This is a post on our planning for the third shoot we are going to do we have focused on the key locations where we will be shooting at, and will be shooting both narrative and performance footage and hopefully we will have enough footage to create our first rough cut. From previous experiences we know that we have to plan our shoots before hand to use our time a lot more efficiently.
Here is our shooting schedule for our third shoot
For our third shoot we are planning on shooting at five different locations as you can see from the shooting schedule above. Luckily two members of the group can drive therefore we can fit the chair in the back of the car and use it in any ideal location.
Shoot 3: Shoot: 29th November
We shot today and the shoot didn't exactly go according to plan because we ran out of valuable time, we also only used two locations as appose to the three/four we were planning on using, also again light was a problem as we were shooting towards the end of daylight hours.
Nevertheless we managed to shoot two key scenes and sequences that we amy be using in our final cut. These were a shot we were experimenting with on a mattress we were using. Our main character would be rolling around on this emphasising his lack of sleep. We also used the chair prop in a different location with a field in the backdrop and we plan on using the layering editing tool to overlap theses shots into one.
Therefore, we will be using our shooting schedule for this shoot for our forth shoot to save time because we have missed some vital shots and scenes that still need to be done. As a result, it is arguable to say that we are behind now however, we will be using the time we have left efficiently to get our full rough cut shot and edited by the 4th of december or the 6th if time is needed.
On creative arts evening we plan to do this clip however get people to volunteer to sit in the chair. This will hopefully be like a free advertising strategy as clips like this have the ability to go viral on youtube and social networking sites.
We will bring the chair we used in this clip into school and then ask people to sit in the seat and do movements or lip synch. We will then quickly take the footage and edit it. We will then show this to the person either face to face or post it on youtube the next day.
As well as this we will also get volunteers to sit in the chair and lip synch some of the lyrics. We will then edit these shots into our short rough cut that lasts around 60 seconds and then show the volunteer the results. this will create a great secondary video for our group, having lots of different shots of different people.
When we went to shoot our sample footage we decided to go with this as costume as we were just shooting sample footage. This costume is now our narrative costume apart from i'm wearing different shoes and a Wight Tshirt.
For our final performance costume we have gone for very similair as this insomnia video. We have used black trousers a grey blazer and white shoes. We thought this was a very unique costume and a convention used in faithless videos.
When shooting we shot lots of me lip synching. We did this on the chair and lip synched the whole thing. Here is the outcome and a few points about it:
Mise En Scene
When shooting we took advantage of what we think is great mise en scene. We asked people what they thought of the background and they loved it, as it was urban and looked very effective. The graffiti is used in lots of music videos like Blue-one love as it gives the video an urban feel.
Feedback
We then got feedback on our video. The main piece of feedback was that there should be more emphasis when lip synching the words. People said i didn't put enough emotion into it and could be more clear with my lip synching. However they liked the mise en scene and some of the footage they said was really good but the best bits need cutting and small bits put into the video not one long bit
Editing The editing of this clip was incredibly easy as i just matched the audio to the visuals of me lip synching. As soon as i did this the clip started to look very good and our team were happy with the results. As well as just dragging the audio, with like all of the other videos we chose the black and white effect to represent the dark place he is in.
When on our shoot we decided to have a shot of me tapping my foot against the wall to the beat as we thought it would be an effective shot and have seen it in many different music videos like George Michaels Faith. I then edited the clip to the beat and found it quite effective.
As we have gone with the idea of having a black and white music video, when editing we always use the black and white to see how it looks. This is because it is not a definitive decision to go with black and white. if it looks good in colour we can discuss and decide whether or not we should keep with the black and white idea
This is our sample scene two where i experimented with different editing techniques. This is rough but it gives us and idea of how it will look when it comes to the actual shoot and we know what we need to do when it comes to changing it.
Our group have created a new Twitter with the username TeamDeJaCu. We will use this twitter as an advertising tool and to let people know about our group and what we're planning to do. Here is our twitter account!
As well as just setting up our twitter and tweeting we have also followed influential twitter pages. One of these pages was beggars group media. A media group responsible for videos from the likes of Bon Iver. They are an english group and they are a company we take inspiration from.
We also followed Faithless as he is the artist of the video we are doing and we take many ideas from his work as inspiration.
What we have found is that in many of Faithless' music videos is that Maxi Jazz when he is lip syncing is usually in a stationary position. He is usually either standing up straight or sitting down.
We took particular interest in the music video Take The Long Way Home by Faithless as they use an old looking armchair for Maxi Jazz to sit on whiles he's singing, and we're planning on incorporating this in our music video and will form an intertextual link with Faithless' other videos, but also it's common
Take The Long Way Home
for juxtaposition to be used in Faithless' videos
for example in Take The Long Way Home Maxi Jazz
is seen sitting on an arm chair in front of a moon in his
armchair and these two things are very juxtaposed, and
with our music video we're planning on shooting with an
armchair in the middle of a field to achieve juxtaposition.
Like in the video Take The Long Way Home we are in the process of planning our green screen shot where we plan on shooting our main character sat in his chair with the green screen behind him. One of the main factors of this is choosing the visuals that will go behind our character whether they will be moving or a still image, it may be the safe option to use a still image however, using a moving background could be equally effective.
From our shoot on the 16th November we managed to get a scene where our main character is sat in an arm chair on a field, and in this scene we wanted to see if duplicating the character in the armchair would work, and to do this we had to keep the camera rolling in one long take and in the same position whiles we moved the armchair in different positions.
Editing: With the editing for this scene we had to use the blade tool to chop up the long take that we took and then separate the clips that had the armchair in different positions, we then re-timed each clip so that they were all the same length and then layered them over the top of each other by cropping each clip to the point where you could see each clip in the same scene.
On the 16th of November we decided that we would shoot during our media lesson at 9.00 Am due to our locations brainstorm we knew the locations we would be shooting at. Because of problems last time due to lack of planning we fully prepared with our storyboard. Therefore, we shot everything we set out to do, which was to get the lip syncing footage from two different locations, these were:
The Ben rhydding field behind Declans house
The graffiti wall
These locations were ideal for some of our lip syncing sequences because we used an abstract backdrop which worked extremely well as the mise en scene of the graffiti on the back wall signifies a 'badboy' role which is what we hope will be our preferred reading from our target audience.
Here is our behind the scenes footage:
In this shoot we used a major prop which was the arm chair, when looking at faithless' previous music videos he seems to be sitting down frequently and we thought it may be a good idea to experiment with a shot like this. In the end we decided we really liked the look of our character lip syncing whilst he is sat in the chair. These are shots we plan to experiment entirely with to get the perfect shot of our character.
We used one shot where we kept the camera in the same position but moved our character in his chair to different parts of the field that our character was in which worked very well as we plan on cropping clips and layering them over one another to get a consistent shot of our character in 5 different positions in one shot.
Also we plan on using a time lapse, for this we filmed the chair in one location as our character sat in many different positions. when speeded up we feel that this will look very effective.
On our next shoot we plan to:
Use storyboards more frequently
Be prepared for weather conditions (umbrellas ect.)
Shoot the narrative aspect of our video
Have a full call sheet written up in which we can refer to when shooting
On the 16th of November we decided that we would shoot during our media lesson at 9.00 And due to our locations brainstorm we knew the locations we would be shooting at. Because of problems last time due to lack of planning we fully prepared with our storyboard. Therefore, we shot everything we set out to do, which was to get the lip syncing footage from two different locations, these were:
The Ben rhydding field behind Declans house
The graffiti wall
These locations were ideal for some of our lip syncing sequences because we used an abstract backdrop which worked extremely well as the mise en scene of the graffiti on the back wall signifies a 'badboy' role which is what we hope will be our preferred reading from our target audience.
Here is our behind the scenes footage:
In this shoot we used a major prop which was the arm chair, when looking at faithless' previous music videos he seems to be sitting down frequently and we thought it may be a good idea to experiment with a shot like this. In the end we decided we really liked the look of our character lip syncing whilst he is sat in the chair. These are shots we plan to experiment entirely with to get the perfect shot of our character.
We used one shot where we kept the camera in the same position but moved our character in his chair to different parts of the field that our character was in which worked very well as we plan on cropping clips and layering them over one another to get a consistent shot of our character in 5 different positions in one shot.
Also we plan on using a time lapse, for this we filmed the chair in one location as our character sat in many different positions. when speeded up we feel that this will look very effective.
On our next shoot we plan to:
Use storyboards more frequently
Be prepared for weather conditions (umbrellas ect.)
Shoot the narrative aspect of our video
Have a full call sheet written up in which we can refer to when shooting
Yet again we see another shot of faithless sat down lip synching the words. This is a common convention of faithless videos and something we have done on our first shoot.
This next point isn't so much a convention of faithless videos but more so with dance videos. This is using nightclub shots in the music videos, like dido in the middle of the dance floor of the nightclub. As it is intended to be played in a nightclub it is like an advertisement to show people what it would be like dancing to.
There is a shot here again of a nightclub scene. This is however behind DJ decks which looks really effective. It shows everyone dancing to the track and goes well with the beat.
1. The framing in this shot is a key element to some of Faithless's video as they frame the artist, Maxi Jazz, at the bottom rather than centre framed , and they have a larger image in the background.
Long shot 0-43
2. This scene uses juxtaposition well and it's common for Faithless to incorporate juxtaposed ideas in the music videos, it works well here as there's Maxi Jazz sat in an arm chair in the centre of the frame with the moon behind him in the background, and this is juxtaposed as these two elements don't look right together.
Black&White
3. It's also common for his videos to be dark and for his clothing to be dark, in this scene they've applied a black and white tint over the scene to give it this dark effect.
There is a lot of footage of Maxi Jazz' performance in this video as he sits in a stand as if he's watching a big match. The shot types vary on the lyrics the shot types are usually MCU, CU, ECU and MS.
2.23
This is other performance footage in the video which links the lyrics in with the visuals which he does quite a lot in his videos i have found. This is something that we should take into consideration in our planning.
2.30
Again there is dance footage included in the video however this isn't all synchronised.
Instead of a girl being the nightmare that the sufferer has, we now have decided to go with a mask to provide a scarier nightmare. This mask will be borrowed from a friend or someone at school, we will use many different angles and effects to anchor the preferred reading.
The use of smoke machines could be very effective.
An effect that signifies insanity. Here is the video in which the effect was used:
Another idea we have had is a close up of the main character (me) tapping my feet on the floor along with the music.
We also took major inspiration from the faithless videos that we observed. A key feature of almost all faithless videos is him sitting down in a chair lip synching. We are going to use this shot but add a bit of a difference by shooting in the middle of a field.
1. Juxtaposition is used well within this music video to signify political and social issues, for example this shot where the school children are running with the Navy ship in the background firing. The juxtaposition is with the harmless children and the dangerous Navy ship.
Medium Close-up 2-10mins
2. Also what's common in his music videos is his presence and shots of him lip syncing with a medium close-up on his face directly singing to the camera.
T.V shot 3-27
3. What also works well is this scene with the T.V as they've obviously made the effort to program the T.V for the scene as it fits in with the narrative.
There is an ECU used on his mouth to create an interesting visual effect because it is an unusual shot. This can also act as a transition between shots also it gives the video an entertainment value as its really abstract.
0.34
A juxtaposition is used when the character switches to a young boy instead of Maxi Jazz, as the young boy sits in his seat. Also the girl members in the background, the female drummer and guitarist are counter-stereotypical as rock instruments are played by women.
In this video, like many other faithless videos he approaches poverty and alot of the videos are set in poverty inflicted areas. This is emphasised by the mise en scene which has been graffitied.
In alot of videos like this one, instruments are included in the mise en scene. This represents that it is a music video.
Maxi Jazz wears alot of long coats and dark clothes. This is going to be used in our music video in our costume choice. We will wear dark clothes and if there is one available, a long coat
1) This video like many others is very abstract. The effect used is very effective and makes the video entertaining. It is used on the face and if can be done will be used in our final piece.
2) The video is one long continuous take that is edited with many different effects. There is one frame with different scenes of different things happening each time.
3) Here a lightning like effect is used with many different colours. It is used to give a rave feel to the video and is used in many different dance videos to give a nightclub feel.
On the 4th of december we decided we would use our lesson time to shoot a proportion of our narrative scenes.
Once again we did not stick to our shooting schedule.
We shot in two different locations these were Brooke street bridge over the river river Wharfe and Middleton woods at the top of Ilkley. When filming on the bridge we aimed to use a variety of shots including LS, OTS, CU ect. Our character would proceed to walk along the bridge and stop to look down at the river. We carefully framed our shots so that there were no cars or other people on show, this was because we wanted to show our characters isolation to the world and we thought if we included cars in these abstract shots it would affect our preferred reading.
When shooting in the woods the backdrop was perfect as the sun was just rising so it gave our shots an early morning effect which is what we want to achieve as are character would be awake in the early morning. Again we used a variety of shots which we aim to use for our narrative scenes as our character walks through these woods. We differentiated between POV shots and OTS shots as well as MS, LS and ELS. One shot which we thought would particularly work well was a POV shot which the camera tilted to look up at the trees and then rotated quickly. This could be a possible conventional ending point but also the sky could signify dreams, which he is hoping for but he cannot sleep.
One problem we encountered was our SD card being full which was a problem to a certain extent. As a result of this, we had to delete footage, though this was luckily on our Mac. We are planning to buy a bigger SD card or even better several and we can appoint certain scenes to certain memory cards to help organisation and time management.
As our third shoot didn't go as according to plan as we had hoped. Therefore, we will be using our shooting schedule the third shoot for our forth shoot to save time because we have missed some vital shots and scenes that still need to be done. As a result, it is arguable to say that we are behind schedule now however, we will be using the time we have left efficiently to get our full rough cut shot and edited.
