Thursday 22 October 2009

Rough cut video


Evaluation of Rough Cut

We have synced all the sound to all of the footage, which is not all in the right order. Only the parts where Olivia is singing is in the right order. The footage has been uploaded but not all of it has been put onto the video itself. the beginning of the video up to around 2 minutes have been put into the right order but we still need to do some more editing to make it perfect. we have done the most time consuming part of the video so we can focus on every little aspect of the video. for example with our animation shots we need to put them in the right speed. We may need to re-shoot one scene, this being with Derek and Liv on the grass. We felt the camera work was not steady. We need to put in all of our shots in the right order and with the right effects. with have done this with about two of three minutes of our song. we will obviously look over everything.

Wednesday 21 October 2009

Little Daffodils

For the last hour I've been putting a little picture of a simple daffodil at the end of every blog. I think it makes the blog look really nice and pretty. It also reminds us all the time of what we are doing :)

Editing

Today we have properly started editing. We have made sure that all four of the shots that I am singing the song in are lip-synced into the perfect place in the track. The first shot was me sitting on the floor singing the whole song of Daffodils. We took a long time over this as we had to refresh our memories on how to accomplish the task back to last year. We finally got the hang of it again and we were all really happy with the outcome. The next three were realitively easier than the first. We had a few hiccups every now and then (like accidently moving the track! and having to start all over again!!) but, as a group, we sorted it out and have completed this part of editing.


Next lesson we will be selecting loads of different shots to put in all over the place. What fun :)

Monday 19 October 2009

Target Audience

The target audience for our song is for teenage girls, this is mainly because of the fairy tale theme which runs throughout the whole video. Also for women in their thirties, daffodils is a very feminine song which is why the main target audience is females. As Olivia is a teenage girl this would appeal to the teenagers, they could relate to the characters, also as Derek is a teenage boy the girls could imagine themselves in Olivia's situation. Throughout the film there is a very feminine feel to the video. For example the shots in Lucy's garden all decorated, it is very pretty and girly.

Song Choice

We had ten songs to choose from. All of different styles and genres, and we ended up deciding to make a video fro Charlene Soraia's " Daffodils". We made this choice as while listening to every song we thought of ideas, and our best ideas were for this song, and we felt most inspired by this song, simply as we liked it the most out of all other songs. Our first ideas were:


  • beer going down in pint glasses

  • cigarettes burning out

  • shots of cars driving on a busy road at night

  • panoramic shot of Cambridge

  • theme of yellow

  • fairytale

  • daffodils everywhere in the video
We did not end up using all of these ideas, however we tried t adapt the ones that we couldn't use. The main reason we chose this song was because we liked it the most and felt inspired to make a good video.

Cutting the song

As our song is 5 minutes 4 seconds long , this is a long song which would mean that we would have to do a lot of extra filming for it to fit with the song. Luckily we were allowed to cut our song down to 3 minutes, which allowed us to focus on making the 3 minutes of filming better and up to a high standard instead of attempting to film enough to last for the entire song in a short period of time. Fortunately for us there is a perfect point in the song at 3 minutes- 'wakey wakey rise and shine'. This is a perfect ending for our song which is very beneficial for us. This has saved time for us which gives us more time to edit our rough cut for the deadline.


Kettle Chips Advert

After filming on Thursday I went home and saw on the television a new advert for Kettle Chips.
I've decided to make a blog of it as the advert is very similar to one of the shots we have filmed in our music video.



Evaluation of Second Day's Filming

On our second day of filming we filmed all the shots at the pub and in city locations. The shots in the pub were of beer in pint glasses going down, also a short animation scene involving various items from around the pub. These shots took up the most time from the second day. We did not encounter any problems with these, the only thing that held us up was deciding how much lighting to use. It took a lot of time and patience to make these shots, however we managed to do it successfully. We had to change our ideas slightly as we hadn't thought it threw as well as we needed to but this did not create any real problems. The city location shooting was of Olivia walking down the street and of her cycling. These were not time consuming or difficult to shoot apart from navigating down the street as we filmed. Rosie, the camerman had to walk backwards so Derek had to guide her, which made it a little more difficult. Also we found filming Olivia cycling more difficult than usual as we had to move the camera at an exact speed, but we managed to get good shots. some Christmas lights were being put up on the same day, which fitted with our theme very well.

Thursday 15 October 2009

Problems We Encountered


  • The shot where Liv and Derek are lying on the grass. We have decided to re film just this shot and try to make it smoother by possibly using the tripod, although we are not sure whether this is going to work because we need to scan around Liv and Derek. If not then we will keep trying to improve the smoothness by attempting to hold the camera as steady as possible!




  • Also because we decorated the garden with a lot of different sets of fairy lights there was a lot of wires on the floor. We managed to keep these out of the majority of shots which was good but we had to adjust some of the shots slightly.


  • Our camera ran out of battery in the middle of filming our scenes in the garden, fortunately we had thought this may happen previous to filming so we had got a charger with us, while the camera was charging we were able to film but we could only film next to a plug which meant we had to do a lot of close-up shots


  • While we were filming in town, other people obviously got in the way of our shots because it was busy. We managed to overcome this problem by walking down the street in a certain way to avoid getting unwanted people in the shots.



Evaluation of First Day Filming

We were able to get a large amount of shots, all the ones we had planned to do as well as some that we thought of at the time, so this will give us even more footage to choose from. We were able to get all of our filming that required daylight done before it got dark, so there were no problems there. It was cloudy, this was not what we pictured when we thought of the ideas, but this was not something we could change. At Lucy's house we did all of the filming in the dark, with lots of lighting effects in the garden, which the group made look incredible. The only problem was thinking how to put things up and finding everything that we needed. Several facial expressions and other things involving the actors could have been better (mainly Derek :P) but we can work with what we have. However one shot had jolts in it so we will re-do that filming again today.

Uploading Our Footage So Far

We have currently uploaded our footage which we filmed yesterday. We have watched it back and are pleased with what we have done, especially the shots of Liv and Derek acting as if they are playing peek-a-boo- it worked really well! We wanted to create an element of humour to our video, which is why we shot the peek-a-boo shots, we are going to add them in throughout the video amongst the serious shots. We are continuing filming tonight and are going to upload the rest of our footage tomorrow.

Filming on Wednesday 14th

The filming has been a success so far! Although the weather wasn't quite how we wanted it to be, we managed to still capture some good shots. The fallen leaves on the floor gave it a nice atmosphere which suited our song really well, the orange red and yellow leaves which were fallen on the floor made the scenery around pretty. This was very beneficial to us because it meant we didn't have to set up the scene unlike the shots in Lucy's garden.

We waited it for it to be dark before we filmed in Lucy's garden this is because we decorated the trees with fairy lights and used the lights with the yellow and grey/white gels to light up the shot.
Hopefully Thursday's filming will be as successful as Wednesday.

Wednesday 14 October 2009

Artist Research - Charlene Soraia

Influences:the Beatles, David Bowie, Bob Marley, Bob Dylan are her main influences. She also claims to enjoy listening to King Cromson, Muse and Led Zeppelin. However ther is not a big rock theme to her music.
Main Songs: "daffodils", "bike", "pictures in my mind", "I don't believe you" and "hello again". According to a poll on "last fm" "daffodils" the song for our video is by far her most well-known song.
History:Charlene started playing guitar age 5. It is obvious she found this as her passion as she was playing open mike seesions at age 8, and was a regular at the open mic circuit at age ten. She taught herself to play the guitar, and attended the "Brit School of Performing Arts" despite not having a GCSE in music. This has won her some acclaim. At this school she stopped performing acoustic and joined a band called "Retrospect". She pursued her solo career in 2008.
notable career achievements: attended the "Brit School of performing arts" without having the minumum requirement of a GCSE in music. This shows that she must have been very skillful in playing a guitar. She sang alongside Jose Gonzalez, Stephanie Dozen and Julien Verlard, who she sang a duet with. she perform at the Glastonbury festival, as she won the "emerging talents competition, giving her a spot at the prestigious festival. Charlene released her new EP entitled Daffodils & Other Idylls in March and has topped the uk Folk Charts on iTunes and will continue to play various shows around London in support of the record.

Auteur Presentation

Changed Ideas

We were supposed to get two shots of the sunrise and sunset, but camera arrangements made this impossible. Instead we will film one shot of sunrise and then play that in reverse for the sunset. Also, daffodils are out of season at this point in time, so it is going to be impossible to put these in the footage. Instead, Lucy has offered to go buy some flowers, preferably yellow ones before we film. there will not be a shot of someone taking a drag on a cigarette, as no one should be forced to smoke, and we feel that it would be inappropriate.

Tonight's filming session

Tonight we have decided that we are going to film mainly in Orwell, this is because of the pretty scenery in Orwell, we need to film this in the daylight. When it begins to get dark we are going to begin filming in Lucy's garden. We are using Lucy's garden to film the shots where we need the lights, this is because we need a plug near by. We are going to decorate the gardens with fairy lights, candles and lanterns. Lucy's garden will act as the Pubs garden. Liv is going to take the camera back to her's and film the beer glasses and cigarette scenes at her house.

Weather for Wednesday 14th October

Unfortunately the weather isn't great for our filming outside, however we are pleased that there appears to be no rain throughout the day!

Tuesday 13 October 2009

updated ideas

If the weather is not so good tomorrow we will have to adjust some of our ideas. We based on ideas on it being sunny as it seemed to go with the theme of the song. at the moment the weather is supposed to be cloudy for both days and this is something that we will have to work with. If it is at night it will not be such a problem, and this may be better for a lot of shots, however we need some variation. We will perhaps use this to create a more melancholy feel to some of the shots, where both characters are feeling distanced from one and other. It is not ideal for our video and will probably make it look less professional but it may create a light/dark contrast with yellow costumes.

Feedback on lighting effects

Yellow light: the main focus point of our video is daffodils, which are coloured yellow. so obviously it is important that we find a way to make this lighting effect work. This lighting effect creates a calming effect, which goes well with the song theme. It would be useful to use this in a pub scene if possible. It creates a sort of "glow" which would also make it useful when focusing on each character.
Grey: This does not portray a grey light on the individual, but more gives a spotlight effect. this would be useful when focusing on one character. Generally it can be used to foucs the viewer on one specific thing. things generally appear to shine more. when focusing on the couple this would be a good effect to use.
Red light: this can appear to be more pink than red. However it can also come out, as more like blood red. This can be used to portray feelings of lust and danger, depending on the expressions of the character. Red is often associated with both love and danger. This can give the character a very big shine on their face and thus should be either kept to a minimum or make sure the character is standing in such a way that this is not so obvious.
blue light: this shade of blue gives of a turqoise light. Like the yellow light this can be used to give off a calming effect. It may also be used to give off an eerie effect. this would be a good effect to use in certain shots, such as one with one person moving at a different speed to the rest of the characters.

Monday 12 October 2009

Sample shots with different gels

we tried using lots of different colours to see what sort of effect it would have on the image and create the atmosphere!

we tried the yellow light first....


Then we tried using a white/grey light....


Then we tried using a red light...




We tried using a green light...


Our favorite light was the white/grey light and the yellow light. We think that the yellow light will be good to use if it isn't sunny.

Today Monday 12th October 09

today we have decided to do some stills with the different effects from gels over a light to see if we can create a different atmosphere with the different colours.

Sunday 11 October 2009

Research into album covers

Kate Nash- Made of Bricks
This album features a lot of songs which are similair to dafodils. Kate Nash is a popular British artist, which is why we felt that doing some research into her album cover would be helpful to us when designing one for our song.

Analysis:

- Colourful. Lots of bright colour have been used in the album cover. This makes it look cheerful and happy. By using the bright colours it would stand out amongst a lot of albumns in a shop.


- Fun Clear Title. The font used for the title is fun and stands out. It is quite a girly font. It's clear and easy to read, which would be helpful to the customers.


Overall this albumn cover is very happy. Instead of focusing on purely the artist, it gives us some idea of what to expect to be on the albumn- upbeat, happy, girly songs.



Adele- 19 Adele is another young popular British artist. Her songs are popular, like Charlene she has a unique style. The albumn cover is completely different to Kate Nash's.


Analysis:


- Black and white themed. This albumn cover uses a black background and white music, this gives it a very mature look.


- Clear font. Like Kate Nash's cover the font is very easy to read, using the white on the back means it is clear and stands out.


- Main focus on artist. Adele is the main feature of the albumn cover. She comes across as quite upset suggesting that her music is going to be quite slow and mellow.


Overall the albumn is quite bold and mature. The main focus being on the artist themselves.


Ideas which are helpful:




  • Clear font

  • A picture of the artist

These are helpful to the customers who will buy the albumn because if the font is clear to read it is easy for the customers to find the albumn which they are looking for, also with the picture of the artist it allows the customers to find the albumn. Another idea would be to create an artistic albumn cover with a different kind of look about it so that it would stand out in the shop.






Weather Conditions

We are planning on filming on Wednesday 14th and Thursday 15th. We are hoping that on at least one of the days it will be sunny, which is quite unlikely as it's autumn! We are hoping this because in one scene the sun shines through the spokes of the bike that Olivia is seen riding throughout the video. According to BBC weather forecast, Tuesday has sunny patches which, this would be brilliant and very beneficial to our group! However if on the day the weather is not sunny, we have decided to use a bright light to give the effect of the sun, we are trying out these lights before we actually film to ensure that the idea works!

Thursday 8 October 2009

Costumes

Liv:



  • Yellow dress

  • Dafodill in her hair

  • Yellow shoes

Photos to be added at later date of the 2 characters.


Derek:



  • Yellow shirt

  • Smart jeans

  • Black shoes


Cast and roles

In the music video Liv is the protagonist- the lady in the yellow dress.
Derek plays the lead role within the video, Liv's love interest.

The whole group will be directing the group collectively to allow everyone to put their own impact in fairly. Lucy and Rosie will both film the music video.

Locations around town

These are some of the locations that we are going to use:


The Alexandra Arms Pub, Cambridge
This is where we will film most of our inside footage i.e. the pints going down,
the cigarettes burning out in the ash tray, the clock going around.
This will be out starting place for Olivia walking aswell.


Mill Road, Cambridge
This is where we will be filming most of the walking and riding scenes for Olivia
And we will try and do some of just the cas and busses and bikes and speed them up to make Olivia looks like she is moving slowlyAnd we will also be using Mill Road bridge because there is good bright artwork which would look good in our music video and would suit our genre.

We would also like to use Parker's Piece
in cambrif=dge at night because it would give a sense of Olivia being lost
when everyone is around.


And out last location is The "Clunch pit" in Orwell.
We wanted to use this location because its a lovely location and would give us great views of the countryside


DVD Cover Ideas

I designed this just for an idea of a doodling effect. I don't think it can work as the track names aren't easily visible, which is a problem.
 
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