Progress of this evening...= ]

Tonight we stayed behind after college to continue the editing phase of our music video as other group members will not be here in Thursday's lesson so we felt it appropriate to use the extra time available to us, in order to make our music video as best as we can.
Things we worked on tonight were fades, transactions and possible rearrangements to keep the audience captured throughout the whole music video.

Progress of yesterday...= ]

Yesterday we continued with our editing and worked on the instrumental section, which we found hard as it was we wanted to keep the audience entertained until the last second. This was hard because there was no singing so we had to find some scenic shots to fill the music and carry it on until the very end. We used some bike scenes and her strolling through some forestry, and to make it more appealing and to fit into the atmosphere we are creating, we did this by adding scenic shots to create a contrast from all of the performance shots in our music video.

Progress of today...= ]

Today we uploaded the final pieces of footage we shot on friday. The footage is Nicola either cycling on a bike or walking with the bike on Jesus Green, cambridge.
We then selected the best parts of the footage and began to lip sync the entire piece, this then let us look through the rough cut and take out any footage that was not as effective as some of the new shots we got.

We now intend to add fades and more transitions to the film to make appear more professional and give it the atmospheric feel we are after. We are also getting our filters uploaded to enable us to add stars and make some footage cartoon to give our video the true final touch, and to make it more unique.

Intentions of today...= ]

Today we intend to film the final pieces of our music video on Jeus Green, Cambridge. We will be filming Nicola on a bike whilts riding around.
We also are hoping to get some very nice scenic shots of the park, as it has the river Camb running down one side of it.

As the weather is cold but sunny we should be able to get the 'look' as the previous filming shots, making it look more professional and well thought through.

Progress of today...= ]

We looked at how to add animatic stars to our music video. we did this by finding a star on google images then putting the star on to a freeze frame of the video. we then using photoshope added layers with the same star, in different sizes and shapes.
This is trying to create the atmosphere we desire.

We are also looking into getting a cartoon affect to change the appearance of the video therefore giving it a more professional look.

We also have started to look at using transitions and fading to create a different effect. One effect we came across was the 'duplicate' which enables the picture to be quadrupled to show the image in four different sections. I also added a fade on to this section which enables to see both scenes at once, luckily the scene we have chosen is very center to shot so gives layered affect.

Writing Questions

Which band/artist did your group choose and why ? (give some positive reasons here)
The artist we chose was 'The Bird'. After listening to all the songs, this song stood out as it was so original and completely different to the rest, with a continuous chorus. The lyrics were interesting and gave us loads of ideas to begin working with.

How did you ‘pitch’ for them ? (summarise briefly)
We were the only people in our class who wanted this song, therefore we didn't need to pitch our song. Our pitch was, to concentrate most on the performance side of music video. We planned to have one singer, surrounded by different scenic areas, including trees, green areas, on a bike, on a punt, and by some water. We also plan to use cartoon effects such as sketchy stars and sparkles floating around our singer.

Where did you get your ideas from ? cite actual examples as shown on your blog !
We got our ideas by brainstorming in a group. One idea led to another idea giving us lots of basic ideas to work with. All our ideas can be easily developed. The lyrics are very narrative, so it helped to come up with ideas, and putting them together created more interesting thoughts.

What tasks had to be done in the research and planning phase? How were these handled and what could have been done to improve them ?
In our researching, we looked through images to give us extra ideas, and searched the internet for possible set areas to film. We used story boarding skills to write down our ideas correctly. We created an animatic from our story board to give us an idea of how to shoot certain clips.

How did the group come to decisions about approaches to the tasks to be completed? (what range of options did you consider and why did you opt for the choices you made?)
We decided to approach the task as a professional performance side. We had a range of options including different uses of indoor and outdoor shots with cartoon animations and real life shots.

What roles did the various people in the group take on ? Concentrate particularly on your role in the various activities.
Our singer was one of our group members Nicola. The 3 of us left just shared the rest of the roles, and helped each other out with different tasks.

Talk about any test footage you shot. What did you learn from doing these tests and from the animatic ?
We shot some test footage before we started filming to test out different shots so that we could work out how to shoot some of the shots. We learnt that we needed a lot of spotlight on our singer as she sang, otherwise the image was not clear enough on the computer.

Write about the shoot. What went well/badly ? what could you have done differently ?
Shooting went well and pretty much to plan. We went to Cherry Hinton Park and shot various scenes with our singer, and also some scenery. This day was surprisingly sunny and warm, so this made shooting easier and gave a better atmosphere. If we could do thing differently, I think we would have taken more time to go to different places in our shooting day.

Consider your early editing and how you reached the rough cut stage. Outline this process and discuss decision-making you undertook.
Once we had uploaded our footage to Final Cut, we watched it all the way through to see how it had turned out. We then tried to lip sink the whole sequence, and then just started cutting up all the shots, adding transitions and cutting from shot to shot.

What does the group feel about the rough cut ? what still needs to be done?
We felt that the rough cut looked really good, and it was a really good starting point in our editing. We got alot of good feedback which has helped us to realise what still needs to be done. We are still planning to film a few more shots, add in fades and dissolves etc.

ROUGH CUT FEEDBACK

We showed the rough cut on the big screen in our lesson. Our feedback is all positive, with some extra pointers which can help with our editing.

After watching it on the big screen we have noticed a few shots which are slightly out of sink, and we've also realized there are a few shakes in the filming which we will have to remove.

We still have a few extra things to film. We are planning on filming a few more scenery shots which we can use in the sequence in the instrumental parts. We are also going to film the girl on a bike, riding along to the song whilst singing. We are going to do this on Jesus Green in Cambridge, using Rowena's bike.

We are also going to add in effects such as dissolves, fades, and desaturated colours. We are also trying to use a cartoon effect, where we are going to shave stars floating around our singer as she sings, with other scenes with the singer in a cartoon world. She also is going to act like she is touching the stars etc.

We are also thinking about using the grand piano in some of our scenes, but we are having problems with booking the piano at an appropriate time.

MUSIC PRODUCTION CRITICAL EVALUATION: PART 1

>>> Due on Moodle by 9am Monday 20th October

MUSIC PRODUCTION CRITICAL EVALUATION
Part 1 should be about 1500 words in length and should consider the planning, shooting and editing to rough cut stage. You should make use of your blog as a reference point throughout! Where you refer to real examples for comparison, give web references and as much detail as possible e.g. artist/song and video director.

Introduction
Explain what task you did for the AS production and how this one differs from it.
(e.g. thriller/kids Tv)

Part One
Explain briefly how the work came about and what the tasks were.
(Talk about learning more techniques for final Cut, analysing some real music videos and looking at student examples,talk from promo director, music range of choices, etc)

Which band/artist did your group choose and why?
(give some positive reasons here)

How did you ‘pitch’ for them?
(summarise briefly)

Where did you get your ideas from? Cite actual examples as shown on your blog!

What tasks had to be done in the research and planning phase? How were these handled and what could have been done to improve them?
(talk about storyboarding, animatic, organising places, props, equipment, people)

How did the group come to decisions about approaches to the tasks to be completed? (what range of options did you consider and why did you opt for the choices you made?)

What roles did the various people in the group take on? Concentrate particularly on your role in the various activities.

Talk about any test footage you shot. What did you learn from doing these tests and from the animatic?

Write about the shoot. What went well/badly? what could you have done differently?

Consider your early editing and how you reached the rough cut stage. Outline this process and discuss decision-making you undertook.

What does the group feel about the rough cut? What feedback have you had from director/ other students etc? what still needs to be done?

ROUGH CUT!

HERE IS OUR ROUGH CUT; FEEDBACK WILL FOLLOW.

Editing

This is our final lesson to edit our rough cut, so far it is going well. However we have had some small problems with the lip syncing in that it keeps on jumping around, so that it is out of time and we have successfully managed to fix this problem, and now we are just putting together the different location shots to make it much more fluent.
Next week we are going to try and film a few extra locations to help make it more interesting and to have more variations. Our ideas for this is going to be Nicola riding a bike and singing, this would be a moving shot, to do this we have thought of some ideas these are;

• Using another bike with a camera attached to the back so we can achieve a moving shot,
  
• Another idea was to have Nicola riding slowly and someone can walk in front of her with the camera, therefore getting a variation of angles,
• Also a variation of the bike filming idea was to use a trolley but we feel that this could be to bumpy, causing shaky camera movement,
  
• We also thought of putting the camera into the basket that Nicola will be riding looking up at her, to have a close up shot showing facial expressions,
• We could also put the camera to the front of Nicola's bike and have a point of view shot of where she is going and what she can see, this could be useful for the musical parts of the song.

The location that we would like to use to film this would be in Jesus green, where the trees lean forward creating shadows, as this would fit in with the calm and tranquil atmosphere that we want to create with our music video.

Filming

These are some photo's of the locations we used a Cherry Hinton hall

We Filmed the first location on Sunday 28th September 08.
The location was Cherry Hinton Park which was a different location to our original idea, as we were inspired by the look and feel of the park. There were a lot autumn trees with leaves falling naturally which helped create the atmosphere we were after. We were fortunate enough to have good sunny weather which worked really well with creating the professional look.
Some shots we were lucky enough to get were the light shinning through trees, the reflection of the sun on the water, rippling of water over rocks and we were lucky enough to find a mini waterfall which helped to create a relaxing atmosphere fitting well with our song.
Our second location was the black room on college grounds, on the 6th October 08.
We filmed some footage but unfortunately it was unusable because the lighting was very poor because we didn't have the correct equipment, but luckily we were able to get some proper lighting which gave us the professional look.
Our 3rd location was punting on the river cam on the 6th October 08.
We had made plans to film to punting scenes on the 6th however due to timing issues we would have rushed the footage and would not have been as good as the other footage we shot.
We intend to re film this ASAP in time for the final cut.