Group Work- Shooting Script Discussion

We have now completed our first draft of our music video using our shooting script. After filming and being in the situation we did change a few things on the shooting script. Although we kept all the locations and order of the shots, when it came to filming the shots we sometimes changed the camera angles or movements.

Original Shooting Script

Our reasons for changing this was that when we got there the shot was not exactly how we all visualised it, to get the most out of the shot we adapted and enhanced our shots in order for the best outcome.

One of the shots we changed was the Jamaica street one (Shot 14). The initial plan was to have a long shot of the skaters. We found this very difficult as there was also skaters we did not know at the park and kept getting in the way. Obviously we could not expect them to stop whilst we film our shot, therefore we decided to make the shop a closer medium shot. This still looked great when we went and reviewed the shot & probably worked better as it showed more detail of the skaters in our video.

My Music Video

Below is a my music video I have made on my own using the clips we shot as a group. This will benefit the group as we will each be doing one of our own and comparing them in order to complete a better final product.

I really enjoyed creating this as it gave me an opportunity to get even more familiar with the software. It only took me about 2 hours to do so as apposed to the original video taking us together about 6 hours in total. This shows I have progressed very quickly and am now more familiar with all the ins and outs of iMovie and green screen etc. I throughly enjoyed producing this and look forward to get some feedback from the rest of the class.

I played a strong part in the putting together of the storyboards therefore I stuck to mainly to the initial plans, However I wanted to show it as if John (Our Character) was trying to pursue a career as a skateboarder, hens the constant switches between John to Matthew & Ryan who are clearly exceptional skaters. I would have liked to have shots of John with them however we had non which looked professional and acceptable to use. This would have shown them in a way as if they were his idols etc.

Although the shots in this video were shot as a group, the editing and putting together of this video is done to my specifications.

Now that I and the other group members have done this we can sit down watch our videos, and this will massively benefit us as we may like aspects of each others videos and then we can discuss what we want to include in our final draft.

Group Work - Music Video (First Draft)

Today I and the rest of the group completed our music video and have it ready to show to the class tomorrow for reviews. This is only our first draft and over the Christmas break we will each be creating our own video to our own specifications rather than 'a group'. 

The editing was going really well and smoothly, everything was coming together well as I was familiar with the software through my research and mock work. We were about 2/3rds of the way through the editing and it all took a turn for the worst. I was editing a clip in time with the beat and in order to do this I had to lengthen a transition. When I clicked the transition and changed the length I did not realise that there was a checkbox next to it saying "apply to all transitions" therefore we went on to compete the rest of the video making everything click into place. Then when it came to exporting the clip, I played it back and then we realised the lip sync and timings were not as we originally had them. It took us about half an hour to realise what was actually the problem. Then we figured out it was the transitions they had all been set to 1 second rather than the original 0.5.

Once this issue was resolved we went back and fixed the transitions and then our video was back to the way we wanted it to be.

We our all very happy with our video especially for a first draft and can not wait until the rest of the class see it and pass on their reviews. I personally can not wait to hear what the class have to say and then go onto edit my own personal video exactly how I want it without input of the thee group members. I think doing this will be very beneficial to the group as we can then compare all our videos and piece over her what we like and tween up our original video with our own ideas. In order to produce the best music video we can. 

There is still a few things we need to alter such as timings, our final draft will be available on the both this blog and the group blog soon.

Group Work- Artist Header

This lesson I used Photoshop to create our artists's logo/header that will be used on our poster and album cover. We have looked at DJ logos and headers and noticed that most of them are just the name of the DJ and they look mostly plain so I have created these two based on what we have seen from looking at similar artists.

Out of the two we have decided as a group to go with the bottom draft because we think that it is a lot better than the top and it stand out more because it is bold. John created the first logo and I created the second. As a group we have decided we will be using my logo.

Touching up Images

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The image I was using during the production of the CD cover for our group work was slightly off. For example it was not professional as the lighting was not perfect, I had a spot or two on my face as well as red cheeks due to the cold air.

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Therefore I needed to remove all this and make sure it was professional and album cover material. To remove the spots and redness and generally brighten up the image I selected the brush tool. Then once I had this selected I went down to colour squares for the layer at the bottom of the toolbar. This image to the right shows the grid that comes up when this option is selected. I then selected 'Colour Libraries' then the similar block comes up (Left) and I then selected 'Colour Picker'.

Now I chose the colour from my image that I wish to use for the area I am editing. Preferably close to the area I am editing so there is no contrast and general change in the colour. Once this Colour is selected I then click 'OK' and then it brings me back to my image with the paint brush tool. Next I click on the area I wish to remove and it is then replaced with the colour I chose through colour picker.

Layer Blending

Today I began making our groups CD cover and came across an issue when I was placing the background on the text. Black text was to dark for the background and the white was to light. This cheapened all my work on the editing of the image. To resolve this problem I used the tool 'Layer Blending'. This adds a layer around the font/image of your choice. To do this i selected my text I wanted to use then made the font white. I then selected the layer the text was on & clicked 'Blending Options'. The image below shows the box that comes up when you select this. To get the effect of the outlined text I selected 'Stroke' and then changed the size to '10'.

This was then perfect as the text was clearly visible to display on the CD cover.

Group Work - Day 1 of editing

Today I and the group began our first day of editing, we had a set back as it took us a long day to actually get out clips from the phone we filmed on to the PC. This process took about 15 minutes and still we could not begin editing as we had to import the clips to iMovie.

When it came to importing the clips to iMovie the estimated time we were given was 7 hours. So we went for our lunch and left it and then came back to see it still wasn't done. We got on with some photoshop work and got to produce our album cover so no time was wasted doing nothing. Then once we had finished that the clips where finally imported and we could then begin editing. 

Getting to grips with the software was easy as I had used it before and talked the rest of the group through it. We are now progressing quickly and are on track to show our finished video to the rest of class on Friday. 

Group Work - Test/Preview Music Video

This is a basic video I made to see how our clips looked put together. This was very basic and solely just a test. It looks really good with the transitions etc. even though it is so basic. Our video will be much more advanced than this and also playing the song over the video will massively improve the outcome. Below you can find this preview, Leave comments on what you think of the shots and camera movements etc.

Group Work - Final Storyboard

Below you can see our final adaptations to our storyboard and genreal plan for filiming our video.
The narrative and whole story of our video has stayed the same since the begining, a young boy who only cares about skating and pretty much doesnt want to grow up. Time seems as if it is moving quickly and he doesnt want to grow up. That is the basic story to our video.

After updating our first storyboard we decided to film john and his mother arguing about him needing to grow up and get a job etc. at the begining of our video as a sort of pre song introduction. We have now scrapped this idea and went with the original sunset start. This is because when we watched our clips we had of this scene we thought it looked very cheap and unproffesinal. Also we had scenes in at the end of john (our character) going to a job interview. Again we thought this took up way to much time in our video and when we watched it back as a group we thought it was quite depressing and boring, and thats not what this genre is about.

Therefore, Once again we sat down as a group and discussed what we could do. We all agreed after conversation that we had lots of skateboard clips of john and his friends & amsterdam music festivile filmed by jacob on his trip away. We looked at videos from our genre once again and thought we would keep out whole story of wanting to skateboard and not growing up, but portray this in a way which is not boring and without scenes of acting out job interviews etc.

We drew up our storyboards again and this time, used 3 main points of attention Me (The artist), John (the boy who doesnt want to grow up) & Johns friends (The skateboarders). We decided to use lots of shots of Me lip syncing from various angles and quick shots alternating with eachother. This we agreed will keep the audience engaged, as it is a constant change and not the same scene for longer than 5 seconds.

Overall we now believe we have finally found what our video was missing and can begin putting it together and get the remaining shots we need in this last week ready to show our video with the class.

Group Work - Filming

Today we were filming and as our storyboards show we needed footage of skateboarding tricks to fill our video and show the narrative.

As John is a regular skater he has lots of friends who were willing to help, therefore he got in touch with them and arranged for us to go down to Jamaica street skatepark to film them. 

This was a very successful trip as we got all the footage we need and more, it helped that one of johns closest friends (Matty) is an exceptional skater and regularly films himself, therefore he knew exactly what the camera wants to see.

Screenshot from our footage at jamaica street

Group Work - Contact sheet

Circled here are some of the possible images we are going to use for our promo work such as CD, Album cover & Poster designs. 

This is sheet one of our images we have for our work. This contact sheet is a collection of images which enables us to select and narrow down our options when it comes to making our final promo work.

Group Work - Filming 3rd December

Today's filming went really well, we got everything we needed to do done and more importantly came together as a group and as well as following the guidance of our storyboard, we all put forward our individual adaptations to scenes and this worked very well.



We done our lip sync scenes for the first time today and that went great, it looks really natural and professional due to the locations and camera angles we used.

The weather was on our side as it was really bright and sunny therefore we got some excellent shots of John (Robert Masters) skateboarding for the scenes on the Albert Dock. 



Overall this day was a great success and brought us together as a group. We learned a lot as there were many things in our storyboard we had planned to do and when we were in the scenario, we relised they were not possible or very difficult. Therefore we worked around this and came together as a group in order to produce the best possible shots. We are next filming on Friday for more lip sync and the final scene for our video, then it is onto our editing which we will begin next week.

Lip Syncing for Music Video

One way to put this, Embarrasing is the best word I can think of. Walking down the street in public singing to myself (badly) and looking quite a fool. However it was great fun and you just have to laugh at these things. I think I done really well as looking back at the clips we have shows I was very natural and when the track is played over this is looks really proffesional.

I messed up a few times with the lyrics as it is a lot harder when random members of the public are looking at you laughing etc. It really is quite ofputting. As apposed to lip syncing in the green room with my friends. On friday we are going to do a run through of the lip sync in two different locations, A recording studio and croxteth park. There is then a final scene we have to film also hopefully by friday. This will then enable us to begin editing next week and begin to put our video together, which I am really looking forward too.

Record Label

Since our music genre is dance music we decided to check out the biggest recording labels in this genre. We have found two big record companies which are 'Spinning Records' And 'Revealed Recordings' 

Spinning Records is home to some of the biggest artists in the world such as Martin Garrix. This recording label is constantly promoting its new and young artists through youtube and twitter. Spinning Records do not offer many music videos with their songs and this is why I do not want to sign for this label. 

The other big record label is Revealed Recording which is owned by the biggest DJ in the world Hardwell whom is the maker of our song. 

Dutch DJ/producer Hardwell presented his very own imprint Revealed Recordings in 2010. The young house sensation revealed a fresh and open-minded label. Next to Hardwell’s own tracks and collaborations, Revealed Recordings will also release tracks that fit the versatile sound of the label, whether that be progressive -, tech – or electro house influenced. Within a short period the label has build up a distinct label profile in todays Dance scene with a unique sound, a Revealed sound!

I believe this record label fits our needs and produces many music videos so it is a perfect fit for our artist. 

This morning, I sent a message to Revealed Recordings to ask for their permission to use Hardwell's "Young Again" for our music video. I have done this because there are copyrights in place which means that we have to ask for permission for use of this song. 

If Revealed reply I will post this on the blog at a later date.

EDIT 24/12/2014: Revealed did not reply to our email. We have sent another hoping for a reply.

Group Work- Week Plan

This is a image of our plan for week 2 of filming, due to us having work this week between us. The best thing for us to do is to do these things on our own if possible to save wasting time therefore we have assigned ourselves individual roles as well as the three of us filming together for one or two key parts of the shooting.

Updated Storyboard

Below you can see our final adaptations to our storyboard and genreal plan for filiming our video.
The narrative and whole story of our video has stayed the same since the begining, a young boy who only cares about skating and pretty much doesnt want to grow up. Time seems as if it is moving quickly and he doesnt want to grow up. That is the basic story to our video.

After updating our first storyboard we decided to film john and his mother arguing about him needing to grow up and get a job etc. at the begining of our video as a sort of pre song introduction. We have now scrapped this idea and went with the original sunset start. This is because when we watched our clips we had of this scene we thought it looked very cheap and unproffesinal. Also we had scenes in at the end of john (our character) going to a job interview. Again we thought this took up way to much time in our video and when we watched it back as a group we thought it was quite depressing and boring, and thats not what this genre is about.

John preparing for job interview

Therefore, Once again we sat down as a group and discussed what we could do. We all agreed after conversation that we had lots of skateboard clips of john and his friends & amsterdam music festivile filmed by jacob on his trip away. We looked at videos from our genre once again and thought we would keep out whole story of wanting to skateboard and not growing up, but portray this in a way which is not boring and without scenes of acting out job interviews etc.

Interview scene which we took out

We drew up our storyboards again and this time, used 3 main points of attention Liam (The artist), John (the boy who doesnt want to grow up) & Johns friends (The skateboarders). We decided to use lots of shots of Liam lip syncing from various angles and quick shots alternating with eachother. This we agreed will keep the audience engaged, as it is a constant change and not the same scene for longer than 5 seconds.

Overall we now believe we have finally found what our video was missing and can begin putting it together and get the remaining shots we need in this last week ready to show our video with the class.

Shooting Script

This is our shooting script which we will be following in order to produce our music video. These shots have been discussed and chosen through various group discussions consisting on what we want to do in terms of our shots.

Having a shooting script will help us to film what we want quicker and more effective. We will be going into our filming knowing exactly what we want to do using both our storyboard and shooting script to help us.

Below is an image of our shooting script we have put together, click the image to enlarge.

Edits & Transitions

Edits are really important in music videos as a continuous story show or continuous performance many become boring and tiring towards the audience who maybe want a little bit more entertainment or a quick break. Many music videos such as The Fray- You Found Me use these types of edits such as a birds eye view looking down on a major city or a time lapse, doing these creates an one screen visual spectacle to enjoy for the audience rather than being continuously shown the same type of camera shots from the storyline on the screen the edits like the ones mentioned make the music video look a lot more professional and makes it look as if a great deal of effort has been put into the music video making us appreciate it more.

Text Experimentation

To the left are fonts that I wouldn't use as some of them look more for young children as apposed to our target age. Also some of the fonts are difficult to read which be frustrating for viewers aswell as our work being pointless. Also considering the genre is dance non of these fonts fit that genre and will therfore not look as proffesioal or effective.

To the left are fonts that I would use as they are clear and easy to read, therfore the readers can understand exactly what it says. Also these fonts look professional and fit well in with the target audinece as they are not too childish but are not too plain and boring. They also suit the genre of Dance well as they are unique fonts which best relates to the genre. Also some of these fonts will give the posters and covers lots of variety making it stand out aswell as being unique.

Further Photoshop Skills

Selecting the size of the paper I will be working on, I selected a preset of international paper and size A4.

The three images of Jay-Z above and left, I have now opened up the image I will be editing and have positioned it where I want it, I have now rasterized the image so that I can now edit the image. I edited it by removing the background of this image and using the magic wand tool and then filled in blank areas with the smudge tool.

I have now placed my second image on to the page which I will be using as my background. My second image will need to be the layer underneath the first image so it then can be positioned behind the main image. I then positioned it where I wanted it and then what I had was them my finished image.

Left is two images, one which I have edited and then one that is the original, I have used the healing brush tool to edit this by removing the spots from the image, when theses two images are compered you can then tell the difference between the two.

Left is another image which I will be editing.

The first thing I did to the image was making it black and white, I did this by selecting the layer and then clicking the black and white tool on the adjustments section. above is what it looked like.

The next step was using the rectangular marquee tool selecting the lips from the image and adding it to its own layer so it was just the lips on the page.




I then put all the images back onto the page and this is what it looked like.

Mock Up of Artist Poster

Today I decided to put together a first poster for my groups project. This poster is of our character (John) Robert Masters riding his skateboard as you can see left. I done this using the techniques I have learned through my photoshop development lessons. Also below you can view a slideshow of how I done this.

Group Work - Planning

This is our second week of filming and we are planning how we are going about filming our next few scenes. Firstly we need to film our lip syncing at the docks, a few more time lapses and finally a clip of the sun/rise set. Our lesson plan for today is - 

Jacobs cousin is a media student in university in her 3rd year and she has offered to help us with the filming of a sunrise as she is able to show us ideal and suitable methods of getting a good clip. Jacob will be going to a nearby beach with John and his cousin to film a sunrise on saturday morning which begins at the hour of 7:14am I will be making a further blog post on this on saturday.

We have all agreed to film our lip syncing scene on friday between the hours of 9am-1pm. We will review all of our clips over the weekend and decide on if we need anymore clips and if that is the case we will film any extra clips on wednesday and begin editing next friday. 

Filming Planning

As you can see here I went onto the BBC website and looked at the weather report for wednesday the 26/11/2014 as me and my group have planned to go out filming more footage for our music video. The weather is cloudy and is okay for us to film effectivley. Planning like this gives us the oppurtunity to see what we have to change. If the weather was predicted to be poor we could change our plans and go for another day. This is something we will be chekcing each time we go out to film as it will give us an advantage and save us a lot of time.

 

Reflection of first shoot

Yesterday after all out planning was complete we went along and filmed the scenes we planned in one of our locations. Croxteth Park in West Derby Liverpool was the first place we went to. This went very well and we worked great in a team and the style we tried to go for was limited as we did not have a budget for clothes etc. We used the best with what was available and think it is very good. As John is the main character in our video we based the character around his skateboarder style to make it easier for us and give it a sense of realism as this is something John is natural and comfortable doing. My Personal thoughts on our first shoot was that overall it went very well and is a great starting point for what is to follow. We had great fun and bonded well as a group as well as being productive and successful with our time.

Music Video Ideas

There are various music videos which take this approach what we are looking at in our group and are going to go with. It is basically a character and then the singer. For example the narrative of the video is a character following a story or the lyrics are linear with what is happening in the video. This is a great approach and something we all agreed on in our group as it gives everyone a role in the performance. Wheatus, Teenage Dirtbag, is a example of this and is one of our inspirations. It is linear with the lyrics and tells a story about a character whilst showing lip syncs and shots featuring the artist performing etc.

Pixel Burst Stages

Here is a presentation using google slides on how I produced my pixel burst image using photoshop.

Photoshop, Bursting pixels

In my free time today I have missed a lesson on pixel burst therefore I had a chance today to catch up on this and have a go at it myself. To the left is my finished piece. I am quite happy with this for my first attempt and I think it is a great effect and is something we could definitely use in our group work for things such as album covers and posters. As I was not in for the lesson where we learned how to do this I used 'John Masters' tutorial on his blog of how to do this. His tutorial was very helpful and allowed me to produce a great first attempt for this photoshop effect.

Slo-Mo Editing

Last week was bomb fire night and I thought this was a great opportunity to get some footage which we could use for our music video. Below is one of many videos I took however this is one which has been edited into slow motion using the feature on the iPhone. This came out great as you can see and I have discussed with my group members whether this is suitable and put forward my ideas and they agreed. There is much we can do with this as it ties in with the genre perfectly. We will include this into our storyboard. This genre often includes lots of live footage of events and lots of bright colours, therefore the idea of the fireworks ties in perfectly. I also have normal speed clips of this if we are unable to implement the slo-mo in with the speed of the song.

Hardwell 'Young Again' Lyrics

In order to know the lyrics for this song and for our actor to lip sync to I have upload the lyrics here and on the group blog. Below I have also typed up the lyrics for future reference for me and group members.

When I was a boy

I dreamed of a place in the sky

Playing in the fieldsBattling with my shields

Bows made out of twine

I wish I could see this world again

Through those eyes

See the child in me

In my fantasy

Never growing old

Will we ever feel young again

Will we ever feel young again

Will we ever feel young again

We wanna feel young

We wanna feel young again

When I was a boy

I searched for a world that’s unknown

All we have is fun

Everybody run

Until the sun goes down

I wish I could see this world again

Through those eyes

See the child in me

In my fantasy

Never growing old

Will we ever feel young again

Will we ever feel young again

Will we ever feel young again

We wanna feel young

We wanna feel young again

Group Song Choice

After numerous group discussions and research on music videos, genres and artists we came to the conclusion that the song we are going to go with is Hardwell Young Again. The group has decided this song choice because after analysing this music video in the past we believe that this will an easy but effective music video to construct as it best suits are strengths and filming ideas we have put forward. The group will be able to easily use the camera angles, movements and editing technique to create our music video. Using all the camera shots and movements we have developed and understanding for. I have uploaded the music video below to display what our music video song is based upon and show what sort of codes and conventions that the group will be using to construct the video.

Storyboard (Verse 1)

Here is the first verse of our storyboard, this is the guidelines we will follow, I and the group prepared this together using our ideas we had. The shots we are planning to get using this is only guidelines and when we our in the filming scenario we may change some things  or adapt some ideas if we believe it will result in a better final outcome.