Rough Cut

7th reflection / risk assessment of re-shooting lip-syncing

In today's lesson we decided to concentrate on studio shots as well as editing our footage from Cromer yesturday, as the rough cut deadline is today. However when we booked the black room, we were only allowed half an hour in there. We booked the black room from eleven to half past eleven and again at twelve to half past twelve. The first slot we booked felt wasted as we didn't have enough time to shoot as we were busy setting up the equipment in the right places. However it was not wasted as we knew where we wanted to place the lights as lighting is important in a music video.

This picture to the left is showing a member of my group editing the footage we gathered from Cromer yesturday in final cut.

This picture to the right shows the clip of the actress, me, on the beach. On the left in the picture is the original clip. On the right in the picture is the clip in the view finder, this is where we can edit the clip by using colour correction e.t.c.

To the left is a picture of a box which deals with how slow of fast the clip is. We were testing to see whether it looked better slowed down or in real time, as this was one clip we didn't use slow motion on the camera for.

To the left is another member of my group seeing the footage we gathered from Cromer, and also trying to edit the footage in final cut.

To the left shows the slow motion shot, close up of the actress, me running in the viewfinder of final cut. 

Below it's showing how the clips of the footage are put onto different layers to make it easier for editing.

To the right, this is showing the shot of the seagulls flying down off the wall. We do have other shots of seagulls flying. We still haven't decided whether or not if we're having all the shots we've gathered from Cromer with the seagulls flying, or to only have one or two in the music video. When we were shooting the seagulls in Cromer. We were expecting them to fly upwards, which is what we wanted. However they flew downwards. Even though they flew downwards, footage looked amazing as it was in slow motion instead of real time. 

To the left shows us trying to make sure the Christmas lights are stuck to the black background. It took several attempts with blue tack, but we ended up using black tape. This was to create depth to the music video and to show we deeply thought of lighting to be key in our music video.

To the right shows our actress holding some Christmas lights close to her without having her hands in the shot. It shows how we took care in lighting up this extreme close up shot.

In our rough cut, it doesn't show all the footage that we have in it. This is due to the fact we still needed to re-shoot the studio shots. It is also due to the fact that some of the Cromer shots need to be discussed about whether we use them in our music video or not.

Whilst filming in the black room we had little space to film, this is why we didn't get any camera movement. In the black room we had to be aware of loads of files that the performing arts department have put there as storage.  

Half Term Homework

Advanced Portfolio Half Term Homework:

You must think seriously now about how your music video works in combination with your magazine advert (advertising the digi-pack) and the digi-pack cover (at least 4 sides).

Answer the following questions:

1.       What is your finalised star persona? Include a photograph of your star that best communicates their persona. Discuss what ideas/ideologies they communicate (materialism, rebellion, innocence, the cultural “ideal”, alternative to the “ideal” etc.). How do they communicate these ideas? How is their persona expressed visually? (costume, hair, makeup, bogy language, lighting, framing etc) How is it expressed through lyrics, genre?

2.       How are you going to ensure continuity between the 3 products? Remember your digi-pack cover cannot look like a single (can’t be images from the music video) but an album. Compare your ideas for the digi pack cover with professional promo images. A digi-pack is a combination of audio and video (a cd and a dvd with special features such as a few music videos or concert videos)

3.       Write down all of your individual or group ideas for the digi-pack cover and magazine advert. Ideas for costume, setting, lighting, colour, hair, makeup, Photoshop special effects etc. If you can do some mock ups of your own, or experiment with effects in photoshop.

Word count : 500 words minimum

ALSO Catch up with your blogging. Make sure Target audience work is complete and you have done at least 25 individual posts since the start of the project! It is not just the amount that counts though but the content!

Overview of filming in Cromer 2

Whilst on the train we figured out how to use slow motion on the camera. It's called SMTH SLOW REC on the camera. 

We thought this would be good for running across where the sea meets the sand. On the left is a picture I took of the slow motion of me running after we shot it.

We also thought it would be good with the dress flowing in the wind. We discussed on the train if all our Cromer shots should be in slow motion. However we decided against all the shots from Cromer being in slow motion as we thought it wouldn't suite it.  We also found out that the slow motion footage lasts around about twelve seconds, which we thought would really come in handy. We were thinking about sharpening the shots in final cut if we really needed to, however then it might not turn out the way we want it to look.

When we got to Cromer, during our filming time in Cromer today we decided to re-shoot what we've already done as the weather is different to last time we went. 

We came up with a few extra shots, this was purely down to luck except for the bird's eye view shot of me in the sea to the right.

To the left we have seagulls flying. We have captured many different shots of seagulls flying. One where it's like a cannon of them flying, one flying after another. One where there was quite a lot on a black rail started flying off. Another shot we managed to get was a load of seagulls on a more pebbly area of the beach, all standing or walking around before taking off into the sky.

To the right is a crab on pebbles. When I spotted the crab, I quickly told George. We decided to pan all the way around the crab. The crab was walking so we also decided to take a shot of it simply walking towards the sea. The crab ended up getting washed over and then carried on walking. We thought this could fit into our music video quite nicely as we've already got seagulls flying.

To the left we filmed these birds walking across the pebbles other than the seagulls and the crab.

Christmas lights

These are the lights I will be bringing to our next lip syncing shoot. There are different settings on them and they're quite a lot of them too. We could stick them on the wall or wrap it around the actress. There will be a filter on the camera so the light will have a flare. We could also put them in soft focus to give it that "bokeh" effect.

Risk Assessment when filming in Cromer beach

When we were filming in Cromer we had to be aware of the pebbles along the beach the second time we went there. One of the group members George was filming shots of me running across the beach, panning around me and walking / running up with the camera from behind me whilst I'm just standing there facing the waves in the creamy dress.

The second time we went to Cromer we managed to film a crab walking along the pebbles. In this area where I spotted the crab, there was quite a few hidden inbetween the sand and pebbles. This meant that we had to be careful we didn't tread on them and get pinched by one, as we zoomed in following the walking crab and also we were a few centimeters away from the crab when panning around the crab, getting a 360 degree shot.

Cromer Sunset / Tide Times and weather summary for Tuesday

The shots that we need to include

1. A shot of the hand, panning to see the dress flowing in the wind.
2. Stop motion of writing Human in the sand.
3. Maybe stop motion of the drawing of the heart in the sand.
4. Maybe twirling in the dress.
5. If it is foggy then a long shot of me just standing still, but the camera will move towards me so it looks like I've disappeared in to the fog.
6. A shot of one shoulder panning to the other shoulder. 

Our aim of filming tomorrow is to get more close ups and medium shots. Also we aim to get the stop motion shots.

Flower Lights

We were thinking about having small lights to make the music video look more interesting. We also decided to have the lights to create more depth to the music video. We can either use plain simple ball lights or some flower lights like the one below. I do have some of flower lights like this. Flower lights could give a better effect than a simple ball light, as the texture from the flower lights are different. Maybe giving a softer light than a harsh light in the music video. I also have different colour flower lights such as; yellow, brown and a mix of red and purple. We could use one or all of them to give more colour to our studio shots of Alyssa lip-syncing to Ellie Goulding - Human. Below are the pictures I've taken of what my flower lights look like.

   

Theoretical Study Into Audience

An audience would approach our media product because listening to this song and watching the video can be an escape from the day, you can zone out of the pressure that you have in your day and watch the video. In a way if you watch the video intensively, you can gain companionship with the actress who is singing about her life.

In aspects of the song, like the repeated reference of ‘I would give my life, to be human’ could get the audience to ask themselves about their personal identity like what makes them human and also to think about the video with a girl who never shows the whole of her face because she doesn’t believe that she is truly a human as she may have a disability and wants to be normal like everyone else.

The audience could relate this video to what is happening in the world, people doubting their humanity because they are not seeing themselves as human. For example people with anorexia seeing themselves as too fat, when they are clearly not. This is an abstract example of people thinking they aren’t normal so in effect not human.

Ideal Audience Type

Ideal Audience Type on Prezi

A Start on Star Persona

Star persona

As a child Sally was diagnosed/had a disfigurement and never saw herself as normal. Her songs always represent or have connexions to this illness and always relate to her sadness. Her fans idolize her spirit and her will to carry on. She is seen to be a mark of purity with a hidden past that slightly hinders her beauty, but is her point of recognition and her USP to the music market.

We have created a facebook page for her, we will continue to add more details about her life and when we have created the digipack for her single and the poster, we can put those up on the facebook page.

Sally Cassello: Facebook Page

Ellie Goulding

Ellie Goulding was born on the 30th of December 1986. She is an English singer, song writer and musician. In 2012, she became the second artist to top both of the BBC's annual Sound of... poll and won the Critic's ChoiceAward at the Brit Awards in the same year. In 2009 after signing her contract to Polydor Records, she released an EP calledAn Introduction to Ellie Goulding.

Goulding released her first album, Lights, in 20120. THe album debuted at number one at the UK albums chat and sold over 850,000 vopies in the UK. The album track, Lights, was released to the US in March 2011 and reached the charts and stayed top number one for weeks. NEarly a year and ahfl later during its thirty third week charting, completing one of hte longest ever climbs into the top two positions on the charts.

6th reflection

During today's lesson we decided that one person should deal with editing the footage we already have, whilst the other three shoot the rest of the lip-syncing shots. As one person needs to film, one needs to hold the torch for lighting and lyrics for our other group member whose doing the lip-syncing. 

However whilst we were shooting the lip-syncing, we wanted to move the light during the shots, to make the shots look more interesting. This led to the camera going blurry each time the light moved. We decided to keep the light in the same place in the end. When we came back to check up on how the editing was coming along. We realized why the shots were blurry when the light moved. It's because we didn't have it in manual focus like last time we filmed shots of lip-syncing. This means we might re-shoot some lip-syncing shots. If we do re-shoot lip-syncing shots. We may have some small lights to use. However we forgot about them. So if we do re-shoot, we'll make sure we have them to play with to see how it's most effective in the shoot.

We were planning to use are one more night to film after rough-cut to go to Cromer beach again. However we are really dependent on the weather. A little bit of rain will be fine and can be effective. However if it is raining as heavily as last time, then we'll be more prepared for this. If we can't go to Cromer if the weather looks bad on a forecast, then our back-up would be to film in Milton park.  

Update from last lesson

Last lesson we shot in a classroom for our lip syncing scenes. It went well and we managed to get a couple of good shots. We shot them against a black background using studio lighting. For our next shoot, we will be getting Christmas lights and use a filter against the camera to make the light dispersed.

Since we don't get an extension, we are discussing the idea of filming at Milton country park. I live in Milton and have been to the park many times so I know my way around it, I know some isolated areas in the park so we can film there. We can use colour correction to mimic the colour scheme of the scenes in Cromer.

Filming Overview / Update

On Sunday 14th October, we went on the train to Cromer. The filming didn't totally go to plan due to the weather being heavy rain throughout the day and that the weather was bitterly cold.

On the upside we did film some shots e.g. the shot of Cat running along the beach, Cat strolling next to a groyne, Cat standing on the beach with the waves brushing against her and a shot of her standing there. These shots were what we wanted but sadly we needed more but time ran out After this the weather took a turn for the worse and we retreated back to a cafe, where the rain got extremely heavy and the tide came in leaving us with no beach to film on.


Later as the rain held back for about 30 minutes we were able to film some shots on the pier, but it was extremely windy and the glide cam didn't work at its best. We were not able to do the time lapse on the pier as it wasn't packed full of people.

In Today's Lesson we started filming the studio lip syncing parts of the song. Which consists of a darkened room with a studio light and Alyssa was being the actress and doing the lip syncing. We will aim to do the entire song with lip syncing but not as a master shot, but with different angles to avoid repetition. We will also avoid to show the entire face at one time, only different sections e.g. mouth and half of face. We also came up with the idea that in the chorus we have Alyssa lip syncing  side on for the 'I would give my life to be' then in another shot we have her the other way round, still side on but facing the other direction lip synicing 'Huuuuman' but in the editing stage, reduce the opactiy to make it seem like the 'Huuuuman' is a ghost of the singer talking to the singer.




We have asked for an extension, and we feel that our cause is a worthwile one as we had to change our idea midway through the planning process. We asked for another weekend of filming, and we got another day not a weekend, which is not ideal at all. We now either have to scrap the whole beach plan and go for an attempt of filming from scratch in Milton Country Park using the lake there and other woodland spaces. There is still hope, but it is disappointing that we are unable to go to Cromer again to do the filming, because we have now wasted our 1 weekend of film time. However, we were given an extra day to film but it cannot be at the weekend, so the possibility of going back to Cromer is inpossible, seeing as though they want the cameras back at 4:10 or possily the morning after. But the trouble is with this, is that not all of the team will be able to make it to the filming, which would be a shame.

Overview of filming in Cromer

We were supposed to arrive in Cromer around eleven, as we were supposed to be catching the train from Cambridge to Norwich at half-past eight. This meant we were supoosed to arrive in Norwich at about thirteen minutes past ten, then need to catch the train at thirty-six minute past ten to Cromer. After hopefully arriving at our final destination, Cromer at twenty-four minutes past eleven. 

However a member of our group couldn't catch the train to come to Cambridge in time to leave Cambridge at half-past eight, due to his train being cancelled. This meant we had to catch a later train. 

We finally arrived in Cromer around one o'clock. It wasn't exactly pleasant weather. It was cloudy all day. It was raining quite heavily and then stopped and started again and so forth. This meant we couldn't do as much filming as we had hoped. 

These are the pictures of the storyboard I had on my camera with us, as we did not have the storyboard themselves. 

Most of the shots we couldn't do due to weather conditions.

Above in the top left hand corner, is a long shot of looking down the pier with the sunset behind it. However there wasn't much of a sunset as it was really cloudy. All we could see was a pink streak in the bleak sky. In the top middle we have a shot of the lip syncing in the studio that we will do later. 

The top right hand corner, is a side view of the pier and me being the actress sitting on it. However we couldn't do this as the bottom part of the pier was blocked off. Instead we decided to do a shot where the camera is panning around me whilst I'm on the pier, looking out to the sea. This we thought was a good shot but doesn't really fit in to what other shots we have already. After a bit of thought we thought it would be a good picture for our digi pack. 

The bottom left hand corner is the same as the one below on the left of that picture, but is just a close up, so we could actually see what was on the post it. We were supposed to do stop motion, writing "HUMAN" in the sand. However do to the bad weather. 

We decided it was better to prioritized the shots of me running across the beach alongside the water edge. 

We also prioritized the shot of panning around me whilst I'm looking into the sea. As shown on our storyboard below, with a few pictures from Cromer beach.

This picture on the left is a shot of me looking out at the sea whilst someone is running towards me.

Another shot we prioritized was the close up of my feet being washed by the waves. This shot below shows how foamy the sea was when it was washing my feet.

Below is showing an extreme close up of my feet being filmed as the sea was washing them.

 After all this we decided it was boring to have the sea all the time as a background. We changed it up a bit by having a shot where I'm walking alongside a groyne. As shown on either side.

We didn't film skipping stones as the sea was too rough to do so and the wind didn't help.

5th reflection

In our lesson today we filmed shots of lip-syncing to Ellie Goulding - Human. We did a shot of the first verse, chorus and second verse. We used a flood light and a desk lamp for lighting in the classroom we were using. We had our actress standing in front of blinds. We found that we didn't have much space for camera movement as there was a white column in-between the blinds. We over came this by using black tape to place a black piece of card in-between the blinds, on the white space. This was to have more freedom with camera movement.

The chorus shots were a close up on one side of the face. 

During the chorus we've realized how difficult it was for are actress, also group member Alyssa to lip-sync "I would give my life, to be human" as "human" is sung so it's overlapped with "I would give my life, to be" as it was edited to be like that. So instead of shooting Alyssa lip-syncing the whole line "I would give my life, to be human". We decided to shoot Alyssa lip-syncing to "I would give my life, to be" facing one side. Then shoot Alyssa lip-syncing "human" facing the other side. This means she looks like she is singing to herself. It would be difficult to do, however if it goes to plan it would be very effective.

After shooting we were thinking about how Ellie Goulding loves her use of lights in her music videos. This lead us to thinking about using some coloured lights as used in this video around 8:34.

In the video below there is another example of lighting that we might want to achieve. This occurs in the first few seconds but carries on, on and off during the music video. The shots where they have loads of light-bulbs flashing on and off at different times in a sequence or all at once is very effective but wouldn't be as good for our music video as it's very fast paced and this video is more rocky than pop like Ellie Goulding.

More ideas

In Human by Ellie Goulding, as she sings "Human I wonder why you’re a better make than I could ever build or create", near the beginning. We could bury a member of the group in the sand to use as a cast of a man that Ellie Goulding has created as such. When she sings "you know not love or hate". We could then break it. However that is more time consuming then to use stop motion and draw a man who is nearly "perfect" and tearing it up. 

In the middle of the song, Ellie Goulding sings "Human I'm trying to come clean". I was thinking this might be a great time for our shot on our story board of the actress walking into the sea. This is so the actress walks into the sea she'll become clean, washing her old self away and then sings "I will be a better me".

Near the end of the song, Ellie Goulding sings "the sound of my heart breaking". We could use stop motion and draw a heart. Then draw a crack in the middle. After draw it breaking in half till there is only one side left, or broken into loads of tiny pieces. This is also quite time consuming as getting it perfect would be crucial if we wanted it smooth. However as it's 'a heart breaking' we can afford to make it jerky on purpose.

On the left is a simple picture of a heart in the sand. On the right shows a simple heart that is near by the sea. This means we can either do the stop motion and drawing it so it becomes broken, or we could just do stop motion of it washing away. This means we can either make it smooth or jerky if we wanted to.

On the left is a simple heart, but instead of drawing a heart we could actually make one out of stones. Then if we did make it out of stones we could break the heart by moving the stone outline apart and make it jerky.

Also whilst drawing the heart and breaking it. We could draw sound marks in the sand as she sings "the sound of my heart is breaking". We could change the sound marks each time we take a picture, so when it comes to give the illusion of sound coming out as if the heart were speakers booming out music. 

Gathering Equipment and Story Boards

Whilst reminding a group member to gather the equipment for filming on sunday. I just realized that whilst gathering the equipment, our group member would forget about our story boards. However this problem can be overcome by me printing out photos I've taken of our story boards yesturday.

4th reflection

In today's lesson we did a test shoot of lip-syncing. We shined bright torch onto the gold reflector, to give  warm glow on the actress' face whilst she was lip-syncing.

We also did another test shot of me being the actress in the dress that I'll be wearing in the music video. This is so that we can see vaguely how the flowing dress would look like when I'm running.

We've discussed that instead of wearing black leggings like I was in the test shot today. I'd be wearing either skin coloured footless tights.

This is the weather forecast for Cromer on sunday 14th, the day that we are filming.