Friday 20 March 2015

Final Music Video



This is the final cut of our music video, 'Battlefield' by Isabel Beau

Tuesday 17 March 2015

Final editing

On Monday morning after Aaron had finished the majority of the editing with the new artist Jess and the new shots over weekend which was his role within the group, him and Hayley both had free periods to finish the remaining of the editing. They both decided to change the theme of the video slightly by having it all in black and white as it looked better to fit with the emotional feel the video and to keep the focus on the performances. In addition at the very end of the video, a final ending was decided this is were there are combined clips of the ballet dancer(Grace) and Isabel Beau (Jess) to show that the young girl is Isabel Beau and she is reflecting back on her past through the song. The last image the viewer is left with is the ballet sitting down with only a spot light on her and her face black.

Saturday 14 March 2015

Shoot in Drama - New Artist

We stayed behind after school for the final shoot with are brand new artist, Jess.The plan we had for the shoot was very clear and we all knew what we wanted the outcome to be so working as a team we was able to work efficiently and practically with the short time frame we had left. The location for the reshoot had not changed we still used the drama hall but a smaller one for this shoot but the black walls and lighting we still used. 

This time from the shoot we had various angles that we had set up to film her performance much more than previously and more costumes which matched the Pop genre conventions more.Jess was a great performer and took the role straight away which was a relief for us all, she was actually singing along to the song that was being played in the background so it looked already more realistic and I think boosted the performance because of the real emotion she was showing. Another prop we added in more this time was the use of the fan to create a more dramatic feel and to show her beauty. The footage we got for the start of the song was close ups and mid shots of her singing in a white dress, to connote vulnerability and purity. In the middle of the chrous of the song she wore a red dress, to connote love which relates to the song very much so.Where as towards the ended of the sing were the emotions and aggressive energy is in the song she wore a navy dress to show strength and dark emotions the artist is releasing.

With all the footage we got at the last shoot I believe are music video will be the best it can be.

Friday 13 March 2015

Feedback on Draft Music Video

 In Wednesday's lesson we had a feedback session on the most recent draft of the music video. After we had played the music video to the class and both of our teachers they filled out feedback sheets on what they thought of our video. The verbal feedback we also received was critical but was constructive for us to make changes to the video before it was to late. From all of this we made another big decision which got the most negative feedback which was our artist's performance so yet again we decided to re cast are artist.

Thursday 12 March 2015

3rd New Artist

With the latest decision made to yet again change our artist which is not ideal being so close to the deadline. We have now re cast jess and a drama and music student to be our new artist because we know she can perform and sing very well which will create more energy in her performance and the facial expressions we need. The shoot for Jess is tomorrow because of this short notice we are still going to use the drama hall as are setting for her performance.

Monday 9 March 2015

Alex Danson Shoot

In Friday's lesson we planned for Laxmi and Hayley to go to Danson park and to film some footage of Alex miming the last half of the song, this is when the build of emotions is released in the song. Meanwhile me and Aaron stayed behind in the Mac Room and did some editing of the dance footage we have previously shot.


The equipment they took with them to shoot was: a camera and the crane. Laxmi and Hayley used the crane to get more high angle shots of her performance to show her freedom she has and passion, in contrast some low angle shots were taken with the camera to show her power and confidence. The majority of the performance was field in the park with the trees walking down a muddy track, this was to represent of form or a battlefield relating to the lyrics.

Friday 6 March 2015

Ballet New Shoot

After school today me, Laxmi, Hayley and Aaron stayed behind to reshoot the ballet scenes for the music video, which were going again to be performed by Grace. Previously in the week we had booked out the drama studio that we required, so we could get the best footage. Aaron filmed some of the footage in a circular motion with Grace dancing around him in a circle and him following her with the camera on a steadicam. By doing this it would give us a more clear movement of Grace's whole body when she was dancing than just certain parts of her, however we also did on getting some head shots of her when she was dancing because we lacked of these when editing for m the first shoot.

In addition we need to get the opening footage for the music video, which had already planned would be grace dancing, however we was not sure what it would specifically be. We all decided on her doing specific ballet moves to the beat of the instrumental before the singing begun, so that when the song began it would a wide shot of her in her ballet outfit.

Thursday 5 March 2015

Next Shoot Plan

After discussions within the group of what are music video needs, we have planned to shoot again with Grace of the ballet dancing. This is due to some of the original ballet footage being out of focus and not having her all in the frame. We plan to re shoot this ballet dancing in the second biggest drama studio with lights set up, also there will be more than camera and we plan to use the steadicam. Another point made clear to us was at the ending of the video, to try and make a more significant ending connecting the narrative and the artist together.

Tuesday 3 March 2015

Narrative Reshoot

After school me and Aaron went to my house again and re shot the some parts of the narrative of my sister playing the young Isabel Beau of her outside waiting for her parents and the reaction of her parents arguing in her room. The shots we got worked well for what we wanted of the many angles we got for her to be cut into the music video and her reaction was more emotional and sad. One of the highlights of her performance was of her crying ifront of us to be able to get this shot for her reaction to all the arguing.


Thursday 26 February 2015

Wednesday 18 February 2015

Editing New Artist Footage

With the footage me, Lamxi and Hayley filmed yesterday of Alex we uploaded it to the Mac and showed Aaron the footage we shot. Firstly we began by choosing our favourite clips and deleting the ones that did not work, we kept the majority of the clips because overall they worked well and her performance was believable. After this we then began to upload the clips we choosen into FinalCut Pro and started cutting them and putting them in place within the music video so far. With all the new footage we have got the video is coming to together with the artist performance and the narrative.

Friday 13 February 2015

New Artist - Alex

Beginning with test shoots for the role of the artist, 'Isabel Beau' we wanted a more relaxed and confident girl to play the role and feature in the music video. After the test shot and watching the footage back, she had good natural facial expressions and movement along to the song, also a bonus was that she knew the song before hand. We did one whole take with no pauses of her singing the song all the way through and we felt that, Alex was the right new artist. 
After this test shoot the day after we did our first shoot with her in the gallery with her, we set up 2 cameras, 2 tripods and 2 studio lamps for the shoot. Also developing the mise en scene for the artist we changed her costume to having one black but including jewellery and another with a blue top and a necklace. The 2 different cameras gave us different angles from the same take giving us more to work with when editing and matching a real music video. 
In addition, after we watched the footage back after the shoot that went very well, her performance was  believable and she looked the part. The biggest benefit with Alex being our new artist, is that we could play the whole song and she would be able to mime and act through out in one take without us having to keep stopping. This also saved time with us having to play back the song etc.

Thursday 12 February 2015

Artist Trial Shoot

We need a new artist and fast so we went through people in our 6th form that we could find to be our new artist for the music video and be, 'Isabel Beau'. After searching for a while we found Alex a girl in year 12 who we mutually knew and we asked her to give us a quick performance of the song and she agreed. We set up a small shoot in the media office just to get a feel of her performance and how she got on with the song.

Here is the test shoot:

Car Footage - Editing

We uploaded the footage to are draft on final cutpro of the music video so far, we all believed that the footage we shot was a high standard and worked well with the narrative scenes we had already shot. Due to the camera memory card running out of space at the end of the shot before we got the inside car shots we used my IPhone 5 to film one scene inside the car to experiment and see if it would work or not. We went through all the indoor arguing shots and refined them down to our favourites and began to cut them into the video. Overall I believe our music video is coming along well with he constant reshoots we are doing and is giving the group a more positive vibe to work with.

Wednesday 11 February 2015

Poppy's/Artist Reshoot

Today after school Aaron and Laxmi did a reshoot with Poppy for the artist, as the previous shoot did not go as well as expected and had a yellow filter over the footage. Before the shot began Laxmi was styling Poppy the she wanted her to look and portray and highlight she is a Pop artist. This was done through the use of make up and accessories, this can be seen in the footage as being effective to what we wanted her to look like, however this was probably the best outcome. When shooting instead of using one camera that we have previously done, before the shoot we discussed using three camera so we could get different angles but all from the same shot. However they only had accessibility to two cameras for when we needed to shoot so they overcame this and still had a half decent shoot.

Laxmi and Aaron feedback back to us in Wednesday's lesson the night after the shoot, they told me and Hayley that although the shoot went well for what it was worth that Poppy still was not a believable artist/performer and her acting/miming still looked faked and put on. We believe this is mainly down to her still not being able to learn the whole song so we cant do one take for the whole song making it easier to get in character. The song, 'Battlefield' is an emotional and passionate song about love and the pain and war it brings, and the performance when we went watched it back did not convince us of these feelings. The option we have considered is recasting for the artist, even though this is a situation we all feel uncomfortable to do but is seriously needed to meet deadlines and make this music video the best it can be.

Tuesday 3 February 2015

New Shoot - Family Car Scene/ Narrative

After school today we are going to shoot more of the narrative scenes for the music video, also we are going to re-shoot the young girl scenes outside as well. We struggled finding a mum and dad for the roles of the child's parents but we asked my mum and dad to be in the video and play this role. This will work better for us as Grace we will feel more comfortable acting and being involved in an argument between her own parents. It also makes the narrative more believable because of how old they are as well.

This is the car we are going to be shooting in for the argument scene:


Research into Music Videos - Dance Scenes

After looking at our ballet dance scene footage we got, as a group we looked in to other recent music videos that our mainly based around dance. We found two music videos from the same artist, 'Sia' the cinematography and more specifically the way the camera follows them dancing, the dance scenes with the music video work so well with creating emotions and an atmosphere relating to the song. Ideas have been created from looking at these two music videos, a few of these are:
  • follow the young girl when she is dancing in a circular motion
  • wide shots of her dancing
  • when editing make it more fast pace
 
 

Editing - Dance Scene into Chrous

Me and Hayley uploaded the footage into FinalCut Pro of the dancing and cut certain sections that worked the best and were in focus. We began to look at what parts of the dancing would work best in the song, we agreed that the faster movements and stronger moves would work best for the chorus to show her aggressive emotions and expressing them through her ballet dancing. This really gave us a good head start to editing the footage some more. 

After this me and Aaron stayed behind in lunch and after school to the edit the footage some more for the first chorus of the song. We used the feet and mid shots cutting between them to create it, the footage we used was filmed by Aaron on a hand-held camera. Going over the footage again together, we both discussed what footage to use and when it should cut, and what would work the best visually. Time was spent on making these decisions between the both of us and we had created a 14 second dance piece for part of the first chorus of the song. Also the pace of the cut and her dancing worked well with the beat/pace of the song as well, it really works well. This is only a very small piece of footage within in the whole of the music video but I think now we have set ourselves a standard and quality of filming and editing that we should be producing through the project. In addition our original idea to have the young girls scenes all in black and white, by changing it to desaturated, it really work well for the ballet dancing.

This is the 14 seconds of footage we edited:

Thursday 29 January 2015

Music Video - Dancing Scenes

As me and Hayley were both at work when we had planned to shoot the dance scenes with Grace, Aaron and Laxmi were still there to film. The big drama hall we had planned to film these scenes in for weeks we found was double booked so they had to relocate and they went to a smaller drama hall. There was downfalls to using this smaller drama room, they was no access spotlights which we had planned to used and a studio lamp was used instead. The footage the pair of them got so really good and well thought out footage we will have to reshoot some of the scenes again because not enough wide shots of her whole body dancing because of the space in the room. However this has given us a brilliant basis to reshot and refine the music video.

Grace's dancing looking at the footage is to a high standard and the costume worked well with he being I all white ballet outfit, and this worked well against the darkness of the room. The camera used for the shoot was a D500 with a 50mm lens however this was not the best one to use because it gave a grainy effect to the footage, next time from the test shoots we did previously we are definitely going to use the D1200 to make it more professional.

Monday 26 January 2015

Experimenting with Camera Lens

In today's lesson due to both Poppy and Grace being busy we had nothing planned to do, so with this in mind we decided to play around and look at different camera lenses. We did this so we could have ideas for what to use for our music video, more specifically for the dance scenes. The main focus for when using the lenses was using it for the, 'depth of field' (DOF). By using DOF when we are filming we can create a focus on an object and making it the main subject to be looked at because the background would be blurred and the other way around. The lens that works best for the shallow focus was the 50mm lens on the 1200 DSLR Canon camera, as a group we made the decision that for the dance scenes we would going to specifically use the 50mm lens on the camera . We made this choice because the focus would be on movements on whatever parts of her body making it more intense and visual appealing for the viewer.

These 2 videos are of us experimenting with the 50mm lens to see what the footage would look like:
  • pull in and out of focus
  • movement
  • keeping in focus


When looking at focus in cinematography we found inspiration from the newly released film, 'Whiplash' in parts. The focus on the boys hand when he is playing the drums create an intense of close feel to his actions, also it is professional and works well, this has given us something to basis the dance scene around.

Saturday 24 January 2015

New Planner for Shooting

After the screening session in Wednesday's lesson we created a new extended calendar for when to shoot which is a rough plan depending on the flexibility of Poppy and Grace. We have planned so far ahead because the amount of film we need to produce for the next screening before half term.
 

Friday 23 January 2015

Feedback on Second Screening

In Wednesday's lesson we presented are second screening of our music video so far  to the class and Sean. Before coming into the class we knew we did not have a lot of shots and that some of the artist (poppy) lip syncing was matched up right with the song. In addition the animatics was in the background of the video when it was playing. We also knew a prior the screening that we need to do some serious work on getting the video to best standard we can do, by shooting a lot more and spending my time on the video.

We got some feedback from Sean some of our fellow classmates on the video, here are two examples:
 

Saturday 17 January 2015

Editing the music video

Once we had parts of the narrative and artist shots for the music video, Hayley began to edit them into the animatics She first simple just placed the shots were we had planned to put them from the storyboard we had created, then cuts were made for the pace of the video. However at this point the amount of footage we have is low so to have a more better basis to get to the end of the music video we need to be shooting more and having a better plan for when we shoot.

Wednesday 14 January 2015

Narrative Filming - Young Girl

On Tuesday after school we planned to film the some narrative parts of the music video, where the young girl played by, Grace. The footage we got mainly was based around the idea of her  waiting for her dad after her ballet lesson and he has not yet arrived, and this shows the passing of time of her waiting in the cold for him and her emotions towards this. I was directing Grace on certain facial expressions to pull and her body movement so that Aaron could get various different shots of her doing it. Laxmi was making sure the mise en scene and also the  visual look of the footage was what we desired whilst we was filming.

We got shots mostly outdoors but we got few shots indoors of her before she goes to dance lesson for an example: doing up her laces on her trainers. When it came to the end of the shoot we began to film some indoor shots in the young girls bedroom, however this did not fully continue after the battery for the camera died. next time we are going to take batteries to every shoot. Overall I believe Grace worked hard and communicated well with us as a team while acting and we got some good shots because of her and are hard work.

Friday 9 January 2015

Brand New Footage - Poppy

After the previous feedback from our first shoot of the artist singing parts of the music video not going so well, we started a fresh. We set up in the Gallery in school which is has all white walls compared to before us using a white sheet the image looked more professional already. Poppy was told by me to wear a black top so this would contrast with the white background and make her stand out more, we learnt this from the first shoot were she wore a white lace top and this didn't look right.
Studio lighting was used we set it up with one lamp either to side of her so there was equal lighting and a cover over them to make it as harsh and lose the shadow that was apparent on the wall behind her. In addition we used a DSLR camera and a tripod to film the footage and we all worked as team to support and help with the lyrics. Each line of the song that we needed her to mime was completed in this filming session but Poppy struggled with remembering some lines that were slightly complex. Overall I believe the shoot went well and it visually worked, we looked at the footage after every take to improve and evaluate our work, was a good decision.

Wednesday 7 January 2015

Planning the shoots


As in today's lesson we made a shot plan of when all of us could film in a week and when are two actors Poppy and Grace would be available. Laxmi did a colourful brainstorm of what specific days each individual could do, as a group we decided that for filming footage that there should be a minimum of " members of the group at the shoot alongside one of the actors. All of shoot times are based around when Grace and Poppy are available to perform/shoot.
 
In addition we made a production of log of when we are going to shoot in a calendar so we can easily write in who we are going to shoot and what day, so everyone can clearly see it. It has also been colour coordinated, so Grace's shoots are in yellow and Poppy's shoots are in pink. We have only planned the log up to end of January because we will not know that  far in advanced when people are free because of other commitments.
 


First Filming Session - Poppy

We planned are first filming session after school on a Wednesday. he plan was for to be with us so we could film parts of the artists section, which was of her miming to the song lyrics from the song, 'Battlefield'.

The media staff room we used to film the footage as we could not access the gallery in photography of drama hall because of other exams taking place. To control this situation affectively we used a white screen put in the staff room we could still film the footage needed. In addition we had a DSLR camera, 2 camera lenses, tripod and a studio lamp. Poppy was dressed in all white for her costume for the artist to connote white to innocence an purity of her being a young artist, also the clothing was tight fitting to create a sex appeal,'voyeurism'.

Laxmi was off sick when we filmed this first footage but she knew what we was planning to do and given ideas prior to this. Me and Hayley were directing Poppy on how to perform and telling her lyrics to sing at the right point. Aaron was controlling the camera and what different shots to take. The scenery for the shot was not ideal for what we had planned and we all knew the footage would not be included in our final video, it was just purely test shots so we could develop and learn from this experience.


Monday 5 January 2015

NEW POSTER

With the poster I used a new picture of Isabel  (the artist) to design the poster around. I kept the typography also again with the pink and white theme for the digipak and the roughly same layout for it as well on the new poster. Also the new typography, 'Piedrita' works better for the Pop Genre look I am going for . In addition I have still included the album front cover on the poster as well to create the connection between the two of them.

NEW DIGIPAK

After the feedback from my previous Digipaki knew I wanted to create a theme for my digipak using the woodlands pictures of the artist.

 I began by recreating my digipak by uploading my front cover image of the artist as this is still my favourtie on to the digpak template, this was a starting point for me. Also i found one other blank white wall photo shoot portrait of the artist to use as an extra panel image that fits in well. The struggle I had was finding 2 pictures that i wanted and would work within the digipak that were from the woodland shot, however i found 2 that I believe are beautiful shots and amplify the genre not as obvious as the first digipak but more low key and less in your face. The pictures still show innocence because she is a young artist but they also have a sex appeal because of her facial expressions she is pulling. Furthermore you could relate the digipak of the autumn theme with the soft pink colours to the Pop genre.

In additon I personally liked the extra social media links and the setting out of all the typography so i kept the layout of it the same but i wanted a new font. In addition I had used, 'Da Font' for my previous text for the artist and the album title etc, but I wanted something my delicate and girly, I found one called 'Piedrita'. I believe this really works well with my theme for the digipak and i kept the colour pink and white scheme for the typography as same as the original. 

The 2 CDs for the album have been similiary designed to the original digipak with the CD having the autumn leaves on it then that being the background for the bonus disc and the same again etc. I believe that the autumn leaves works with the leaves in the backgroudn of the 2 woodland shots with the artist in.I have yet still to make a lyric booklet but i have the front cover of it on the digipak with Isabel's face but i know I am going to have the pink watercolour background with the lyrics in white writing over it in the same font as the rest of the digipak.