First cut - Skrillex

This is our first cut of our video, I am very proud of how this video turned out as it is our first attempt at making a music video.I feel that there are still some more sections that need altering, however this will only take a short while to do. I think the main thing that I think will make the video appear more professional would be to add an opening title and having an MTV Base sign in the corner.

Final Touches - 1st cut

Today was our last day for editing our video to create the first cut. All we had left to do was to make sure that all cuts were neat and crisp, and that the three way colour correction was the same throughout.

Last Day of Filming

This weekend was our last weekend of filming before putting together our first cut.We decided to do this filming in reading as we knew of some good locations that we haven't yet used. We have briefly story-boarded some extra shots that we wanted to include, and managed to successfully capture these on our day of shooting. All of our actors got on well with each other, which was a bonus and enjoyed the day out.

Editing

Whilst we have been resolving the issues with the actresses we have been making the most of our time in the media suite and have been editing with all the footage. We have in particular been looking at speeding up the dubstep sections of the song by including lots of fast cuts, jumps and a combination of forward and reverse motions in time with beats. we have also been experimenting with all the possible affects that we could use. we have found that the most successful to be stop motion blur as it creates an excellent disoriented affect.



We have also found that as a result of the excessive editing our video would need to be rendered on a regular basis. We have also been using colour correction 3 way to give the footage a more professional view.

Planning and Research - Replacements

These are the two girls that we have replaced our previous actress' 
Hannah    Leanne

Planning and Research - Call sheet

This is the call sheet the my partner and I put together in order to help organize ourselves and plan ahead for future filming.

Planning and Research - Problem/Solution

At the begining of our music video process we decided that we were going to use the two girls, Tess and Lisa, as our actresses. however due to their lack of enthusiasum and co-operation, we have had to remove them from our video. This then left us with no female actors. Fortunatly we have found two replacements in a short period of time, this has helped as we have not lost out on too much precious time, however this does mean that we now need to go through all of our footage and re-shoot all scenes with the girls in.

Planning and Research - Filming

In the latest filming session, we went to Kidwells park which is located near Maidenhead town. We chose this area because there was lots of colourful autumn leaves around which we felt gave a good contrast between Dan and the background.

Whilst we were filming we had to play the music out loud in order for Dan to here the song to be able to lip sync in time.We also played the music out loud so that when it came to the editing process we would know what lines he was singing easily.

This is an image of my partner filming the section when Dan is walking down the street singing. We used a tracking shot for this section but did not use the steady-cam as we wanted a slightly shaky uncontrolled shot to reflect his emotions.

Planning and Research - Today's Lesson

In today's lesson we were discussing the definitions of match-on-action and continuity. in a group we all split off into our tables to discuss what we thought and then after 5 minutes we came back together as a class and wrote down on 'The Wall'  

We then had to work in two groups and were given a topic to discuss which was either how to shrink time in a film or make it longer. Our group had the task of shrinking time, to do this we decided that we would take away multiple frames that we felt were pointless and took up too much time.

Planning and Research - Location shots

After our first filming session we then decided to look in different locations. We decided to film in maidenhead town centre in order to give our video an urban feeling as well as the classic cliche of green rural areas. We managed to get a variety of interesting shots including and arc of our main actor, Dan, which we intend to then speed up to use in our dubstep section of the song. We also managed to get some good shots of one of our female actors, Tess, close to a tree, which i feel meets the iconic image of an innocent girl in a natural surroundings.

This is the bench we used for Dans individual shots

We used some of the shops for the duo shots

We used this to practice our arc shot

Planning and Research - Filming

Today, my group went to film the first section of our music video, we met all of our actors in Punt Hill park where we filmed the opening of shots of our lead actor as well as some cliche shots with the girls. We used a variety of different shots and altered the focus. we also found out that filming whilst it was raining added an atmosphere to our footage.
We have now put together a list of shots that we need to get the next time we go filming.

Planning and research - BFI

On Tuesday the 16th of October I attended the BFI film festival, where I watched a short documentary called 'The Road' directed by Marc Isaacs. the documentary was about the people in the area along the main road of the A5. After the screening there was a Q&A with the director himself, he explained to us that the duration of the film was recorded of a period of 3 years in which two of the characters passed away.

Synopsis 

Planning and Research - Julien Christian Lutz

Julien Christian Lutz, or better known as Director X is a canadian music video director. He has his own clothing line and was born and raised in Toronto, Ontario

His trademark is tweaking the letterbox format; instead of just using black bars on the top and bottom of the frame, many videos by X actually feature the bars opening vertically to reveal the video and closing vertically at the end, like a letter box.

He has directed Justin Bieber's music video for the song 'Boyfriend'

And Nelly Furtado's "Big Hoops"

Planning and Research - Storyboard so far

During the past few weeks my partner and we have been working on our storyboard in preparation for filming. This is so that we can have a set plan of what we are going to film and on what days. This also helps for us to visualize how our final video will look once it has been finished. we will now take these sheets with us when we go to film so that we know exactly what sorts of shots we need to do and with who.

We currently have 45 frames and are roughly about 30 seconds into the required 3 minutes 15 seconds of the song.

Planning and Research - Ancillary task research

As well as our practical work we are currently looking at some research into the ancillary task.

Planning and Research - Lesson Review

As part of today's lesson with creativity we were put into groups and told to come up with twenty four different ideas of objects that would make day to day life easier. We then had to chose five of the twenty four to share wit the rest of the class in a large discussion where we would then see which as a group would feel there was a large market for.

Planning and research - Theorist Andrew Goodwin

When I researched the theorist Andrew Goodwin I found this slideshow and found it very informative
Source : http://www.slideshare.net/guestc6d43a4a/andrew-goodwins-theory

Planning and Research - background info

'Skrillex'

Sonny john more (born January 15, 1988), better known by his stage name Skrillex, is an American electronic music producer and singer-songwriter. raised in northeast Los Angeles. he began his first tour as a solo artist in late 2007. On November 30, 2011, he was nominated for a total of five Grammy awards at the 54th Grammy Awards including best new artist and won three: "best dance/electronica album." and "best dance recording"

Moore has just stated in an online interview that he has been a longtime fan of Warp, an electronic music label that has released recordings from artists such as Aphex Twin and Squarepusher.

Planning and research - Lyric ananlysis

I could watch you for a lifetime ----Voyeurism
you're my favorite movie
A thousand endings -------A variety of possibilities
You mean everything to me
I never know whats coming
Forever fascinating
Hope you don't stop running
To me 'cause I'll always be waiting ----Eternal love

You are a cinema I could watch you forever 
Action, thriller, I could watch you forever
You are a cinema, a Hollywood treasure
Love you just the way you are
A cinema, a cinema...  ---- Title reference

Drop the bass ---- dubstep section giving us the possibility to add fast pace editing 

Stars spell out your name ---- lovers cliche
Like in a science fiction drama ---- film genre reference
Romance roll in 
Like a flower in the summer ---- Simile
You always keep me guessing ---- Mystery
forever my wonder
hope you start undressing
All my dreams until the end of

You are a cinema I could watch you forever ---- Repetition
Action, thriller, i could watch you forever
You are a cinema, a Hollywood treasure
Love you just the way you are
A cinema, a cinema...

Drop the bass

You are a cinema I could watch you forever
Action, thriller, I could watch you forever
You are a cinema a Hollywood treasure
Love you just the way you are
A cinema, a cinema...

Planning and Research - Time line

My partner and I have been creating a timeline during our lessons in order to get a an understanding of how many frames we need to fit the song and the pace. We have not yet completed it so the image below is a work in progress

Planning and Research - Creativity

Today's lesson was based on the idea of creativity. We were given the question "The more you know how to do something, the less creative you become: agree or disagree?" we discussed this in pairs to begin with and then all gathered in the center of the room so that we could have a group discussion. We had a variety of opinions and we looked at a tweet that a class mate had tweeted "free flowing creativity can be restricted by knowledge but knowledge allows you to take from many inspirations and be creative"

Planning and Research - Brainstorms

in todays lesson my partner and I began to brainstorm some ideas for our music video

Planning and research - The Song

The song we have chosen is originally 5 minutes long, so we therefore had to spend the last week cutting it down to bring it into the time limit of 3 minutes. We decided to take out some of the dubstep beats as we felt  that some parts would drag for too long. We also took out the the high pitched rap leading into the dubstep as we felt that it was not needed to make the song, we then had to use a cross fade from the audio effects to make the track run smoothly.

Planning and research - Actors

This past week my partner and i have been focusing on finding three actors to be in our video. We finally managed to find them and ensured that the two girls were contrasting in looks and the guys look suits the voice.

Dan Brown

Lisa Hibbitt

Tess Warn

Planning and research - Album covers

I have looked at several album covers by a variety of artists to compare the difference between whether they have an image of the artist on the cover or not and how much graphics and special effects are used.

Skrillex does not use an image of the artist and rely's mainly on the bold graphics with the attention to detail on the colour combinations to make the name stand out.

Katy Perry's album cover has lots of connections with her song 'Teenage dream' with the candy cane style writing and the pink candy floss clouds makes the album cover very girly and childish. yet with her in minimal clothing keeps her sexy idol image.

Justin Biebers album is in contrast to both of the other albums as he has made the focus on the album name rather than his name. I feel he did this because when this album was released he had already made himself popular so the majority of the population would recognize his face. I also feel that in comparison to some artists Justin is selling himself as a brand, relying on his image to sell his music.

Planning and Research - Ed Sheeran

In our marketing/branding lesson we looked at the way Ed Sheeran is represented in his first music video. This was when he was first introduced to the public in the video 'you need me, i don't need you'. for a start the have made the video in black and white as currently Ed Sheeran is not known for his good looks, and in our discussion we said that the music label was probably afraid of the audiences reaction to him being ginger as this is very different from mainstream.

We then looked at his first album cover which keeps the orange theme with his hair but is an extreme close up of his face so it is hard to see his facial features. We felt that his producers decided to do this because they felt that people would dislike his music because of his image, and they would rather have people discover the music before his look.

Planning and research - 2 week class project

in class we were set a challenge to create a short music video during our lessons to the song 'brick in the wall' by Pink Floyd. i was in team A and we were given part 2 of the song.

Lyrics

We don't need no education
we don't need no thought control
no dark sarcasm in the classroom
teachers leave them kids alone
Hey! Teachers! leave them kids alone
All in all it's just another brick in the wall
All in all you're just another brick in the wall.

We don't need no education
We don't need no thought control
No dark sarcasm in the classroom
Teachers leave them kids alone
Hey! Teachers! leave them kids alone!
All in all it's just another brick in the wall
All in all you're just another brick in the wall.

To plan for our video we looked at the four aspects of media; mise-en-scene, sound, camera and editing. we also looked at intertextuality as well as taking images of the locations we were going to use that we thought would be stereotypically used to define a school.