Rough Cut

Rough Cut from Sophie on Vimeo.

Equipment list

Equipment that we used in the process of our filming:


We decided to use a friends camera which was Canon 1234B002 Model EOS 30D (SRL) as shown below:


When looking at the camera it was amazing how clear it was, consequently what made it more important for us is the fact we wished to film our video in the dark therefore needed a good video camera that actually picked up the change in lighting. Furthermore, what made filming easier and positioning of the camera was the use of the tripod.

The tripod we used was a Canon Deluxe 200 Tripod, for scenes that entitled still footage it is absolutely essential the camera work is stable however it would not look professional and could end up looking quite rushed.



Overall performance of equipment?


The only problems we faced when using the equipment for filming was because it was so diverse and had many of buttons we weren't particularly educated when it come to working the camera. Therefore, before we even started I made sure I had a few lessons on how to change the lighting, exposure, mode and overall settings. The problem we did encounter was before being able to film you did to focus the camera so it is clear, this did take a while in some cases as we had to make it perfectly visible to prevent blurs.
However, because it wasn't any of the group members camera it was hard to keep getting the camera for when we wanted therefore next time we film we have decided to use a different video camera, that we would be able to use much more.


This is the video camera we are going to use the next time we film:
(sony DCR-trv19e)

Target Audience

Target Audience- INDIE

We thought it was a good idea to identify our target audience so it is clear:

Taken from www.UKTRIBES.com:

Indie:
Musically, Vampire Weekend, The Killers, The Klaxons, Glasvegas, Lily Allen, Pete Doherty, Friendly Fires, Bloc Party are currently important – and members don’t go off a band just because they have chart success. Indie kids are particularly fond of bands with teenage members, like Cajun Dance Party or Laura Mauling, where there’s a small gap between the band and their audience.


Fashion of Indie Pop Artists:
Fashion-wise, the uniform of Converse and skinny jeans, fringes, band T-shirts and lots of jewelery remains unchanged. Clothes are second-hand not vintage.

This was taken from www.uktribes.co.uk

Here is a montage of clothing brands I have put together which my target audience are likely to go in:



This mindmap was taken from Uktribes.com as you can see it clearly identifies the target segment. One particular aspect of the indie genre is "trendies" and "hipsters". I also notice that there are many different aspects of the indie genre which shows it is very diverse therefore we can create our own look also which could challenge the genre expectation.

Demographics:

We target our music video at 16-25 year olds, both male and females. We have targeted this because in my opinion I believe this is the age group that are most likely to watch the music video and more importantly listen to the type of music. Any age below this, I doubt they will listen to indie music or any above.

Ideal female indie mise-en-scene

Inspiration:

What is really popular with the indie scene and our target audience at the moment is the choppy, uneven hair style that looks edgy also the blonde died hair has always been a major trademark of an indie girl.

Female protagonist- EMILY FRY

As you can see above the target audience of our genre are very fond of oversize glasses and fur coats. We thought this would go well with our protagonist and ensure she had bright red lipstick to stand out from the crowd. We gained inspiration from the model Agness Deyn (shown above) as she has a similar look to our protagonist.

Fashion-

Typical shops that our target audience will shop in:

• H&M
• Topshop
• American Apparel
• Urban Outiftters
• ASOS
  

Below is a photograph I have taken from asos.com (A fashionable wesbite that will be used greatly amongst my target audience. As you can see the clothing discussed above links in with the images below. We think this is very important because we need to get the mise-en-scene right so we keep up with our genre expectation. If we do not follow the genre expectation it will be unclear to the target audience what genre the music falls under. Additionally, many artists nowaday have become known for their fashion which has attracted people and then their music. An example of this is Lady Gaga, many have heard of her fashion sense and now this has translated into her music- becoming a muse.

GoAnimate.com: Indie target audience by sjansen1


Like it? Create your own at

Digipack research [2]

Continuation of digipack research
Exploring into different Digipaks from our chosen genre

Typeface-

• Example






• Plan B






• Oasis






• U2
  

When exploring into digipaks of our chosen genre myself and Voke came across 4 different artists/bands that had a coherent house style that can be used as inspiration. Firstly, Example (similar to Bloc Party) have similar title styles therefore if we had Example we would carry on this house style.

Coldplay

When looking at Coldplays fonts for album covers they all have the same style, the colour just changes. They also have the song name below which looks like a convention of an album cover from many artists, especially in my genre of music.

As you can see the font has very much been kept the same house style of the overall digipak. The black background text and white font is kept therefore creates brand identity because we instantly associate Example when we see this font. This house style is important therefore it must be carried out across all promotional platforms.

Digipak Research

Research based on our chosen band: Bloc Party

Voke and I are going to research into Digipak's and the art work behind them. Firstly, we are going to look at the artwork within our chosen genre and compare them, we will also look at our Bloc party's past digipaks and find out whether there have a coherence house style because then we will carry that on.

Focusing on font

Firstly, we thought it was a good idea to look at Bloc party's album artwork, as you can see they all have the same font on their albums. It is a simple yet bold title "Bloc Party." with the use of the full stop. Therefore we think it is essential to use this font the whole way through.

The font as shown is always in white, with the song name underneath in a smaller size.

Looking at their artwork

When discussing the artwork, I will go in order starting from the top left. The first album is a photograph at night with the trees in the background, it looks as if it is in winter due to the snow-like atmosphere, I believe this works because the song name is "silent alarm" and the ominous sense is created from the artwork.

The second album is an extreme close up of two people kissing, we are unaware of the gender between these two people however works greatly due to the song name as "intimacy". As we can see, so far there are no photographs of the band members or people therefore, already we are unlikely to take a photograph of just our male protagonist.

The last album "A weekend away in the city" is a personal favorite of mine, I absolutely love the photograph and the lighting works very well! This is something that has inspired us when we took the photographs to go on our digipak.

Our main aim is to find a font that looked exactly like the one Bloc Party have used. The best website for this was www.dafont.com the site that we used greatly in our AS media portfolio.

We came across the font "Abeat by Kai" which looked quite circular and similar to the font used therefore we downloaded it and thought we would have a look at it on a real photograph as a almost template.

Next..

We looked at all the photographs we took in filming and came across one we all absolutely loved after we edited it in photoshop.

After moving a few things around in photoshop- adjusting the size, brightness and contrast this is our first outcome:

This is a grab shot from photoshop:

This is an example we put together, just a mock task to see how we could use the images we had taken whilst filming to see how they correlated when placed onto the album cover.

Shooting photographs

This is a image of me filming Jake under the bridge.

A combination of photographs taken from filming



I created this in photo using photoshop, I had taken the photograph of Jake (top right hand corner) during day 1 of our filming however thought it was a good idea to compare it with our inspriations. This montage includes Plan B and the protagonist from Example- As you can see they are all very much in the same clothing which is what we set out to create therefore met our aim.

Evidence:

Tools on photoshop greatly used:

One tool that I used a lot during this process was the opacity tool, this made photographs look like the effect we used in final cut which was an overlay. It has been used in the second and forth photographs above as shown.

DAY 2 FILMING

SECOND LOCATION: LONGFIELD

DATE: 25/01/12

We are now going to film our chorus in my garage and the end scene with the passing train and the abrupt ending. We are all going to go to my house and set up the background design then hopefully film the chorus multiple times to insure it is the best filming.

I am very excited for our second day of filming as we have a lot that needs to be done so we can start properly editing. At the moment we have significant chunks left out of our editing as we have not done the chorus or ending, so hopefully after today we will have everything and it will be just a matter of selecting the correct footage and adding effects.

MISTAKES WE CAN LEARN FROM?

In our first day of filming we made a few mistakes here and there however this time we hope to learn from our mistakes so we don't experience them again.

Firstly camera use is very important! I will try my best to get the shoot at the correct angle and correct distance without it being shaky- Footage definitely doesnt look proffessional when its shaking all over the place?

Significance of close ups- Any music video you see the artist is always, always looking at the camera in a close up- it is the most convention of a music video therefore we need to remember this!!!

Take as many shots of the same footage- Last time we filmed we did the scene we wanted then moved on quite quickly, this time we are going to make sure we do different takes and different angles so it will be easier when we come to editing!!

UPDATE

I really enjoyed filming yesterday, we found some good locations when filming and the strobe lighting worked very well overall. We are now carrying on editing to meet our rough cut deadline (which is soon). We have also taken pictures in the middle of filming which could be used for our auxiliary tasks. We thought, instead of just taking pictures of scenery we would also use the main characters to show the narrative.

Filming the end scene...
Walking to the park scene...

How does this location fit in with our theme?

The idea of having my garage in our music video was to create an almost hide away that was in this case, the female protagonists place where she would collect a montage of photographs of Jake. The garage was darkly lit which create an ominous atmosphere and to keep the audience intrigued. Furthermore, we thought it was a good idea to use Longfield station for the ending (even though it should be Camden) this is because it is less crowded therefore we could get better footage.

Designing Props

For the chorus scenes we have planned to have a montage of photographs displayed on a wall with images of Jake which is the first time he realizes he is being stalked and followed by a mystery person. We all had this image in our heads of a wall being covered and cut outs from newspapers showing the mental state of the girl and her undying love for the male.

Voke had the responsibility for finding photographs and printed them out ready for use. I volunteerd to put the display together and making it look realistic. Below is an image of the photographs that have been placed together. We hope to hang this on a wall with additional props in our second time shooting.Our main aim was for these images to stand out to the audience as this is the vital piece of the narrative which gives the realization that the male is being stalked therefore it is essential the audience can see what exactly is going on.

This is the process of the props I have currently designed however it has not finished just yet, the next step I will have to design my garage and place the photos up and create the mood that we have aimed for.

DAY 1 FILMING

LOCATION: CAMDEN

This was the first time we had all been out together and used the camera to start shooting the scenes. We had to go up to Camden to shoot the opening scene, end and parts of the middle- however not the chorus. When we were up London we found some great settings as shown from the photographs. The favorite of ours was the bridge with the electric blue lighting underneath, this is exactly the image we were hoping for.

This is an image taken from Vicky of myself and voke shooting the bridge scene- which is iconic from The Script video.

This is underneath the bridge, the scene where jake comes into contact with his stalker for the first time. We absolutely loved this scene because of the radiant lighting coming off the bridge and also the narrow alley way we had been trying to find for a couple of hours! It also clearly portrays the vulnerability of the protagonist male when he comes in view point of his stalker.

After shooting this alley scene we found this great graffiti wall, in our research we found that graffiti corresponds greatly with the indie image therefore is likely to appeal to our target audience. We wanted jake to be situated in the middle with his hood up and tried a few shoots to see how they came out on the camera.

These are the photographs I took of Jake, I thought this was a good idea as we can use these for the scene where the photos of jake are reveled from his stalker also it began to give us ideas for our digipak.

Myself and Voke uploaded the photo's into photoshop and started to edit them to enhance the photograph and bring the brightness up. This picture below is a personal favorite of mine because we tried for a whole to get an image of Jake face on to the camera looking rather serious. I believe this photo captivates the mood we were hoping for very well.

As well as taking photos of Jake we also wanted to take a few of Emily, seeing as she is the female protagonist. Similarly, we wanted a serious photograph where she actually looks quite scary, unfortunately we were unable to capture a photo of both Emily and Jake therefore we will make sure we do this next time we film!

Evidence of filming:

As well as filming, we did have a laugh in the rain with crowds of people in Camden...

The problems we faced:

1. This was our first time going out all together and using the camera, we knew that Camden was going to be busy therefore expected the crowds however at times it was difficult especially when people would walk in front of the camera unaware.

2. From our footage, some parts look unprofessional due to the use of camera and where it was positioned in shot, however this is something I can improve on when next shooting.

3. Originally we wanted to get random people from the street to hold up signs for us whilst we filmed them, unfortunately this became a hard task! We did however find some willing volunteers but when we uploaded it into final cut it did not look very well, therefore when we next film the idea is for us to use each other to hold up the signs.

Filming!

We decided that our Christmas break was the perfect opportunity to start shooting therefore via the social networking site facebook I sent an email to my group and our actors telling everyone the details for the day of filming and where we shall meet- this shows evidence of our planning which is essential for our music video.