What was different about filming this year?

• There had to be a much wider verity of shots and different angles.
• More camera movement, hardly any still shots.
• Took a lot longer due to the confined space and constant movement of the tripod for different shots
• Not so focused on the acting, more on the lip-syncing.
• Had to replay the same song at least 15 times.. We're all pretty sick of Who You Are now.

Potential locations..

Plain white bedroom 












Royal Victoria Dock Excel

PLANNING - Filming day 1 (and 2)?

Filming Day on Tuesday 25th October

Filming Day on the Tuesday 25th October

A 'cartooned' explanation for our filming day.

PLANNING - permission GRANTED!

By the morning, I still hadn't recieved a reply from the Royal Victoria Docks so Louisa called them on the number they left me and gave them specific details of when we would like to film (video posted below).  Later on in the afternoon, they contacted me saying permission had been granted.  Now everything technical is out of the way, we're all ready to film.   Next week should be fun :)

Email granting permission

Permission/Request Call

Request Call

Emily e-mailed the customer services department to ask for permission in order to film by the river bank near the Edexcel centre. They were not replying so our teacher Louisa called them to ask them herself. About 2 hours later they called back saying it was fine as long as we didn't go in the river.

Perfecting our lip synching

Emily Perfecting her lip synching.

Here we see Emily perfecting her lip synching, we realised that it was better she sang the song out loud this way it seemed more realistic. Through this small practice we knew that the performance on the day had to improve, she had to really play the role of the artist and mean every single she's singing. This was very helpful for Emily.

Presenting our Pitch

PLANNING - Response from requesting permission to film

I recieved another response but this time from the Royal Victoria Docks!  It turned out I had emailed the wrong person again so they left me the correct email and the phone number of who I should contact.  In tomorrow's lesson, I think we should call them so the whole group is together, but this will only be if they don't respond by tomorrow morning.  Fingers still crossed!

Response leaving me with correct details

The email forwarded to the correct person.  (I removed the exact dates we plan to film because it was only briefly discussed amongst the members - shall be further discussed in tomorrow's lesson)

RIHANNA'S NEW VIDEO

Before you read, click the link below and watch Rihanna's new video to We Found Love

http://www.capitalfm.com/artists/rihanna/videos/we-found-love/

I absolutely love this video its so expressive, deep, meaningful, unique, fun! Our video will be nothing like this so this blog is totally irrelevant to our music video but i just needed to express how much i love this video. Her best video by far.

PLANNING - Response from requesting permission to film

I recieved a response from London Southbank Centre, giving me the contact details of the person who is responsible for dealing with all film requests.  I blogged about prefering to film at the Royal Victoria Docks as it's nearer to my house (our location) but I'm still awaiting a response from them sadly.  Fingers crossed!

This is the response I recieved

This is the contact details of who I needed to get in touch with

 

 

 

 

This is the email forwarded to the correct person

The making of a music video-Behind the scenes

Behind the scenes of a music video


In order to have a better idea of how we are going to film our music video, I decided to look at some of the things that go on behind the scenes of a professional music video.
When typing 'behind the scenes of a music video' in Youtube I instantly got the video of Beyonce's 'Sweet dreams' music video. When viewing this video I learned what  things are important when making a music video such as the mise en scene,  lighting, make-up, variety of shots, moving the camera with the beat of the song and the artist performance. In my opinion, the artist performance has to be done exceptionally very well in order for our music video to look good and not like a typical student video.


In this video we see Beyonce repeating her choreography various times until its done to perfection. This is something our group will need to do, obviously not to Beyonce's standard but it needs to be done well. This video also shows how Beyonce chooses her make-up, she explains how she wants to have a natural look so that the audience's attention is on the choreography rather than on her. I think that our group has not really thought much about the make-up our artist Emily is going to wear, but after viewing this video I think its quite   important we discuss if our artist and actress are going to wear make-up.

PLANNING - Requesting permission to film

Requesting permission to film at London Southbank

Requesting permission to film at Royal Victoria Docks

PLANNING - Locations for outside scene

I still haven't decided what would be a better venue to film at between Southbank and Royal Victoria Docks, but I am pushing more towards the docks as it's just a bus away from my house, so travelling far with the equipment won't be a problem.  I haven't told the rest of the group yet and I am still awaiting a response accepting my request to give us permission to film at either location.  I'll be sending my group a text message during the week to inform them, hopefully by then permission will be granted.

PLANNING - Feedback from Pitch

Despite the struggle we experienced to actually complete the prezi for the pitch, we recieved a lot of positive feedback.  A member of the class said it was 'very detailed', 'explained everything' and was 'the best prezi he had ever seen.'  Although our pitch was long compared to the other groups, it was better this way, because it was more in depth and explained things clearly.  Louisa gave us one bit of critiscm as she thought that we hadn't explained our locations thoroughly enough and it was unclear.  It was understandable because we referred to one location as 'a busy street' rather than stating the actual name of the street we wanted to film on.  

The others in the group had said they were looking for a busy road to film on, and small discussions were made about filming on one of the roads near my house, because that's where we were filming the rest of the video.  I disagreed as I think there are nicer venues in London than the ones in my area.  Mary also said that we should think carefully about what street we film on as it might not fit the rest of the video's image or theme.  I personally don't think we should film on a 'busy road', I would rather it be an area with water in the background like Royal Victoria Dock or Southbank - I'll be discussing this with the rest of the group.

PLANNING - Editing in One Direction's video

For a first music video, this is absolutely amazing.  Other than the beautiful location, one editing technique I really enjoyed are the fade transitions.  It works well because it suits the whole beach scenario.  The jump cuts also work well as it flows in time with the tempo of the song.

 A variety of shots are also used such as establishing shot, close up, wide shot, low angle shot, high angle shot, etc.  The use of the panning camera movement also works well because it again blends in with the song pace.

In terms of Mis En Scene, they seemed to have a 'blue and white' colour scheme, although one of them was wearing red/crimson bottoms.  The colour scheme fitted well with the setting as the sky was a bright blue along with the waves in the water, and there were times in the video when the boys were on a white settee.

It's a cute video that is just about teenage love, and I love it.  I hope to see more videos like this from the group.

One Direction - What Makes You Beautiful

PLANNING - My part of the pitch (4-6)

In Wednesday's lesson, me and my group were expected to complete the anamatic storyboard, the production schedule and the pitch for Friday's lesson.  Because it was a short lesson, it was frustrating as there wasn't enough time to get all three tasks done.  We decided that I would work on the prezi for the pitch, whilst the rest of the group worked on completing the anamatic.  I found it very difficult because a lot of the questions couldn't be done in a short amount of time, as they required a lot of focus, so I did the best I can.

With the majority of the questions incompleted, communicating via text messaging, we decided to divide the task questions between the group members which made the task easier.  With a day to go, we had to work on my prezi account, where each of us would add our questions to the pitch in chronological order.  I was assigned to questions four to six which were:

- where did we get our ideas from - refer to existing music videos
- who will our audience be with specific details
- how will our music video link to Goodwin's theory and how it will appeal to our target audience

After Iriesha had finished putting questions 1-3 up on the prezi, I then went on to add my bit.  It flowed very well - it was a good thing we all had each other's numbers to text each other.  Everybody contributed to adding their parts on the prezi in our own spare time - this made the whole process much easier.

We have done our pitch!!

Pitch Done!

YEEEY! We have presented our pitch. These last few days have been very stressful as we had to get a lot of work done, our animatic,story board, short list and our pitch. We thought we were never going to get it done but we have! Last lesson we split up and we had to people doing the animatic in another room and Emily was making a start on our pitch as she was the only one who knew how to use prezi. However I managed to help both sides. We didn't  finish making our pitch so the next day I decided to teach my self on how to use a "Prezi" after an hour of experimenting I finally mastered it. That night Ireisha, Emily and myself done different parts which we then put in the pitch. Dina done her part on a power point but in the morning of our pitch day we added it to our prezi presentation. The end result was amazing, it was full of information, examples, theories, videos and images. We were very pleased with it! :)

When presenting the pitch to our class we spoke clearly and with coherence making sure that the rest of our class and our teachers knew what we were saying. We all said an equal amount things and the pitch presentation took 17minutes which was quite shocking as we never thought we would take so long. However this shows that are pitch was very well done! Our teacher Mary quotes  "I think that's the best pitch I've ever seen"

Permission for the use of Camden Lock River

Permission for the use of Camden Lock River

I was quite surprised to of got a reply back within about forty minutes. I was honestly expecting to get a reply within a couple of days. Unfortunately the website that I emailed wasn't exactly in control of the permission rights. It was then said that I had to get in contact with Camden Council which apparently deals with permission rights. I am not too sure if I am going to contact Camden Council as it might be a long process!

Test Shots of Potential Performers

Test Shots of potential performers

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Toyota Yaris Advert

Editing: Toyota Yaris Advert

When I saw the for this I honestly wasn't expecting it to be about cars. I really like this advert because it's young, qwerky and it will relate to a lot of younger people like to say around eighteen plus. The idea of the animation characters and the real life background made the advert as a whole seem very out of the ordinary because car adverts aren't usually like this so this advert, in my opinion has been made with a motif and has had a conception to it. I think that with the editing skills it definitely will not go with my groups slow song but using this type of editing may be best with an upbeat song. 

Second Scene for Music Video

The Second Scene for Our Music Video

I previously blogged about the street location, I came up with another idea to film it at a river and I thought that Camden Lock river would be the best place to do so. However I haven't consulted the rest of the group yet. I was rather confused on whether I needed to find out if I had to obtain permission to film by the lake but I failed to find any information on it. I just decided to email a website called 'Best of Camden' so hopefully they have an answer to my question. If my group agrees to filming in Camden for the second bit of music video at least I would of obtained permission to do so and not just wait for a response for quite some time. 

An email asking for permission to film around the lake.

Another Favourite Video of Mine

Janelle Monae

One of my favourite videos of all time. Janelle Monae's - Cold War has to be one of the most simplistic music videos which has such a huge effect on me as a viewer as I can see she showing her vulnerability through her song lyrics. I love how it only took one take to capture this video. Another thing that I really like about this video is that it doesn't focus on her face a couple of times  which I think is very effective furthermore, the camera shot of it being close up implies to me that we are in her personal space throughout the whole of the music video therefore we, the audience are going to get a 'taste' of what she wants to get off her 'chest' as the song lyrics are very powerful.  

The Pitch (Overall Feedback)

Overall Feedback

Well the feedback for our pitch in today's lesson was quite good actually. We covered all the points that we needed to cover as a group. Our pitch was thorough and it outlined everything that we were doing exactly. However, Louisa did mention that on our 'Locations' section of our Prezi it wasn't that clear. We mentioned on the Prezi that we would film on a street but we didn't go in-depth about what kind of street we wanted; it being for example a calm quiet road or a busy road with a lot of people walking on it. Louisa really made a valid point because different roads really have different meanings so for an example, Brick Lane could represent an urban flavour. Mary also made another valid point in deciding what road to film on as she mentioned that we should consider if the road we'd be filming on would fit into the 'theme' of our video. Furthermore, if we do film on a main road hypothetically speaking, we'd need to consider the general public, the shops in the background and if they relate to the song and so on. 

As mentioned from above Brick Lane has such a 'raw' edge to it as it is like a congregation of multi-ethnic people coming together as one. I haven't been there so I wouldn't exactly know the feeling of being there and experiencing what I see visually but I can definitely tell that there is something special about it!

Camden Town is known for having all people that society classes as 'freaks' which I think is totally wrong in my eyes. I think that Camden Town will be awfully busy to film a scene on as a lot of people tend to visit Camden Town. 

On the other side of busy Camden Town you have the peaceful, quiet Camden Lock, which up to this date I totally forgot about! I think that this will be a perfect location because like I said, its quiet, peaceful and not many people go there. If we are lucky to catch Camden Lock on a sunny day the Lock itself is literally beautiful as the water sparkles. I just think its really nice. Maybe instead of filming on a 'Plain Old' street we could film our ending scene on Camden Lock. I will definitely talk to the group about this choice! 

Due to the fire alarm going off in today's lesson, I was unable to upload the video of my group presenting our pitch. But I shall upload it next week so it can be viewed! :)

Our Pitch

Pitch Q1-6 on Prezi

Editing in Frank Ocean's - Novacane music video

Editing Skills in Frank Ocean's - Novacane Music Video

I really like Frank Ocean's - Novacane music video because the editing in it is extremely good. I love the fading in with the clips on top of Frank whilst he's singing. I think this may imply that Frank himself is perhaps daydreaming as the contrast isn't the same as the background one.

I would upload the music video for this song, but the lyrics in this song are very explicit watch at your own risk!

Pitching for tomorrows lesson (14th October)

Questions 1 - 3 Done! 

Today has been a very stressful day. It was quite difficult at first to plan our pitch as we didn't know what we'd use. It being Powerpoint Presentation or Prezi etc. The task questions that Mary gave out to us last week was divided equally between the four members in the group which instantly became easier. I was given questions one to three which I had to expand on the following questions

• Sum up your music video in one sentence.
• Introduce the song that you've chosen and outline how your video will be different from the original.
• Introduce your artist and their brand image - Which artists are they similar to? What will your artist wear and why?

I decided alongside two other members of the group that I will present the first 3 questions of the pitch on Prezi alongside the other questions answered by the others. I feel Prezi is interactive, fun and also, it isn't a normal presentation like Powerpoint which in some cases tend to be on the boring side. 

I have just finished answering the three questions with videos, pictures and text and I feel a lot better that I have got it out of the way and I can actually go to bed at a reasonable time. Not staying up until early hours of the morning trying to complete this pitch. 

I am also grateful that I have such understanding group members. We communicate well and we understand each and everyone's view. I feel that the other group members take into consideration my ideas which is very nice. I feel that I am 'heard' in the group.