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Blog Reflections: Week 14

After receiving feedback from our class mates this week we went onto make the changes that we had received from our peers. This was the week of our deadline, we spent all of our time up to Thursday making changes and double checking that we was happy with our final outcome. The main changes that we made was to the editing such as the overlays and fades, we also found that there was small gaps in between some of the shots where it would be black. We didn't realize that there was these small gaps but we luckily got told by our teacher so we could make these changes before our final deadline. Another thing we had to alter was the colours used, we had to make sure that the colours had a similar brightness so there was some form of continuity between all of the different location. On Thursdays lesson we uploaded our work onto YouTube and we had finally completed our music video. 

Our next deadline that I had to meet was that in a weeks time we would have to have our ancillary products complete. This included our magazine advert and digi pak. We started producing this on the last day of the week and this meant we could focus on the work that needed to be completed for the next week. This meant we had to put our flat plans onto the computer and try and translate our hand drawn designs by using fireworks and photoshop

Final Music Video

Blog Reflections: Week 13

This week we spent all of our time up on the Mac's. We wanted to make sure that we had clearly made changes from our first draft which we would could improve and develop until we was happy with. We stayed most evenings to try and get a product which we was happy with due to us having a mixture of positive and negative feedback from our peers. Some of the shots we had in our draft, we werent 100% happy with so we made changes. It helped us that we had filmed shots in a variety of locations and with different angles and movements. This meant when it come to editing we could easily find shots that would match in specific places throughout the song. 

Next week will be our final week working on our music video. We will be staying again in our free time until we are happy. We have till Thursday to upload our work, I feel happy with this deadline because we met our first deadline for the first draft. This means we are on track and will meet the deadline for the final music video which i am very pleased about.

Feedback From Class Mates

During this week we each went round the class and watched each others music videos so far. From doing this each group gave us feedback on the strengths,weaknesses and the improvements that could be made. 

Some of the main strengths we received was that it was typical of the genre and the themes were clearly shown in the narrative part of the music video. My class mates also said that we used a variety of shots, angles and had a good amount of movement which made the video more visually appealing compared to it being quite static. They also said that the main thing we did well was our casting, they felt that the boy we had used for the artist and the tramp in the narrative worked well as he looked like someone who would appear in a Indie music video. They also said they he was very good at acting and his lip syncing was very believable for the audience. Another strength was our use of editing, people said that they liked that we overlapped some of the shots and it was typical of a music video. As most of the class mates said they liked our use of editing we felt as though we should add more of the overlapping. Overall we got quite a bit of good feedback however we were also given improvements.

Some of the improvements we were told to make was that some of the shots didn't always cut to the beat. This was a problem as this is conventional of a music video, we found this hard because the song was so slow and didn't always match with the length of the shots. Another improvement that was suggested was that there wasn't enough shots of the girl and the parts where we showed clips of "behind the scenes" confused the audience as they saw two girls. However I didn't really agree with this feedback because we made clear that the shots of behind the scenes were in a red tint and the narrative was in black and white which would help stop confusion. The final main improvement we received was based on the colours and lighting. Some people felt that there was too much colour going on and the lighting was contrasted too much between the narrative and performance. We agree with this comment so we have decided to make the performance shots darker so they match with all of the locations and we have also decided to make the red tint a bit darker so it matches more with the black and white used in the narrative.

Blog Reflection: Week 12

This week was focused on getting all of the shots onto the timeline. This meant we had to focus and spend extra time out of school hours and in our free periods to edit footage together. As me and Tara have the same free periods we could come up and use Final cut quite alot. Once we had got all of our shots down on the timeline, we started to add some transitions to a few of the shots. This meant we could start making it look a bit more like a typical music video. 

By Thursday we had to get our first draft complete so we could show it to our teachers. We met this deadline as we had filled all the gaps in with the shots we had in our library and this meant we would be prepared for the week ahead. We had made some changes this week such s changing the "back stage" shots to black and white. We felt as this would make it clear to the audience that it wasn't part of the narrative or the performance. However when asking a classmate they said that it might be better if we were to change the narrative shots to black and white. 

We were also showed a video which was a tutorial on how to edit a music video. We used this to help us edit the clips quickly and it did actually make it slightly easier however because we had edited quite a bit of our music video we felt as though we was happy to use our own way of editing it. 

Blog Reflection: Week 11

This week we went out and filmed some more. Last week we had planned to film in the music studio at school however due to complications we were unable to and we had to use our back up plan. However we were still able to film in school which was good as we had easy access and we didn’t have any problem with lighting due to us being inside. During this time we filmed many shots that we would include in our music video. We used several different locations so we could pick which ones looked best and which ones would fit more with the Indie genre. 









This week we also imported our shots and began to put all of our shots onto the timeline.  This meant we could fill any gaps with the shots that we had filmed this week. By having a variety of shots that we filmed in different locations is meant we had more choice when it came to editing. We also made sure our actor sang the whole song instead of small parts like we had done previously. This made it better for us as it was much easier when we came to cutting the shots and inserting them into places where we had gaps. 

Call Sheet 3

Blog Reflections: Week 10

This week we mainly focused on getting all of our footage imported onto our own Macs. Once we had imported the footage that we had shot over the half term we had to download a copy of the song we were using onto Final cut pro.

This meant we could then go onto start editing our work which meant we could move forward with our production, we spent alot of time making sure that we were happy with the shots we had and we started roughly placing them onto our timeline. 

By doing this we got an idea of what shots we needed to re-film and what shots we needed to go out and film the next time we went out. This helped us realize that we needed shots of him working and singing in the music studio. We then decided that when we next go out to film we would focus mainly on getting these shots completed and then worry about the other shots we need to re-film later on in the week.

Call Sheet 2

Blog Reflections: Week 9

This week we finished all of our pre production work this included:

Shot List

Production Schedule

Our Magazine Flatplan

Our digipak Flatplan

Recci Images

We finally started to go out and start the production side to the course. I had to create call sheets for everytime we went out to film any footage that we would use in our music video. In our call sheet we had to say what equipment we would need, what cast was needed, the location, date and what shots we would film in that time. 

We went to film through our half term where we selected the shots we would film and where we would go to film. However due to weather problems we had to change our location to film as it was raining. This meant we didnt have to travel as far as planned, and the locations were still quite similar to where we had originally planned to film our music video.

Call Sheet 1

Shot list

We created a shot list which would be a description of what our music video will end up looking like. We had to talk about what shots we was going to use, how long the shot will last, who will be included in the shot, the angle, movement and where it will be filmed. By doing this we have an idea of what shots we will film and how they will fit with the music video. We completed as many shots as possible which would fit the length of the song, but we had to make sure there was a variety of different camera language that we would use

When coming up with our shooting script we looked at two music videos. For each one we counted how many shots were present in each video. On average there was around 70 shots in both of these music videos and the pace of the song matches with our song "Once in a lifetime"

Blog Reflections: Week 8

This week we have focused on all of our last few parts for the pre-production stage. This included several things.

Our flatplans had to be our initial hand drawn designs of what we want our magazine advert and digipak to look like. In our job roles we split up this work evenly, it was my job to create the magazine advertisement and my partners job to come up with a digipak. We worked together when brainstorming our ideas so that we could both go away and create two items that still had synergy and had a clear link between each media text. 

It was also my job to make up a production schedule which would help us plan when we would go out and film, where we would go and what scenes we would film. By doing this it will help us meet our deadlines set by our teachers and the ones we have set for ourselves, which will help us keep on top of the work. 

The shot list was the final piece of work that we completed for the pre-production stage. We had initially decided that Tara would work on this by herself, but we decided to work together when completing this so we both had an visual idea of what would be going on when we actually go out and film.  We had to consider:

shot types,movements,angles,duration of each shot,locations,props,equipment,what will be seen in each,shot(what the actors will do), and the lyrics 

Now that we have completed all of our pre - production work we could go on to begin all of our production. We have planned to go out over the half term and visit our two locations to film the narrative side of the music video. These will be Brick Lane and Camden Lock, we will get to these locations by train and hope to find somewhere suited which isnt too over crowded and too busy to film in.