Day 6

2012.11.31

During the editing, we were suggested by our teacher. He suggested us that we could film a sequence 'zoom-in to the frame which is the picture in the frame is the first sequence of our music video'. We accept the suggestion, because we think this sequence could be a good link back to the story what could represent our equilibrium linear narrative, and bring our audience back to real life.

Abbie filmed few clips, but on some clips we could see the door next to the frame and the lighting was dark which we don't think will suit our video. So in media lesson, I filmed it again in different camera shots.

Abbie printed the picture out, we put it in a real frame, by using the Blue Tac I sticked the frame on the wall outside our class room. This time, there were nothing near the place where the frame sticked, no door etc.

 I filmed this in 'Zoom-in','Zoom-out' and 'Pan' with different positions, so that we have more choices.

Below are some of the clips I filmed.

Participants： Serena

Day 4

2012. 11. 28

Today, we filmed the 'Jump' sequence in college studio. On our planning, we was going to film this sequence in the museum. We filmed that part as our planning, but when we watched it on computer, it does not work well. After discussed with our teacher, we decided we are going to film it again in the studio, by using software, we could edit it looks like she jump out from the frame.

By the test on yesterday, Bronte tried few different ways. Because we cannot ware hight-heels on the floor in the studio, she cannot jump up both feet with the dress otherwise we will see her jeans inside. To solve this problem, we asked her step out by using one feet, which was the best solution. Thomas also jump out after her, which followed the narrative that he wants her back.

There are some clips and pictures of the filming.

Participants： Abbie, Serena, Thomas

Rough Cut 2 (Abbie)

                      

What is in this Sequence:
It contains the opening sequence and I have added the 'stepping' out clip which was missing in the previous rough cut, although I still have to edit it further and crop out the studio light. I have also included some more lip-syncing from the performing arts studio where the dance sequence takes place, I have also added some of the museum clips where she is exploring the houses and leaves one of the houses as well as the candle sequence.  There is a lot more black patches since I have synced different clips at different timings of the music.

The Narrative of the video:
There is a painting of a couple on there wedding day, the female persona is sick of being stuck in a small framed space, eventually she's had enough of being a painting and decides to break free leaving her husband confused at her sudden departure. She finds herself in the museum where she explores vicariously as if she was human, passing against the houses she finds some candles and begans to light the dark world which is the realistic look on life when she escaped from her optimistic lifestyle.

What i'm going to do next:
I will add more clips in which will be the dance sequence and I will also try and sync the clips more into the beat of the song, for my main next goal will be to roughly place as many clips as possible in order to fill up the gaps and get around two to three minutes of the song completely sycned. 

Rough Cut 1

            

What is in this Sequence:
For rough cut one, I did a thirty second clip of what my beginning sequence would look like. It shows our personas standing infront of a church lipsyncing. We filmed this sequence on our first day of filming, in the studio. It shows us doing a close up, medium shot and long shot with the additional transition to make the sequence flow more easily. I have to be careful not to go overboard with the transitions as it won't look professional like I intended it to.

The Narrative of the video:
There is a painting of a couple on there wedding day, the female persona is sick of being stuck in a small framed space, eventually she's had enough of being a painting and decides to break free leaving her husband confused at her sudden departure. She finds herself in the museum where she explores vicariously as if she was human, passing against the houses she finds some candles and begans to light the dark world which is the realistic look on life when she escaped from her optimistic lifestyle.

What i'm going to do next:

I am going to add more of the dance sequence which we re-filmed, I am also going to add the clips which we re-filmed in the studio. Due to re-filming, there was a few black patches of in between the clips, because we had not shown that she 'steps' out of the painting which would rupture the order of events in the narrative leaving the audience confused. I will try and make the next rough cut longer than 30 seconds preferably to a minute or more.

Test Footage(Abbie)

                            

Test Footage: 
This is our test footage of our music video 'Cosmic Love', it shows the beginning sequence of our music video. The beginning shows a medium shot of our actors Bronte and Thomas, then it changes to a long shot of them infront of a church that I have used film colorization on. On the right you see part of the green screen coming through onto the footage while we were doing a few shots, we weren't able to use this clip because of it. It then shows a long shot of our actor Bronte doing some dance moves in the same studio we filmed our beginning scene, we were going to use these for the actual video but decided against because it didn't look very good. It then changes to a medium shot of Bronte in the museum walking towards the camera, this was a good shot and we may use it in our music video.

The narrative:

There is a painting of a couple on there wedding day, the female persona is sick of being stuck in a small framed space, eventually she's had enough of being a painting and decides to break free leaving her husband confused at her sudden departure. She finds herself in the museum where she explores vicariously as if she was human, passing against the houses she finds some candles and begans to light the dark world which is the realistic look on life when she escaped from her optimistic lifestyle.

Inspirational Videos (Abbie)

                                       Inspirational videos from Abbitybabbityboo

We were inspired by Christina Perri "A Thousand Years" because of her candle scenes where it shows her holding a candle and surrounded by hundreds of candles. I liked this because it went with the song lyrics 'They have all been blown out'.  It was also a nice touch to add in the dark room, because of the lyrics 'You've left me in the dark', they melted quite quickly because they were tea lights but overall I liked how they were portrayed during that scene in our music video.

For the dress, we wanted a victorian like theme but were not 
sure what dress to use, Within Temptation song Frozen portrayed a very formal dress which we liked very much so we tried to find a dress similar such as the collar of the dress in Frozen is similar to our dress in our music video. It went with our theme and we're glad that we could find a dress so alike.

For this inspiration we went to the source of our song, with is 'Cosmic love'. We really liked this camera angle of how she is surrounded by lights while singing on the beat so we decided to do something similar but we got a side view instead because it looked better with the lights reflecting onto her rather than under her. 

Location Request (Abbie)

 I written an email to Hartlepool Marina asking for permission to use their premise to film part of our music video as I explained in the email.

 I got a reply quickly from a woman named Emma, who I stayed in touch with most of the time whilst arranging permission. Fairly, they required I come down and show them where I want to film so they know if they need to redirect the public.

I offered to go that weekend to meet Dominic and show them where I wanted to film which was on the Boat, in the hallway and outside where we could light candles and not be stopped because of health and Safety reasons. 

I went to meet Dominic who was kind enough to give me a tour of where I could film and gave me the permission to use the Museum grounds for filming. I was given the busiest days and offered to film when the museum wasn't open to the public, which was great if I needed be. But I decided I could easily work around the public. He said he would like me to call in preferably 2 days before we are going to the museum filming, I agreed that was fine. 

Unfortunately when I went to call them two days beforehand but I was unable to get through to Emma so I left my number, I was told I'd get a call back that same day but sadly I did not. I tried again the next day and I left my number a second time and again I did not receive a call back. This was very frustrating as I was trying to arrange a time so that all members including the actors were able to come.

I was able to reply, and told Wendy a date and a time I wished to go and film at the museum, by this time I had to arrange this on the day. I told them we we're more likely to be a couple of hours simply due to the amount of shots we needed. I offered to work around the public, and try not cause any inconvenience. 

After getting a reply back from Emma, they required I bring my storyboard of my shots in like I promised Dominic, they told me a large school was coming on the same day as us so I needed to play where we were going to film at particular times.

I told her where our locations are going to be on their establishment and unfortunately I had forgotten the name of the hallway which we were going to film in. I also asked if we we're able to use the boat in which the museum owned. I gave them I time, me and my group would be appearing at the museum and that I would show them the storyboard before I set up any equipment.

Exploring the studio:

Our group booked in the studio for Thursday 4th October. 
We asked a series of questions on how to work the equipment, what would we need to achieve the effect we wanted etc.

We found a series of problems that we need to avoid:

• When planning outfits, we need to cross out green clothing as it would affect the green screen
• We need our image to the big so that it isn't pixelated and unrealistic 
• We need to plan our cinematography carefully due to the amount of space we have on the screen
• Lighting need to focus on the backdrop and face of the actor(s).

We were advised to film outside the studio and grab our still shot using a real background so that if we need to go back we can without a problem, we also need to find out what cinematography we want to use so that it's easier to film in the studio. We're also advised to film in colour and when we want to record in the studio and want to change shots we record the whole song and cut it in post production due to the camera being live.

Planning our first few shots:
Longshot of actor(s) by the church
Close up of actor before zooming out into a medium shot

Draft Advert one (Abbie)

Firstly I opened up a new photoshop file before changing the size of the canvas so that it is the same size as the orignal Florence and the Machine advert.

Next thing I did was to copy the background incase I made any mistakes I could simply delete that background with my orignal still intact.

Next I changed the 'background copy' to black but kept the orignal background white.

After changing the background to black, I added the bands name at the top of the canvas. I changed the font to our chosen font which is Edwardian Script ITC and change the colour to white, the size is 48 PT and set the anti-aliasing method to strong.

Next I added the title 'Presents' and I changed the font to our chosen font which is Edwardian Script ITC and change the colour to white, the size is 48 PT and set the anti-aliasing method to strong.

I added the title of the album which is 'Lungs' and changed the font to our chosen font which is Edwardian Script ITC and change the colour to white, the size is 48 PT and set the anti-aliasing method to strong.

I print screened a photo of candles and copied it into photoshop before changing the layer name to 'Candles'.

I added a 'dark shadows' that was located in the blending options to add a soft touch to the photograph.

I then added outer glow onto the picture because it reminded me of a picture frame which makes reference to our narrative.

Afterwards I changed the blend mode to 'Hard light', which darkened it and made it look more shadowed.

I then added the date in which the album was released orignally.

I added some information on the advert as has as well  as the CD, you will recieve live versions of the songs and a behind the scenes exclusive. I also offered a download on the song we chosen 'Cosmic love'.

I then added one of our actors Thomas, I rasterize the layer and used transformation to move the picture to blend in with the background before turning opacity the down (96%) and Fill (72%).

Then I added a picture of Bronte in and added a mask as her background was going through the lines, so I masked it out. I had orignally used the same opacity and fill as Thomas but decided against it and changed her opacity back to 100%

I then saved it as a JPEG and added an 8 for image quality, the reason I chose 8 so it looked high quality without taking a long time for the images to load.

The final image