Location, Props and Actors

As I am the director of the group it is my job to sort out locations, props and the actors within the video.

Props:
Gutair, mic, camera, camera stand, mic stand, chairs, drum kit,  

Locations:

Liverpool, music room, new Brighton promenade and the drama studio.

Actors:

Me, Will, Henry(guitarist) and my theatre class.

Group Meeting

In our group meeting this week we discussed what we needed to be able to make this video successful:

We need to make sure we are all punctual and attend lesson in order to actually be able to film the video

We also need to speak to people about acting within the video

We also need to think of new location and props.

New Idea

Since we can longer use the band we have decided that we can still use some of the footage that we were able to obtain. We are now using Will in our music video singing the original song we were going to use and someone else we know playing it on guitar so we don't have to start from scratch completely we are still using the majority of our ideas just not the same people.

Change of Plan

Due to unforeseen circumstances we can no longer use the band we were originally using can longer be part of our video as they were letting us down and were unable to fully commit to the times and dates we had set for them so we have to rethink our idea now

Template for Digipak

Before I went and created the digipak I decided I would first create a template on paper so I could get a clear idea of how I was going to design it. This what literally a really quick template I done.

Different Fonts for the Digipak

These are some of the fonts I have been looking at for my digipak.

I have chosen these fonts in particular because I really like the distorted look especially with the background I've chosen to go with because I quite like all of the texts I've decided that I'm going to create a digipak with each one of the fonts in and the decide at the end which one I like most.

Looking in to different backgrounds

I have been looking at different background for my digipak, these are what i have found.

These are some of the background I have looked at for my digipak album, I think I most prefer the last one because of it's distorted look it has and the background looks quite cracked.

Digipak

As I have no group at the moment and we are unable to discuss what the plans for the week ahead are I'm going to start looking in to the digipak album cover and the magazine cover as well. So completing my digipak is my priority this week.

Posts

Due to group absences over the past two week hardly anyone has been in so it has been hard to continue with work as the cameraman and the editor have both been off on numerous occasions these past few weeks so we have been unable to obtain any footage, so when we are all back in again we are going to have a group meeting and sort out everything.

Costume and Props

Costuming:
We have decided we will let the band just wear there normal clothes and remain casual as we don't really have a specific a theme when it comes to costume.

Props:
For our props we need a lot of photographs, a corkboard and instruments.

As I am in charge of costume and props it is my job to sort all of these out. For props there is a corkboard I can use within school so I'm going to take so pictures tomorrow, as for instruments the band already have all of their own instruments so I don't need to worry about sorting them out.

Schedule

Filming Schedule:

• Booking D2 for filming- 1/2 weeks away.
• The Plans- getting the band into school to perform 'Dreaming of you.' whilst we get the sound tech to record sound- Pending, awaiting band to tell us when they are free
• Play round with some more camera angles to see which suit, this will be a first draft run through.
• When we have decided what camera angles we are using we will then make a new cut.
• Look over the video and decided whether this is suitable for the beginning of our video.
• Whilst this is happening other bits of filming 2-3 weeks away.
• Editing, this will take more time than the rest but Chereece has been assigned to do the majority of the editing whilst me and Will assist.

Group Meeting

In our group meeting we have set ourself a deadline that we want to have all of our filming done and in place by the 20th December, we have all agreed that we work better and more on task when we set ourselves a deadline. The next thing that we need to sort out when all the band are available to be able to begin to properly start shooting the video and add the background story in. We have also said we are going to do some more filming this weekend and take more pictures for the magazine digipak.

Storyboard

This is our storyboard so far, the idea is that on the hardboard it will be covered in pictures of the memories. What we will do is zoom into an image and then we will show the memory, I think this will work really well.

Lyrics to song

It's up in my heart
When it skips a beat
Can't feel no pavement
Right under my feet

Up in my lonely room
When I'm dreaming of you
Oh, what can I do? I still need you
But I don't want you now

When I'm down and my hands are tied
I cannot reach a pen for me to draw the line
From this pain I just can't disguise
It's gonna hurt but I'll have to say goodbye

Up in my lonely room
When I'm dreaming of you
Oh, what can I do? I still need you
But I don't want you now

Up in my lonely room
When I'm dreaming of you
Oh, what can I do? I still need you
But I don't want you now

These are the lyrics for the song we have chosen, by looking at the lyrics we have decided that our idea of the photographs is a really good idea as it fits in brilliantly with the song.

Group Meeting

After studying the video footage we managed to obtain, we have decided what our story basis is going to be, we have decided to go with having a wall full of photographs and we are then going to zoom into a picture of a memory and then we will play the memory, the actual official video has a wall full of photographs but they don't zoom in on any of the pictures to show a memory at any point within the video.

After Filming

We went and watched the band at their gig on Friday and we managed to obtain footage of the song, this is all the footage that we got. I am pleased with all the footage that we got and I think there are really good shots that could be used in our final piece.

Group Meeting

Our group has had our group meeting has had our weekly group meeting, and we decided that we are going to watch the band again but this time get some actual footage so we can start getting a basis on what kind of storyline we want for the video and what the sound quality would be like if we were to record it straight from the videocamera.

Group Meeting

Me and Will came in to the group with notes we wrote whilst we were at the gig to present back. We came back to the group and showed the normal version of the song even though we are using the bands cover version. We had some technical errors with the Camera so we are unable to show any footage at the moment.

The Band

This is officially now our group logo.

We have also decided to use the song 'Dreaming of You' by The Coral as we felt that was the song they performed best. Me and Will went to their gig and watched them perform we are probably going to attempt to record some footage as a starting basis.

This is a picture of the band that we are using 'The Plans' these are a local band that we all know very well. We took this picture of them and felt it was a really good picture to use as it shows the whole band with their instruments.

Group Meeting

In this group meeting Chereece came back and showed us the three different logos that she had designed we all sat down and looked at the different logos. These are the logos:

These are the three logos Chereece brought back to us. We looked at each one. We looked at the first one and we said that we liked it but we didn't like the harp. I didn't really like the second one at all but we all agreed that we liked the third one as we felt it was simple but it worked really well.

We also decided that we were going to watch the band perform live this Friday and we will listen to their songs that they do and decide what we thought they done best and use that for our music video.

Deciding Group Roles

We have now chosen our group roles.

The director is responsible for the creative decisions in the group, also for deciding and arranging the locations, camera angles. In our group I am the director, each week I arrange the times of our group meetings, book out the equipment and set up the locations.

The musical director is responsible for the recording of the music and the quality of the sound. Will has been used as our music director, Will is also our camera man because he is better when it comes to working with the camera and he is really good at using different camera angles.

The editor is responsible for editing the piece and creating the digipak. Chereece has been appointed for this role as we felt the editing work would be better with her.

Deciding Groups

We have now got to the group deciding stage. My group consists of three people Me, Will and Chereece, we have decided that we will share the different roles in the group so we would all have equal roles. We have also decided that we are going to do a music video and we are going use a band that we know to feature in the video.

My conclusion

For me personally I would prefer to do this first brief:
A promotion package for the release of an album, to include music promo video, together with two of the following three options:

• A website homepage for the band
• A digipak for the album's release
• A magazine advertisement for the digipak

I have decided I would prefer to do this because it would be the most beneficial for our group due to the resources we have in the group it would be wasteful if we didn't use the resources. If we were to go with creating a magazine advertisement we have all had previous experience with them last year in our AS media coursework.

Examples for Brief 4

A promotion package for a new computer/video game, to include two TV advertisements together with two of the three options:

• The cover of the game's package
• Two hyperlinked pages from the games website
• A magazine advertisement for the game

I have chosen to look at the computer/video games brief because I know it would be extremely difficult to make a video game due to all the different animations that it needs but I wanted to research into it a little bit more.

I have chosen the first one because I like all of the different shots that have been added in, I also like all the different animation shots and effects that have been put into place. This is a really good trailer despite all the gun crime. It would be extremely difficult to try and create something of this level of quality.

I have chosen the second one because I really like the introduction into the beginning of it because it shows all the kind of different emotions that it shows at a real football game. I also liked how it changed for a real scenario into the fiction football game that is FIFA.

I have selected the third one because I think its visually amazing to look at and all of the different effects that have been used within it are amazing.

It would be so difficult to create a video game because all the animation and different affects that we would have to add in it would be extremely time consuming.

Examples for Brief 2

A promotion package for a new film, to include a trailer, together with two of the following three options

• A website homepage for the film.
• A film magazine front cover, featuring the film.
• A poster for the film

The reason I think the film task of making a trailer is good for our group is that there are certain elements and technical skills that are needed on software such as iMovie that you need to be able to create and our group have previous experience with iMovie and we know how to use the software.

These are the three trailers I have decided to look at.
I like the first one because the trailer mainly consists of two person shots and they are quite close up as well which would be really easy to re-create and make use of because they have used really up close shots it allows the target audience to get a real feel of the actors and it engages the audience.

I have chosen the second one because I like all the action shots that are included in it and I like all the different locations that have been used as well. I also like all the editing shots that have been added in as well, I think they're all really effective. If we were to recreate or use this as a basis it would be quite difficult due to the scenery but we could always add backdrops.

I have chosen the last one because it shows a story throughout all the other films and shows that this is the final one. I like all the costumes and props that are used in this. I really like the locations that have been used within this and all the affects have been used are amazing. We probably wouldn't be able to recreate this due to all the action shots.

Examples for Brief 1

1) A promotion package for the release of an album, to include a music promo video, together with two of the following three options:

• A website homepage for the band
• A digipak for the album's release
• A magazine advertisement for the digipak.

The reason I think that this would be a good task for our group is there are certain elements you need to be able to create a music video and some peoples talents in our group would allow us to do so. 

I think this would be a really good task for our group as one of our group members is a musician and creates his own music so this would prove really useful to us if we were to select this option as he can create his own music and can re-record other pieces of music.

These are some music videos I have looked at because of some of the shots, angels and editing work:

These are the three videos I have looked at.

I have selected the first videos because I really like all the shots that have been put in to place with all different angels, it also wouldn't be that complex to make either as it literally just consists of a series of different shots. I also like the different patterned backgrounds in the video whilst the shots where taking place and the way the background rotated.

The second video is a lot more complex than the other two this would be a lot more complex and extremely difficult to make due to all the different dancing we could possibly look at using a dancer at our school to attempt to recreate the video but the moves are extremely difficult, I selected this video because it shows a story and I would like it if we could try and create a story within a music video if we were to chose it.

The third video is really simple it uses basic simple movements but it looks really effective. I like the way the video looks at the different music instruments and shows them being played this is really effective and despite it not being as complex as the other to video I think this one could be a contender as to what we would base our music video on if we were to select it.

Looking at Briefs

We were presented with 14 different briefs and we were told to look at the briefs and select at least three. We all looked at the briefs on our own and then decided we would come back as a group and discuss the briefs.

The briefs I selected where
1) A promotion package for the release of an album, to include a music promo video.
2) A promotion package for a new film, to include a trailer.
4) A promotion package for a new computer/video game to include two TV advertisements.

I have selected these three because I think these would be the more easier to do out of the 14 due to the resources and the equipment.

Finished Prelimb task

This is our finished pre limb product.

Editing

After we filmed our piece we had to begin editing we used the software iMovie to add in our editing work. We looked at different effects and decided what effects would look good with the different effects. We also looked at the different motions and applied one that showed the water being thrown back into the bucket rather than onto Will. We also had to add the music over the shots but because we didn't use the opening 25 seconds of the song we had to cut down the song.

Filming

Before we began filming we had to deign our storyboards so we could plan where we were going to be placing our shots. We had to plan where our shots were going to be taking place. Our different locations were around the school, we chose the hall, outside the hall and then in the entry by school. We used different camera angles such as close ups, mid shots and an over the shoulder shot. We also used different props such as red dye, a bucket, a lighter and a jacket. 

Looking at short movies

We decided to go with making a short music video. We looking at different songs we chose two in particular that we looked and used for the piece. We looked at several videos but these two where the best for what we wanted to create. The first one was the one that influenced our piece. The second one was what influenced the editing and the different motions we added later on.

Pre Limb task

Our task was to make a short movie based on a real media product such as a a film trailer, music video etc. We then decided on groups and group roles.
My group was Will, Jason and Chereece. We were all assigned different roles. I was given the role of the director, Will was an actor in the piece and also in charge of making sure we had the correct props. Jason filmed the majority of the piece but he was also in certain points of the piece so Will would take over the camera. Chereece also appeared in the piece and she was also in charge of making sure we had all the correct props.