Organising Filming

So for the last bit of filming I needed to get my two actors back,  the quickest and easiest way to tell them about my filming plans was through chat on Facebook.

Here is a screen grab of my latest post to them about filming tomorrow.

Planning the Last bit of Filming

Over the weekend I have been planning what to do for the last bit of my music video filming as the footage I initially wanted to use for the green screen section doesn't work. Therefore I still need to do filming for the green screen and for some layering near the end of the music video, which will be cut to the beat of the music. Here I will have the couple at home now, cooking and hanging out like a normal couple to show him reflecting on the 'good times'.

Band Websites -Steeling Sheep

Listening to the radio last night my songs band, Alt-J, were being interviewed and had taken over the station for an hour or two choosing songs that they liked. I found this insightful as they played songs that were of a similar genre of music. One group was Stealing Sheep, of which Alt-J have played with on a number of occasions. The reason this was insightful was because it meant I could look at a relevant groups website, looking at features from a band within a similar genre.

The website is very basic, but there are features that I can take away and try to use within my own design.

The site has a side panel that has features for the audience to follow the group on a number of different social networks, it also includes quick play of the groups latest songs. 

The site has a more of a blog feel about it with images of band posters, pictures and CD covers.
Here is the website link, http://stealingsheep.co.uk/

Photoshop Trial

I began to practice editing my images for the auxiliary task of digi pack and band website. I started with an image of a rustic boat, but have to remove and replace the writing and some people that are in the scene, by the left side of the boat. The image was taken during filming, it fits into the theme of the music video and the theme I am going to base the album called 'Ocean Noise'.

Before editing

 After editing

I like the location of the text on the boat, however I will try to give it the effect of actually being printed onto the boat as for me at the moment I don't think it looks as realistic. Although the sans serif font used does look very good and in keeping with the style of the band.

iStopMotion

I practiced using iStopMotion to see how fluid I could get the movement of the sheep and to also test the quality of the camera as I will have to use one of the old tape cameras. The result of my trial is above, the quality of this stop motion is quite poor and would not only limit the editing of the video but would not fit in to the rest of the bedroom film sequence. For this reason I will be using my cannon 1100D to take the pictures as it will give a much higher quality picture. However I will still set up the iStopMotion, to use the Onionskin effect which will allow me to adjust the sheep seeing where the object was before so the movement isn't to extreme.

Issue with Editing

I have reached a bit of an issue with with editing my video. I had hoped to use the light leaks or sun burn effect on the dream stage of the music video, but the feature was not available to use on the Macs at school. So I then intended to download software on my home laptop, edit in my home laptop then put the edit piece of film together on final cut at school. This plan has fallen through as my laptop is either unable to use the software or has an incompatible operating system. I will try and use Final Cut Express at school to give an effect close to that I desire, however an alternative effect may have to be used.

Surveys

To work out what to include in my own music video survey I used an example questionnaire and made changes where I thought the questionnaire had a fault whether it was unclear or just unnecessary. The main issue I found with the questionnaire was when it cam to answering the question, to often the boxes were to limiting, with many questions requiring multiple answers. Such as question six 'What type of 'gizmosz' do you own?', it is more than likely that the audience will have more than just one of the forms of technology listed. Another problem with this question is it's highly informal using a sociolect term such as 'gizmo' may confuse the audience if they do not know what it means and put them off from answering the question reliably or at all.

The example questionnaire also asks what does the audience 'expect too see in a music video'. This is a reasonable question as the feeedback will determine the nature of the music video and whether it's a concept, narrative or performance. Yet, including options like, drugs, sex and alcohol is not necessary as I would be unable to include these in my music video.

Unfortunately the survey site SurveyMonkey, that I used, only allows questionnaires to be ten questions long, so I am having to split the survey in to two. The first asking about music genres and purchasing and the second to be on music identity and content.

To get people to fill out my surveys I will post the survey on my blog and on Twitter, I will also email it to people that have agreed to fill the survey out but do not have a way of accessing my blog or Twitter. 

Create your free online surveys with SurveyMonkey, the world's leading questionnaire tool.

Create your free online surveys with SurveyMonkey, the world's leading questionnaire tool.

Final Cut Express Effects

Yesterday I went for a walk and practised using my camera for filming, to get use to using the camera and its functions. And also to practice using the effects in Final Cut Express, the program I will be using to edit my music video. Below are a series of effects that I applied to the video, to work out which if any effects suited the style I'm aiming for. This is particularly important as the school Mac's have Final Cut Express, this version does not have the light leaks effect that I was hoping to use.

Costumes

I have decided to go for a vintage look for my character in the music video I feel this look fits in well with the music genre, and the video.

The collage of images shows a variety of styles. For the main character the retro theme involves rustic heavy boots, worn jeans or chinos, a knitted jumper (some times christmas themed) and heavy coats, like the duffle coat. Accessories include a thick knitted scarf, retro shades and old school leather watches.
The tweed look turned up a lot when searching for the male character vintage look, this look is to sophisticated for the style that I'm going for, as is the more formal blazer look.

For the girlfriend character the vintage look takes a lot of inspiration from the 60's and 70's. Although a lot of the styles I looked at were more link to summer weather, I'll incorporate the knitted jumper and a stylistic vintage coat and scarf to make the costume appropriate for the season I'm filming in.





http://www.theatticpeople.co.uk/womens-vintage-clothing-archive-ebay I found this website really useful when deciding the costume of my woman character.


http://loveclothing-blog.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/street-styles-celebrities-like-love.html This site was also useful showing the retro fashion with men and women.

Making the Sheep

Last night I started making my felt sheep for the stop motion animation part of my music video.  I have the basic body shapes, now I just need to assemble them. I have made them bigger then in the additional test of stop motion, which you can see as an older post. This is because the shot isn't going to be as close so for the sheep to be actually visible they needed to be larger.

Shot list

Here is my shot list which includes a brief description of the type, action and props to be used.

Storyboards

Here is my storyboard for my music video, it has the; shot type, movements and location as well as a visual representation - of which is hand drawn.

Online Location Scouting

I decided to start looking at which beaches I could realistically use in my music video for the dream phase of the video. I used the well known search engine Google.co.uk with a broad search of beaches in Suffolk. I looked at a couple of sites, the most helpful being suffolktouristguide.com. The site listed a number of beaches such a Lowestof and Southwold. However after looking more closely at the suggested beaches I decided to go for Aldeburgh beach.


Aldeburgh beach and town has a set of features that I wanted to include in my music video, these features are typical to the British rural town but are being seen less and less. Fortunately Aldebrugh still hold onto these idyllic features with its; cottages, brightly painted housing, traditional corner shops and




Although I have visited Aldebrugh a number of times I still wanted to have a look at the location, to decide upon possible areas which would be good to use. Rather than actually visiting the location, which is some distance away, I used Google maps. The reason for using Google maps is because it has the feature of 'street view', where you are actually at street level giving a better representation of the location.

The first shot is of a stretch of beach that has partially been vegetated, this section of beach has a footpath through it linking Aldeburgh to the next beach town, Thorpneas. This location will be useful for my music video as I am planning of having a lot of shots with the couple waking through idilic beach locations. For the same reason the next shot of the beach will also be useful, not only can I have the couple walking on the actual beach, but on the path that runs along it. This means that I will be able to show both aspects of the English beach, the buildings and the actual beach.

 The main town has been relatively untouched by tourism, unlike other British beaches, such as Lowestof. This is why it is so perfect as the setting for my music video. The shops that run along the street are either boutiques or higher market retailers (such as Joules). These stores are broken up with the traditions fish and chip shop, beach cafes/restaurants or housing. I am particularly fond of the housing and think it will give my music video character during the 'dream state'.

Stop Motion - First Attempt

I decided to practice the stop-motion animation shots of my sheep as not only do I need to plan the movement of the sheep and their fluidity, but I also have to work with iMovie to edit the stills together.

This is my initial stop-motin attempt, it includes all of the shots taken. The only problem is that the sheep appears to be walking along the back-board of the bed, whereas it should be jumping. To alter the motion of the sheep I deleted some of the stills taken.

In this version I have only deleted some miner movements or duplicates of the sheep. This gives the sheep better movement and a judderyness I was aiming for, yet it still appears to be walking rather than jumping.  

Finally I deleted major sections of stills, it has created a movements that is slightly to quick for what I was aiming for. But has helped as I now know for my final piece that this type of movement is not right. I will be using a pace closer to the second edit, and make the sheep jump three times over the characters head rather than the initial one jump that appears to be more of a walk. 

Music Video Plan, PowerPoint

Alt j, dissolve me from panayimedia

Mind Map of My Music Video - Alt-J, Dissolve Me

Here is a mind map of my initial ideas for the music video, some points suggested I am unsure about and will have to tweak during later planning stages.

Class Feedback

I presented my song in class today to get some feedback on my song choice, and ideas to help me with for the music video.After playing my song through the class gave their feedback and notes on the song, I wasn't quite prepared for the variety of ideas and concepts that were said. With other songs that were played before mine, people could see the same themes within a song whether is be location, characters or an editing style. Yet with mine their were no real links with peoples suggestion.

So the ideas;
People dancing, and a lot of them! This was the only suggestion which more than one person put down. However there is subtle changes with each individuals idea, not least the settings for this mass group dance sesh to take place. The first idea was to have the setting at night at the beach. I think this idea could be developed upon further as you could add a bonfire, which the group could be dancing round. Using the fire as light will create atmosphere with the way it lights up people and the shadows it would project.

Another idea which came from have a group of dancers was to have them dressed in different costumes, the suggested costumes were; aliens, dogs, cats, fish, tigers, cows and teapots. And to have the video with slow and fast paced editing. I like this idea of have the group in costumes as it plays on the bands unique and quirky style.

The final idea which suggested having dancers was the idea of having a mature boat party, that was more fun than crazy. The party would take part at night, an in the slower parts of the song, known as the 'ohh bit' there could be a shot of the stars. The narrative was  of a boy liking a girl who doesn't like him, yet he gets her in the end. At the end of the video we would see him waking up with her the next morning. Again a good idea that works well with the song, however it is not the most achievable because of getting a boat. However, the narrative of boy and girl is something I intend to use too.

The next thought from a classmate was to have the video oriental themed, in particular they said; Chinese, China town and Chinese lanterns. I can see from where they are coming from, with the intro and other parts of the song sounding a little oriental, however getting Chinese actors may prove to be a challenge. Yet the other part of the suggestion, to have the video jump in and out of dreams was something I had previously thought to use.

One suggestion was to have a sci-fi theme to the video, and deliberately use 'bad' stop motion animation. Elements like; poorly coloured backgrounds, string or hands shown, spaceship bumps into parts of the setting. In the end in turns out to be a child's sci-fi film. A good idea and I like the idea of using stop motion, I will try to incorporate this into my music video though may not have it deliberately bad.

Another suggestion was to have a man walking down an unusually long corridor, with photos of his past on the walls. As he walks down the corridor he stops, every now and then, and looks at a photo and it goes into that memory. Then at the end of the corridor there is the girl (that he may be seeing in the memories). I really like this idea of looking back over memories with a person, though I am not sure if I will end the recollecting quite so nicely.

The final suggestion was to have a split screen showing the lives of two similar characters, and at the slower acoustic bit of the song their lives are shown going in different direction. One will have a great day the other, not so much. It may be as simple as one forgetting their keys at home, but it sets the rest of their day back and could ruin it. I like this idea in particular having a split screen to show the lives of the two men, I think it will show my skill well and there is so much I could show with one being successful and the other not.