GROUP 04 - Music Video 2008/9 Erin, Laura, Jess and David

Week of the 4th November:

2008-11-04T01:52:00.000-08:00

This week the deadline is on Friday so for this week, we need to do:
*Cut all the footage of instruments & sync to music.
*Make sure split screens are introduced at the right moments, to the beat
*Carry on putting in the footage of the narrative and the singing.
*Blog any problems and solutions
*Make a group decision on how we want the video to finish

Filming!!!

2008-10-21T02:19:00.001-07:00

Today we thought we should film the part of the video when we have a male narrative and he sings the song- that we can lip sync up to the music. It went really well and we have found since uploading to the computer that we have a lot more extra footage that we can use as cut away's and use in other parts of the video- even when there is no singing!
We want to sa thank you to Dan in our class for agreeing to be in the video- THANK YOU DAN!!!!

Week of 13th October:

2008-10-16T04:09:00.000-07:00

This week we are working on editing all of our footage and making the improvments which were sugested to us both by Andrea and the rest of our class. We are having discussions amost the group about if we should add in lip- syncing or not. We are hoping going to book a camera out for the begginning of the half term so that we can re-shot some of our footage and add in some shots of a man singing the lyrics, hopefully with the narrative girl in the same shot.
We have sorted out the main order for our video, we just need to add in any effects we want on the clips and to slot everything together, which are not going to do until we know if we have a camera for half term- otherwise we will not leave enough space to add the new footage into.
In Fridays lesson we are hoping to sort out the split screens so we know what shots we are using in which ones and when we are going to stagger the entrances in and out.

:D

2008-10-15T08:02:00.000-07:00

We just wanted to say thanks for voting us blog of the week - 13th October!!!!

Thanks

La, Erin, Jess and David

Feedback on Roughcut

2008-10-14T01:54:00.000-07:00

Camerawork:
Liked the camera work, no wobbling. Good variety of shots

Editing:
Split screen was really good, syncing needs to be done on all instruments.
Really good editing, really effective.

Effects:
Traffic over the top was good,
Liked the sepia effect.
The effect with the traffic overlapping the girl was really effective.
Split screen was also really effective.

Mise En Scene:
lighting was good, liked the beginning
good setting in the woods

Performance/genre
Guitar performance didn't look realistic.
Instruments need better syncing.
Realistic and believable.

Continuity:
No connection hard to understand,

Overall comments: No lips syncing but repetitive.

Our opinions on feedback:
We're really pleased with the feedback we got as most of it was quite positive. However, we know think we have to add lip syncing. Also we have to put the instruments in time with music to make it more realistic. We also might need to explain the connection although we took the idea of the girl from the original video because they had a girl in that wasn't related to the song so we thought we could use that idea in ours. The traffic is mentioned in the song so we thought it would be good to add it in this video.

Teacher feedback:
Person first then have the traffic slowly fading into the shot
First split screen, staged entry
Split screens on the beat with the instruments
Sun set too long so we will see what it looks like having the shot of the girl looking up "at the sunset" Then have traffic fading into the shot.
She liked the close up of the piano but thinks we need more of the other instruments. Maybe zoom in more with the piano.

Rough Cut

2008-10-10T04:13:00.000-07:00

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This is our Rough-Cut of the video, we have only worked on the first minute of the video so far.

2008-10-08T07:37:00.001-07:00

This is a picture of Siobhan. She was our actress for the narrative part of the music video.

Mood Board

2008-10-08T07:04:00.000-07:00

This is the screen shot of the mood board we have to created to try and get over to the rest of the people who look at our blog, what mood we are trying to create in our video.

starting editing for the rough cut.

2008-10-07T01:54:00.000-07:00

we had the idea of changing the transparency of some of our footage. we overlayed a section of our sped up traffic footage on top of the piano part. we think it works really well and goes well with the music.

This is just an idea for the rough cut.

Target Audience:

2008-10-03T03:58:00.001-07:00

We have taken a look at the the bands myspace again to try and work out the type of people listen to the bands music and this would be our target audience as we are obviously using the bands song. The type of people that like our band also like the bands- Coldplay, Brian Adams, the feeling, the script and also James Blunt.
The type of people who like the band seem to be mainly female, as they feel they can connect to the lyrics of the songs. Also they seem to be around the ages of 20 to 30 around the ages of the band members.

Feedback on our blog:

2008-10-01T07:35:00.000-07:00

Today the class went through our blog and assessed how we were doing with it. They believed that we were very organized when we came to planning our locations and our equipment lists for shooting. They also believed that we carried out good background research on the band. They all said that our pitch has enhanced our ideas and made them very clear for people to work out what our aims were. we were told that we also explained our ideas well and also the pictures make the ideas and certain blogs stand out from others.
In terms of grades, every group believes that we were on level four for planning - which is Excellent planning. This has made us very happy and we just want to work on the blog to improve it even more- but we were not actually told what we need to do to improve our blog, so we are just going to compare our blog with the blog of the week.

Shooting the traffic footage

2008-09-30T08:07:00.000-07:00

Location: soham cycle bridge over the bypass at night.

It was on a sunday night so there wasnt as much traffic as we would have liked but there was enough and as it is on a roundabout it is very well lit which in this case was a bad thing as it made the lights on the cars less significant and had less of an impact but the high angle and being directly over the road worked really well.

The traffic on the soham roundabout was also quite slow moving so we recorded from some different angles so we could get a variety of different parts of the traffic. We plan to try the different angles of the traffic for variety parts of the music video to show that it wasn't just one angled we filmed on the bridge.

As we didnt think the footage was going to be good enough we went and sat at a BP garage for half an hour at the side of the A14. This footage works alot better as the road is dark so the car lights show up much better and brighter. Plus there was alot more traffic which unfortunately made the footage blurry, however we will use some of this 'blurry' footage in a good way when choosing the shots for our music video.

problems: Cold, wet and davids car nearly got crushed by an Argos lorry.

Argos lorry ^^^^

shooting the piano part

2008-09-30T07:58:00.000-07:00

we wanted an old style piano as we thought it would be more appropriate for the slower song and our mate Annabel had one. yay.

again we had to get the video up on youtube for her to try and copy the piano part which she did really well.

when we filmed our test footage we got really good angles and shots like looking along, level with the keys and looking over and down the pianists shoulder so we just reshot it.

the piano was in a really small room aswell but it didnt really make much of a difference when it came to getting the footage.

Filming Electric guitar

2008-09-30T07:45:00.000-07:00

We had our very own rockstar...Mr. David Button on lead guitar in his garage which had plenty of room and good lighting.

we used alot of different angles when filming this part and tried different ideas using the amp and cables again.

the only problem we had was davids dog, alvin, kept knocking the camera.

Shooting Bass

2008-09-30T07:30:00.000-07:00

Location: high street baptist church..(its where tom keeps his bass guitar)

this location was really good as we had a ALOT of room and access to other instruments, amps and all kinds of different cables and musical stuff basically.

the card came in very handy and in places you can see the shadow of the muscian on the card which i think looks good.

again we had ideas about shots like close up of the fret board and looking along entire body of the guitar but as we didnt know how much equipment would be there we also add extra ideas while we were there like having Tom plug in the jack plug into the amp and following the amp lead.

we didnt have a single problem when filming the bass part, apart from trying not to swear in a church.

Jess & David's Shooting - Drums

2008-09-30T06:56:00.000-07:00

We had to shoot the instrumental footage as we were the only ones in our group with access to the instruments and knew people who could play them well enough.

FILMING THE DRUMS -

our mate stephen is an amazing drummer.
Location: his house, in a TEENY WEENY spare room.

Trying a high angle shot looking down on drummers hands:

FEEDBACK:

we did already have ideas of the kind of shots we wanted but we hadnt planned on the room being quite that small so we just had to see what we could come up with on the spot but in some cases the footage came out better, when we watched it back like the shots of the foot pedal with the camera sitting on the floor.

David bought a giant piece of white card to put behind the section we were filming so the background wasnt to distracting in the overall finished video, which really helped, especially when filming the guitars.

the main problems with filming the drumming was that we wernt given the cd with the track on but we just got up the Thirteen senses 'Do No Wrong' video on youtube and asked stephen to get as close as he could but half way through filming he kept getting bored and just did his own thing as he said it was to slow and boring, but we got some good shots...hopfully and as the room was so smallit made the shot angles were very limited.

Jess & David

Filming

2008-09-30T01:25:00.000-07:00

Narrative:
We think the filming went well and we got all the shots we needed and more. While we were filming we were able to think of more shots and different angles. We think these shots would look really good and effective. We faced no problems during our filming.

this is us filming

This is a picture of Erin filming the narrative part of the video. We managed to come up with a lot of different angles and when we put them on the computer we are very pleased as they look very good, we just cant wait to turn it into black and white.

We decided this was our favourite place for filming as we were able to do allot of different angles and different positions. While we were there we came up with new ideas which we hadn't thought of in class time. Such as shooting the character from across the brook, shooting the character on the bridge and in the rush's. We think these looked good and we think they work with what we are doing. We're glad we were able to think of new ideas instead of sticking to the original plan because this meant that we were able to get the best out of creativity and the best shots possible.

Shot List

2008-09-30T01:12:00.000-07:00

Narrative:
*High above the person at an angle.
*straight on close up of face
*long distance
*mid shot
*Low Angle
*Pan shot

*We decided to have the girl in the first shot to set the narrative of the story.
*The 2nd shot would be of the instruments playing once they come in. This would be done in split screen but we haven't decided which instruments would be seen yet.
*Then we wanted to decide the rest of the shots depending on the music

Re-vamp of music video test shots

2008-09-26T03:58:00.000-07:00

Here is the New music video test shots, we have added new images and the main one we have added is the man singing the lyrics of the song at the split screen at the end. We have not lip-synced the footage as we did not have enough time to do this. We have put this in black and white as we thought it would be in-keeping with the video. Also We are planning on filming this section in college as then we d not have to film this weekend the guys section and we can just concentrate on the girls part.

Test Footage

2008-09-24T07:41:00.000-07:00

This is the test footage, we wanted to try different angles and different techniques.
In this footage, you will see us trying
*Split Screen, which we found really easy to do
*Fading scenes.
*Turning a colour shot into black and white
*Speeding up cars
*Reversing
We thought all these techniques would be useful for us. We want to try and put all these ideas in our video.

Music Video Analysis

2008-09-22T13:58:00.000-07:00

Alot of the comments of our chosen band on youtube compare our group to coldplay.So i have decided to analyse a coldplay music video.

Final Animatic

2008-09-19T03:18:00.000-07:00

We decided to do the beginning of the song because we needed to check that our narrative and band scenes would work together.
We decided not to have the sunset scene because it would only be on for about 10 secs and it would take hours to film, so we decided we would film a short footage of Cambridge.
We also decided to change the length of the Cambridge scene. We also thought we would start with the narrative, then when the instruments clearly come in have shots of the band playing.

band shots

2008-09-19T03:02:00.002-07:00

camera shot/ angle ideas:

plugging in the instruments/setting up.

following the cables on the floor to the musician

low angle looking up and along the neck of the guitar and bass.

high angle looking down the instruments

close up on strings

close up on pic.

close up on the drum foot peddle thingy.

shot looking over drummers shoulder and down onto the d-d-d-d-drums

close up on sticks on skins

close up on symbols

shot along the keys on the piano with the pianists hands playing

looking down the arm onto keys

Jess and David

Stephen - drummer
David - guitar
Tom - bass
Annabel - piano

Houstan, we have a problem..

2008-09-19T03:02:00.001-07:00

for the narrative part of our video we were going to use erins sister as the
'depressed' one who would be lip syncing but it took us a while to realise that would not work because its a mans voice on our chosen track. duh. so now we are going to have a guy next to her who is invisible to her, telling the story, lip syncing. problem solved.

past student videos

2008-09-19T03:02:00.000-07:00

This is our favourite past student video. We really want to use split screen in this way to separate from the narrative story line and the shots of the band playing. i personally really like how when they have a close up of the red guitar along side the shot of the guy lip syncing who is wearing red, the colours works really well.

Some of the split screening in the footage was a bit pointless as it was just one shot split into three bits, we are instead going to have a split between the two stories and then a full shot of either the narrative and the band playing.

We liked this video because of the different split screens and the close ups on the instruments. We like the way they have positioned their shots, you can also see that they were careful which shots they used, to stop the screen looking too busy.

break it down now..

2008-09-17T06:56:00.000-07:00

the original intro is 22 seconds long.

Satellites contain us
Traffic lights control us
Rockets shoot us up into the stars
Rockets shoot us up into the stars

23 seconds [45 seconds]

13 seconds instrumental [58 seconds]

Complement the atmosphere
Fill the ground with all our tears
Dry them up to make it clear
We do no wrong
Complement the atmosphere
Fill the ground with all our tears
Dry them up to make it clear
We do no wrong

[23 seconds]
1 minute 21 seconds

Strange surrounds each corner
Stains pollute the water
Something for us all to think about
Something for us all to think about

[24 seconds]
1 minute 45 seconds

Summer sun protects us
Winter rains torment us
Now it seems to me we can't be free
Now it seems to me we can't be free

[26 seconds] 2 minute 11 seconds

instrumental [14 second] 2 minutes 25 seconds

Close the door before it's late
We were born to love and hate
Turn it down for our own sake
We do no wrong
You fill your ears with every note
Direction seems the only hope
Its crowded, let's create now
We do no wrong

[22 seconds] 2 minutes 47 seconds

instrumental [35 seconds] 3 minutes 22 seconds

Common sense protects us
Everything affects us
To the outside light it's paradise
To the outside light it's paradise

[23seconds] 3 minutes 45 seconds plus a bit more music

THE END!!

Jess & Daffid

Locations locations locations

2008-09-16T01:36:00.000-07:00

This is a picture from Castle Hill. We thought this would be a great view for the sunset. As its urban landscape. We also hoped there might be construction going on as this would indicates the pollution.

We thought we could film the narrative with the person in Histon. This would be done on a curb of a street, and we are also thinking of filming in an empty park.
Below is the site we used to look at different locations, it has images of the places we were thinking of using for our narrative.
http://www.hisimp.net/history/hissight.htm

Brook, Village Green & Christmas Lights

Brook & Village Green

Village Pump & Green

Brook & Village Green

For filming "the band" playing that would be done in peoples house's. Because they are going to be close ups it doesn't matter where its filmed too much. We are going to put a plain colour behind them in case it gets into the shot. We will try allot of different colours to see which looks best.

More Ideas :)

2008-09-16T01:12:00.000-07:00

We thought about other ideas other the weekend and we came up with two different ideas.

For one idea, It would be narrative, with a person being on their own, you would have them in places like sitting on the curb or in the park all aloneeeeee. This would be in black and white to highlight the fact they are alone. Then when people come into the shot it would go into colour.

Another idea was to have a split screen, each square would have a different image in it. One could have a band playing, then another could be something decaying. This could be filmed in black and white to go with the mood of the song.

We liked both these ideas, so we decided to fuse them together. We thought we could keep the split screen, and then have something come into colour, we could also keep the narrative and keep something decaying in the other section. We would also include "the band" in certain parts in one of the sections.

Idea's

2008-09-12T12:18:00.000-07:00

For my idea- i like the idea we had of girls all dressed rather differently to the norm. An example is above. These are the girls we are hoping to use if we do this idea. However we would want them dressed slightly differently. Maybe all in black or white.

I am thinking we could do a performance from the 'band' and have cut away shots of these girls with one member playing in front of them or something along those ideas. i am hoping to develop this idea futher and will update the blog once i have sorted out a few of the issues.

Feedback on our Pitch

2008-09-12T04:07:00.000-07:00

People thought the idea was too predictable. They didn't like the fact it went with the lyrics and had image illustration. They also said that they felt there wasn't much to our idea, they thought it was a bit plain. We need to add more to the idea and come up with a structure. We're going to re-think the whole idea and come up with some new ideas/solutions.

Pitch

2008-09-10T07:42:00.001-07:00

We are going to pitch for the song by Thirteen Senses Do No Wrong.
We want the key element to be of the time lapse of traffic and people.
We want to dress people in a remember able costume, to make them stand out in a crowd of people. We will have these people in every scene we want the audience to notice this people. We also thought this could be the link between the different scenes. We are going to try three different outfits and get peoples opinions on them and take their advice.
We plan on filming at night but we would need to find somewhere busy.
We are thinking of having a person drumming in the middle of a roundabout. We also are hoping to film this in the rain at night. If we do this idea we think we would have to have people singing or playing instruments. This would be a theme through out the video.
We want to go to places and streets with allot of traffic at night.
We want to film a sunset for the introduction of the music video. We are filming this in a big open space or an Urban Landscape we will try both and decide which we prefer. An idea to film Castle Hill, we thought this might be a nice landscape, we would be able to get a view of the whole of Cambridge. We are hoping to film the roundabout scene at Soham.
We were also thinking about filming in Histon, there is a playground, with a big open space and trees, we were thinking about filming the people coming from behind the trees. We are also thinking about filming the people in an empty playground. This would give the video a bit of an eerie style.
We were thinking about basing our video on pollution to suit the lyrics. But then we felt that we couldn’t keep the audience drawn in, and that there was more potential to this song.

Related Images

2008-09-09T03:56:00.000-07:00

Having certain people blurred and some in focus is a main idea for our video.

This image shows the lighting effects we want at night but not quite this intense and the water covering the floor (i think) looks really good and would fit in with some of the lyrics and the idea of using reflections in the water.

This photo demonstrates what effect we want from our traffic footage which could be filmed from a bridge over the A14 or cycle bridge in soham. Having buildings in the background would look better than not as they will also have lights on.

both these angles look good and each would be appropriate for different points in the song. It would be easier to include people in white in the street level shots rather than the higher angled shots.

The lyrics

2008-09-09T03:14:00.000-07:00

One idea for what this song is about is pollution but when we read through them again, to us it seems that they are more about being controlled and how the things around us comand how we live. it's a deep song, and thats why we think the idea of having people in white out at night will work so well as they will stand out from the crowd, breaking the routine that seems to be considered 'normal' which will be represented by the speeded up footage of the public and the traffic. The people dressed all in white will look quite creepy and out of place which is what we want, the video will make people wonder what is going on and really pay attention to what the song is saying. The people in white will be a constant element throughout our footage, almost like 'big brother is watching you' and would appear in more subtle places which would emphaise the idea of control. Our ideas for our footage will be mainly focused on the metorphorical concepts but we also want to be illustrative in places. For example;

'Rockets shoot us up into the stars
Rockets shoot us up into the stars'

- the footage will be at night and the camera could pan into the sky to see the stars but this will only work if it is clear.

'Nothing picks us up when we are down
Nothing picks us up when we are down'

- someone could fall over maybe in slow motion and we could have a person in white just standing behind them not helping.

'Strange surrounds each corner
Stains pollute the water'

- the people in white will look very strange which is the whole point, and i think trying to include a shot where we can see the reflection of a person in white in the water will again look creey but also stick with the lyrics. [this also fits with the idea of pollution..]

'Direction seems the only hope,
Its crowded, let's create now,
We do no wrong'

- Having the footage of a busy road at night, with the car lights going in different directions, this would only work if there was enough cars on the road otherwise the link between the footage and the lyrics will not be strong enough and wont work.

These are just some ideas we had when reading the lyrics.

coldplay - fix you

2008-09-09T01:44:00.000-07:00

We like the idea of being out at night like in this coldplay video for fix you, it will make the car lights look a lot more effective and if we do go with the idea of people wearing white they will stand out a lot more in their surroundings and with other people.

Rough ideas

2008-09-09T01:35:00.001-07:00

Images that stick in peoples mind, people all dressed in white was one idea for this.
We would have this theme through out the video these people in different places.
We want people to focus on the people in white.
We were thinking of filming at night, we thought this would be effective with the different lights that would be on, for example car lights.

We thought there was a pollution theme in this song and we thought we could have nature shots or different images of things that could effect the environment.

Another idea was speeding cars or people. keeping the people in white in the scene.

Locations: Elizabeth Way bridge (film cars passing)
Town centers and market square (film people passing)
Empty Child's playground
Grand Arcade, Angle from above people walking and shopping.
Big open Green spaces, Fields.
Footballers

We could add a special effect that makes the video a little eerie, we want the people dressed in white to have something in common to link them all together.

We could film a band preforming, we wold have close ups of the band.
We could do this in a clear space, but also film a little outside. (Mark Ronson)
We would be following the musicians

We could also film the band singing outside, and follow them in public places.
We could also film them outside in big open spaces. From a high up view. Like the Kaisercheifs.

Spice Girls

2008-09-09T01:23:00.000-07:00

The parts of this video when the cars are going past at high speed is an idea that we are definately going to do. With the contrast between the high speed lights and the slow song and the slow movements of the character/s.

Thirteen Senses

2008-09-09T01:17:00.000-07:00

We found this on the bands myspace page, its them giving their fans some information about themselves:

2001 was the year that these post-college, pre-university schoolmates came together and began creating elegant, searing pop soundscapes. Penned by songwriter Will South, the foundations that were later to become Thirteen Senses began in a bedroom, in the sleepy coastal town of Penzance, Cornwall.

After two intense years of playing live, honing their songcraft and demoing their songs, they signed to Vertigo records. It didn't take long for these humble country boys to start making a name for themselves in the big bad world of music. Early success from the the release of singles 'Into The FIre' and 'Thru The Glass' led to 12 months of touring both at home and abroad, finally culminating in a gold record on their walls for their debut album 'The Invitation'.

By the time their year on the road wound to an end with a headline show at the London Astoria in May 2005, it had become a hometown gig. Thirteen Senses were now a London band, and were determined to make their second album reflect that.

The resultant album 'Contact', released in 2007 - whilst still recognisably Thirteen Senses - is a far more vital, energetic, and infectious ROCK record. If 'The Invitation' felt like a sleepy stretch, then 'Contact' feels like a reach for the stratosphere - a vibrant, scintillating and goddamn HUGE album that fulfils every ounce of their initial promise and exposes whole new realms of broiling pop thunder.

Never a band to sit around, Thirteen Senses are currently locked away recording their third studio album..........Freeing themselves of all possible constraints, they make no promises about when it will be ready.

These are the lyrics of the song we want to do:

Satellites contain us
Traffic lights control us
Rockets shoot us up into the stars
Rockets shoot us up into the stars

Letters keep us posted
Numbers calculated
Nothing picks us up when we are down
Nothing picks us up when we are down

Complement the atmosphere
Fill the ground with all our tears
Dry them up to make it clear
We do no wrong
Complement the atmosphere
Fill the ground with all our tears
Dry them up to make it clear
We do no wrong

Strange surrounds each corner
Stains pollute the water
Something for us all to think about
Something for us all to think about

Summer sun protects us
Winter rains torment us
Now it seems to me we can't be free
Now it seems to me we can't be free

Close the door before it's late
We were born to love and hate
Turn it down for our own sake
We do no wrong
You fill your ears with every note
Direction seems the only hope
Its crowded, let's create now
We do no wrong

Common sense protects us
Everything affects us
To the outside light it's paradise
To the outside light it's paradise

This is a link to the bands myspace page- where they have listed all of their songs and they write blogs to update the bands current news:
http://www.myspace.com/thirteensenses
This a screenshot of the bands myspace:

This is a video of one of the bands other songs, we thought we would look at their videos to help inspire us and so we can a feel for what the band like and what their own style is too.

This Song is called into the fire. We liked this video and from this drew to the conclusion that the band is quite dark and grungy, they seem to have slow songs and quite somber songs.

Welcome to GROUP 04

2008-09-01T01:24:00.001-07:00