(Production) - Reflection Blog Week 8

This week:

My partner and I filmed the PERFORMANCE SCENES of our music video in Hainualt Forest, aswell as taking pictures for our digipak and magazine advert.


Filming:
Filming was not to difficult as the actors we ended up using were very efficient and easy to work with. We did have some trouble with our original actors, however, as they decided not to be in our music video the night before we were to film. In dealing with this problem, my partner and looked back on how perevious questionnaires and focus groups about music videos and what indie's artists should look like, in order to try and find someone how fits their description.we looked at our FOCUS GROUP, on what audiences wanted to see in a music video. We found that, when asked the question 'what does an indie artist look like?' one participant actually said me. Therefore, as we had little time to find a relacement actor, we decided that I would play the role.
Apart from this major problem, which we managed to sort out, every other problem we faced was quite minor and we were able to deal with them relatively easily.
If my partner and I were to film again we would most likely take more time to find a similar place to were we filmed, however in a quieter location. This is because, although we feel we found the perfect place to film in, this location was quite near the entrance to the forest, so other visitors were walking in this area and our actors became distracted whilst we were filming. We have also had a small VIDEO about problems we faced before filming began.


Next week:
My partner and I will be back at sixth form next week, after a week off. Next week we will upload our footage onto an IMac and decide which footage looks most realistic and fits the style we our going for. We will have a look on YouTube at music videos of similar bands to 50 Leaves and see what shot types they use most often, e.g. long shots and pans, to helps us do this.

                                     

(Production) - Performance scenes recci images

Today my partner, our cast members and I went to Hainault Forest to film the performance scenes of our music video for 50 Leaves song 'Man on Fire'.

Setting up:

My partner and I felt setting up relatively easy as we decided to stick with basic equipment, including, a Canon video camera and a tripod. This is because we thought by using equipment we had used several times we would spend less time setting up and more of our time filming. Also by using this equipment we feel that it helps connote the idea that the band is upcoming and so perhaps, like many upcoming bands, would not have that much money to spend on filming equipment.We also brought with us a digital camera to take pictures for our digipak and magazine advert.

Location:

Although Hainault Forest is big, it did not take us long to find the perfect place to film in, because my partner and I already had a good idea of the mise-en-scenes we wanted for performance part of our music video.

 These mise-en-scenes included:

- Shadows of the trees

- Bright lighting from the sun

- Autumnal leaves

- No forest paths

Actors: Thomas Dadwell, Patrick Rawlins and gemma Doherty.

Actors:

We had some trouble with our actors for this section of the music video, as two of the actors we were going to use dropped out the night before we were to film.

Due to this I myself had to be part of the music video, alongside Thomas Dadswell and Patrick Rawlins. Me and my partner felt that, although this was not our initial idea of what we wanted the band to be like, by adding a girl to the band we feel that we can now attract a larger target audience.

The two actors that we did use, however, did a great job and we feel that they looked the part. If we were to re-film this section of the music video, I would say that we would still include these two actors.

What went well and problems we faced:

What went well:

My partner and I feel that the actors we used actually looked like they could be a band and that the clothes they wore fit the style we are trying to connote very well.

Differing from when my partner and I filmed the NARRATIVE shots of our music video, the weather was not to bad and so we felt it easier to film for longer. 

Problems we faced:

The biggest problem we faced was our to actors dropping out at the last minute, as me and my partner had began to imagine the video with this actors in mind. However, we managed to find replacement actors and once we began filming my partner and I felt that the actors we managed to get where very good at understanding what we needed from them and fit the part well.

Although the weather was not to bad for most of the day, it did begin to get colder towards the end of filming, so our actors began to look more stiff in the shots. This effected the actors playing the guitars the most, as they found it hard to keep playing the instruments for the whole length of the song as their fingers began to hurt.

Another problem was that the actor that was playing the lead vocalist found it difficult to remember all of the lyrics. My partner and I decided that in order for the actor to sing the whole song through without forgetting the lyrics it would be best if he had the song playing. My partner had her Ipod with her which could play the song out load. We tried this, but with the forest being a public one there was a lot of noise from other people around and the noise from the wind was quite load, making it hard to hear the song. Instead of playing the music out load we gave the Ipod to the vocalist so he could play the song with headphones. We thought that this might look a bit strange in video, however after looking at the footage we found that the headphones are barely visible and when they are visible they could be passed off as a head set that would normally be worn by vocalist on stage.

      

Whilst filming my partner and I had some difficult in making sure the camera was straight, due to the rocky surface of the forest. We found that we had to move the camera and tripod two or three times in order to find a spot where the flooring was flat enough.

Digipak and magazine advert images:

My partner and I decided to take the pictures for our digipak and magazine advert in the same location as where we filmed the music video, as we felt that this would help connect all the bands texts together. We wanted the pictures to look quite relaxed and so my partner to the pictures when the two actors and myself where practising for the scenes, talking, walking through the forest and even whilst we were filming.

My partner and I looked at the photos we took after we had finished filming for the day and narrowed the pictures we wanted to use for our digipak and magazine advert down to these six:

 

In are next meeting my partner and I will it down and choose which pictures we think will look best. If we choose the pictures where the camera is seen in the mise-en-scene we will cut and edit the camera out.

(Production) - Props change

Guitars:

My partner and I had a discussion about our props and decided it would be best to use one acoustic guitar and one electric one. This is because we felt, after listening to our song again, it would be best to use two different guitars to go with the diverse sounds of the song.

Guitar we were originally going to use

Guitar we used in the end

                                                          

 

(Production) - Video discussion for our music video: explaining problems

This is a video of my partner and I discussing issues we were faced with before we started filming the performances scenes of our music video.

(Production) Reflection Blog Week 7

This week:
This week my partner and I began filming the narrative scenes of our music video, as well as completing our initial magazine and digipak designs and collecting some more pictures for our work.

Filming:

My partner and I found FILMING not to difficult as our actor took are

directions very well and we were both familiar with the pieces of equipment we used.

If I could change anything about the filming it would be the weather, as it was very windy so our actor's hair kept covering her face so we were unable to capture the facial expression of the character in some parts of our footage. Also, the cold weather made it quite difficult to stay out side for too long, especially as we wanted are actress to feel comfortable and be able to play her role well without looking to stiff as a result of being cold.

Magazine and digipak designs:

My partner and I quite liked are INITIAL DESIGNS for our magazine and digipak designs. However, we thought it would be better, in our final designs, to include images of the band in the designs so that it is clear to audience hows digipak and advert they are looking at. As my partner and I like the idea of using pictures of autumnal locations, we will take pictures of the band in these locations so that we can connect the two.

Pictures:

Before starting our final digipak and magazine designs we decided to have a practise run at taking PICTURES that connect the the location and the band, or in the practise pictures, our teacher.
My partner and I feel that these kind of pictures work well and help connote the young style of band.





Preparing for filming:
My partner and I have been PREPARING to film next week by creating and gathering props, asking are cast to wear certain clothes and typing out the lyrics to the song we our going to use.
We had some difficulties. Firstly, in finding props light enough to carry around with us. We found that using speakers would be to hard as we are going to travel to our location and speakers are quite heavy. We overcome this by deciding not to use real speakers and instead created speakers by using cardboard boxes and black bin liner, these are much little than the real speakers. My partner and I think they look OK, however, will decide at location whether they look the part or not.
My partner and I have also downloaded the song we are using onto our Ipods, in order to play the music out load when practising the scenes and perhaps even when we film.

           




Next week:
Next week my partner and I will begin filming the performance scenes of our music video.

(Production) - New tracking list

My partner and I have been doing some more research into digipaks. Whilst doing this we noticed that the song that is usually made into a single is often found lower down on the tracking lost. Rather than at the top, which is were my partner and I had placed it.

Original tracking list

To make our digipak more realistic we rearranged the order of our track list so that the main song was in the middle of the track list. My partner and I feel that this makes the digipak look more authentic.

Updated tracking list

(Production) - Call sheet for 24/10/11

(Production) Preparing for filming

Lyrics:
In preparation to film on Monday my partner and I have written out the lyrics to our song, Man on fire by 50 LEAVES, on a Word document to give to our cast on the day. As well as sending them the document via Facebook.

 

 

Props:

My partner and I have also been creating and gathering some props for our music video.

Here are the speakers we will use in the video, we could not find speakers suitable and light enough to carry around with us, so we created these 'look-a-like' speakers by putting bin liners over cardboard boxes that we had gathered from home.



My partner and I asked the people around the neighbour if they had any microphones we could borrow. For example, if there children had any toy microphones. My neighbour gave us their Wii sing microphones to use in our video. These are perfect as they do not have much writing on to show what company they are made by and I feel that they look similar to the microphones you normally see in music videos.



This is my guitar, we will use this in our music video alongside another guitar that we have borrowed from a friend.

As you can see from the picture, my guitar is a bit old and broken.  To get around this problem my partner and I have decided to only use long shots when this guitar is in the mise-en-scene and will use the other guitar, which is in better condition, when filming close-ups.





Clothing:

To help connote the indie and young style of the band, we have asked our cast to wear clothing that would usually represent this style. Clothing like this:



Checkered shirt



Black, denim jeans



Converse trainers





(Production) - First day of filming

Today my partner and I began filming the narrative shots of our music video.



Actor:

Elise Phillips is the actress we are using for the narrative section of the music video. Her small frame helps connote the young age of the character and the actress found the playing the character relatively easy as she has recently left school herself.

My partner and I believe we made a good decision in casting Elise in the music video, as we have worked with her before on some of our other media projects and she is very easy to work with and takes direction well.

Setting up and filming:                                                                                   

As my partner and I used little equipment today, (a camera, Tripod and a phone to take pictures), we found setting up the equipment took a short amount of time and was not to difficult.                                                                                    When filming we did have trouble seeing what we were filming through the camera, as the sun reflected off the screen. However after moving the camera around we found that filming in certain area, e.g. in the shade, where much easy to film in. This happening, on the brighter side, helped us to connote a dark narrative in our footage, as we were forced to film in the shade most of the time. As this is what we wanted to connote to the audience, in a way, the weather today helped us to do this.

  

Location:

We decides that the best location to film was at our school. This is because it helps connote the young age of the character as well as being an easy access location for us, especially if we need to redo scenes in the future.

The one thing that we found hard about filming at our school was that, as we filmed some of these shots during lesson time, it was difficult to gain permission to leave school premises at this time. However, we did over come this and where allowed to film outside of school.

What went well and improvements:

After filming my partner and I discussed what we felt went well and what we felt we could improve on.

Filming was quite easy, however, one thing that was hard to control was the weather, as we were filming outside. The wind was very bad that day so filming close-ups of the girls face was bad, as the actors hair tended to cover the face.

My partner and I feel that the actress we used was a good choice and that we really captured the image we wanted for our character.

We feel that we could improve on some of our locations. For example, when we filmed shots of the character in a classroom, we filmed these shots in an empty classroom that is usually used by GSCE and Alevel students and so did not really connote the young vibe that we are trying to portray. We will take time to look at our footage and see if we need to redo these scenes or not.

Video review of filming
 Below is a video of my partner, our actress and I discussing what we did today and what problems we faced.

(Production) - Call sheet for 19/10/11

Open publication - Free publishing

(Production) - Creating second design for magazine

Today, I redid the magazine advert design. This time, instead of creating the texts on Fireworks my partner and I created the text aspects of the advert using DaFont, then imported them onto fireworks. We added the blackberry bar code, as we did before, as we thought that the bar code gave the advert a young feel. This helps connote the young style of the band.

(Production) - Initial ideas for digipak and magazine advert 2

My partner and I created some initial ideas of what  our digipak and magazine advert will look  like. After doing this, we looked at the initial designs we had created for the digipak and then the ideas for our magazine advert and focused on how we could improve each of them.

Digipak: 

we decided that there was too many images of natural settings, e.g. leaves. We needed to include an image of the band for our audience to relate to. We brainstormed and decided we would like a main image of the band playing in the leaves and having fun as this would connote the youth of the band and how not every song is as serious as 'Man on fire'. This would give the audience a reason to connect to the band more than they would if the images were just of natural settings.

 We looked at different album adverts and wanted to take different aspects from each. We started off with a rough copy to see where we would like our text and action line to go. We then looked at this rough copy and decided that we did not like it or believe that it would be appealing to the audience and would not make them want to go out and by the digipak.                                                                    We also have an idea of putting a picture of the band covered in leaves showing that their having fun and enjoying themselves.We will make up these ideas and show them to people and conduct a questionnaire on what magazine advert or digipak would appeal to our target audience more and which would make them want to go and by the album/digipak.

Magazine:

(Production) - Images of leaves for digipak and magazine advert

                                                

 My partner and I went out and collected some more leaves for our digipak and magazine advert images, as we found that the pistures we took to use on our initial digipak and advert were not very appealing and we new we could find more eye catching images.

 

We thought of the idea to have an image of the band members heads, with there bodies appearing as though they are covered in leaves. We used are teacher to see what it would be like.

After taking these picture my partner and I sat down and had a discusion about different ideas we could go with for our digipak and magazine advert. Some ideas we came up with were:

- An image of the band kicking over a big pile of leaves
- Image of band throughing leaves into the sky
- Image of band general having fun in the forest

(Production) - Reflection Blog Week 6

At the weekend:

At the weekend I visited more different LOCATIONS to find which one would best suit the location my partner and I want for our music video. All of the places I visited had the potential to be a location for our video, some more than others because these look more autumnal, which is the look me and my partner are going for. I found looking at different location quites easy, although the more autumnal parts of the forests/parks I visited where more off the path than I expected them to be and so I got lost a few times.

Creating the digipak and magazine advert:



This week my partner and I have begun creating our digipak and album magazine advert using Fireworks. I have never properly used Fireworks before so understanding the layers and different icons on the program was quite hard at the beginning. So that I could understand it better, I took some time to practise using the software and talked to my partner and teacher when deciding how to make the MAGAZINE ADVERT look good with the knowledge I have about about software. (Link to creating album magazine advert post). After using Fireworks a few times, I am able to understand what most of the icons mean and I am sure that in a week or two I will understand the program well.

This is one of the adverts we looked at.



Beachcombing:

This week I create a new BEACHCOMBING post as when I was not doing my media work I kept finding different inspirations that I could use in my work. So not to forget them, I added them to a post and wrote that I liked about them and how I will use them in my work. By doing this I know that, if I ever get stuck on how my work should look, I can look at the beachcombing post for inspiration.

Next week:

Next week my partner and will finish adding the final touches to our artist's digipak and album magazine advert. We will also begin filming the narrative part of the music video.