Monthly Archives: November 2013
Editing Process – Rough Cut
When we had filmed all of our footage for our rough cut we began our editing process. As we had found out when we edited our animatic, we knew the editing stage would take a long time to complete. Therefore we left ourselves plenty of time to complete this stage to ensure we edited as well as we could for our rough cut. As we had picked a fast song with significantly up-tempo beats, the editing to the chorus we knew would be very fast and difficult. Additionally, as our song ‘Grammy’ has a large rap element to the song, the lyrics are therefore sung very quickly and this made lip-synching and editing the lyrics to the visuals would be even harder.
We decided to edit on the iMovie software as we were all comfortable and confident with this software and furthermore it still included some of the effects we were intending to use. Also, this would make our editing process more proficient as we already knew how to successfully edit on this software.
We found this period extremely valuable and we believe quite successful, however, we are aware we will need ti improve certain elements and aspects of the music video to improve the editing.
Below are some images of us during our editing process.
Filming – Pictures
Today we filmed the pictures of Luna and her boyfriend. We originally had the intention to have polaroid pictures in the music video, however, we realised this would be slightly unachieveable as none of us had a polaroid camera. Therefore we printed out the pictures normally and this worked well. When filming we shot all of the pictures laying out and another shot of a pile of pictures. Through audience feedback these shots have worked out well.
Filming – Sunday 24th November
During this filming session we filmed the shots of Luna’s boyfriend (being played by Alex) walking out of the house and walking to the party and also the pictures of Luna (being played by Zara) and her boyfriend. We will use these pictures during the flashbacks in the music video to convey their once happy relationship and use this to juxtapose their broken down relationship now. We also had to re-film some of shots we had filmed during the previous week of Luna’s boyfriend as it was too dark outside.
Issues we faced when filming:
As we started filming at 3:00pm it was still light outside and we tried to film as many shots as we could during this time frame before it got dark outside. However, as we had researched it would have been a 4:00pm sunset, we would have been able to film all of the shots we needed within an hour. However, as the sun set earlier than expected, this mean’t we had to use the lighting to kit to make it appear like we was filming during daylight.
Lighting the Studio
As the issue with lighting was the most significant negative feedback we gained from our first dailies, we believed that we should focus on improving the lighting so we would not have to film the studio element of the music video again. When we filmed our trial shots with Brooke, we only hired one lighting kit, consisting of 1 soft box and 3 lights. Thus, by doubling the amount of lights we had, we believed this would result in a much brighter backdrop and also if we aimed a lot of lighting on the backdrop this would decrease the harsh brightness differences of the actress and the backdrop.
When we watched the footage back, the increase in lighting significantly improved the brightness and made the studio setting look more professional. However, it did involve a lot of re-adjustment to ensure the lighting remained effective when we changed the shot angle.
Below, shows the differences between the lighting of the trial shots and the lighting with Zara. On the left shows the improved lighting with Zara, whereas the right picture shows the dark and dull lighting.
Dailies Feedback
After completing our second ‘dailies’ feedback session, we gained some very useful feedback from our media studies teacher and classmates. The feedback was based on footage we showed the class of our actress, Zara, in the studio setting singing the song – this is the performance element of our music video.
Positives:
– bright costumes worked well
– close ups of her eyes looked good
– eyes looked sharp
– our actress successfully conveyed the appropriate expression when singing the song
– well formed shots
– good variety of studio shots
– successful and effective lighting
– good hair and make-up
Negatives:
– close up of her mouth singing didn’t work and wasn’t very effective
– less playing of hair when singing the song
– she moves a lot up and down and does not stay in the middle third of the shot
Communication with our actress
To ensure we have a successful filming session, we communciate a lot with our actress and actor in our music video. Below are some screen shots of the communication in the form of text messages between Zara (playing Luna) and myself. We were communciating and sorting out the filming on November 24th 2013. We were sorting out the costumes we needed Zara to wear, consisting of casual clothing, and also the time we needed Zara to start filming.
Polaroid Pictures
Within our music video we wanted to include an element of originality as we believed the song ‘Grammy’ was particularly unique and we wanted to reflect this by including an aspect that is not usually in videos. Therefore we decided to include Polaroid pictures to create a section of stop motion effect to convey and establish Luna and her boyfriends relationship and the emotions they are both feeling. We came to this idea by brainstorming a way in which we can
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