Production - 2nd Day Filming (Reflection)

Production - First filming date (Reflection)

Our group opinions/feedback on the editing process

Target audience feedback of our music video so far

Today we interviewed some of target audience member to see what they thought of our video so far, as they the ones who are essentially going to view it. They had many positive feedback as well as valuable criticisms here they are:

First draft of our music video

This is the first draft of our music video. There is still a lot to do and edit but we have sort of found what we want to do in terms of our style of editing. The sequence of base master tracks have been shifted as we felt that it did not fit the look we was going for and often did not make sense e.g. we tried to do a jump cut but in one of the shots the artist was wearing a scarf and the other she wasn't. 

We also got two contrasting feedbacks from our teachers about the flicker effect in the beginning of the song. One teacher said it looked really good and effective with the song, whereas the other teacher said it did not flow with the beat at all and the edit would change the genre of the whole song.
We had a long think and decided removing the flicker effect was the best thing to do after all.

Synergy

The pictures above show the objects that will be used within:

-Our Digipak/CD Cover
-Our Trailer
-Our Music Video
Our music video/genre is of a soul genre. So I believe that these objects fit in with this genre, so the  black fascinator as it gives a classic feel and one of emotion. Also it helps distinguish our artist from others which is important as our inspiration Adele does this with her simplistic outfits.Also dark colours, in near all the base tracks Aurora (me) is wearing black. This reflects the lyrics of the song of heart break.

Production- Blog task 38, 4th Reflection of editing process

My overview of editing process

Our production schedule wasn't as detailed as it could've been, as it only included the dates in which we'd be filming certain scenes. There wasn't any clear time period that we'd assigned to editing, however I feel like we're now back on right track.

My group and I had all of our footage on the timeline except we replaced Hampstead Heath with St Pauls Cathedral but the actual footage we had did not agree with all members of our group hence why we needed to add scenes and different locations. We finished our filming a lot later than we expected to and so we have less time to edit.

The production schedule states that we were meant to started filming on Friday 23rd October, which we did which was basic area shots. The footage that would be dominating our music video the Alexandra base track of our main artist was filmed the following week through the half term. By doing this we had the majority of our footage out of the way on this day.

Our production schedule was only a rough guideline and although we stated we would film the Oxford/Piccadilly Circus scene on Tuesday 27th October, we were unable to film then and so we spent the time we would've been filming, editing instead. This set us ahead an hour and a half and by the end of that lesson, we'd imported all of our footage into Adobe Premiere Pro, decided what we'd keep and which shots were not so good. We'd also begun moving our base tracks into the timeline. This is always a major part of editing and it takes a lot of time to sort through the footage, so I feel like we got a lot done.

If anything, I find that this worked out better than our initial schedule would have done, as we found a more appropriate day to film what we intended to and allowed ourselves a lot more time to film this, which should hopefully be reflected in the quality of our footage as we put more thought into it.

All of the footage we'd compiled over the course of the half term was all imported into Adobe Premiere Pro on our first three hour lesson back and so by the end of that lesson each clip had been named, sorted, put on the timeline and we started syncing the base tracks to the music.

We're now going to create a new production schedule; one that reflects exactly what we've done in terms of both filming and editing, including each date and what happened in the editing session in detail.

Currently, we've completed and uploaded our rough cut and we're simply fine-tuning our footage. By this I mean going through it and ensuring that it's all appropriate - deleting clips that have a lot of dead space in them or where Aurora (our main artist) is mumbling and the lip singing doesn't look as good as it could be.

The media technician helped us by showing us how to do some of the specific effects we desire for our music video. All that we'll have to do is implement that, so adding in the effects and re-watching the music video several times to figure out what we could change and make better.

Some of the strengths that we've come up to do with our editing at the moment are that we have a variety of footage to pick from and a good performance to work with.

A few weaknesses that we've found are that our music video is that the artist does not have to be singing through as it is too repetitive also we need a more clear vision in terms of the sequence of our clips.

We've actually changed a lot in regards to our storyboard. Our whole concept is the same however we also filmed Aurora singing in another location as we didn't have enough footage as we needed full base tracks.

We still have all of the same shots that we were planning to use, however the order has just been re-arranged a little.

Here is the production schedule we created via timetoast prior to actual production:

Production- Blog task 38, 3rd reflection of editing process

Production- Blog task 38, 2nd reflection of editing process Editing session 24/11/15

Before todays lesson me and Tahsin thought it would wise to go film one more extra base master track at St Pauls Cathedral to complete our footage.

The feedback we received from Louisa on our footage was:

-We need to stop filiming!!

-We are focusing too much on filiming which is overlapping into our editing time.

-We are nearly 10 days away from our editing deadline

-Keep drafting our rough cuts

-Strong performance

My response to this feedback (Iman):

I understand where Louisa is coming from as we have a lot of footage to choose from and after much discussion we came to the conclusion we are in fact done with filming. We need to focus strictly now more on the actual editing process because that's what going to bring the music video to life. From now we are going to dedicate lesson time not to filming like previous weeks but instead editing and attend workshops.

Here is evidence from todays lesson of us taking on and acting on Louisa feedback: 

Production- Blog task 38, 1st reflection of editing process

My overview on editing today:

In todays lesson we did choose not to film as Marissa advised but instead choose to look over the footage we had to see the areas we needed to focus on. We found that the base master tracks we had need to be completed in full as we did have one complete one of artist sing. In addition, we stabilised our work so it could look more professional as the footage was shaky.Also I realised how much editing we actually had to do and blogging we need to catch up.

18. Song Choice Digipak

 

Adele - 21 (song choice: Set Fire To The Rain)

At the front is a big image of the artist, below it her name and the name of the Album. The simplicity of the front reflects herself aswell as the genre as her songs are calm yet powerful. Adele's face is the first thing the audience see's, her posture seems very laid back and sad which reflects what is possibly the theme in her songs.

At the back we see the artists face once again, including the songs in the album and a barcode which is used during sales of the album.

Opinion on feedback of First Draft of rough cut

Here is my reflection and views on the rough cut feedback given today!

Rough cut of our music video

Here is a rough cut of our music video! There is still very much to do in terms of editing , adding more base tracks and filming but here is a preview of our hard work.

Filming 27/10/2015

Reflection from perspective

Alexandra Palace

Location -  Alexandra Palace has been a very picturesque location with a nice skyline view. It has allowed us to get some very visually appealing shots of green which contrasts the colour black which our artist was wearing. It made the artist stand our even more even though she wore the darkest colour possible.
Costume - The costume was a very good choice including the hat which gave it that sad touch. The area itself was green and vibrant but our artist wore contrasting items to denote the sadness of her song in a world where she once lived in happiness. 

Overall, the base tracks we took had some really nice angles, especially the silhouette type shot taken against the skyline view, was my favourite. However, we made one error of not continuing the recording of our base track right till the end which without a doubt limited us from having shots of our artist singing in Alexandra palace towards the end of the song. From this we have learnt that in furute base track recordings, we must carry on recording one whole song before cutting to record a different shot type. We plan to re film some shots in Alexandra Palace if the time allows us.

15. Short-list

Our group were very adamant that we did not want to do a pop song, which we automatically ruled out at first.

Then we began debating on which artist to choose and whether they would be male or female, depending on who in our group was willing to be the artist.

It was finalized among us that the artist would be Adele and we will be working on her song Skyfall.

However, when enlightening Marissa (our teacher) about our song choice, she highly pressured us into choosing a different song as Skyfall is a high profile track associated with James Bond. Therefore it would influence our ideas about what kind of music video to have, and overall it would have been a massive challenge. We then decided it would be out of Adele's Rolling In The Deep or Set Fire To The Rain. We then finalized it one more time that Set Fire To The Rain would be a perfect choice as it did not have a music video for it, therefore all idea's would solely be ours. 

(Summary) - Short-list:

Adele:

- SkyFall

- Rolling In The Deep

- Set Fire To The Rain