Re-casting of Isabel Beau

11/03/15

Due to the performance being carried out by our actress, Alex, was not to the high standard which everyone was expecting to see in the music video, we decided to re-cast.Alex's 

From the constructive criticism feedback we got from our music video we have decided to have Jess, who is a singer and performer, act as our artist. By having Jess play Isabel's role I feel the performance will look much more stronger and natural due to it being realistic as she will sing and perform as if it is her songs.

Although this is the third time we are changing our actress for the role of Isabel Beau, our digi-packs and poster will still remain the same of them being of poppy. 

                               

Plan For Next Shoot

27/02/15

As we are coming towards the end of our music video and only have to reshoot Grace's ballet dancing and outdoor shoot of Alex solo singing we made a quick plan on when we will carry out these shoots.

• On Monday 2nd February we will film Grace's dancing in the drama hall. When filming this scene we will use tripod based wide and long shots as well as handheld which will be done by Aaron.
• On Wednesday, we will film Alex at Danson Park performing her solo performance of her lip-syncing the song. Me and Hayley will carry out this shoot while Aaron and Megan are editing the music video. This is so that we are all using our time wisely and so that everything gets done quicker giving us time to review our music video and make any small changes if needed. 

New Artist- Alex

11/02/15
We have now selected a new girl to act out the role of Isabel Beau. Alex will be our new Isabel Beau. We have come upon a decision of using her as she has the Pop star artist icon look and her performance from the test shoot tells us that she will be more than capable in acting and miming the song. Her facial expression and body language, when miming to Battlefield, is just what we were looking for in the performance. The re-shoot for the Pop start singing part will take place tomorrow after school in the gallery where we will style up Alex, set up the lights and camera and film her acting and singing to Battlefield.

Selecting new artist

11/02/15
After reviewing the shots Aaron and I had taken yesterday, we have come to conclusion of possibly having to re-cast for Isabel beau. This is simply because we feel that Poppy expresses the pop artist look perfectly however her performance doesn't quite match the song in which we are all imagining it to be. By her finding the lyrics difficult to memorize and express made the visuals not be in sync and flow with the music and lyrics, reflecting back to Goodwin's theory of music videos.
  We currently have another girl, Alex from year 12, who we are ding test shoots with right now to see if she suits the role. Here is the test shoot of Alex miming to Battlefield.

Plan for next shoot

30/01/15
We have all agreed to do a shoot on 03/02/15 at 4pm which is a Tuesday, in which we will be filming the narrative section focusing on the parents arguing and car scenes. Here we will be filming Grace and her parents. The scenes will be mainly of the parents arguing in the house down stairs in which we will capture in different shot angles and of the parents picking grace up from her ballet classes. When filming Grace we will have to make sure that the outfit she wears is the same as the ones we shot her in when filming her coming out her ballet classes.

Editing

28/01/15

Megan and Hayley began to go through the shots me and Aaron took on monday. They started editing the scenes we took by going through them and deleting the rubbish ones. They cut some of the clips so that the out of focus scenes were deleted. They began to add the clips to the sequence, on Final Cut Pro, making sure it went along with the music. Some of the scenes in which Grace was dancing quite aggressively went really well with the chorus as its really upbeat creating the emotional tension.

Later on today Megan and Aaron stayed behind for lunch doing some more edits of the ballet scene. Here they started to play around with the mid shots and the feet and cutting from the two to create tension. The first chorus of the song was of the ballet dancing as there the chorus is really upbeat and pace working along really well withe dance movements  and the cuts of the shots being short and pacey. Along with the original idea of having the narrative, including ballet scenes, be in black and white this was done on Fianl Cut Pro.
This is a part of the section in which was edited of the ballet scenes:

Looking at the shots in a bigger screen they look pretty good. Theres only a few changes which we need to do, which we will take in to consideration when we reshoot. The changes are when filming using a D1200 Canon DSLR, having the setting clear and all blacked out and using the Drama Spotlights.

From watching our music video, i think we have done extremely well in that we have boosted our confidence into knowing that if we just work harder we can reach our target of producing and have created a high standard music video. At the start of the filming of our music video, i think we all lost our confidence in being able to film some good scenes but from doing rough shoots and then re-shoots i feel that we are learning from our mistakes and developing rapidly.

Experimenting 1200 DSLR Canon Camera

26/01/15

Today as we had nothing planned, due to both our actresses being busy, we decided to play around with different camera lens and filming using DOF( depth of field). Depth of field "is the distance between the nearest and farthest objects in a scene that appear acceptably sharp in an image." This is what makes the scenes captured more interesting due to the idea of shallow focus and having one object be the main subject. The lens that really amplifies the shallow focus is the 50mm lens on a 1200 DSLR Canon. This is why we have decided to use the 50mm lens when filming the dance as it will give a greater impact of focusing on certain areas making the audience focus on those areas.

Here we had a play around with the 50mm lens experimenting with the different pull focus and how to move the camera along, keeping the subject in focus, while the subject is moving.

I think this lens works really great as it gives that professional look due tot he pull focus. Using this when filming the dance scenes will really work well and look slick.

For inspiration, when filming the dance sequence, we looked at the music video from Whiplash which was shown towards the end. The pace of the cuts being fast and from different angles and camera shots is what makes this performance in the music video interesting. This is what we will try to persue when filming the dance scene.

Second Screening

21/01/15

Today the group and i screened our latest shoots put together constructing a rough cut of our music video. We had shown all the shots we have filmed so far and edited them so that it fits into our music video. When constructing this second screen we were all well aware that there were not enough shots taken, most of the shots need to be re-taken and we need to focus on the micro-elements.                                       

                  

In order for us to create a high standard music video, we need to start making more time for shooting lots of different scenes and re-shooting them. Therefore we elaborated on our production log by marking in more days in which we will be filming. There also has to be more focus on other filming areas rather than just Poppy's solo singing which is why we have started to plan filming in different locations such as the school drama room.

Poppy's Solo Shoot

09/01/15

Looking through the videos taken we found a pretty big problem in that the whole shoot was filmed with a yellow filter which lead all the shots recorded in being filtered looking really horrible and strange. As all of the artists singing videos are suppose to be in colour we can't hide the filter by making it black and white. The other thing was when we were viewing the videos were that they looked a bit too staged and fake; the acting and emotions were very minimal and not realistic. Although we were going along with the idea of negative spacing i don't think it works well enough as it doesn't give the pop feel, maybe this is because she has no colour on her face or the hair is a bit too simple.

So to overcome all of these problems we have asked Poppy to learn the whole song of 'Battlefield' so that when it comes to doing the shoot we can just film her singing again and again changing the camera angles. We have also decided to style her up a bit more giving her some colour. Having her wearing red/pink lipstick along with eyeshadow and styling her hair differently. We will also be aware of the fact that the camera may have a filter so we will test it out and check it properly before filming. The next shoot of Poppy singing solo will be sometime next week when we feel like she knows the song vaguely.

                                                 

Shoot Planning

07/01/15

Today we as a group made a visual plan and discussed of when we are all free so that we can plan our shoots according to who is free. I made a little diagram of what days everyone is free on. We all agreed on having a minimum of two members from our group make it to each shoot. Our shoots will be planned on this and our actresses; Grace and Poppy.

                     

After deciding which days were suitable for us to carry out the shoot i made a quick production log on the January month. I shaded the days in so that its clear on which actress we need on which day; yellow being Grace and pink being Poppy. According to our production log, our next shoot is on Thursday with Poppy acting out her solo performance of her singing. This shoot will take place in the art gallery due to the white background and bright lighting.

First Screening

17/12/14

Megan had frees in the lesson's 1 and 2 which is why she decided on editing the cuts we got and constructing them together. The clips were converted into DV.files and then put in order along with our animatics so that the footage we have is clear. We then presented our shots that we took the classroom. 

The feedback we got was that the shots we took were minimal and all the same. We need to have much more shots and different ones with her in different styles. Shaun said this is mainly because we left the filming last minute and therefore didn't organise it properly. He also noted the idea of playing around with the colours black and white (negative spacing), having Poppy dressed in black and the background being white or Poppy being dressed in white with a black background. The black costume will connote the aggressive annoyed emotion of Isabel Beau relating to the lyrics. Sinead contributed in the feedback saying that she isn't too fond of the background as it looks slight tacky and maybe to film in the gallery next time as the background is more smooth and realistic. On the other hand, the positive feedback we got was that the lighting throughout the clips was really good and so was the costume she had on.

As we felt that our draft was really weak and we were all a bit annoyed with it we now know what to do next. We will film after the Christmas half term on the first week back so that everyone is available and start from fresh. We will also do the technique of filming each section filming with the whole song. So that we film Poppy singing the whole song and will choose the parts we feel work part of our music video. Also when we film the dancing we will do the same too. This therefore mean's that we won't fully go with the storyboard. We have titled and given roles to everyone in our group so that we all know our parts and concentrate on them really well, so that when it comes to playing each role it is done perfectly. My role will be to be Poppy's stylist which will be of pre-production. This includes making sure her hair, make-up and costume has the pop feel and is different in each shoot. In production Aarons role is to be the cinematographer while Hayley will be directing Poppy. Megan and Aarons role will be of editing the sequence during post-production.

Rough Music Shoot

16/12/14

Today was the first rough cut shooting day. As I had a doctors appointment I was not able to make it however we planned this shoot earlier on the day of what camera angles will be taken and where. The shoot was done of our artist singing her parts to 'Battlefield' according to what we planned in our storyboard. The shoot took place in our media classroom where the set up of the white screen and lighting along with the camera was done. Hayley was in charge of playing the music while Aaron was filming Poppy playing her part and doing movements that Megan's guiding her to do. The background being white and Poppy's colour being white looked really good expressing her innocence.

Many re-shoots were taken so that the camera angles, lighting and artist performance were all working along with each other in the right way. The performance of the artist, Isabel Beau, was impressive due to the aggressive and emotional facial expressions relating to the lyrics which follows the theory by Andrew Goodwin, of the visuals relating to the lyrics.

Re-Pitch

03/12/14
                    

 

I think that by doing this pitch again gave the audience(class and teachers) a clear idea on what our music video is based around and what we are trying to convey and express in the terms of the pop genre and narrative. As me and Hayley were not present to pitch along with Aaron and Megan, they did it on our behalf. We all created this pitch as a group and developed on it through the previous constructive criticism feedback we were given.

Animatics

03/12/14

As Megan and I had illustrated and planned the developed storyboard, we told Aaron to construct the animatic of it. He started off by taking close-up photographs of each frame, using a DSLR camera. When doing this he made sure that the lighting and angles of the frame taken in was the same and the shots were similar sizes. This is so that when it comes to putting all the shots together on Final Cut, the shots are smooth and consistent. Aaron constructed the animatic by uploading all the camera shots, on Final Cut Pro, putting them together along with synchronising with the music(Battlefield).

By creating an animatic, it gave a clear idea on what our narritave is of and how it reflects upon the music. This also shows Goodwin's theory clearly as it shows the relation between the lyrics and visuals as well as the link between the music and visuals. The animatic will be shown as part of our pitch so that this time our classmates and teacher have a clear view and idea on our music video narrative. 

                                 
                              

The feedback we got from the animatics was that there was too many blank spaces left of what shots will be shown in some parts. I feel that our animatics didn't really flow smoothly as they're was lots of gaps. However there was a clear idea on the narrative just not on what shots will be taken. I think we struggled constructing our animatics because our storyboard was not strong enough. But i feel that we can use our storyboard as a starting point but when it comes to filming, take lots of shots using different camera angles and elaborating from the storyboard.

Re-Storyboarding

26/11/14

We began re-doing our storyboards so that they are more precise and are clear to understand. This is so that when it comes to constructing the animatics there is a clear idea of the narrative through the illustrated frames. I think this developed stroyboard is much better than the original as the illustration is much more simpler making it clear to understand. Comparing this storyboard to the original there is a high improvement due to the frames here being elaborated.  However it was really useful doing a draft storyboard plan as we used it as a guideline when creating the final ones. This storyboard is highly successful due to the narrative being expressed beautifully.

Pitch presentation

10/11/14

Today my group and i presented our pitch to the whole classroom. While doing our presentation we were being recorded by Sean. By recording us presenting our pitch was useful as it gave us an idea on what we are like when it comes to presentation and how to improve for when doing a pitch next time. Watching our presentation, i think, we were all organised in knowing what to do and say and we were all explaining the areas clearly. By having the handouts to the classmates, it think was pretty handy as they got an idea on what we are looking into.

     

Developed presentation

From going through the feedback of our pitch we developed our presentation slightly by adding slides for our storyboard and mood board and changing parts of it.
             

Change in Narrative

From one of the feedbacks on our pitch we got was that the narrative was a bit difficult to understand in that of the young girl growing up throughout the video and how it will relate to the family problems. My group and i had a discussion on whether to still continue with this idea or not. We came upon a decision of changing our narrative slightly so that it is a bit more simple and easier to understand. The narrative will now be of a young girl doing ballet dancing as an escapism from her home where here parent are constantly arguing and fighting.The narrative will convey the message of the girl dancing to keep her away from family problems and will also express her feeling and emotions of feeling lonely and fed up of her parents always arguing. 

When it comes to editing the music video, we will experiment with having all the narrative in black and white and the scenes showing Isabel Beau in colour. The whole black and white concept will be used to show the difference between the narrative and the artist singing so that the audience don't get confused. By having the narrative in black and white will connote the idea of the storyline being emotional, serious and upsetting.

     

Script for mondays pitch

Today we all had a discussion of who will do what on Monday's pitch. I created a script from the slides we all constructed  with the notes in which will need to be read. The order in which we will all do sections of the pitch will be Aaron, Megan, Me and Hayley. We've all got roughly similar lengths of notes and slides to be reading of so that it is fair. I am reading and explaining four slides which covers detail of performance, Location, costume and Andrew Goodwin reflection.

By having a script for Our pitch on Monday will mean that we will all be organised in knowing what to say when and also know our areas clearly so that if we get questioned by any of our classmates we can answer it. Along with our pitch we will have hand outs for everyone so that they can reflect on it and have a clear idea of our music video. By having these different interactions i think our classmates will be engaged in our pitch.

Storyboarding

06/11/14

We finished off our storyboard, that we started off last week, so that by monday we are all up to date, organised and know what we are doing when carrying out our pitch. It was pretty difficult into deciding what shots we want to take where and when however we came upon a conclusion of this. We will try our best to follow this storyboard but i feel that when we start filming our ideas will obviously change and expand. In our storyboard we tried our best to follow Goodwin's codes and conventions by relating the lyrics and visuals with the song. Along with the drawings on our storyboard we had annotations and timings from the songs on the side so that when it comes to editing our music video we know which part of the scenes come where in the song.