Feedback after rough cut

After showing our rough cut to our class, we had a varied discussion about the strengths and weaknesses of the music video on the big-screen, and what we need to do before our deadline.

From our filming and editing, we knew that our performance sequences were the strongest parts of the video, especially as Matt (Grainger) experimented with a series of effects to create the needed tempo and effect within the video. The quick cut between the performance clips in relation to our storyboard are also strong. Yet, we have decided to do one more performance shoot to provide filler shots for the video and to get more close-ups of the singer to show the relationship between the visuals and music, as that was our main criticism.

We are also aiming to re-filming parts of the narrative, by using more running sequences to add/ create the fast-paced tempo within the narrative, as that two was a main criticism of our video.

We also need to take mise-en-scene into account as part of our performance shots in the school gym have a classroom chair in-shot, as a drum stall was unavailable, so the likely resolution is to zoom the sequence to cut the chair from the sequence and make the performance more realistic.

Overall, the response to the video was positive, in a way, we just need to 'fill-in-the-gaps'!

Progress so far...

At present, we have the introduction, first half of the first verse and both choruses complete, whilst the second verse, interlude and ending are still in progress. The main focus of our group now is to get vital and effective band filler shots to complete the sequences, as well as a possible, extra narrative location.

This footage will be uploaded and captured Monday and then put edited into the timeline.

Shoot 5 - Narrative Comments

We filmed around the Tunbridge Wells locations relevant to our video, e.g. the grove park and around the high street. Initially the shots appeared acceptable, as we filmed in the same light and camera conditions are we did during our recci of our narrative location. Yet, when we uploaded and captured the footage, some clips appeared too dark, as we could not distinguish the outline of the protagonist's body from the shadow and outlines of the surrounding street furniture.

In order to deal with the problems, we have applied the 'brightness and contrast' tool to the narrative slides and altered the settings so that the outline quality of the footage is obvious and acceptable as music video footage, and the transfer is not obivous.

(26th January 2009) the majority of footage is in place and ordered to the stroyboard. We now want to film a variety of filler shots for both the narrative and peformance sequences to 'fill-in the gaps'. The narrative will be set at the same locations, just changing the light source to adust to natural light within the shots and the performance will be in the drama studio, where the solo performance shots were, yet the performance will be whole band footage to 'fill-in' the gaps within the narrative of the verse and chorus.

Shoot 4

Shoot 4 was due to be filmed on saturday night. Once we had all met in town it started raining very heavily and instead of risking breaking the camera we decided to postpone filming and to do it at a later date.

Shoot 3

Shoot 3 was filmed in the gym and was fairly successful in terms of what filming we got done and the quality it came out at. We got all the shots we wanted done. We managed to include high angle, low angle, close ups, extreme high angle, handicam and even tilt and pan shots too. We filmed whole band performances and single band members shots.

Shoot 2 - Comments

Overall, Shoot 2, which was the solo performance shots of the drums and the singer, were very sucessful. We managed to capture mutliple shots of both musicians from various angles, manipulating the style of Hoobastank performance videos.

The shots included multiple aerial, high angle, low angle and close-up shots of the drummer, whilst, we concentrated on mid to close-up shots to capture their facial expressions and physical performance.

Filming

Location Reccie comment

In order to test our location efficiency, we carried out a series of test runs at the locations from our storyboard. The aim of the exercise was to test the locations light (in darkness, since we will be filming late at night), as well as the street furniture and how we can use/avoid in where and when we need to, whilst filming.

In order to test the lighting of our locations, we used a character to walk similar to how we will get our main character to walk at our locations when we do the actual filming of our narrative. Whilst filming, we tested various camera angles, zoom and focus settings to see which would work best at the location.

Overall, the lighting and (street) furniture seemed perfect for the setting we require for filming our narrative. The natural street lighting provides the perfect amount of light we need to capture the protagonists facial and body expressions, so we won't need any additional lighting. the street furniture, such as benchs, lamposts, alleys and roadsides are in a perfect position to meet our requirements of the locations of our narrative.

Location Reccie

Call Sheets

A call sheet is a document which shows the details of planned recording shoots. It includes details such as date, time, location, cast, props and equipment requirements, whos responsible for equipment, contact details and technical notes. The purpose of these being to easily organise our time, equipment and cast effectively to make the filming process as smooth as possible.
The people responsible are those that are included in the shoot details on the call sheet itself.

Animatic Comment

We created an animatic for our music video to enable us to see how well our storyboard and ideas fitted in with the music. We created a storyboard for the narrative which set out how long each shot and where it would be placed in the song so to cover all possible timing problems we would have. We then storyboarded our performance based side of the video. However instead of setting it out how we would have in the video we just drew some of the shots we wanted to use and then slotted them in between the narrative storyboard allowing us to move them around when it came to the animatic and fitting our ideas to the music.
We then filmed both the storyboards and exported them into premiere. When filming we filmed each shot for twice the length we wanted to use them for in case we needed to stretch a shot. Once this was done we added the music track and began to cut down and fit the video and images to the music. We found that although we had timed it fairly well when storyboarding alot of tweaking had to be done to ensure the beat of the song fitted the images. In hindsight it may have been better to do the animatic shot by shot rather than edit the whole video at once because when stretching one shot it would put the rest of the video out of sync. However after a while of tweaking we managed to finish our animatic.
Looking back at our finished animatic i think it will have helped us to alot of the work that we needed to do for the actual shoot because we can now easily fit in the shots to the music knowing how long each shot needs to be and also what looks best when fitting into the track.

Our Animatic for Hoobastank - Never There