Group meeting

Group Meeting 

Because of difficulty with getting the band together for filming we have decided to change our whole project but this should not cause any problems to our schedule and it is more likely that with is idea we will be able to create a better project. We will still be using Dreaming of you but instead of a cover we'll be using the original version, we understand that this is likely to lose us some marks but as we don't have much time and the song isn't very well known, so this gives us an advantage.

We have to write up a new story board, and come up with some new ideas, so therefore we have created a mind map.
Here some ideas have been jotted down quickly for video ideas. Its only a rough outline of what we might end up doing but its a start!







This also means I will, have to create a new digipak and Magazine Advert. Which hopefully wont take me long as i already have a basic layout now.

Style Model - Music Video

I have had trouble getting the original 'Dreaming of you' music video uploaded to my blog, but I wanted to compare some of the conventions that we'd be using. Therefore i have taken some screen shots from the video that is on youtube, to that I can highlight the techniques we are sort of recreating.

Here I have put composed a collage of some screen shots from the video. These shots show the members of the band playing their instruments and this is a techniques that we're using as we have the full band playing certain clips of the song in the video and this is separate from the narrative.

You can view the official video here: Dreaming Of You -The Coral

Narrative

As we are recoding for a song called 'Dreaming of you' Our musical director has put forward ideas towards the narrative part of the music video, this is where a wall will be filled with pictures, each containing a memory. The camera will zoom in on the images and they will start to play, this gives the idea that these images are memories and the singer of the song is remembering them. I think this is a very effective and smart technique to use as it will be individual and not a techniques that is used often.

Story board

So the idea behind this is that the cork-board will be filled with images of memories and the centre image will be one of the band. When the camera zooms into a picture it will come alive and play the memory. This is how the narrative will work and the cork-board idea also works as a transition between shots which I think is very effective.







The narrative will also work to the lyrics; 

It's up in my heart

When it skips a beat
Can't feel no pavement

Right under my feet

Up in my lonely room
When I'm dreamin' of you
Oh, what can I do ? I still need you
But I don't want you now

When I'm down and my hands are tied
I cannot reach a pen for me to draw the line
From this pain I just can't disguise

Its gonna hurt but I'll have to say goodbye

Up in my lonely room
When I'm dreamin' of you
Oh, what can I do? I still need you
But I don't want you now

Up in my lonely room
When I'm dreamin' of you
Oh what can I do
I still need you
But I don't want you now

The highlighted green parts are where the band will come alive and there will be shots of them. The other,unhighlighted parts are where the memories will be. The Plans version of the song is a little longer than the original and therefore we'll be able to get more in to the video. 

Organising PhotoShoot.

Because we are creating a magazine and digipak, I need some images of the band. Therefore I am organising a photo shoot with the Band which will provide these images and speed up my editing process, as if I get the smaller things like the Advert and Digipak out of the was I'll be able to dedicate more time to the main video. I have organised for images to be taken on Friday 24th October, then hopefully I will be able to start editing soon after.

First Recording

We did a first practice recording of the band we were using on Friday 17th October. We recoded them performing their rendition of the song 'Dreaming Of You' and here is what it looked like:

Obviously the camera is a little shaky and the sound quality isn't very good but that was why we actually began recording like this, so that we could work out the levels and decide whether we're aiming to dub over the recording or just just the sound at the quality that its recorded. We are not going to use the sound from this recording as it is not very good and there is a lot of background interference, as it is also a recoding of a live performance we have the trouble of other people getting in the way of the camera. But this gave us a rough idea of what were working with and of what we need to work on. There are some very good camera angles that have been used although some are shaky so maybe next time we could use a tripod or some static for of recording that'll give us some still shots.

Because we have done a first recoding so early on in the course we have a lot of time for improvement which is a bonus as editing can be a very tedious process so the longer we have to make hard decisions and try different ways of recording the better. This clip is completely unedited, but I personally think I'm going to get a better quality by using iMovie.

Group Meeting 16/10/14

In today's group meeting we chose a logo, this basic yet stylish logo which makes the company look more professional. Its also two simple colours that look good on any document and permission form of on a headed of the companies blog page.

We have also decided on the song that we are using 'Dreaming Of You' - The Coral. but not the original song, a cover version from a local ban to us, The Plans.To the Left is an image of the band.

We also decided that we are going to have the video part narrative and part natural. Using shots of the band but also letting the lyrics telling the rest of the story a video.

Group Meeting

I have been working on an organisation plan so that we keep on track. So far we have 4 group meetings a week where we dicuss the progress that we are making and the fumes tasks that we have to decided on.

For example, our next group meeting is on the 16/10/14— here we need to discuss the logo, plans for what song we are going to just and the type of music video that we are going to create.

We will decide this by breaking the tasks down, as Jenni is the director, most of the hard decisions come down to her. Whereas Will is the musical director and he chooses the creative aspects. So therefore both them and I have to come to some hard decisions...

Magazine Advertisement Research

As I also have to create a Magazine advertisement for the music video/album Digipak I'm creating I conducted some research into the different styles of advertisement and the conventions that have been used. Here are some style models that I will be hoping to recreate as small tasks before I actually create our own. I have began analysing the Rihanna poster and will post and update on that in a future blog post.

Research On Digipak's

As the editor it different to design and create the Digipak and Magazine advertisement. So, because of this I have been researching other album Digipak's to get a basic idea of the layout I'd be using and different designs that are appealing to the different genres of music. Below are four different examples of Digipak's, as you can see they're completely different to one another, this makes designing our own a simple task becausw we can sit down as a group and pick from one of the designs that I have found or another that maybe somebody else in the group likes the style of. I also founda temulate of a Digipak layout, which makes it an easier job for me as I can used the template as a basic layout to create our Digipak.

Logo

So far I have created three Logos;

I am going to take these back to the group on the 16/10/14 and  we will review which they think best, and best suited to our company. 

Group Work

We decided on our group a couple of weeks ago and so far we have chosen a name, designed a logo and appointed the Roles Within The Group.
I have been appointed the position of editor which entails breaking down the footage and editing it, creating the magazine advertisement and Digi-Pack.
So far, I have created a brief logo, but I, in my personal opinion, don't think it fits the genre of music that we are going to represent. So I have decided to create and new one and I am in the process of doing this. Here is this logo that we already have:

Research on brief three

Research On Brief Three

A promotional package for the release of an album, to include a music promo video, together with two of the following three options:

• a digipack fot the album release
• a magazine advertisement for the digipack

I am a big music fan and I watch a lot of music videos, this is why I think that this task is a suitable on for me. I like to break videos down from a media point of view picking out what shots have been used and how certain parts of the video match the song used.

I really enjoy this video for 'Happy Little Pill' by Troye Sivan as its all really slow and individual.

I really like the way this video is all in reverse, which makes it stand out from other music videos. I would love to do something like this as it is very unique, and would leave a lasting image.

Therefore this is a task that I would really enjoy to do and I think it would be a success.

Research on Brief Two

Research on Brief two

A short film in its entirety, lasting approximately five minutes, which may be live action or animated or a combination of both, together with two of the following three options:

• a poster for the film

• a magazine review page for the film

 After watching these short film trailers, it seems that a lot of work has been put in to them over a long period of time. Although these are just the trailers, I have watched the full films and they seem to have really minimalistic techniques but are also very high quality films. Most short films are also over 5 minutes long and I think it would be difficult to compress a full story in to five minutes. So, therefore I have chosen not to go ahead with this brief.

Research On Brief One

 Research on Brief One

A promotional package for the release of a computer/video game, include two TV advertisements together with two of the following three options:

• The cover of the games package
• A magazine advertisement for the game

After researching these games, 'Rise of the guardians', 'Bully' and 'Grand theft auto V',  which like many other games are animated I have concluded that although the images would be easy enough to recreate the animated trailers would consume at lot of time and would probably not meet the standards that I could reach with a non-antimated trailer, so therefore I have decided against using this brief. 

Briefs

Briefs


After reading through the briefs, I have chosen three that really appealed to me, they stood out and I though they suited my abilities more that the others;

1. A promotional package for the release of an album, to include a music promo video, together with two of the following three options:

• a website homepage for a band
• a digipack fot the album release
• a magazine advertisement for the digipack

2.  A promotional package for the release of a computer/video game, include two TV advertisements together with two of the following three options:

• The cover of the games package
• Two hyperlinked pages from the games website
• A magazine advertisement for the game

3. A short film in its entirety, lasting approximately five minutes, which may be live action or animated or a combination of both, together with two of the following three options:

• a poster for the film
• a radio trailer for the film
• a magazine review page for the film

Prelim Task

Preliminary Task
For our Prelim task we were told to make a short video to get to grips with filming and editing the different areas. We researched certain music videos and film trailers that would be easily replicable, as a group we chose the song/video Down by the Kooks; it has very quick snappy movements and actions that looked slick and agile. We also decided we'd like to reference the music video for 'Alt J - Breezeblocks'. As you can see from the video's below...

-Down The Kooks-Breezeblocks Alt-J

We used the slow motion, reversed scenes from the Alt-J video and the snappy cut scenes from The Kooks video. This gave us a sort of cross over effect. We used visual effects, such as filters, eg. old movie, heatwave etcetera. We also used a reverse effect on some clips, slowing them down and speeding them up, just to get a feel for the controls and as I said earlier, to come to grips with film and music editing. We also cut some scenes, because after the filming we thought they they were not relevant.

This is the finished version of the task...

Prelim Task - Editing

Prelim Task


During the editing process we imported all of our clips to iMovie, as this editing suit seemed to suit us best. This is an image of our storyboard, in iMovie:



We then used the trimming tool to cut down the clips so that they started and ended exactly where we wanted them too:

We did this with all the clips, and then watched them all through in the project area, making sure that they were exactly how we wanted them. Once we had done this, we began to order them in ways that looked slick and stylised. We then added in the music and you can see that is is the green line below the clips.





We managed to get the clips in time with the music and then we began to try out different transitions, speeds and even had some clips playing backwards.












As you can see in these two images, this first one is of the inspector menu which allows us used certain techniques.

This clip is an example of some of the filters and transitions that we used to move from shot to shot. We also put different coloured filters on our images that make the scenes look brighter, or in some cases darker.

Prelim Task - Filming

Prelim Task

Now that we had the storyboard, with all the necessary information we decided it was time to rehearse and record the scenes that we had selected. This involved getting the correct props and making sure all the areas that we had chose to film in were available at the times we needed them. 

We made sure that everybody was quiet when the scenes were being shot and we made sure that were were a few spare seconds at the beginning and end for editing purposes. Once we had recorded all the shots, multiple times as some were bound to come out better than the others, we watched back as a group.

Prelim Task - Story Board

Prelim Task

As a group, we broke down the structure of the music video we were using and started to pick out certain scenes that we wanted to try and interpret. During this we had to work together to try and come to a mutual agreement on the scenes that we wanted to use, we also had to decide what props and costumes we'd need. Then, after wed drew up a basic outline of the scenes we wanted to used, we began to put the ideas down on a storyboard. 
During this process, we chose the timing for each shots, the camera angles wed use and where the scene would be shot. 

Prelim Task - Research

Prelim Task

To start the term we were given a preliminary task of making a short, 30 second video. We worked in groups of 3/4, my group consisted of Jason Smith, Jenni Smyth and Will Lawton. Together we worked very well, conduction research into what type of video we would wish to recreate, and whether it would be a music video or film trailer.

After a discussion between the group we decided that a music widow would be better to recreate as it had no dialogue which could be harder to record for an amateur film maker(s).

After searching the internet for a wide range of music videos looking in to different genres and styles of music we finally chose to recreate 'Down' - The Kooks.