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.