Location shots

Here are the location shots of where we filmed our narrative. We have only taken pictures of our key locations and some to show what we have done during the filming process.




This is where we are filming the opening of our video. It's a wide open space and we believe it will be the perfect place to film the first part of the video as it is not cluttered and is minimal with the amount of trees. We also liked that fact it has a great stone arch for our protagonist to walk under.




This is where we are shooting the first chorus scene in our video. We have chosen this bench because it's a good spot for filming the protagonist writing the song and because it's a large bench we can do the stop motion aspect on the bench as well.




This is a shot to show us using the equipment. Here we have the camcorder set up on the tripod to shoot the first chorus scene. We thought we should include this to show how we have used the camcorder in our music video.





This is a shot to show where we will be filming our second chorus scene. We have chosen this spot because the protagonist will be sat on the edge writing in her book and filming it there will make the video more interesting as there will be a variation of locations in our music video project.




As we used a lot of paper in our video it was only right that we recycled. So after filming we went to a recycling bin to put all the paper in which we used for our stop motion technique.

Lesson Progress

Here is a blog for everything that we do in each of our lessons. This blog is going to be continually updated throughout our coursework progress. To show you what we are doing and how we are doing with the different tasks. We are not going to include the blog posts we have done in our lesson progress as we will be doing these outside of lesson time.

Monday 13th September
In our first lesson we started to look at existing music videos to get ideas for our coursework. We looked at many different genres of music videos such as hip-hop, rock, pop and R'n'B. We hoped that this would give us some sort of idea into what style of music and maybe an early idea into what song we were going to use for our music video.

Thursday 16th September
After looking into existing music videos, we managed to narrow our ideas down to using a pop genre for our music video. After a while of discussion we decided that we were going to use the song "These Words" by Natasha Bedingfield. We were then able to discuss our ideas for the music video. For example locations, camera shots, costumes, lighting etc. Monday 20th September With the ideas of our song decided, we were able to start planning and drawing out our storyboard. We produced a storyboard of shots for the whole song and listed the camera angles, mise en scene, lighting and shot types.

Thursday 23rd September
This lesson Mr Lewis set up our blog for us. Once this was sorted we were able to begin our production treatment. In our production treatment we included the song we have chosen to use, the length of the song, the genre and target audience, detail of ideas we have thought of for our performance, how and where we will be performing and filming and some of the shots that we have decided we will be using.

Monday 27th September
With having the draft storyboard for our music video complete, we decided that we would do a neat final copy of only the first minute of the storyboard to portray in detail some of the shots that we would be using in our video. Our idea was to then scan the images on to the computer whilst in college, but due to the issues of broken scanners we had to do this at home and email the images to our college email address.

Thursday 30th September
This lesson we looked deep into the lyrics of the song that we chose for our video. We began the analysis of our song lyrics, explaining how we had interpreted the words of the song, what we felt she meant in her song and how she was feeling.

Monday 4th October
With the scans of the first minute of the storyboard uploaded onto the computers, we were able to put them on to the blog and talk about them. We uploaded each image separately and wrote about each aspect of the shot. After we had the scanned pieces we made a video animatic of our storyboard and made it to go in time with the music to give a rough idea of our video.

Thursday 7th October
Hour before lesson we did the shooting schedule on our blog so we were up to date before we did our filming during the lesson. In the lesson we went into the media production suite and filming our performance piece. We set up 3 different cameras and have Lucy perform the song into each of the different cameras so we have the whole song performed in close-up medium and long shot.

Monday 11th October
We started to edit all of our previous blog posts and do the process of spell checking and changing the words in the posts to improve it. This took up the whole lesson as we had a lot of changing to do for all our drafts.

Thursday 14th October
We edited our research analysis posts after we realised we had to talk about the technical, narrative and overall aspect of each music video we have done. This took us all lesson as we had to watch each video a few times to fully understand all the different aspects of it.

Monday 18th October
We filmed our narrative part of the video. We went to Reddish Vale to film this was our location and filmed the chorus part of the song. It took us 2 hours to get all the different shots but hopefully we have enough footage so we don't have to go and film the narrative again. This means we would have more time to do the editing when we get back after half term. Thursday 21st October We are not in for this lesson as we will be doing an activity day with college. But on Friday we hope to add all of the location shots and talk about them in a new post.

Monday 1st November
We have started the editing of our filming together in final cut pro. This will be a long process s we need to cover all our filming to go on the Mac then we had to convert the filming again to work with final cut pro. We have also finished our location shot post which we started on the previous Friday. Next lesson we hope to make a good start on our editing and making the timing fit with the song.

Thursday 4th November
We now have the song and have uploaded it onto final cut pro. We have started to edit all of our chorus pieces, but are having some trouble with timing a piece in a song the bit with are struggling with is the part where it says 'I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you' as we want to speed this part up to fit with the song so we are having to use a lot of trial and error to fix it. The rest of the song we have edited seems to be fine so far but we have realised that we need to re-do some of our performance footage.

Monday 8th November
Today after we finished our filming our performance piece we decided to work on more of the editing whilst the video footage rendered onto the Mac computers, in our editing we have all of our narrative piece's placed and in time with the song., but have realised we will need to film some more parts to the narrative as the video as the moment is mostly performance. We only want mainly performance for the verses so hope to film more of the narrative before next lesson then all of the filming will be complete.

Thursday 11th November
We could not film the narrative bits we are missing as we needed Lucy to write to keep the continuity but she was off on a trip. So instead we decided to edit our new performance footage more for our music video, we have finished edited the chorus pieces together and have started piecing it together with the narrative.

Monday 15th November
For the first part of the lesson we filmed our pissing narrative pieces. Then in the second we added it to the video and edited it so al the bits where Lucy are writing it left out and the words just remain. We then place it in the video and started to edit it all together. We stayed behind for as extra hour as we wanted to finish the rough edit of our video to show to our teacher next lesson. So now we have completed our rough edit and will be placing it on our blog very soon, next lesson we hope to get feedback and improve it even further.

Thursday 18th November
We have shown our teacher the rough edit of our video and asked them what the thought. They said we needed to come up with more footage as we have too much performance. We spent the first lesson coming up with ideas on how to improve our video and we have decided to film Lucy in the recording studio in college for the 'you know I had some studio time booked' as we think it will be more interesting then the performance and will add more variation, then in the second we re-filmed 'read some Bryon Shelly and Keats' bit again and have now filmed the pieces of paper instead of Lucy folding them up. We have taken the camera home and we hope to do a lot of filming over the long weekend to help improve our video further.

Monday 22nd November
Lucy and Jeannette spent time at Lucy's house re-filming the "From my heart flow" section of the song. We came up with the idea to cut out lots of heart shapes from pink paper and make these cut outs into a heart shape. We decided to do a shot of half a heart for the "From" then the other half for "My", then the full shape for "Heart". On the word flow, we used a fan to blow the hearts away. To make it look more effective, we put more hearts in front of the fan to blow away with the ones in the shape so that it looked like there were more hearts. We are going to speed this up when putting it in the final video so it cuts to the beat of the song.

Thursday 25th November
This lesson we put the part about the poets into the video. We sped each one up and cut out the parts where the hand is placing the paper one on top of the other. This gave the effect of them being placed on top of each other, we cut this to the time of the beat so as each poets name is said, their poem was shown. We did some more filming in the recording studio in college for the part of the song that says "You know I had some studio time booked...”. We did this to make the song more effective, to show the protagonist is trying to record a song but she walks out at the end as she is struggling. We also needed to add more narrative to replace the performance as we felt there was too much and it would be uninteresting for the audience. After watching the video, we realised we needed to redo the “Getting off my stage" section of the song as it was not as emotional and effective as we had initially hoped. We went to the production suite and filmed the protagonist performing this section. We used a medium shot for the "I'm getting off my stage" to "My naked soul exposes" section. We then used a long shot so the protagonist could move more and show her emotion through body language. We filmed the protagonist falling to the floor, showing that after all the struggle she had given up.

Monday 29th November
We have now added all the footage into the video. We are editing to make the lip syncing professional. We added a jump cut of the protagonist walking into the recording studio, with the light coming on the last beat to show that the room is in session. Now that we have finished the video, after showing our teachers and getting feedback, we decided that we are going to add effects to the performance sections of the video as we feel that the white background is too plain and it would look better with an effect behind the protagonist. We tried adding different backgrounds behind the protagonist during the performance sections. We downloaded a background of clouds from a website called detonationfilms.com. When we set it as the background, we decided that it looked to angelic to be a music video and it didn't suit the genre of the song. We used a programme called """live motion pro""" and instead of adding a background, we added a spot light which was a pale shade of pink which suited our video as the dress worn by the protagonist is pink and it is a feminine colour.

Thursday 2nd December
We have now fully finished the video and have uploaded it to our blog. We are beginning work on the digipack, which contains the CD inserts and magazine advertisement. After various changes, we have completed the front cover of our CD and have almost finished the back.

Monday 6th December
This lesson we began creating our magazine advertisement. We researched exiting adverts but will be unable to upload them to our blog as we do not have access to a scanner and they are not on the Internet. Our research gave us a basic idea of what a music advert in a magazine should look like and what aspects it should include. For example, date of release, website and where it is available from.

Thursday 9th December
This lesson we finished the final versions of our CD covers and magazine advertisement and are ready to hand all of our work in for the deadline. We are quite pleased with this as we have managed our time quite well.

Filming Progress

Thursday 7th October
We started the filming for the performance piece of our music video. We set up three cameras in the production room at different shot types. We had camera one set at a close up shot showing just the face. We decided to use this shot as there are some parts of the song that we believe are quite emotional, the close up shot allows us to portray this emotion in a rather intimate way. The protagonist was rather still on this camera and not much movement was captured. We set camera two at a medium shot. This shot shown just the face and the shoulders. It allowed us to keep the intimacy of the close up but also gave room for more movement and activity and emotion in the shot. Camera three was set at long shot. This allowed view of the whole body up to the knees. We decided on the use of this shot as it allowed the protagonist to move around freely with plenty of space not to go off the screen of the camera. We decided that for one part of the song where the artist lists of poets (Byron, Shelly and Keats) that the protagonist would have a piece of paper representing each poet’s work that she had read. These were held up at this point and shown to the camera. At the end of the verse where she says that nothing she writes is ever good enough, we decided that the protagonist would throw the pieces of paper in the air to signify how fed up she was that her lyrics were nowhere near as good as the works of the poets. We decided to perform the song all the way through on each camera so that we could pick out the bits we wanted during editing and fit them in with the narrative piece. Each camera performance was the same apart from in camera three, where the protagonist had the pieces of paper in her hands to throw in the air at the correct point.

Monday 18th October
We have filmed our location part of the video in which we went off sight and filmed at Reddish Vale. We filmed all the bits that will go with the chorus part of the video. We filmed no lip syncing as we believe it is not needed for the chorus and the narrative should help to illustrate the words of the video. We decided to use a bit of stop motion for the part in the songs that says 'Waste bin full of paper' in which a pile of paper keeps stacking up until it gets knocked over. We have used over the shoulder shots in which we have captured 'I love you' being written four times, in editing we will speed the writing up so it goes in time with the song. We have also spelt out the line 'D-E-F' and 'A-D-D' in rocks which starts off as close up on the first letter then a medium to show the first and the second and a long shot to show all three letters to help illustrate the words to the song. We believe that these things will help to make our video effective as it's something different that wouldn't happen in a 'Pop' video. We used close ups to show the frustration on the performers face in different parts of the song. We have also used a tracking shot which we will turn into a jump cut in editing.

Monday 8th November
We re-filmed some of our performance footage as we believed our original footage up to a good enough standard when piecing it with the narrative shots in the editing suite. Looking at what we filmed today it seems much better and will help our music video to look more professional as the performer is using more emotion rather than standing still with arms by her side. We re-filmed the medium and close up shots again and now the lip-syncing is perfect, we have kept our original long shot as that was fine the first time we filmed it. Now we have filmed this we shouldn’t need to film any more performance for our music video. Monday 15th November Today we filmed the final parts to add to our music video in the editing suite. Today we filmed Lucy writing more in the book and are going to use stop motion techniques to show this we have gotten her to write ' I love you' three times and 'is that okay?' we have done this as we believe showing these lyrics in the video will help to emphasize the meaning of the song to the audience. Also by using the book it will help to make our video look more interesting as other similar 'Pop' videos do not use it. Thursday 18th November Today we printed out poems by each of the three poets mentioned in the song lyrics. We found the poems on the internet and filmed one at a time being placed on top of each other in order as the song says them. We had planned to film the protagonist showing books of poems by each of the poets but when we looked for them in the library, we could only find books by Byron and Keats, so this is why we printed them off instead. We put the name of the poet in larger font to stress the words in time with the song.

Monday 22nd November
We were not in college today as we had a four day weekend so we decided to go to Lucy's house and film some more footage for the narrative part of our video. We decided to cut out love hearts in pink paper and make them into a heart shape for the line of the song "from my heart flow". We filmed one half of a heart for the word "from", the other half of the heart for the word "my" and then the whole of the heart for the word "heart". For the word "flow" we decided to use a fan to blow the hearts away. We put more hearts ff the shot so that when the fan blew them it gave more of an effect.

Tuesday 23rd November
After coming up with new ideas we decided to re-do the 'Getting of my stage' part of the song we have redone the green screen and use a different costume as we believed that using the bright dress we use in the narrative and the other parts of the performance wouldn’t be suitable for this part of the song as the verse is quite serious as she is now starting to give up with writing a song. After using the green screen we need to find a picture of a stage, to put in the background.

Shooting Schedule

We have made a shooting schedule and we have decided on what days we shall we be filming and approximately the length of time we shall be filming for, and divided it into what days will be spent doing performance and what days will be spent filming the narrative.

Performance

We will be filming on Thursday and Monday for two hours on each day and it should take us about two weeks to get all the footage we will need to make the video successful. We will be filming our performance in the production room on the green screen. We had a look around the production studio and it gave us ideas of how to set up the cameras and how to organise our performance. We are going to set up three cameras at different angles in three different shots; long shot, medium shot and close up. We are going to record the performance of the whole song on each camera so that we can edit the footage and fit it in with the footage from our narrative filming.

Narrative

We are going to do the filming for our narrative on Sunday mornings as this is one of the only times we are able to film due to work commitments of group members. When looking around the area, it also came to our attention that it would be quieter on a Sunday as less people went there on a Sunday morning. We are going to film the footage for our narrative in a field area on Reddish Vale. We had a look at this area and we believed that it would be a good place to film as it has nice scenery and we believe it fits in with our music video because it’s a large, open spaced area, emphasising the fact of the protagonist being alone in her writing.

Scanning of the storyboard

Here are the scans of the first minute of our storyboard. We didn't complete all the boxes in the storyboard because we felt that we needed to write more than the space provided so below each picture is paragraph summing up how the mise en scene and lighting will be in each frame.

Shot One

The camera will be a tracking shot following the protagonist until she walks off camera.
The mise en scene will contain the protagonist dressed in a quite feminine, casual outfit the costume will be the same throughout the music video. The lighting will be quite bright as it will compliment the video as the song is quite upbeat, the prop will be a notebook and the pen in her hand as she is walking. The location will be where we are filming our narrative piece. The sound will be the song for our music video Natasha Bedingfield-These words.

Shot Two



















The camera will be a medium shot of the protagonist. The mise en scene will contain the same costume as the first shot, the lighting will be quite bright again the same as the first shot. We won’t have any props in this shot and it won’t last for very long. The location will be in a room with the green screen behind it. The sound will be the song in which we are doing for the music video.

Shot Three

This shot will be a cutaway and will hopefully be done in stop motion which goes in time with the beat and the lighting will be quite bright. The stop motion will be made of rocks coming together to spell out the letters, to help illustrate the words of the song.

Shot Four

This will be a medium shot of the performance piece set in a room with the green scene.
The costume, lighting, props and location will all be the same as the second shot.

Shot five

This shot will be a cutaway shot made in the same way as shot three with bright lighting and stop motion.

Shot 6

This shot will be done in the same was as shots two and four will the camera and the mise en scene staying the same.
Shot 7

This shot we will be an extreme long shots that zooms into the medium shot of the protagonist. The location will be quite different from all the other shots so far. Here we have the protagonists sitting on a wall in a filmed in place that nearer to the location in the first shot. Also she is writing in a notepad, also the bin is shown because it will be a key prop for the next two shots. The rest of the mise en scene for the scene (costume and lighting) will stay the same.
Shot Eight

This is a medium shot of the character sitting on the wall writing in the notebook which helps to visualise the lyrics of the music. At the end of this shot it shows the protagonist throwing paper. All aspects of the mise en scene are as same and the previous shot, shot seven.
Shot Nine

This shot is a close up of a waste basket, the piece of paper from shot eight is thrown into this wastebasket making it a key prop also the lighting for this shot will be quite bright. The waste basket will then fill up with paper to go in time with the beat of the lyrics.

Shot Ten

Shot ten cuts back to the protagonist sat on the wall but zooms in from a long shot to a close up of the protagonists face to show her emotion and to also illustrate the lyrics of the song. The mise en scene will be the same as shot eight.
Shot 11

Will be an over the shoulder shot on the protagonist write the words "I love you" in the note book, it will be written four times and sped up to match with the lyrics to the song. The mise en scene will still be similar to the other shots but the note book will be the key prop in this shot.
Shot Twelve

Shot twelve will cut back to a medium shot of the protagonist doing the performance piece but we might add a few jump cuts to go with the beat of the song of the protagonist moving back and forth. This will help the video to look more interesting. The mise en scene will be the same as all the other performance shots.