Schedule No.2 #22

Rough Cut & Feedback #21

Rough Cut

Feedback

The video is only 23 seconds long as we don't have all the footage, and that is the clear disadvantage for us. All of the feedback we got was good feedback apart from some improvements that could be made to the fine-tuning of the editing. We have already set out to tweak this before we start filming and editing all of the other scenes just so that we don't have to go back to it after (only if it fails to collaborate with the other scenes sufficiently).

From this feedback we definitely know that there will be a rough cut No.2 when the music video is all together and edited. The main thing for us isn't so much specific camera angles and editing etc. because we have researched so vastly into that, but it is more how they work all together and what they mean when they do so. The narrative itself and what it shows is extremely important for us and holds the key to the integrity of the overall music video; and this is why it is so important to get right. There are so many different locations and two different things going on at the same time (band and narrative) that we have to try and make the work collaboratively brilliant in order to represent a whole theme and story within many other sub-themes also. The problem with ours is that although our ambitions for the narrative follow the emotion shown in the 'Float on' lyrics, the lyrics and actions don't semantically cooperate. This is when the camera angles, editing, lighting and the mise-en-scène come in to produce that feeling and emotion and when clarity of the story is (fingers-crossed) achieved.

So many Green Screen attempts #20

    These are photos of all the attempts at the recordings with the green screen - as you can see it didn't go well. There were probably about four to five times where I set up the green screen and attempted to try and record my self walking and doing all the actions necessary for the video, but for some reason it just didn't go well.
      If this was the only way I could have done this part of the music video then I would have made it work, but seeing as after the holiday break we will be able to re-film it I thought it was best to just wait after all these attempts to try and make it perfect.

    There were many problems to the way I did it and many reasons to why it failed but over ruling factor was that I was filming in my house and not s studio. This on its own caused problems such as height difficulties, lighting difficulties, framing difficulties and more.
    

     Most of the problems evolved from the fact that there was little space and this meant that when I was supposedly walking everything would look wrong in the editing stage. I tried just standing on the spot and walking and then when it came to editing just using the ken burns tool would make me move. However that idea went straight into to bin as when I looked at what I had recorded my feet didn't look at all like there were walking forwards and it just all looked wrong. Then after this hinderance I thought it would be best to try and re-evaluate the situation and see if I actually did have to walk. I ended up just recording myself standing and looking around etc. so then when it came to editing what I thought of doing was placing myself on top of a cloud and the cloud would move around with me on it through the dream world. This seemed like a brilliant idea at first but it just involved way too much technical editing such as motion tracking of two objects, and then that meant using multiple pieces of software, and for something that looked only half-decent it wasn't worth it.

    After all of this trauma I decided that I'd just wait until I could use the space of a studio to film the green screen part of the video. Let's just see how it goes.

Diary Entry - Filming & Editing No.4 (BAND PROBLEMS) #19

    Depending on others is a recurring problem for us and because the band performance meant we had to depend on four or more people, this was a serious problem. There were many attempts to try and record the band performance before we actually decided on what to do and this diary post will explain everything that has happened and everything that is going to happen.

   The studio space we thought would be the best solution for the place to record the performance, as it would have a similar feel to many other music videos that we have researched and seen previously, however this posed as a problem also. Alike to the green screen problems in the run up to christmas resources became limited as there were tens of people wanting the same space and equipment etc. We had the drummer and we had the singer/guitarist but the main problem was trying to pick a date that everyone was able to do, and with work and college this was immensely hard. This meant that for most of the scenes/shots we weren't able to film until after christmas and this fact just threw the initial shooting schedule right out the window.

    Following the attitude of the song, and not to seem intentionally ironic, but we persevered and due to our optimism of the project we saw this as an opportunity to become better directors/ filmmakers/ editors/cameramen etc. I knew we wouldn't have the equipment, and I knew we wouldn't have the resources either, but alike to the green screen filming also I found ways to still try and make the band performance look good.

      Instead of a studio I decided that it would be best to try and find a house that had the same look as what the audience would be able to relate too. Luckily y friend (the guitarist and singer) has precisely that look in his bedroom (following the nature of his musical creativity). There are many posters, instruments, amps etc. located everywhere so this is going to clearly be the best place for it, and all that is left is to put my research into lighting and mise-en-scène to apply it to his bedroom. This would then give that professional feel of the studio, but also the indie feel also. 

     The equipment was the main thing that we were going to miss, and in order to make up for it I had to come up with some cheap ways to make use of the best we had. The 'Equipment' post shows all of the equipment we will be using for all of the recordings but here I will explain why I got everything I did. I already had the DSLR and the waterproof camera but I wanted one more camera and another fish eye lens or wide angle. For this I decided to use my phone to record, although it's 1080p the quality still isn't great and no where near as good as the others. The fish eye lens look was already able to be achieved on the DSLR with a lens adapter, but I wanted to use the DSLR for close-ups so that means the fish eye would have to be on the other two. So I bought a fish eye and wide angle magnetic lens adapter from Amazon for £6.99 and this meant that I could attach lenses to all three cameras at the same time as the package included two lenses. This is going to make the band performance a lot easier, and I didn't stop there with the DIY/Cheap aspects. I also bought a dolly from Amazon (again) for £1 it was very cheap, but it is coming from China and hopefully it'll be here soon.A few months ago, ready for this project and other filming ideas I decided to create a monopod out of baseball bat that I owned. I have always wanted a monopod as well as a tripod as they are much easier to carry and they are a lot easier to use for some shots. The baseball bat has a grip on it also so trying to get to those high-up, hard-to-reach places is going to be a lot easier when it comes to recording. Apart from the more proper equipment, things like tape and the Gorillapod will be used to put the cameras in weird and obscure places once more to try and get a better look for the indie genre we want to try and show. 

    The plan is then to work through Christmas on planning, visualising etc. before we record at a friend's house. This will give us time to research even more and make the probability of the recordings going perfect much much higher. Let's just hope it goes that way.
   

Diary Entry - Filming & Editing No.3 (NIGHTMARE) #18

    Producing this video over the past few weeks has been an absolute nightmare for q few main reasons - lack of resources, high dependency on others and just plain unlucky situations and events. We knew at the start how much of a momentous task this was going to be but we didn't anticipate many of the things that would happen with filming and editing that was going to cause problems or hindrance to the project's deadline.

    First of all the biggest of problems that is still ongoing is the major issues with recording the green screen footage. With the run up to Christmas on its way everything else in life becomes a bit hectic and not only are our deadlines for the project closing in, but they are for many other students as well. Access to the green screen room to produce some film-work for the 'dream world' scenes became immensely hard to come by as all the rooms had been booked up to the half term. Not only was this the case, but trying to find others that were able to help became very hard also as they had priorities with activities outside of work such as jobs etc.

    In order to make up for the time we decided that the best plan would be to try and film and edit quite a lot of the recordings over the Christmas break, but then this would inevitably lead us to one burden of a factor for the project, that it would have to be filmed inside a house of ours. For the green screen shots I knew that all you needed was in fact a big piece of cloth that was the colour green as keying works by eliminating a colour from a frame and green is the furthest away from your skin etc. Amazon proved to me that green screens weren't that cheap and in fact for a project such as this, paying out that much money for a good green screen wouldn't be as much beneficial as it would be ridiculous. Following the previous fact that the material just had to be green, I searched for 'green cloth' and an item came up for £1.04. The material clearly wasn't going to be that big but I knew that we could just tape multiple pieces together, so considering the price I ordered four pieces as well as some green tape. The items are on their way now, but the only problem now I that I still worry about the look of the shots and whether or not they will still look professional. On the other hand though the genre is indie and D.I.Y home made things are more a part of that genre rather than multi-million pound professional studios.

     The final problem that we knew we would have to face over the Christmas break is that we wouldn't be able to have all of the equipment that the College provided and this meant that we had to stick with what we had. Luckily for myself I already own quite a bit of small pieces of equipment such as a tripod, a small dolly and a waterproof camera as well as a DSLR so it isn't going to be that difficult to record everything. The problem we still faced was that the shots we want to record with the GoPro won't be able to be done, which is extremely annoying as the shots taken in the tests seem to be very original yet creative and good looking. The GoPro was also the camera going to be used for the underwater shot and although I possess an underwater camera I am going to have to think of a way whereby the wide-angle look will still be able to be created as my camera doesn't offer the same as the GoPro. Finally the one other thing we won't have is one more DSLR to film with, so when it comes to the band performance it will take a lot longer than expected as we will have to take more shots on one of the cameras.

Diary Entry - Filming & Editing No.2 #17 Bristol

Today, Shani and I went to Bristol for the recording of one of the first scenes, and some exterior shots for the cross-cut virtual and reality scenes. The weather was perfect, there weren't many people so there was only one thing left to do, record.

 Filming

   The first plan was to set off for Park Street and the College Green; we knew there was a lot of architecturally beautiful buildings, and the colour of the buildings along with the weather would really go well with mood that the video is trying to present at this point (optimism). We chose the City Hall to record next to, as it would show the typical 'worklife' very well.

    This scene would only go on for ten seconds or so, so although we knew there was little video that needed to be recorded, we still captured ten times as much as we needed too. The reason for this was because at the start I wanted the video to show the beginning of an adventure for the main character and I believe a montage of shots represents this height of emotion and dream to set off into the unknown, as well as engaging the audience thoroughly. Taking all of this into consideration many shots were taken at different angles, different movements and different distances in order to throw the excitement in as much as possible.

    As far as recording went, there wasn't much fuss or nuisances at all. There were a few times where we had to wait for people to walk by etc. but this was general minor hindrances that were to always be expected when filming in uncontrolled exterior situations.

    As the genre for the music video is supposedly/hopefully going to be seen as 'indie' we wanted to try and get some creative shots in there, and this was the reason for the lens flare in a couple of the shots. This was to generally make the whole scene look a bit more art-y.

     The close up shots for this scene worked out really well because we managed to create the perfect amount of blur in the background of the shot using the DSLR and there was enough light for all of the shots together to look of very high quality. The light also helped us with the colouring of the clips afterwards. The amount of light that we were given with the exterior shots meant that we could customise each shot's look to a very detailed standard and it made the whole job a lot more accessible and a lot easier. 

   The shots towards the end turned out beautifully as they displayed a very lovely looking, architecturally magnificent archway that was framed perfectly symmetrical for the shot. Although this wasn't sought out before hand, I learnt that it is always key to acknowledge and understand the surroundings of the filming location as they may be a bit of a filmic hidden gem in the midst of the mise-en-scène. The light had worked out really well too (shown in the picture on the left) as when I exited the archway pass-through the light shined on me to a luminosity that almost looked unreal, and visually familiarised itself with that of movie moments of characters ascending to heaven. Although this may be quite far fetched, the shot and the way it was filmed still shows the same kind of message as it does in the movies; Going to a better place.

   The filming itself was left to my partner, but to be both involved with it, discussions were made previously on the bus ride. I had brought a long with me the DSLR but instead of a tripod, a camera stabiliser or steadicam. This I thought would look a lot more realistic than a shot from a tripod, as you still get the stability, but with a little bit of movement and dynamic motion. Previous to this project I had studied many critically acclaimed indie movies and TV shows to see what makes a shot look so professional. Apart from the beautiful scenes and the glamorous actors, the main two things were blurred backgrounds and a minute amount of motion within the shot. This was especially apparent within the scenes of the TV show Breaking Bad. The steadicam proved useful for these 'staying-still' shots, and of course it worked a treat for the shots where Shani had to walk a long side or infront of me.

    After Park Street there was only two more places left to go - the Waterfront and Cabot Circus. 

    Both of these locations were going to be pretty easy to record, even when taking all of the factors into consideration. There weren't many people about and the conditions were still perfect. The reason that we didn't think much about framing or mise-en-scène etc. was because these shots were used purely for messages and they would be collaborating alongside green screen shots as a graphic match. There was no point in heavily thinking out what t do with the shot as long as it ticked everything that was expected of it, and also they weren't going to be on for that long anyway.

     This shot on the left is one of my favourites thus far because of the meaning it will give at the end when it is tied in with everything else. I also think it looks very good, and in the clip itself the transition of ascending skywards is very subtle, which helps the audience focus on the message and the emotion a lot more than what else is supposed to or not supposed to occur. 

In a busy city centre, at the heart of a thriving shopping centre, this had to be one of the most embarrassing shots I have ever had to endure. Clearly we knew that Cabot was going to be busy as it was the run up to christmas, so this was the main thing that made this shot so difficult to record. The point of it is to work with a similar shot with the green screen where by I am potentially flying, and this shot is to truly show the reality of what's occurring. However it did take just one take, with the help of carful consideration of distances and positioning of cameraman and actor as well as timings also.

Editing

   For this part of the task fortunately enough the editing wasn't that difficult or time consuming. However,it had only got to this point of simplicity because I had researched, practiced and learned the best ways to edit this kind of footage before hand, which inevitably made the whole process a lot easier in the end. 

    First of all I gathered all of my clips together and extracted the best parts of them using the tool 'Favourite'. We already knew which shots would kind of go in order together so it wasn't that difficult in the end. 

   The most important tool used in this process of editing and will be used for all the other processes would be the sound clip and the present waves that were shown on it. This made life a whole lot easier as it meant that I was able to detect where I should edit each cut too, and this way it was a lot more precise and quicker. This was going to prove to be extremely helpful in the latter stages of editing also because there will be so many shots of the band etc. to collaborate and to coordinate with the music that something as little as this could deduct the time consumption by half and allow myself to spend more time fine tuning each clip to look more professional.

   

    One neat editing trick that I found really beneficial was having a long-length and low-dynamic shot being cut up into parts and being edited to the time of the music. Although theoretically most of these shots were part of the same overall clip the effect still looked pretty good on the screen, because the fact that it's the character that changes not the surroundings. Not only does this show a sped-up effect that conforms to the time scale in which we have to meet but it also presents the recurring theme once more of the character moving forward in a world that's going no where. 

   Last of all to edit was the colouring of the clips. Because most of the clips were all filmed at the same light and with similar surroundings, each clip wasn't going to be that different visually and this meant that I could edit one clip and then copy the preset to all the others. To edit the colour I went onto 'correction 1' on one of the first clips in the inspector tool and manually changed the colours. I have many presets that I like, but the one I like the most is 'Spring Sun'. I used this preset for this choice and then lessened the green a little bit as shown in the picture  to the side. Finally to make it look that much more indie, I decided that I would change the brightness and contrast a little bit to make the midtones more prominent and the highlights less so. 

    The hardest part of the editing here was with the character jumping or de-scaling into the pathway at the end of the scene. To do this we originally wanted o use green screen as we thought this would be a lot easier, but we tried a lot of attempts and it just didn't work out as we wanted it. So in order to make it look good I took a screen grab of the archway entrance with me in it and without me in it. I then edited these in fireworks so that there was a transparent background behind me. I then imported these into FCP X and the archway was below and the character was on top (in terms of timeline placement). Then to make the character descend into the pathway I used the ken burns tool (as shown above) to make my character disappear and appear to grow smaller as doing so. The final thing was to just make the archway picture and the character picture flow with the one before as because they had been screen grabbed and edited multiple times they lost some of the colour and brightness to them. For this I tried 'Match Colour' but this didn't turn out perfect, so instead I decided to manually change the colour and this was done by using the 'colour correction tool'. Mostly it was just changing the brightness/contrast with the mid tones but I also had to make the whites and blacks look a bit more red-y to go with the previous shot and not to show any visual colour jump.

     The very last thing that I did to all the clips was adding black bars at the bottom and the top of the screen. There are two main things I said that made a shot look professional and that was blur and stabilised motion, but when it comes to editing I use black bars within the narrative to give the cinematic feel of a widescreen 16:9 or 2.39:1.

Further Research #16

    The extremity to which I want this music video to not only be a success but more importantly something that I want to be proud of has led me into this intense amount of further research for the video. The bar of expectation for the music video has been set very high, and is built under many complex, but very important aspects and this is the sole reason to why I though it'd be best to watch all of these tutorials underneath.

  

  All of the videos are noted for being helpful for people making films and of whom want to better their films and make them look a lot more professional. The reason that I have looked into the 'Film Look' as a whole, rather than just music video production specifically, is because most of my video (or at least, most of the significance) is displayed through the use of narrative. Having a more professional, more aesthetically pleasing look to the narrative scenes engages audiences. On the other hand though I still do like the fast-paced, creative and unique feel you get with an indie-style music video. Therefore I decided that to try and make this work on an efficient and likeable level I had to find the perfect balance between indie-film and indie-music video, to thus create a engineered integration that would and could be explored by many. 

  

   That's my vision for the end product, no matter how plausible it may be. To try and lessen the gap of implausibility though was the result of this list beneath this. I have also looked a lot into many indie games such as 'Badland', many british films such as 'Layer Cake' and 'Submarine' and critically-acclaimed TV shows such as Breaking bad - all to get the best possible opportunity for my vision.

    a lot of the videos below focus mainly on budget-filming, and these mostly come from YT channels 'FilmRiot' and IndyMogul'. I have been a fan for a long time and used a lot of their tips to help me with other work, and I believe that using budget techniques is the way forward for aspiring filmmakers like myself, but to make them so inconspicuous isn't always necessary. Compared to the narrative, the band performance doesn't have to be so 'professional' because it being or looking amateur can have its benefits. However the 'amateur' aspect has to be heavily thought out and has to be evident and relevant to the shots and the context at which it is presented in. Indie music videos show a lot of this amateur-ness in them and one of them that I enjoy and am inspired from is the video Flashlight by The Front Bottoms. I love the fluidity of the shots and the simpleness to them, the fact that they aren't produced using a giant thousand pound jib, or a multi-million pound stage/studio makes it that much more personal to the audience. Celebrities are often put on a tall platform where they're perceived to be god-like, lowering that platform to a much more fathomable and empathetically realistic height can have an effect that is much more empowering to the interpreter. This only works in certain situations and the genre indie is especially where it prospers most. The creators of the media texts aren't out to glorify people or the envious life at which they may live, but they make the products to present a powerful and deeply emotional meaning that can only be seen and understood through the art they make.

    I have read many books, watched many films and listened to many songs all to try and understand the mechanical beauty of the genre and how I can make my own just as elegant. Incorporating all this research into a three and a half minute video is going to be very hard, but it is what i am most looking forward too.

 

Equipment List #15

Equipment List

• Sony A57 DSLR
• Gopro Silver Edition
• Kodak Playsport Zx3
• Nexus 5
• RODE VideoMic
• Zeikos 0.18x Fisheye Lens Adapter (with macro also)
• Smartphone fisheye
• Zeikos filters
• Lens hood
• Manfrotto Tripod x2
• Glide Gear SYL 3000 Steady Cam
• Joby Gorillapod
• niceEshop(TM) Mute Flex Skater Dolly Stabilizer
• 16 GB SD Card x2
• Camcorder Video Light and filters
• x100 LED Fairy Lights
• Rear bike light
• Front bike light
• x4 Green Cloths 1.5m x 1m (green screen)
• Green insulation tape

    All of this equipment that we will be using is individually very significant and each play a major role into the production of the music video. However there is a lot of very technical and hard-to-use equipment here so in order to understand it, capture and take them all to their full potential I had to once again do some heavy research via YouTube.

    It wasn't so much the actual use of individual items that concerned me mostly, but it was more the collective use of groups of equipment (such as cameras, lights, tripods/stabilisers etc.) and how they can all work simultaneously together with excellent creative integration. 

Talking with the band & Cast #14

    This project is currently and in the future, going to take a lot of effort and time from I my parter and many other individuals. I knew that depending on others is always going to be a challenge, and the more people you have to be dependent on the larger the amount of problems that can hinder your expected finishing time frame. This is why the talks with the other cast members and the band members also was initiated and confirmed for casting a long time before the preliminary filming even started. The reason for this was because I felt that I had to get an evident decision from my chosen/ideal members to whether or not they wouldn't be reluctant to help and this meant that we would have more time to work around everyone's schedules and make the filming a lot easier on everyone. 

   James Dyer is a good friend of mine and I have worked on many projects with him before, including previously recording his band twice. Of course this relationship does help in minors situations, but it will mostly be down to the creativity and outcome of the filming on the day (however it does mean I'm not afraid to persuade the band to be a bit more enthusiastic or not).

    

    The band I have picked to help us with our music video though is a purposeful (and to some extent, lucky) choice too. I know from experience that they like the band and the song that they will be playing, and they also play similar sounds to the very same genre also. This then creates a better sense of character, and because the band performance plays such an important part to the video, character is key because if the belief and the emotion is there to be encapsulated then the audience will be there to do so. 

   Luckily our narrative only includes one other person (apart from myself and my partner), and that role is for the character of the firing-boss. For this role we knew we needed someone that looked powerful and very important, and this is why we chose someone that looks older, that is wiser with more experience compared to out adolescent-looking individual (me). This hopefully adds to that belief of character, and existentially, the belief of the whole story in its entirety. This is why I chose and asked both my Tutor and the Section Leader for the sixth-form for the role, as I thought he'd be perfect for it. We'd also get the office a long with it too - so it was a clear win, win situation.