shots for our video. We have booked the cameras for monday evening through to wednesday morning. hopefully by the end of next weeks lessons, we would have uploaded all of our footage and already started on some of the editing.

=)

Animatic

This is our animatic for a minute of our planned video.. the animatic shows the shots we plan to take from 2.23mins to 3.06mins.

General Update

The locations we have decided to shoot at are..

Cambridge Train Station
Harston & Laurens Boyfriends House
Trumpington round-about - Flyover

The majority of our shots will be in Harston either down the street or at Ant's house.
We plan to film at night time, but if worse comes to worse we will film during the day and put a night time filter on our shots.

Becca's Step dad works at cambridge station, so were hoping to go and shoot whilst hes there to make sure its 100% okay.. and also it allows to go on the trains later at night on our own to shoot the necessary shots.

Were planning on shooting this time next week, but were going to do a number of test shots this week to make sure we know exactly what to do.. and how the shots will look, especially if we need to make changes.

Music video analysis

I chose to analyze the music video "That's not my name" By The Ting Tings.

The genre for this music video is pop/ drum and bass.
This is shown in the music video by using florescent colours. This is very fashionable at the moment so its showing that the band is modern and up to date and that they can set they're own trend. By using bright colours it also helps the band to stand out and be noticeable.
They use shots of the instruments such as the drums in key parts of the song. for example when the drum can be heard clearly and loudly they cut to a shot of the drum being hit. This shows off the bands talents and amplifies the song.



The band name is printed on the large drum which is constantly being banged throughout the video. This is so that the name of the band is constantly being noticed and so that it fixes in your brain every time their is a close up of the drum.


The music video has no narrative. The main point of the music video is to show the band and advertise them. I know this because you can only see the band playing in the center of a room, one room is plain white whilst the members are dressed in bright colours, this helps them to stand out. The second room has bright florescent lights in the background to add to the effect of drum and bass dance.
There is a strong relationship between the music and the visuals in this music video, for example for every new line of the song there is a different angle shot from the camera or the background changes to a bright colour to fit in with the tone of the music.
There is a patten between the changes of the background, for example for every time there is a white background, it is followed through with a colour background then back to white. This continues throughout the song to add the theme of change.

They use a variety of different bright colours in the video for backgrounds, this is so that it keeps the audience entertained so that they do not get bored with just watching the band performing. The change of bright colours also go well with the beat of the tune and compliment each other incredibly well. Bright colours also help to make this music video more memorable and stand out against other competitors.
Bright colours also has the capability of creating the music genre, for example it makes it seem more pop relative, whereas if they were to use dark reds and blacks then the video would seem more rock and roll and clash with the music video.











They use close up shots of the band members to introduce to each individual of the band. They do this several times but each time its from a different angle, this stops it from getting boring and keeps the audience keen. The record company make sure that there is plenty of close ups of the band. This is how the band get advertised and well known, also it makes them recognizable.
The close up shots of the female singer do not focus on her musical abilities, the focus is her appearance. In contrast to the male performer the parts of her body that are focused on are not playing an instrument. This approach to her as a subject could suggest that she is being objectified, it is her body that is the focus, not her ability.

Many of the close up shots are of the main female singer, her music abilities are not shown off due to they are just focusing on her and her appearance. It suggests the idea of female voyeuristic treatment of the female body. From the shot below of just one of the females body parts it suggests that she is just seen for her body and body parts, there for they are objectifying her in this music video.








A wide variety of shots is being used throughout the video. For example it goes from a mid shot to a close up shot. This is to keep up with the pace of the song and constantly be in change, therefore stopping the audience from being bored and getting fed up.

Camera Allocation - Teacher Post

Make sure you discuss and plan your filming times now. You can start filming next week, assuming you have returned your signed camera loan letter.
Cameras can be used in your usual class blocks (just for that hour and a half), in addition groups can book out either one weekend (Fri 16.10 - Mon 9am) or two overnights during the week (excluding Friday night, for example Tuesday 16.10 to Thursday 9am).
There are around 60 music video groups and nowhere near 60 cameras! Book your camera slot as soon as possible to avoid disappointment.

Feedback

Our feedback to our music video idea was rather good, many people thought we had an original idea and that it was very interesting. However issues came up about filming at night so one of the class members suggested that we film in the daytime and then put the night time filter on.
Questions were raised about whether it was all going to be filmed at the train station as many people thought that after a while the scene may become boring, therefore we suggested that we do some cut away scenes of Cambridge at night to add in to the night time feel.
Luckily no other group had chosen the same song as us so therefore we are definitely aloud to use this song in our music video.
We need to start thinking of more ideas to fill in the gaps for our cut away scenes, these will develop over the next few lessons.
We were successful enough to already have offers for some one to play our main female character and we think that she will play the character well. :)
We are looking forward to shooting our ideas and producing this music video.
xxx

Images of locations

This is one of the locations we plan to shoot at.
This is the Cambridge train station where our main character will be singing and acting.


This is another location that we plan to film at. There are many local fly overs that are close by to us so it will be easy to access them, one of our members of the group can drive so she will be able to drive us to each location to film at.

Similar student videos

We liked this song and thought that it was very similar sounding to ours, mainly because its a slow female singing.
However we did not like the music video at all! we thought more could of been done with it and in better locations rather then just in somebody's garden.
We didn't like many of the shots that were captured, they looked a bit messy and could of been shot better. For example they could of done more close ups and made the main character more centered rather then having the bottom half of her cut off and then having too much sky.
They could of used better lighting, in some places the lighting is too dark and it looks very unprofessional. Its difficult to see the characters of the video and to see whats going on.
The lip syncing to the music video was rather good and impressive, however it would of been clearer if the characters had better close ups and weren't always so far away from the camera.



This is another student video that is similar to our ideas. We thought that it was similar becuase its a solo female singer singing towards the camera alone. We also thought the music sounded very similar as both the songs are slow and chill out music.
However we did not like the lip synching to this video as it was rather off key and didnt seem to fit in with the music. We also did not like that when you looked at the characters face you could tell that she was reading the lyrics off a piece of paper close to the camera so it appeared that she knew what she was singing.

Storyboard =)

We felt as a group that producing a story board would be a really useful idea, as it would allow us to plan what we wanted to shoot and have in specific sections.
For example, by cutting the song down into timed sections, we can work on them individually.

We've decided to cut it down into 12 sections.

1-9 secs = Car Lights - Intro - Beeping noise

9-45 secs = On the train.. drinking out of paper cups
shot inside of her singing on train
close-up shots and normal shot

45-103 secs = CHORUS - her singing down the street.. with cut awat shots of ant at home at train station

103-112 secs = Car lights - flyover bit again

112-130 secs = Both lying down looking at the stars over head shot.. but not at the same place. (split screen) then high shot of stars

130-148 secs = Lying in bed

148-225 secs = CHORUS .. her singing down the street.. with cut away shots of him at home

225-302 secs = Walking down lane.. then down ants drive

302-338 secs = CHORUS... same as other chorus.. except nearer to ants and send message to to him.. cut of her texting him then him recieving it.

338-357 secs = Beeping

357-434 secs = shot of walking over to ant, lie down beside him, look over at each other, than away, then shot of holding hands, then of the stars.

End shot of the stars

Song Lyrics..

We were unable to locate the lyrics for our chosen song online, and therefore had to listen to the track and write down the lyrics ourselves. They are as follows,

Versus 1
Sunday afternoon,
the hills are tumbling down,
i'am on a train to somewhere like home.
Drinking brandy, from plastic cups,
to smooth the day away.

Chorus
One day i saw your name in the stars
I'd love to know if you saw mine.

Versus 2
In my happy dreams,
we both came from the stars, and you kept me warm inside.
As im lying here
in my sweet sweet bed, id like to tell you,
'Home is where we should be'.

Chorus x 2

Versus 3
So here i am walking on Kit-Kat street,
sometimes i find you near.
Settle down in city town, its time to rest,
and i'm making my own way home.

Chorus x 2

Settle down, City town x 7

Pitch

For our music video the performers will be ourselves, however we will also get some of our friends to take on some roles in the video as well.
The main character will be a female singer alone around a city at night, the main character has to be a female as the song is sung by a female artist.
Locations for the video will be around Cambridge at night and some scenes shot at the Cambridge train station to match some of the lyrics about a train.
Some of the props in our music video could just include basic object that aren't very noticeable, we want our video to be simple and not have too much in it otherwise it will distract the viewers. Therefore we decided on ideas such as disposable coffee cups and bench's.
The target audience for our music video is young girls becuase the artist is a slow female singer, however it could also attract chillout fans as well becuase the music is slow and calm to relax to.

We plan to have a connection between the music and visuals, for example the singer sings about a train, therefore we will be filming some scenes on a train and at a train station. we plan to do this for a lot of the music keeping it quite straightforward.
The video will conform for the generic conventions of the music video, we expect it to be very similar to something that you could imagine. Our idea is very similar to music videos that already exist that are similar to this music genre.

TEACHER POST - What your pitch must include

All groups must produce and present a pitch as an integral part of the planning stage. Your pitch is a proposal for your music video to the record company thinking of hiring you:
It must include:

* A clear written summary of the content/key idea for the video (at least 500 words).
The summary should include a reference to performers, locations, props, target audience for the video, reference to research conducted on the band, genre of the band and the song, relationship between the music and the visuals, relationship between the lyrics and the visuals, if the video will conform to or oppose the generic conventions of videos within that genre of music

* 2-4 (embedded) actual music videos which you think are similar to yours or that contain something that has influenced your idea (plus analysis, use Goodwin’s framework for analysing music videos)

* 2 (embedded) student videos which you think are similar (plus analysis)

* 4-6 Images which indicate location choices, overall mise en scene, costumes, props


If there is more than one group pitching for the same song, ensure you have a back-up choice and also try to make your pitch memorable.

First Ideas 9th sept

We have chosen the song "Settle Down" By the band Mr Dan.
Our key ideas for our music video include a night time idea where we will film ourselves miming the words to the song whilst at night time. A keen idea of ours is to film traffic passing by at night at a location like a flyover and having the singer miming the words whilst the traffic in the background is fast forward.
We also like the idea of having the singer on a train at night time, the main character will be wearing warm winter clothes, e.g. Long black coats.
We are intending to have ourselves in it, but may possibly have our friends be the main characters in it so that we can have more control over whats going on and can take more part on the productive side then the acting side.
Our Main characters will be female singers as its a female that is singing the song.




This video by the band Spice Girls contains some of the ideas similar to ours, For example the fast forwarding of the traffic in the background whilst the characters are moving slowly and singing towards the camera.



This is also another example of a video that we liked by a girl band, we like this video because its set at night with fast lights blurred in the background.



We liked this video by a female solo artist because she had an interesting use of lights and dancing. The video also starts off slow like what ours should hopefully do.




We liked this video by the band Coldplay because they had a similar idea to ours, which was to film in a city at night using slow captions.

The Genre of this band called Coldplay is mainstream rock. Their music video for "Fix You" Is a slow video which picks up at the end. its starts off with the main singer hidden away in a part of London singing the song to himself, but as the song begins to pick up the main singer joins his band on stage to finish the song in front of a crowd of thousands where the mood is ecstatic and lively.
Dark Lighting is used in this video to set the mood for the tone of the song which is a slightly depressing feel.
Casual clothing is used for the characters of the music video which is the band members themselves. However they use dark clothing to fit in with the depressing and slow feeling of the start.
The video uses slow editing in this footage to fit in with the slow genre of the song, however when the songs begins to pick up so does the pace of the footage.

Welcome to GROUP 03