Ancillary Task - Ideas

In today's session we took to our creative skills once more and grouped together to create the CD digi-pack and the poster for ourlesson. Initially we wanted to incorparate as much nature as we could into this without leving Amanda being pushed to the back. Here are some of the ideas that we have come up with so far...

 

 

This is the idea that we had for the front cover. As we looked over our music video once more, we found out that one of our most iconic shots was of the heart in the hands so we decided that we would experiment with that. We wanted the name of our artist to represent the red string that is shown in the music video. We really liked this idea and felt that having a busy background would take away from the main image, so we just decided to have the backround blurred in depth of field or just a plain background.

 

This is the idea that we had for the interior of our pack. We wanted the flower to be on the CD and of the background of the CD so when you take the CD out you will still have the picture of the flower. For the left hand side, we wanted a picture of the forest with depth of feild. We  have deiced not to do a booklet, but rather a pull out poster that folds into this shape. We thought that this would be very orignal and connote with the niche theme well.

 

Here shows the picture of a pull-out poster and what it will initially look like. We prefer this idea to the booklet but we feel that it suits the genre and the album better. The idea is that it folds out to present lyrics and nature pictures on one side and the big poster of amanda on the other. We feel that this will be hard to construct on photoshop, but is something that we are willing to work on.

 

 

This is a slightly rough copy of what the back of the CD will look like. The basic idea is that we will have two trees either side and Amanda standing in the middle. There will be red string tied round both of the trees that will be connected to amanda by her holding them. The track list will then be above in the space between the two trees. We felt that a simple background would not take too much focus away from the tracklist as that is the most important thing on the back of this.

 

This last image is Vickies interpretation of the main cover with the offical font that we want on it as well. We will use these images and look at them closely to recreate what we want.

Editing Journel - Day Four

In this session we wanted to achieve organisation and thought that it would be better to intorduce each location in a seprate part of the song instead of just random shots put in anywhere in order for it to look good.

We deicded that we wnated to introduce our main location first and started off with Langley Park and the Heartwood tree and mainly focusing on the perofmance side of theings rather than the narrative. This location stated at the beginning of the song and edned after the first chorus where Black Park took over.

Black park was the second laction we wanted to intorduce, as certain shots are meant to be in this location.The whole of the black park scenes were slightly darker and had a more blue hue than that of Langley Park, so we had to make sure that this problem was looked at in the future when we were colour grading it. The Black Park location started on the second verse and finished after the bridge.

In the bridge we wnated a mixture of Black park and to introduce the photo tree to the audience where we could add lots of meaningfull close ups, and really connect with the song and sort of let loose, by ripping down all the photos and sort of cleansing her soul and mind of beauty really is.

For the last chorus we had a mixture of locations, as we have introduced them all so it won't be confusing for our audience-hopefully! we wanted the pace to quicken towards the end of the piece with the mount of shots we used and the usage of reversing footage quickened the pace.

So after today's session we completed the following:
-sorting out our video in cronological order in terms of location

Editing Journel - Day Three

Finally we have finished filming all our video footage for the music video, and we celebrated by doing some more editing!

We are in to day three of editing and have already put down the skeleton and first opening sequence which we thought was very good considering the difficulties we had to face with filming.

-We decided that we would fill the gaps we had alocated for close-ups and performance shots first so it would back-up our story board and also create a better connection with the audience.

-We started to put in the fast cut shots at the end of the piece following our story board using different shots of nature and of Amanda running. We wanted to show the audience that nature was a big part of what this music video is all about and being natural. the editing of this scene was a breeze and we were able to get on wiht other things

-We started to edit the final chorus and I had the idea to reverse it so it looks like its going all the way back to the beginning where she follows the string and finds the heart representing innner beauty.This bit was very tricky to crack as we had to change the speed as well as reversing it and as soon as we had done it, it cut bits of the clip off altogether and we just keft with gaps in the music video. This was soon resolved as we moved the sequence that we wanted to reverse to the very end and did it that way. This resolved in all of the clips around it satying their original length

-We also finished the beginning of our music video adding the cracking of the leaves and the twigs and using tranistions effects to fade it into the actual start of the song. This wasn't that hard to do and we found it really effective and made our music video have that edge of originality

-We also considered adding the final lyrics of her singing to the audeince, but decided agianst it as we thought that what we already had was really strong and we really liked it

after day three we had the following skills done:
-official opening of our music video
-final chorus
-nature cuts where the pace picks up

Editing Journal - Day Two

Day two of our editing and things were already moving on at a rapid pace, with the 'Firt Cut' of music videos having to be in, we thought it was probaly best to scedule other editing sessions outside of lessons to really be on top of our deadline.

Today we mainly focused on getting the track uploaded and our goal for today was getting the first bit of our sequence synced with the music and to follow the story boards clearly.

Our first task was to upload the mp3 into Final Cutfrom ITunes. We thought it was best than illegaly downloading it from YouTube that wewould do it the proper way and upload the song from the CD.It was fortunate enough that Vicky had the CD for us to use and burn the track onto ITunes. This proved to be successful and luckilly it didn't effect the track that we wanted to use (eg. skipping, cracking etc..)

Now that the easy bit was over we decided to tackle the hard hurdle and begin our opening sequence. After looking at all our clips we decidede to start off with the feet crunching idea, but seeing as we hgadnt filmed that shot yet, we started with some simple lip syncing and nature shots to the small instrumental that is heard at the begining. The lip-syncing was actually easier that we thought and it was just a case of placing the shot in time with the mp3. Becuase I had used the technique of singing instead of miming when shooting, it looks a lot more real and believeable when put with the mp3. Our opening sequence in the end started with using about ten shots which considering our genre and thr pop side to it, we thought it was acurate when referring to our textual anaylysis on video genre's and how their editing relate to that.

So the things that we had done today included:

-Uploading the mp3of' 'ThisBeauty' to ITunes and then into Final Cut Pro

-Realising some shots we have to shoot again

-Creating our first 10 clips of our opening sequence accompaning the mp3 track

Shooting Journal - Day Three

This was the first day that we actually left on time and all of us felt motivated and ready to film despite how cold it was. When we got there is was the early morning sun weather which we caught in some of our shots which looked really effective.  Being at Langley Park we went to our soon to be famous 'Heartwood Tree' and bean the normal procedure of chucking red string all of the place in an organised manner.

Seeing as we had three cameras to our use this time, we decided upon seeing how our first day of shooting went that we would do a full song run through which we did about three or four times. This involved me sitting in a tree singing the whole song while being recorded from three different perspectives. This saved time drastically and gave us three points of performance that we could choose from when in post-production.
The next thing we decided to film was the crunching of the leaves under the feet and a tracking shot of the side to show that 'Amanda' is following it. This shot will then flow into her discovering the heart covered in red thread in the centre of the tree from three different perspectives shown below:

These shots didn't take too long to shoot and only took a few try's to get them right. The last few shots that we did involving the 'Heartwood Tree' was me prancing around it, as we liked the idea and shots from the first day of shooting but they were too dark so we had to redo them all. from doing this we also obtained a lovely close-up shot of me walking towards the camera lip-syncing which really secures that connection that i have with the audience.

After that we decided to take on the photo tree and started to set it up putting photos all over it attaching them to string. We had a dress change to the green and blue halter-neck dress of variation and began filming the next few set of shots. We filmed some performance of me next to the photo tree looking at the photos and singing t the audience, we then shot me ripping down all the photos in a twirly dancy kind of manner. After that we tried out Keeley's brilliant idea of a shot of me next to a photo of an eye and positioned myself so that it covered on of my eyes. this was mainly for the lyrics "imperfected me will not be seen". It took us quite a while to do this shot as the wind kept blowing and the eye kept moving, so I had to hold onto it instead. Next we filmed some close-ups of me ripping a photo to finish off the photo tree section of the music video.

As the sun was setting we decided to get a move on and film the shots involving the long flowing magnolia coloured dress.First we filmed some running shots in which we decreased the frame rate on the camera so when we slow it down in editing, it will flow better and have a batter quality. we filmed from the top of the path up the few steps they had, and I stared just below the steps. This was very effective when looking back at the shot as the path ended and the sunset began. We then filmed some close-ups of the dress floating down the stairs which worked very well as it flowed just like we wanted it to. Next up we shot me at the top of the stairs holding onto the ends of the dress and flowing it around which we also decreased the frame rate for. for the last few shots we shot me from the back looking out to the sunset dramatically holding the ends of the dress and lifting them up slowly as they get blown by the wind. Our last shot was a tracking shot of my feet running from the side down the path in which we planned to use for the chorus.

After the long old day we decided to go home and it was just in time as our cameras had slowly began to run out of battery. We looked at the footage that we shot and were very happy! We cant wait to start editing it!

Shooting Journal - Day Two

Unfortunately for us on this day we had all met up on time and because it was raining we decided to check if the parks were closed due to BBC's predicted storms, unfortunately for us they weren't which meant we delayed in shooting again! we decided that we would still get ready if the parks were to open up again on a later date.

[INSERT PHOTO HERE] 

Finally we had some good news as about midday we checked the site and the parks were open again! When we got there, we went directly to the set that we had planned to shoot at and got filming with no time to waste. As we had two cameras again, we decided that we would split into twos and try and get some shots done, therefore no-one will be left just standing there and we could get more shots done at the some time. Whilst Vicky and I were off filming some shots with Amanda Rogers (me) weaving in and out of trees, spinning and jumping, Keeley and Cary got to filming nature filler shots which consisted of sun spots and panning shots of the empty forest with bright blue skies (believe it or not). After we had all finished that, we grouped together to film some of the specific shots we had written down for black park such as the close-up of feet walking through the forest and the sound of the crushing twigs underneath them, and some of our narrative shots of the red thread.
Then we started to film some lip-syncing shots particularly "and those greens and those blues seem to perfect to be true." Earlier on I had found an area with grass that was so green it looked like it had been taken out f some fairy film an the skies were so blue therefore mimicking the lyrics.We did this by me standing on a tree trunk in a long shot so you can see the green grass and then when I look up, the camera pans up to show the really blue skies. This is a shot we were particularly proud of and was shot by Cary.

We then intended to film some shots by some trees that we thought were good because they went from brown to green leaves at the top representing the way that 'Amanda' was dressed from scruffy boots to an elegant white strapless dress. But the day we decided to film the trees had got more brown and golden giving a vintage feel to our music video, and a blue hue could be seen when playing back footage which worked well with the type and style of our music videos. 

Shooting Journal - Day One

Due to some of the group having commitments earlier on in the day, we decided we would shoot from 1:00pm onwards, but other things such as sorting out hair and costume took some time before we actually left to get on to set. Seeing as the clocks had gone back, we now had less time to shoot all our footage and we knew by then that we would be needing our extra day to finish all the shooting! When we finally decide to get moving we were two hours late into our filming which was worrying. But we made a speedy recovery by getting the set ready to shoot very quickly by coming together as a team and literally throwing red string any-where and every-where all over our 'Heartwood tree'. Upon discovering this location, it was decided that this tree would be the centre of the music video. After we had set everything up, we went about shooting our first shots on our shot list which included a some performance shots in the tree's for the verses. We had two camera's to use to our advantage and this diagram kindly borrowed from Cary shows the positions we placed them in:


When filming, we realised we were losing light very fast and due to it being natural lighting, there was nothing we could do about it, but having two cameras helped solve this issue and we got twice the footage that we could have had.

Other shots that we decided to shoot was some frolicking around the tree shots for the chorus as it is more upbeat and the drums in the song could represent the running around the tree's.We also filming some random filler shots of nature that we could add somewhere into our sequence to break up the sequence and narrative and make it flow more.

When the park closed we had to stop shooting and leave the premises. When looking back on the footage we realised that all that we captured, the lighting was really dark, and if we were going to use some of this footage, it should be colour graded to make the image lighter.

Shooting Schedule

Upon deciding the locations where our music video was shot we had to arrange with the parks the days that we could come in and film and also of course get our filming permit which was free.

We had to sort our shooting schedule to the times the park opened and closed which was:
Langley Park: 8:15am-4:30pm
Black Park: 8:00am-5:00pm


Shooting Schedule

Location                    Day             Date                                   Time

Langley Park            Sunday         27th October 2013            1:00pm-Closing

Black Park               Monday       28th October 2013             9:30am-3:00pm

Langley Park          Saturday      2nd November 2013           10:am-2:00pm

We decided that the last day on Saturday would be a pick up shot day if we didn't get all the footage we wanted. We chose Langley Park for this last day as most of our footage is shot here and there was no way that we would have finished all that footage we wanted to capture in one day, so we out down a reserve just in-case.