Footage from London

Using iMovie, I edited together the raw footage and removed the ambience.

Shooting in South Bank

Unfortunately the trip that we had arranged to London on 16th October was too technically difficult to arrange. Recently, whilst I was visiting London I had a short window of opportunity to get some footage of South Bank.

I used my Canon 550D using both a kit lens and a Canon EF-S 55-250mm.

The location was really fitting as you could see many recognisable London attractions such as the London eye, St Pauls cathedral, the Houses of Parliament and of course the River Thames. Of course I couldn't shoot Charlotte however I got several shots of busy streets and urban settings.

I also really liked how in many shots I managed to combine urban and natural elements which could be really interesting for our video.

Also, on South Bank there was a Carousel which could link to the childish theme in our video where the band have stick fights and play with toy bow and arrows.

Projections

Following the set design and lighting meeting, we decided that it could be a good idea so project either London or woodland imagery onto the torso of our lead.

Here are some images which demonstrate our idea:

We think that this could add a really interesting element to our video, it was advised that if our lead was uncomfortable not wearing anything on this chest that he could wear a plain white T-shirt instead.

Lighting and Set design meeting

In our lesson we worked with a lighting director and set designer, we pitched to them our concept so they were able to guide us with their expertise on how we should go about making the video.

Set design

Firstly we talked to a set designer called Jacqueline, who praised everything that we had so far. She suggested for the studio shoot to have one black background and one white to add more diversity to the setting. For the white background we will add projections over the top of the band and for the black background we will arrange dried leaves around the band and their instruments to link to the woodland setting. This reminded us of a video which was created by some students last year where there were feathers falling onto the band.

Unfortunately she won't be able to help us in the woodland setting but we did discuss just really paying attention to detail in all areas of that shoot.


Lighting

When talking to the lighting director Jack, he put it simply that we only really need basic studio lighting whilst shooting in the studio using redheads and blondies. This was perfectly understandable for us as the main focus of the video is the woodland. Similarly to Jacqueline Jack won't be there to advise us in the woods but this doesn't really affect us as the woods during the day will be using natural lighting and the woods during the night will be lit by the projections. We did also say though, that we wanted soft red or blue lights during the night shoot to make to setting more atmospheric.

Things for the boys to do in woods

After visiting the woods and creating our animatic storyboard it coon became apparent that we need to have a better idea about what the boys are actually doing in the woods.

Whilst thinking about this myself I came up with two lists of what the band could be doing together in the woods and also individually.

Band
1) Throwing mud a each other
2) Stick fight
3) Collectively sat around fire
4) Nodding heads to the beat of the music
5) Firing bow and arrow at lead

Individuals
1) Sat in tent sharpening a stick (add knife to prop list)
2) In armchair drinking from can
3) Firing a bow and arrow whilst sat in a tree
4) Probing fire with a stick
5) Sat in armchair combing hair (add comb)
6) Drumming the side of a tree
7) Climbing a tree/jumping down from a tree
8) Putting mud 'army stripes' on face (bring water to make mud)
9) Playing with the objects hanging from the tree
10) Drinking from mug in tent (add mug)
11) Rolling Cigarette

Feedback from animatic storyboard

We showed some of our peers our animatic storyboard with the aim to gain some advice for the real shoot.

Feedback 1:

Do you understand the narrative/concept? 
Yes I fully understand the narrative. I like how you have added a girl character which makes it more interesting as it doesn't just focus on the band. 

Is your a star obvious?
Yes your band are very obvious.

Does it flow well as an edit and an idea? 
Yes it flows well, however I feel like you can slow down the shots they don't need to be as fast. I like how we see a variety of shots though.

Is it too repetitive? 
Not at all. As your idea is very simplistic it is very engaging to watch.

Does the style work with the genre? 
Yes the style works with the genre. I love how it is set in a forest, I also love the fairy lights I feel like this makes it really fascinating to watch. I love how the band are ‘lost boys’ this works really well and I think when its done it will be really good.

From this piece of feedback we are very confident about our idea, the feedback especially praises our 'lost boys' concept which we very happy about.

The animatic

Our group created an animatic story board. Typically in the film industry, the storyboarding stage may be followed by simplified mock-ups called "animatics" to give a better idea of how the scene will look and feel with motion and timing. At its simplest, an animatic is a series of still images edited together and displayed in sequence with rough dialogue and/or rough soundtrack added to the sequence of still images to test whether the sound and images are working effectively together.  This allows the directors to work out any screenplay, camera positioning, shot list and timing issues that may exist with the current storyboard. The storyboard and soundtrack are amended if necessary, and a new animatic may be created and reviewed with the director until the storyboard is perfected. Editing the film at the animatic stage can avoid animation of scenes that would be edited out of the film.


Here is the final product:

We are very pleased with the result as the edit flows very nicely and is representative of our vision.

We are now showing our peers the animatic with the aim to gain some feedback.


Yet as a group we did make some immediate observations regarding our idea. Firstly, we noticed that we will need more close ups in the studio section of the video, to vary the shot types to make the video more interesting for the viewer. We also came to the realisation that in the woods we wont have the technology for our lead to lip-sync due to the limited power supply, this makes the lack of close ups a more pressing issue for us. Another point was that when we were making the storyboard we weren't entirely sure about when or how we were going to introduce the fairy girl to the narrative, so this will be something that we'll need to further discuss.

Editing the animatic storyboard

We edited the footage of the storyboards using Adobe premier pro. We were advised my our teachers to put markers on the timeline against the track, whenever we wanted a change of shot, to quicken the editing process. We consistently went back and forth change the storyboard shots making sure that they all matched up correctly with he markers so the edit flowed with the beat of the song. We made sure not to cut on the regular beat otherwise the video would become repetitive and predictable for the viewer watching; hence we cut the edit on both the beats and in more random places to make the edit a little bit more interesting for the viewer. I think this is really important for video as there are many visual elements that we want to encapsulate.

Change of cast?

Although we are very happy overall with yesterdays results, we are considering swapping Rory for someone else as he didn't turn up to our audition session so we really unsure about still casting him in the video due to his lack of enthusiassm. Moreover he does not come from an acting or musical theatre background so we are doubting whether he'll be appropriate for the video.

After discussing within our group we came to the conclusion that another AS boy called Charlie Ridgeway could be perfect for the role as he has the 'right look' of long-ish blonde hair and he comes from a musical theatre background.

Since we have been discussing with our tutors about the possibility of swapping at this late date.

Hopefully we will be successful in doing so, since we have been in contact with Charlie and he is actually available on the 16th November which is promising.  

Confirmed cast and shoot day!

Today we found out our finalised cast and shoot day.

We will be shooting on 16th November.
Meaning we will have to build the set on the previous Friday.
We are really pleased that the day is still a little while away as it'll give us more time to collate props and also give us more opportunity to film in London prior to the shoot day, as last Friday proved to be too technically difficult to arrange.

...And our cast is comprised of:

1. Charlotte McGee
2. Ashen Page
3. Rory Browne
4. Jonty Harrison
5. Alec Herritier

                

 

We are all really pleased about these findings and are excited to start production!

Our teacher Mike emailed the cast to ensure their availability as it is VITAL that they are completely free on the day as there is no negotiation surrounding the shoot day.

Shooting the animatic

Taking our storyboards, we shot a 10 second video of each frame in preparation for an animatic storyboard. An animatic storyboard is used in the industry to give a better idea of how the scene will look and feel with motion and timing.

Trying to go to Radnor

India kindly emailed Al and Elizabeth, who are in the props and wardrobe department at our school, to see if we could get access to one of the school's buildings which contains the costume department. If we are successful it would be great as we wouldn't have to spend the time and money buying new clothes for our cast.

Elizabeth responded by telling us that we were welcome to borrow some of the schools resources, she asked us to send her some images of our ideas so she could see our vision to then collate some appropriate pieces.

I thought that we could send her some of my moodboard images:

Legal permission to use track

Identifying he tracks copywrite holder, we comprised an email seeking permission to use the track 'Away Frm U'.

To Inflated Records,

We are a group of A Level students working on an A Level project for a qualification in Media Studies. We are writing to request permission to use the following track as part of this project:

‘Away Frm U’ by Oberhofer

With your permission the track would be used as the accompaniment to a short form video that is made purely for assessment purposes and will have no commercial usage. The video will be viewed only by members of the school community and the assessor of the examination board.

The artist and the copyright holder will of course be fully recognised in the pre-production and evaluation material that accompanies the project. We can also include a full copyright notice if required both in the planning material and on the video itself.

Yours sincerely,

Francesca Parisi, Sasha Ward Smith, India Raniolo and Phoebe Belli
Hurtwood House School 

Visit from Polydor Records

In class we had two guest speakers, Hannah and Emily, who were both from Polydor records (part of the Universal group), to talk to us about the process of making music videos. They were both from the video commission department in Polydor, a small department comprised of 3 people who oversee the whole process of music video production. They explained that there are other similar departments including digital and press departments, though in recent years these departments have crossed over due to the reduction of physical magazines etc.

Some of their artists:

Pre-production

The label often has a relationship with the artist so doesn’t have to seek artists. Once the department has received a track from the artist, they will talk with the artist discussing the video. They talk about things such as how literal the video is, the location (set/studio), narrative, what to avoid etc. On occasion the artist will have a clear vision of their video making the video brief very specific. The department will then search for directors either from production agencies or seek individuals, the department will often take risks by contacting new talent especially if it is a low budget non-commercial production. Once the department has found 5 to 10 suitable directors, they will send them the brief, the more specific the brief the fewer directors would be contacted. The directors would send back a treatment and the department would select the strongest ideas but the artist would have the final say on the director.

Treatment

The women gave us some examples of treatments, they explained the structure of brief, concept, references. The examples had lots of visual imagery to help the artist quickly understand the ideas behind the video.

They gave us the example of the ‘Years and Years’ video of 'King', which had a budget of around £20-40,000. The video had a large performance element so it really helped that the lead singer came from a acting background. They explained that they used different visual elements during the chorus, such as the water scene, to engage the viewer for the whole duration of the video.

Budget

The women explained that the budget is forecasted by sales of the artist’s previous work; music videos can range from £2,000 to £200,000; more popular commercial artists have a much larger budget, for instance Taylor Swift’s ‘Bad Blood’ music video had a budget of $1 million. They said that they enjoy working on low budget productions, as there is less pressure on the video so they can take more risks.

Overview

They said that their job is effectively “micro managing” the whole process, as they are responsible for deadlines and asking for the storyboards, shot lists, casting references etc. so everything and everyone is ready on the day of the shoot. Their job is also to make sure everyone involved is on the same page of the vision and process. It was explained that the video has a 6 week turn around, 1 week prep for the video, a 1 to 2 day shoot and a 1 week edit before the edit is sent back to them for their conformation. There is often two different edits of the video, one for TV the other for online release as there is much more censorship on TV. The release is often dependent on the marketing scheme as it is important for management to compare the industry competition.

Vevo

Once the edit is confirmed, the video is most likely uploaded onto Vevo as the label has a relationship with the platform; this is very typical for very commercial artists who generate the most money. Vevo is used as it often boosts the view count due to the banners and advertisements that they create.

Hairstyles

After thinking about the cast's costumes I felt the need to create mood boards for their hairstyles as it was something that we hadn't yet considered.

The Band:

I thought that the band could all have really messy hair to fit in with the earthy natural theme of the video. I also found some images of hairstyles which were braided, I thought this could be a really interesting thing that we could do adding to the stylish element of the video- appealing to our young audience.

The girl:

 As we always wanted a girl with long hair I found some images of messy but braided long hair which I think could work really well with the video due to the natural setting, moreover this would correspond with the boys hairstyles if they were also braided.

Alternatively I found some images of braided updos which could also work really well as an alternative, to avoid the cliche of 'long flowing hair' or possibly if we had a change of hairstyle in the video.

The girl's costume

Here are my ideas for the girls costume:

I want the girl to wear a lace up up white 'peasant like' top with a long grey or black heavy knit cardigan, with a fur gillet over the top. It was important for the girl to look ethereal but still make sure she is warm enough for the November weather.

Adhering to the monochrome theme I thought she could wear a maxi skirt like this, which would be long enough to wear leggings underneath.