ROUGH CUT

Video diary 3rd December

Video Diary - 26th of November 2012

1ST Photoshoot - Magg's Edited Photos.

 

First Shoot - Saturday, November 18th.

We took pictures on the shoot to demonstrate our roles on the shoot on Saturday, 18th of November. 

Firstly Magg set up the camera for the first few shots: got the camera ready with batteries, tape and microphone, mounted the camera on tripod, set the right white balance, and adjusted the manual focus for the first shot. 

Adam set up the lights and set up the scene by using the tripod, mounting the LED light on the lightstand and balancing it out so that it matches our desired effect. Then he set up the scene by removing all of our personal  belongings, camera equipment from the bedroom & decorating the room so it fits our character profile & story line.  

Throughout the shoot we were switching the camera between each other every few shots so that the work was equally divided between us to ensure we both contribute to the project.

Video Diary - Week 3

Digipak draft (photoshop)

Here is a rough version of what I would like our front cover of our digipak to look like, I collected a random image of a male online because we have not done our photo shoot yet. I also collected other images that relate to the dance music genre such as:
Headphones
Microphone
Microphone leads
Fader
Speaker
Glow stick
After collecting these images i re-sized and rotated them to fit them to the face, they represent the facial figures of our artist.

Call Sheet

Adam: 07518338163
Mag: 07521014870
Kieran: 07983448020
Connie: 07824555295
Bruce: 07710700750

Digipak And Website Draft 1

 For planning I decided to draw out with pencil some drafts. Starting with the website and the layout to give a basic structure to our site including an image of the artist, the music video, tour dates, latest news, information about the artist. We will be creating our website for our artist on Wix.






Here is one of the first drafts of the front cover of our digipak including our artist in the center of the shot posing. The speakers in the background are too add effect as they are blasting our sound behind our artist, this fits with the genre of dance music with our artist.






 

Our second draft had the more creative elements, the image of the artist in the background and features from dance equipment is chopped up and used as the facial features of our artist. For example part of the speakers is used as the eye. This image would be similar to a collage.

Production Schedule

Production Schedule:

Thursday 15th of November - 12 - 2.30 pm 

Location: in the photography studio,

Asset List: the artist, speakers, headphones, microphone, faders; 

AIM: Digipack Photos & Photos for the website.

Thursday 15th of November 2012 - 4pm -6pm

Location: London.
Asset List: camera, tripod, charger, batteries, speakers & ipod for song, final shotlist, risk assessment, call sheet (emergency numbers etc)
AIM : establishing shot of London, ON SHOT LIST: 21, 22, 60 + backup shots, (possibly 19, 23, 59)

---
Saturday, 17th of November - 11am -2pm ; 3pm - 6pm :

11am-11.30am = set up
11.30 am -12o'clock = actors arrive = run through the scenes & film trial shots.
12o'clock (or 12.30) til 2pm = 1 - 6, 60 - 76 shots (shot numbers in shot list)
3pm -6pm = 70/71 - 81shots. (shot numbers in shotlist)
6pm -7pm = shot numbers: 24, 26, 30, 32

Location: Alice's house/spare bedroom.
Asset List: female and male actors, camera, ipod for the song, final shotlist, risk assessment, call sheet, batteries, charger, costumes, props such as photoframes, bedcovers, lights & microphone for the camera, batteries for the lights,
AIM: COMPLETE SHOTS FROM: 1 -6 , 60 - 76, 78 - 80

--
Sunday, 18th Of November - 11am -2pm ; 3pm - 6pm (longest, planned to cut at 4/5pm)

11.am -11.30 am = set up.
11.30am - 12o'clock = actors arrive = run through the scenes, trial shots.
12o'clock - til 2pm = 8 -18 shots (shot numbers in shotlist)
3pm -4pm = 27, 28, 29, 31 (shot numbers according to shotlist)

Location: Hextable, Adam's house.
Asset List: actors, camera, ipod for the song, final shotlist printed out, risk assessment, call sheet, batteries, charger, costumes, lights, batteries for the lights, microphone for camera,

Final Shot List.

I've created the final shot list for our film. After I've done my storyboard and the animatic 

I've noticed that I could improve my idea by removing some shots and replacing them with some better ones in terms of professionalism and advance level.

This shot list is going to be used during the shoot & this is going to be our guide for those two weeks.

Costume Design - Actors.

 

please note: click on the images to enlarge ^ 

I've search the internet to gather examples of the costume I am going to provide my actors with.There is one costume design for the male actor as he will not have a costume change on set. There is two costume designs for the female actor as she will need a costume change for certain shots.I decided to use symbolism in my music video such as the use of red & white.Red usually symbolises aggression and passion, whereas white symbolises purity or innocence.

The female actor will be dressed in a red dress and wearing red lipstick with a red mask over her eyes for most of the point of view shots in my video to represent the way her boyfriend is portraying her in his head (seeing her as evil but still feeling passion for her & love). In rest of the shots, the female actor will be dressed in casual clothing such as shorts & a jumper. There will be still elements of passion and love and anger in her casual costume such as her red lipstick and ribbon in her hair.

The male character will be dressed in a white t-shirt, symbolising his purity and his innocence - showing he's the victim in the story, being cheated on by his girlfriend. He will also be dressed in blacks & greys to symbolise his feelings (depressed, sad, disappointed) and also to show the differences between the two personalities in the story.

Location Recce

  

^Magg.

I've taken pictures of the room that we are going to use as our character John's bedroom. 

There is a lot of things that we need to clear from the bedroom to set it up for the music video

so in our production schedule we will need to include all the time for the set up until we can start shooting. 

^ Magg

I also to took a picture of Air and Breathe in Dartford. This is the club we are going to use for our night club shots and perfomance shots in our music video. 

Animatic

I've created the Animatic for our Storyboard. Animatic is a motion version of the storyboard to present your final idea & the concept for the video in more visual form. The animatic, just like the storyboard is going to be my guide to show me what shots do I need and how is it going to look like. It's very probable that my final video will be a lot different to my storyboard and animatic but the point is to learn new skills and improve throughout the work.

Props.

I gathered images of the most essential props we will need for the shoot including:

photoframes, 

alcohol bottles,

something to symbolise drugs

microphone

set of lights

sound system

DSLR camera

charger for camcorder and camera

Sony recording camera

set of keys

money

bed covers and pillows

make up set

costume

tripod

Artist Costume

After gathering images on the internet we got a rough idea of what our artists costume will look like during our shoot, going for the fashionable and independent young male image with the boat shoes, skinny jeans, leather jacket, casual plan white tee and bright coloured glasses to match the dance culture.

Visual Style Mood Board

 

^moodboard 1 = by Magg.

^ This is our visual style for most of the video. 

The dim lighting effect & the dominating blue shades of the video give it that sort of old film effect as well the grotty, dirty feel to it, which I'm aiming to achieve with appropriate camera techniques & after-effects when editing in our video. There is a lot of reasons why I thought this visual style would be perfect for our video, some of them include:

* It symbolises the impurity of the girl (Sarah) 

in the video, impurity in their relationship & "dirty" lifestyle.

* It makes it look rough, just as our character's relationship is & lifestyle as well.

Moodboard 2 = by Adam.

Night Club

This is the visual style of the rest of the scenes in our video in the nightclub location 

Colours - Bright, Fluorescent, Abstract, Psychedelic to create the atmosphere of a night club
Lighting - Dark, Dirty, Pictoral
Visual - Distorted, Blurred, Out Of Focus this will relate to the drug use or drinking from the character as it intensely affects his vision.

Other Locations
Colours - Washed Out, Blues, Browns, Reds And Romantic Colours
Lighting - Dim, High Exposure
Visual - Natural

Institutions, Marketing And Strategy

Institutions, Marketing And Strategy on Prezi

I created a collage of visuals and images that represent the promotional campaign for my artists new album release and some of the marketing methods I would use such as:

• social networking sites (facebook, twitter, myspace and soundcloud) - posting messages about the new album release on these sites would encourage people to purchase the album when released. 
• Singles and songs featured on other albums - my artist has already released singles and featured on other artists tracks, the use of posters and wallpapers promoting this helps expand his fan base
• Billboards - even though this is an old method for marketing it is still effective
• Album signings - offering the fans a album signing may encourage more people to buy the album and meet the artist up close in person 
• Live performances and tours - this is essential in our promotional campaign we would like a bigger audience to watch our artist live
• Artists personal website - this allows fans or researchers to find information about our artist and also it will include the release date of the latest album  
• Merchandise - can help create an image, style or fashion for the artist bringing in different types of people from other genres of music. 
• Pop-ups and ringtones - these online advertisements are useful as they grab peoples attention when unexpected. 

Risk Assessment

Before filming on location it is essential that you create a risk assessment for safety issues, this is a plan of what actions will be taken if their is a risk on site. It includes the different hazards you may face and how dangerous the hazard is, the people it could affect and who will take action and when on the day of filming.

Assets List

Creating an assets list is good to plan out your day of filming as you have a list of equipment, props and costumes. This avoids delay when it comes to shooting on the day and so me and my partner are fully prepared to make our video with no mistakes.

Things I need to bring:

• Video Camera
• Video Tape
• Camera Charger
• Tripod
• Lighting 
• Make-Up
• Strobe Lights
• Empty Alcohol Bottles
• Laptop 
• Laptop Charger
• Hair Products
• Money

Kieran: 

• Jeans
• Shirt
• Shoes

Connie: 

• Heels
• Dress
• Lipstick 
• Hair Straighteners

Test Shots - Main Characters.

Main Characters in our story line:
Sarah: Connie Ball.
John: Kieran Hanks-McComas.

I took pictures of the two main characters in our storyline to show who the actors are, and their relationship.
It is important that the actors get on with each other during the shoot because our story line requires the actors to trust each other and be comfortable with each other. We are quite lucky as our actors are in a relationship personally and acting out the story in our music video should not be too hard for them.

Digipack Influences

Digipack Influences on Prezi

Idea Development

Today we had a group meeting and we discussed in detail all the aspects of our story: the character types, the story types, the genre, the plot and structure of the video and song. We worked out the sections of the song and planned out what happens during the verses and choruses.

Group Meeting. 02/10/2012

 

We created this mind map and discussed what we need to improve after watching last years pitches and looking at their Research & Planning work. We discussed and wrote down what we need to do to keep our work on Level4. 

Target Audience Collage

Using Kizoa the free collage maker website i used pictures from the internet to gather an overall picture of the gender, subculture and target audience. After doing some research our target audience is likely ages between 25-30 so i went on to our artists (Pryce Oliver) twitter and clicked on some of his friends and got some of there pictures demonstrating his audience he aims for. There is not on particular gender that our artist aims for as he entertains both. I got some images to express the subculture of dance music as we can see some drugs, the crazy colour outfits and bright neon bands. Other famous artists such as The Prodigy and Fat Boy Slim are examples of other inspirations of dance club music.

Target Audience - Social Networking!

We are lucky enough to have an artist with a quite established status in the local music industry. Pryce Oliver already has his own website and facebook profile, twitter account, soundclound account & a youtube account. He has a reasonably sized fanbase. Also with increasing interest in Dance genre by the public, there is a great potential for his music to become well-known in a short period of time.

I collected some screen captures from his existing accounts
to get an idea of what the target audience may be. By that, I mean,
what age group is his music targeting and what kind of an audience listens to dance music?

Information provided by facebook:

Twitter followers: 

                                     
Instantly we can see that the age group most interested in this kind of music & our artists are adults aged from 25-34 years old. This is perfect because our initial ideas for the music video for one of his songs are touching quite serious, grown up subjects such as jealous, relationships, betrayal and drug and alcohol use. This information will help us narrow down what we want to include in our music video and what kind of scenes, themes and concepts can we include so that we target the above type of audience successfully.

Concept Mood Board

Using the free mood board creator 'Kizoa' i gathered images from the internet to represent the concept of our music video. This included the locations: London street, untidy room or flat and a night club. Drugs and alcohol heavily influence one of the characters in the story so this has to be included. The theme of success and failure is essential as the male character we are positioned with faces good times and bad times with his girlfriend. We have hype-reality involved as the female character winks at the camera as our last shot almost establishing that she knew we was watching the whole time and comes out of her character. We see alot of the couple kissing but also we see her cheating causing a fight between her boyfriend and another guy. This raises the emotion of jealousy and anger.

References And Inspirations, Image Of Artist

Our artist 'Pryce Oliver' has already established himself an image what we can build on and develop. He is homosexual which makes him feminine this is important when it comes to his photo shoots and style.

 We were asked to explore and find other references what involve similarities with our artist and other famous artists. I found example, by looking at his myspace and his pictures i found that he had a casual look and style, selling a independent male figure solo artist. I found in some cases Pryce Oiver too had some elements of examples style as he presents himself as his personality and creating his own image.

However just because in some photos Pryce Oliver is presenting himself as casual and ordinary he also has some photo shoots of him showing his fashion. Here we can see he looks quite trendy with his hair messy and a scarf giving him a more original look. I think that the artist Mika can be compared to our artist as he is also homosexual so both artists aim to look feminine and fashionable.

Lastly i discovered that Pryce Oliver also had an interest in looking unique or adding make up to make him seem more interesting. Using a black line splitting down the middle of his face to give him that abstract and weird affect but giving the image a more original style. Famous artist Fat Boy Slim used a similar effect in one of his photos.

References And Inspirations (intertextuality)

After using Youtube to research some other music videos to help us with our ideas for our own music video we found that other music videos was the most useful type of media for intertextual reference however there was some of types of media such as film, the film hangover can be an intertextual reference because they wake up rough after an extreme night out after the use of drugs and drinking.

Lyrics Timecode.

This is our initial idea for our music video. We have worked out what kind of shots would fit in with each section of the song, and with what lyrics. This is what we have produced.

0:00 -0:01 – close up on the main character’s eyes opening. First “Excess”

0:01 – 0:07 –establishing shot of the room, close up on a full ashtray, broken bottles, clothes everywhere.

0:07 – 0:08 – second “Excess”, close up on the girlfriend mouthing Excess, blowing out smoke in a white shirt, smudged make up.

0:08 -0:15 –close ups two-shot of the couple sitting next to each other, looking at each other, lovingly.

0:15 -0:16 – third “Excess” extreme close up of them squeezing each other’s hands “in passion”.

0:16 -0:18 – close up on his face, extreme close up zoom in shot on his eye, “wide open”,

0:18 -0:22 –shots of the fight from the night before, close ups on bottles being smashed to pieces, possible slow-motion

0:22 -0:23 –fourth “Excess” they let go of each other’s hands,

0:23 -0:31 –two shot of them leaving the bed/floor in separate directions/ sides,  a close up of her face wiping tears away, “evil” smile,

0:31 -0:32 –he leaves, door shuts

0:32 -0:46 – “Oh well, I’ve been trying my best, and now I’ve had some success” – him walking down the streets, singing to the camera, few establishing shots, intercutting with him singing

0:46 – 0:52 – “It’s time to try some excess, a little bit of excess” cuts to the girl pulling on stockings & getting ready to go out, putting make up etc

0:52 -1:03 –“ It’s time to try some excess, a little bit of excess” -him still singing, walking into the club (shot of him walking in from outside), sitting down/ordering a shot.

1:03 -1:18 –shots of her walking out of the flat, walking into the same club, ordering a drink, club full of people, they dance, she meets her friends, he meets his, both dance on the dancefloor. (slowmo?)

1:18-1:22 – “Running around and around like a rollercoaster” – blurry camera, p.o.v., as if the whole club was spinning, drug use/alcohol effect.

1:22 -1:25 – he notices the girl, flirting with some other guy

1:25- 1:30 –“Nothing to lose, so excited as we go faster” he walks over, pushes them apart, starts a fight with the other man.

1:30 -1:47 – they fight, possible slow motion, close ups, on the girl the people, they get kicked out, he’s all beaten up, heading home.

1:47-2:01–music speeds up, girl dances, and flirts with guys intercuts with the guy going back home, blurry camera, shaky (drunk & on drugs), shuts the door,

2:01 -2:03 –close up on her face in the club, looks confused/lost

2:03 -2:10 –she comes back, looks all guilty, he sits on the bed, looks up (close up) – quite long shots, of them looking at each other (her guilty & apologising), him all angry?

2:10 -2:17 – arguments ends in kissing, making up, passionate kissing, he throws her on the bed, etc

2:17-2:18 – darkness/blank shot, symbolising end of the day, end of an old chapter,

2:18 – 2:33- "Oh well, I’ve been trying my best, and now I’ve had some success”, morning after both on the bed, facing each other, looking happy, morning light, bright, cheerful, fresh feel.

2:33 –2:38 –“It’s time to try some excess a little bit of excess” –they have breakfast together across a table, talk, laugh etc (good relationship, happiness, no problems)

2:38 -2:46 –“It’s time to try some excess, a little bit of excess” –he goes out, kisses her goodbye, she sits on a sofa, reading a book, close ups, shot of him walking out the door.

2:46 -2:55 –she throws the book away, puts on the stockings, make up, winks at the camera as “Excess” comes on

2:55 -3:10 –she walks down the street, typing on the phone, walks past him in a café, he’s writing, walks out, follows her, she sees him, they fight, he walks away

3:10 – 3:26 –he goes back to the flat, goes mental, packs a suitcase with her clothes, gets a bottle of Jack, gets drunk, image gets shaky. Excess comes on everything goes black,

3:26 -3:34 – she walks in, he’s on the floor, passed out, her suitcase’s by the door, she takes it, winks at the camera again and leaves. Door shuts. THE END.

Final Idea Brainstorm.

We brainstorm our individual ideas together and threw some ideas in suggested by other students, and we created a mind map based upon it as we did in our notebooks when discussing this. We listened to the song many times, thinking of different themes & different settings we could include in the video and this is what we came up with. We will post our final idea template soon.

Email To Copyright Holder

For copyright reasons we had to get permission from the copyright holders to use their song 'Excess' in our music video.