Meeting – 17th January
Today Me and Natasha continued to edit our music video and it is nearly completed. With the re-filmed entrance and exit of the music video added into it and edited. We have discussed the re-filming of the ballroom scene which we are doing tomorrow evening so we can gather more close-ups so follow the connotations of a hip hop dance video as it is fast paced.
Our media teacher told us our deadline, which is a week from thursday (the 27th January). This has given us an idea of just how much time we have to continue to work on our magazine advert and a design for the back of the CD cover.
We are meeting after school and during free periods and also lunch times to complete this work to the best of our ability.
Meeting-10th January
We have finished doing our rough cut for our film but whilst looking over it we discovered we had a few shots out of focus. The over-the-shoulder shot of the note is blurred as well as a shot of Emma. Furthermore there is a shot in our hip-hop scene that was slightly dark compared to the other shots. We also discovered our ballroom scene doesn’t have enough close-ups.
Therefore we are going to have to go out and film again. We must go back to the underpass and film the note again but this time we will press the focus button on the camera to ensure that it is in focus. At the same time we must film the shot of Emma again ensuring it is in focus. We wouldn’t have to re-film the hip-hop shot, we will just have to find another shot in contrast that we have already filmed and add it in next lesson. As for the ballroom scene, we will have to try and re-film as we have no close-ups but this will be very difficult to recreate!
FILMING: Hip-Hop Scene
Hip Hop Scene
On Friday the 3rd of December we filmed the Hip-Hop scene for our music video. We did not use many props apart from the box which we needed for every scene as it was Tasha’s mode of transportation from each scene, we also ensured that Tasha and Tiago (the young boy who was dancing in this scene) were both in costume appropiate for the this style of dance to try and attain marks for mis-en-scene. We felt the alley way was an ideal setting for this style of dance as in many music videos
Filming and Editing so far
Filming:
We have finished all of our footage and believe we have enough angles to create a good film. The ballet and the ballroom scene came out better than we expected as we were worried it would look too much like a school. The club scene was the hardest bit to film as not many people turned up even though they promised us they would. We had trouble getting lots of close-ups and different angles in the time slot we had and making it look effective with the amount of people we had. We had to re-film this section as we didnt have enough footage but after that we did we got what we needed and had a lot more to work with. Our best filmed scene was the underpass scene as it was easy to put together and simple to do. We were most worried about the alley scene as we didnt have a male who could really do hip-hop but we created a simple routine for him and we believe that the footage was a lot better than expected with a lot of different angles and shots.
Editing
We took about a week to get all the editing on to the allocated time for the song. We found our underpass scene easy to put together with a lot of cuts to make it more interesting. Our ballroom and ballet scene were also quite easy to put together but we found it tricky to make it look like it wasnt just filmed at school. The section with the most trouble was the club scene as we had to try and make it look realistic. We put it together quite well and it has a slight feeling of disoreintation that i like about it. The hip-hop scene was rather easy to put together also as we had a lot of footage to work with. In the end this is my favourite scene as i like the transition between this and the ballet one before it. We havent quite finished the editing as we need to put the underpass bit at the end. We are currently getting some feedback for our editing so we know where to go from here and what bits needs working on. We feel we are about 50% of the way finished.
FILMING: Underpass scene
Actors: Natasha Walters
Filmed: 22/11/2010
Re-Filmed: 3/12/2010
Here are some photos of us filming our underpass scene which is the beginning of our video. Our filming for this scene was exactly how we wanted it and we were proud with the footage that we got. Unfortunately we managed to film over the footage we got with our club scene footage and had to arrange a day to re-film which was rather annoying. However, we knew exactly the shots we needed and it didnt take us long to recreate the footage we had previously. We are happy with the results from this scene so far and we are ready to add them to our film.
Filming and editing so far! 2
FILMING
So far, we have filmed the majority of our footage and we are very pleased with the results!
However, it hasnt all gone smoothly. We had some issues casting actors for the music video as our idea had lots of different styles of dance. But in the end, we were very lucky and friends took time to learn new dances well in order to make our video look as authentic as possible.
In addition to that set back, as a group, we were not happy with the first cut of the club scene as we felt there were not enough actors. So, we re-organised the filming and re-filmed the entire scene. The extra work paid off asthe footage was much better the second time round.
EDITING
We have almost put together a rough cut of our video. So far, we are happy with how it has turned out.
At first, it took some time to get used to the new editing package. But after a couple of sessions playing around with the different settings and effects, we got used to it and put together the first couple of scenes quite quickly.
All of our group have had a go at editing the rough cut and we will have a meeting after the audience feedback about how to improve further.
FILMING: ballroom scene
Actors: Natasha Walters and Sean Pearce
Location: Stage (in hall)
Date: 15/11/10
Here are some pictures from the day we fimed our ballroom scene. We went to our school hall as planned and filmed our footage from there. In the pictures we have our friend Mairead who is a ballroom dancer and helped us with the choreography. We had some trouble filming this scene as we thought it looked too much like a school hall but we managed to get enough shots of just the stage to make sure it didnt. However we did some close-ups as well as long and mid shots and therefore we were happy with our progress.
From MTV to YouTube- Media Trip
As a Alevel group, we attended RICHMIX on a school trip. We received talks from Peter Fraser, Liz and Corin Hardy.
Peter Fraser- OCR examiner
He talked us through different techiques of music video and gave us his top tips when making our videos
!930s experimental
The 1930s saw the emergence of colour box- Len Lye
1940s-Soundies
For example, Nat King Cole
The soundies dies down because of censorship
1960s
Scopitone (france)- similar to a dukebox. Showed the music video on screen.
Development of music video- Bands started to produce proper music videos. (eg. The beatles).
!970s
More big budget videos (eg. Queen- bohemium rhapsody)
1980s
MTV! –born in America (at first it was mainly English artists)
Important artists at this time- Madonna, Michael Jackson.
Liz
Liz talked about what it was like to a be a music video producer, and gave us some top tips on producing music videos of our own
Corin Hardy
Corin is a well known music video director and he talked to us about what it was like to be in his proffession. He showed us some of his work and explained his ideas behind them.
Animatic Feedback
We showed our class our storyboard animatic so that we could hear some feedback about our idea. This was so we could ensure our idea was clear to the audience and so we could find o ut any improvements we should make. Here is the feedback we recieved:
- It is clear that your transition is through a box into a different style of dance world.
- I dont think anything needs changing. The stop motion was really good!
- You could perhaps have light coming out of thye box, perhaps in different colours to draw her to the box.
- Decorate your box!
- Could include a disco box
- Make the box stand out more.
- Brilliant, not bad at all
- More dancing scenes? Line dancing? Indian dancing?
How the animatic was made…
– Shanice and sabina drew the shots onto picture cards.
– Emma and Natasha took photographs of the pictures.
– The photos were then uploaded onto the computer.
– The photos were then inported onto the editing package, Adobe premier elements.
– We then Imported the song onto the package and then cut it to 3minutes and added a fade at the end.
– The photos were then added in order to fit to the music.
– The photos were then cut using markers to go with the beats of the music.
– The pictures were then zoomed in and out using key framing.
– We then added transitions and fades to go from scene to scene.
– We then added a lighting change for the club scene.
– The animatic was then rendered!
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