As we are coming to the end of the process of making our blog, I made a list of each category we had and my posts in each one. This made it easier to see what areas of our blog need improving and what I could do to improve it. It also showed what areas needed more attention, how well we have worked during the process and highlighted anything we could have missed out.
Here is a first draft of our potential advertisement. We want the picture to be in either the left or right third to allow room for the text down one side as we feel this will create a nice balance. We want our artist to be posed looking away from the camera with a slight smile as a mid-shot. We intend to use our logo as featured on our digipak incorporated with our artist’s name in a crimson colour font, matching with our artist’s outfit in the music video and digipak colour scheme. We intend to keep the text font the same as our digipak for continuity. A main convention of music adverts is reviews and so we have decided to use two genre specific reviews to promote our artist and their album. We will also include tangeable links to other music platforms such as iTunes where the album can be downloaded. From research into the current music industry, iTunes is the most popular way of downloading music and thus feel this will be suitable for our album. As our artist is internationally famous, we feel that by converging with social media networks such as Facebook, this will help to promote our artist whilst providing “extras” for her fan base / target audience.
Overall we were happy with how our shoot went outside, however due to forces beyond our control such as the weather, an additional shoot is needed to get our final shots. We feel that we have no captured the shots that perhaps were the trickiest such as the use of sparklers which proved very unpredictable! Upon reflection, we now need to make sure we capture the performance aspect of our video as well as filming some extra atmospheric shots of the party. I have already devised a shooting script in order to make sure we are efficient when filming and our actors aren’t standing around for too long! Overall we are happy with the lighting we used which was an initial worry of ours and shall keep our three point lighting system the same when reshooting. We felt that the clarity of our shots was good and the additional sources of light such as the fairy lights and the sparklers worked well illuminating our subjects whilst still being atmospheric. We were also happy with the performance from our actors who we felt looked natural in most of our shots and thus this has given our video a sense of realism, something we hope to bridge when re-filming. Below are some shots that we feel worked particularly well with the lighting structure we had in place:
This is a shooting list we made to ensure that we had everything we needed for our planned filming date. It also made our organisation a lot more efficient because we could then delegate certain props and costume parts to each member of the group meaning it would not all be left to one person to find and provide the props. Doing the shooting list also meant we were clear on what equipment we needed and therefore would not forget anything important on the day of filming.
Here is a timeline we made to track our progress and to help us spot anything important we could have missed. It also helped us to realised what had to be done and how long it would take. This enabled us to plan our time more efficiently and be more clear on what needed doing.
Here is a diagram showing how we intend to set up the lighting kit for filming tomorrow. We have followed the rules of three point lighting as we feel this is effective and has worked in many successful videos. Sometimes we wont be able to use three point lighting, for example where our artist is sitting against the video and consequently won’t be able to have a back light. We feel that the natural light coming in through the window should be sufficient however we will need to be careful that us filming doesn’t reflect off of the window and back through the camera lens. When we film outside tomorrow, we shall also use three point lighting to help our artist to stand out.
I have just prepared a shooting script for our first day of filming which tells us exactly what shots we need to film tomorrow. Each shot has its specified shot type such as a close up, what is happening within the shot, whether there is any camera movement and whether it goes along with a piece of lyric. This will be really helpful to us tomorrow as we will be able to tick off what shots we have filmed and it should allow us to film more efficiently as we know exactly what shots are coming up. I have also colour coded the script to help us. Unfortunately Emily has to leave tomorrow so the shots in red are the ones that Alice and I can do once Emily has left and does not involve our artist . The black shots are those which feature our artist and the green ones specify when the artist is singing. We are filming from approximately 12:30 pm tomorrow and hope to have completed the 1st verse, chorus and bridge and begin editing this on Tuesday.
A technique that we would really like to use in our music video is the use of colour filters, particularly towards the end of our video. We feel that using bright colour filters will reveal the playful and party side of our music video and feel that the different colours could represent different emotions e.g. yellow could symbolise happiness. We have studied some music videos and looked at the way they have incorporated the filters in effectivley.
FILTER – WHAT DO YOU SAY
We feel that the constant pink filter adds to the continuity of the video. We can see how the filter gives a particular effect to the video. For example, this filter gives the video a slightly edgy and rocky feel. We hope that our filters will put across a particular emotion, mainly a playful sense of happiness.
LITTLE MIX – MOVE
Here is a more recent music video that uses colour filters but in a more subtle way. The filter usually focuses on a particular aspect such as the outline of the artists hair as opposed to the whole shot being filtered. Again, this gives a contemporary and edgy feel as it draws the audience’s attention to particular features such as the artist’s face. We hope to make our filters quite subtle and only use them in particular places where we feel it is necessary such as the final chorus and the friends are happy and having fun together and feel a colour filter can help accentuate this.
USING FINAL CUT TO IMPLEMENT COLOUR FILTERS
We have researched into how we can work colour filters within final cut and found these controls which can create different colour filters:
Here is the link to a website that explains to us how we can do colour filters for our video within final cut. This will be so beneficial to us when editing as we can quickly refer back and remind ourseleves of how to add filters. I personally feel we will use bright colour filters such as blue, red, yellow and green. We intend to experiment with the filters and gain feedback on how effective they are.
http://blog.alex4d.com/2012/03/22/11-colour-fcpx-filters/
Yesterday we met up as a group to shoot a test run of a chorus of our video. We felt this would be beneficial to us as we could practice lip syncing and gain an even more visual idea of what our music video could potentially look like. We decided to film the first chorus of our video as it includes only our artist and we did not have our extras available. In the final video, the artist will sing this chorus outside, however due to weather constraints, we chose to film this inside during our test run as our main focus was on performance and lip syncing. Emily also wore the costume that she will wear for the video and we begun to introduce props such as the guitar. We decided to film the chorus in my living room as it is a fairly neutral room. We relied solely on the lighting kit provided by the school and through experimentation decided that 2 out of the 3 lamps would be sufficient enough for filming inside and we feel this amount of lighting enhanced our artist well. We are currently in the process of editing this chorus and this shall hopefully be up on the blog by the end of the weekend. Overall we are happy with the lip syncing of the chorus and feel that this test run has left us in good steed for filming the final video. Below is a short montage of us during yesterday’s filming process:
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Isabella Grace 