Filming Progress Update

Filming is completed and we have managed to get enough footage to edit.

Final Magazine Advert

Change of Plan!...

During filming we have been looking at our storyboard as a guideline although we have thought out some better ideas for some of the scenes. This has also occurred when editing as we found that we hadn't filmed enough footage, therefore we had to shuffle some scenes around in order to fit successfully and follow a minor storyline.

- We have not included the scenes at the train station, instead we have added in some POV shots ( http://nfgsannahigginson.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/pov-filming.html ) and some more scenes of Danny singing with the guitar. Think by doing this it will introduce the female better and more quicker in time for the chorus.
- We have still included a photo of the couple, although we have used a print out in which we can show it burning later on in the video - the print out is instead of the photo in the frame. Danny also takes it out of the bin instead from under the bed where the audience will see that the photo has been scrunched up out of anger and sorrow.
- Although we filmed Danny putting his coat on and tying his shoes up, we decided to not include these scenes as they took too long, wasted time and we didn't think they were necessarily needed.
- We were thinking of ending the video with Danny burning the photo of him and the girl, but we put this clip further back as we thought ending with sun shining through would be more appropriate.

Another change that we made was the actress playing the girl. As we were running out of time and it was hard to get hold of our original actress, we all decided that it would be more ideal to use a member of the group, therefore I, myself am playing the role of the female.

Editing Day 12/12/2013

Today we had an all day editing day which enabled us to complete the majority of the editing for our final music video. This really has benefited us, as it has given us the time we needed and the determination to complete the editing during school time. Considering that all of the group have different time tables means that in order to get our editing done we would have to find some time, like when filming, to edit the music video all together. Therefore if we didn't have the chance to take time off school to edit, it would have been difficult to find time due to the programme used, Final Cut Express, only being available to use at school.

At the beginning of the day, we weren't off to the best start. We uploaded our filmed scenes onto Final Cut and placed them in the correct order, however we then found out that we hadn't filmed enough footage in order to complete the video. Therefore we had to take time out of today and film some more scenes. Luckily this went successfully and we managed to get some great shots, although we were running out of time to edit. In the end we managed to complete around 80% of filming which is great, we just need to add in a few filters to the camera and film a few more fillers such as the sun gleaming through the trees.

Final Digi Pack

     

 Front Cover & Spine.

                                               Back Cover.

Disc.

 Disc background/inlay, inlay booklet front cover, inlay pouch.

Final Inlay Booklet

   

Magazine Advert Ideas & Conventions

For our magazine advert to look as professional and authentic as it could be our group decided that we need to incorporate the following into it; the title of the album, the image of the album, reviews, the Artists website, a design similar to the Album, links to purchases places, ratings, an image of the artist, CD logo and a selection of cross media platforms. These are the common features of all magazine adverts.

The common conventions of Indie Adverts are normally that they have the appearance of being designed with a vintage feel and artistically which overall tends to be quite simple but creative. I believe that an image such as a photo of the artist with a vintage tint would really show that it is from this genre, which is used mostly in Indie. There is often a link to the Artists website or their twitter accounts so they can be easily connected with the artist. 

The two types of magazine advert are either artist or album focused adverts; meaning as our artist is still not hugely well known and is still very independently run, our advert will be artist focused. Our advert must link with the Digi pack and relate to each other, at best they can.When choosing the right image, font and content for our magazine advert, it is important we include and take into account the content above.

POV Filming

During filming we discovered that we were lacking in shots of the couple together. Therefore in order to build the narrative of the song, this was vital, as it would give a personal feel to the video. Our inspiration came from Calvin Harris' music video for 'I Need Your Love'. In that video , the point of view camera technique is used which we felt would be suitable for our video.

Whilst filming, we experimented with this technique in everyday situation with the love interest included. For example, the male (Danny) filmed the two of them sipping coffee at a cafe which looks as though they are having a laugh and so brightens up the video. We then uploaded the POV clip to the Mac and inserted it into our video which we thought looked really good. Therefore we have decided that we should film some more similar clips for the narrative to run more smoothly. Locations could include, in bed, walking in the outdoors, a park.
The POV shot is a brilliant way for us to bring the video to life as it really builds up the characters in the video. Developing the characters also allows us to enhance the narrative and so we end up making a video that can relate to our audience.

Risk Assessment

In order to ensure a safe filming day, I looked into some possible hazards when it comes to filming our final project.

As we are aiming to film in a variety of different locations, it is important that we carefully consider how we get there, carrying the props around ensuring nothing drops or anyone trips over any false leads.
- As I intend to drive myself and the group to the locations, I have to make sure that I drive with caution and certify that all seatbelts are worn.
- Intending to film at a train station means that we need to be extra cautious when filming and make sure there is nothing or anyone in danger of the tracks.
- To film indoors, we need to make sure no leads are sprawled across the floor in case members of the group or actors don't trip over and injure themselves.

Overlay Editing - Inlay Booklet Front Cover

To improve our images to make them seem more professional and artistic, our group decided to experiment with overlaying the image for the front cover of our inlay booklet. This added depth to the images and I found the technique added a unique and different feel to it.

The Process...

 - 1. We put the image we wanted to use as a base layer/image on Photoshop.

 - 2. We then created a copy of this layer, which also enhanced the colour slightly.

 - 3. We then selected the image we wanted to overlay onto the image and placed it on top of the original image and then selected the soft overlay option.

 - 4. Next we added a blue filter to it.

 - 5. Then an additional creamy filter.

 - 6. Then adjusted the brightness and contrast.

Meeting 5/11/2013

Today we discussed the location, evaluation of our practice filming and updating our blogs with more gadgets/widgets to provide viewers with more satisfaction of our blogs.

Having already created a Twitter account for the media group, we were able to provide our blogs with a Twitter widget which updates and presents any tweets that have been made such as, about the progress of our music videos, and any inspirational tweets that we may retweet or comments we have made. On Twitter we have followed some artists that we think can relate to our chosen singer/songwriter, various artists include; Jason Mraz, Ben Howard, Ed Sheeran, John Mayer. Another few accounts that we think were worth following were Radio 1's Twitter profile and various DJs that are involved in that area. This gives us updates on our Twitter Feed of any new and upcoming music that we may be interested in and relate to Mike Dignam. In relation to Mike, we have followed him on Twitter which allows us to become updated on tour dates and any comments, personal updates from him that could link to our music video narrative.

In the lesson today, we also talked about the final location dates as all members of the media group were in the lesson. Locations finalised included, a Train Station (perhaps situated in Newport, Essex), a photo booth (although this could be known as a prop), a calm and collected forest type scene (perhaps a Bluebell woods or something similar). I think all these locations would be great when filming as they will give us some fantastic shots, also filming in Cambridge would be a good idea as it will give some great shots of the Urban environment in comparison to the natural/rural scenes of a forest.

Shotlist Part II

Here is the second part of our draft shot list for production:

Shot 23 - Girl found under the sheets by the male, playing around "contentment in these sheets".
Shot 24 - Aerial shot of the couple lying in bed.
Shot 25 - Master shot of male singing with guitar on bench.
Shot 26 - Medium shot of couple playing in the leaves.
Shot 27 - Aerial shot of male falling into the leaves.
Shot 28 - Fade in from a previous shot to show him falling onto the bed.
Shot 29 - Male lying on the bed, turns head to see the girl isn't there.
Shot 30 - Master shot of the male lip syncing with guitar, whilst walking down the path.
Shot 31 - Close up of male's face to see him singing to the camera, lip syncing.
Shot 32 - Male sitting by a tree with the photo of him and the girl, long shot.
Shot 33 - Master shot of male singing with guitar at the tree, long shot, photo beside him.
Shot 34 - Overlay technique used at the same tree, medium shot of singer lip syncing whilst showing the past of the couple walking in the background.
Shot 35 - Master shot of singer lip syncing next to the tree.
Shot 36 - Shot of sun gleaming through the trees.
Shot 37 - Male walking through meadow.
Shot 38 - Sun shining through the meadow.
Shot 39 - Master shot of singing, medium shot.
Shot 40 - Goes into a number of different split screens with various shots.

Storyboard Part II

23. 1:28- 1:33

24. 1:33- 1:39

25. 1:39- 1:47

26. 1:47- 1:50

27. 1:50- (fade in)

28. -1:56

29. 1:56- 2:02

30. 2:02- 2:13

31. 2:13- 2:26

32. 2:26- 2:38

33. 2:38- 2:44

34. 2:44- 2:49

35. 2:44- 3:01

36. 3:01- 3:08

37. 3:08- 3:10

38. 3:10- 3:22

39. 3:22-- ends in various split screens.

Shotlist Part 1

Here is our draft shot list for our production:

Shot 1- Close up on hand placing CD in the disk tray of a music player.

Shot 2- Close up on a hand turning up the volume.

Shot 3- Mid shot of artist sitting on his bed, looking sad.

Shot 4- High angle, medium shot on artist retrieving a box.

Shot 5- Aerial shot of him searching the box for a photo.

Shot 6- Mid shot, of him lying on the bed looking at the photo.

Shot 7- Close up, Zoom in on the photo.

Shot 8- Cut to tracking of the couple walking down the street.

Shot 9- (master-shot) artist playing guitar.

Shot 10- Tracking of couple walking through a walk way to a bench.

Shot 11- Mid-shot of artist sitting on bench.

Shot 12- Mid-shot of couple sitting on bench. (potential for overlay).

Shot 13- Over the shoulder shot of artist looking at couple.

Shot 14- Train begins to drive by.

Shot 15- Cut to mid shot of artist sitting on the bench.

Shot 16- Over the shoulder shot, Cut to train station, couple have disappeared. 

Shot 17- Master shot

Shot 18- Pan, of artist getting up and leaving location.

Shot 19- Close-up, on artist playing guitar.

Shot 20- Mid-shot of artist walking away.

Shot 21- Cuts back to shot 6.

Shot 22- Gets up and leaves bedroom.

Storyboard Part I

Above shows our first few scenes up to 1:35 of our chosen song 'I'll Lie Here'. We have presented our storyline in separate parts as the whiteboard wasn't big enough to have the whole storyboard on there and we have limited time before our markings are rubbed off.

Number of seconds on each shot:

1. 0:00-0:03 secs
2. 0:03-0:05
3. 0:05-0:07
4. 0:07-0:09
5. 0:09-0:11
6. 0:11-0:13
7. 0:13-0:15
8. 0:15-0:18
9. 0:18-0:26
10. 0:26-0:30
11. 0:30-0:36
12. 0:36-0:42
13. 0:42-0:48
14. 0:48-0:54
15. 0:54-1:00
16. 1:00-1:03
17. 1:03-1:16
18. 1:16-1:19
19. 1:19-1:21
20. 1:21-1:26
21. 1:26-1:31
22. 1:31-1:35

Meeting 13/10/2013

In todays lesson we discussed about the different techniques we could use in our music video for 'I'll Lie Here' by Mike Dignam. We researched various music videos such as Daniel Powter's Bad Day where he uses a split screen effectively and presents the narrative through an omniscience where he is the narrator telling the story through lyrics.
We also talked about the genreal narrative of the music video where we concluded that it will be a typical indie love story with a stereotypical boy and a girl involved.

Survey Results/Conclusions

We conducted an online survey in order to gather responses from the public via the internet as it seems that Web 2.0 is widely used by all ages these days. Due to the majority of our friends also using social networking sites, this gives an advantage as we can post our survey onto Facebook or 'tweet' it on Twitter, which then our friends (as our desired average age) can hopefully respond to our questionnaire.

1. WHAT IS YOUR AGE?

2. WHAT TYPE OF MUSIC DO YOU LISTEN TO?

3. IF INDIE, WHAT IS YOUR FAVOURITE SUB-GENRE?

4. IF YOU DON'T LIKE INDIE MUSIC, WHY NOT?

- Production-wise, it's too basic. I prefer my music more mechanical, and more computerised- and I prefer it not to make pretences about being "real". 

- Boring

- I find it boring. 

5. HOW OFTEN DO YOU LISTEN TO MUSIC?

6. HOW OFTEN DO YOU ATTEND GIGS?

7. HOW OFTEN DO YOU STREAM MUSIC ONLINE?

8. WHERE DO YOU GET YOUR MUSIC FROM?

From looking at the results, it is clear that the average ages of people who listen to general music is from 15-24, in which the majority of this sample enjoy listening to the Indie genre. The age range of people that generally listen to music also correlates to the demographic research, therefore meaning that this is our target audience, especially as our demographics explain for Mike and similar artists that the target range is mainly teenage girls and young adults. Considering that the majority of people that we asked download and buy their music from Itunes or CD's, we will have to make sure our digipak will be worth buying therefore providing some bonus features such as a concert live song or a music video on the album might be a good idea.

Media Group

I was told this week that throughout this media A2 project I will be working along side Aimee Kemp (http://aimeekmedia.blogspot.co.uk/ ), Danny Buckley (http://dannybuckleya2media.blogspot.co.uk/ ) and Ben Start (http://benstart3.blogspot.co.uk/ ).