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FILMING PROCESS 31/10/17

FILMING PROGRESS 31/10/17

This morning I was free to go and film the shots I needed of the castle for the opening of my music video. The weather was slightly gloomy but not too dark and not too bright, which is what I was hoping for. This was to give the opening a tense atmosphere and set the scene.

 

I used my Canon 100D to film, I took my 28-55mm lens and my 75-300mm lens, tripod and my own detachable track, I took the track so that I could get slow panning shots of the castle and ensure that they were steady.

 

The only problem that I encountered was that the gates to the castle were not open due to preparing for an occasional event, but this meant I was able to get shots utilising the gates at the foot of the castle to give a sense on entrapment.

 

I am yet to record both performance aspects of my video, the dancers need one more session to finish and recap choreography.

I intend to film with my main character as soon as possible as she is due for an operation on her ankle in the coming month.

AUDIENCE FEEDBACK

AUDIENCE FEEDBACK

 

Before creating my digipack, I asked my peers which of the photographs I should use for my front cover. The responses were a mix between the second and third photograph. After reading the reasons, I picked the second photograph (the skull) as I preferred the composition of it.

 

“I like the second picture because the skull is centred and it will be easier to write around”

 

“The crown falling off the skull is effective as it gives an uneasy feeling”

 

It was picked up on that my casting was all female which lacks diversity however after relaying my message of female empowerment, it began to make sense to them.

 

After mentioning I will feature the dancers, I was asked how I am going to make it obvious that they link to the storyline, this is when I decided that they would wear the tiaras to link them to the royal figure.

 

After creating my initial digipack cover:

 

After the front cover of my digipack was set out, I presented two designs to my peers and asked them which they preferred. They preferred the version with the writing framed in the centre rather than the version with the writing around the edges.

 

“The first version centres the image and draws the attention straight to the skull.”

“The writing in the first version is smaller and all in one place, whereas in the second one it is in two separate places and is very sharp.”

“The lightning is more subtle on the first version and the deeper purple contributes to the atmosphere”

In response to my feedback, I used Photoshop to overlay the lightning instead of changing the opacity, this made the purple and pink contrast darker and therefore gloomier.

 

After seeing my final cover design:

 

Whilst experimenting on Photoshop, I tested out the shadow effects and found a grain effect. I changed the width of it to match the shape and it looked like one thick box, so I changed the shadow to white which made it look like two boxes instead. I preferred this because it made the shape stand out, so I did the same to the second shape.

To contribute to this, I tried changing the text to black and give it a white shadow. It only worked with the one, however I changed the alternate text to white and gave it a black shadow. The alternating colours created a pattern and it looked really effective.

 

My peers agreed that this was a lot better than my original two designs and somebody suggested spacing out the letters in the writing. In the end, my peers agreed that my final outcome looked very effective and linked together well.

 

 

MUSIC VIDEO INITIAL IDEAS AND SONGS

MUSIC VIDEO INITIAL IDEAS & SONGS

I have two main ideas for my A2 Music Video. It is between Emma Blackery’s “Don’t Come Home” and Halsey’s “Castle”. I have quite a few ideas for both of these songs and wrote them out to see which would be most successful.


The initial idea I had for "Don't Come Home" was two teenagers in the middle of an argument. One of the friends storms out of the room and the singer is left alone, the video consists of flashbacks throughout their friendship and what was going wrong.

I found that Halsey’s “Castle” had more realistic ideas and things I was capable to do rather than “Don’t Come Home”. The latter would have required a large cast, several days of filming and organising and various location settings. The message I came up with for “Castle” inspired me more and I was more creative with coming up with those ideas, rather than going directly by the lyrics.



EDITING PROCESS

EDITING PROCESS

 

To Edit my A2 Music Video, I used Adobe Premiere Pro, which I used in my AS work to create the opening of my Horror film ‘PLAY’. I decided to use this again as I am familiar with the software and will be able to explore it further than I did previously.
I also chose to use Adobe Premiere Pro to edit instead of any other software because I was able to access Adobe Premiere Pro from home, meaning that I could avoid problems such as time limits and storage limits that I had previously encountered when using the Sixth Form computers.

 

The first thing that I needed to do when editing was to upload the footage from the SD card to my computer. I then had to import this footage to Adobe Premiere Pro. I did this by dragging the video files from the folder they had been saved to on the computer into the import space on Adobe Premiere.

 

The most important aspect is the song itself, I saved an mp4 version of the song and then dragged that into the import space, then I had to drag that onto the editing timeline. As there is a quiet gap at the beginning of the song, I had to cut down some of the beginning and choose where I wanted the song to start. As the mp4 file also contained video, I had to lock the audio track in place on the Audio 1 line on the timeline and then select the video and delete it, then unlock the audio line.

 

In order to be more creative in my editing compared to last year, I researched how to use certain effects and experimented with settings I hadn’t used before. A prime example of this is the shot of my main character walking towards the castle, there is an RGB effect flicking around her as she walks, this required me to create multiple layers and change corresponding channel colours.

 

I also experimented with a glitch effect, this was because of key moments at the start of the song that sound like static noises. This also required several layers and moving the different layers to alternative sides.

 

Like last year, I used the ‘Fast Colour Corrector’ feature. Last year, I was rather unsuccessful using this feature as my outcome came out far too blue, so this time I was more careful with the colours I chose and the intensity of these colours. As my video was quite fairy-tale like, I decided to go for a faint pink on the corrector, and as it was sunny when I filmed, the colours reflected nicely and the colouring was a lot more subtle.

 

Part of the way through editing, I noticed a lot of my shots were middle or long shots, so to give a range of shots, I zoomed in on some of the clips. Even though the outcome was slightly grainy, I felt that it would be best to include this variation and the grain was not the worst it could have been.

 

 

FILMING PROCESS 29/11/17

FILMING PROCESS 29/11/17

During the morning I was able to film with my main character. We went early in the morning so I was able to film as the sun began to rise, I intentionally did this due to the colours in the sky adding to the fairy-tale like effect.

 

We spent a few hours out by the castle and fortunately the gates were open this time, so we were able to go right up to the doors and the viewing area. The inside of the castle itself was not open to the public, however we did not intend to go inside as it is paid entry and I did not require any indoor shots.

 

The plan is to edit what I have of my main character into the timeline to ensure that we have enough choreography to cover the rest of the track. If not, I need to meet with the dancers again to fill in the gaps. Until then, I will continue to work on my print artefacts.

 

 

COSTUME PLAN

COSTUME PLAN

Dancers:

 

• Plain black leggings
• Plain black leotard or tank top
• White button up shirt (undone)
• White trainers
• Hair half up and half down
• Silver tiaras

 

This plan is suitable for my dancers because if it is cold, they are fairly covered up and they will not overheat if it happens to be a warm day. This costume links to my video idea because it represents the two as royal figures but in casual clothing. This is to connote that they are normal people who want to lead normal lives and not be trapped by the controlling ways within the royal circle.

 

• Burgundy dress (skirt I flows to knee length)
• Jazz shoes
• Hair half up half down
• Tiaras

 

This plan will only be suitable if the weather is nice, otherwise the dancers will be too cold and could potentially pull a muscle whilst dancing. I want the dancers to wear jazz shoes because I do not want them having bare feet because we are definitely filming outside so there are large risks of them cutting up their feet.

 

Main Character:

 

• I want my main character to be wearing casual clothes
• Black jeans
• Black cape
• Black shoes
• Gold crown
• Light coloured jumper

 

This costume will be suitable for my main character no matter what the weather is like, she will not be too warm or too cold. She could potentially catch the cape on sharp corners or get it dirty, however I will check before each shot that it is not wrecked.