In todays lesson we added the three scenarios in this order:
Our main actor walking into shot and sitting next to the girl and putting his hand on her leg and then she slaps him.
The main actor walks into shot, sits beside a girl and slides up really close to her and she pops a balloon in his face.
Lastly the actor walks into shot, sits beside a couple and interrupts them and the girl pours water over his head.
We edited these scenarios so that there would be cutaways to lip syncing and dancing, instead of a continuous shots of these scenarios. Having the cutaways will keep the video flowing and will reinforce the fast paced music. It will also give the audience a variety of lip syncing and narrative to view. To cut the clips we used the razor tool and to mute the footage audio we clicked on the individual speaker icons to turn of the sound.
ADD SCREENSHOTS
Next lesson we are aiming to add dance shots to the timeline.
In todays lesson we started with the lip syncing shots as we felt that these were the most important shots and would create a base for us to work onto. We started with a lip syncing shot of our artist with dancers in the background and a handheld shot of our artist. We synced this up to the music, but this took a lot of time as we weren't familiar with the software that we were using. In Final Cut Pro we were able to use the arrows on the keyboard to nudge the clip, so that it was in sync with the music, but on Premiere Pro we didn't know how to nudge the clip. We then discovered that to move the clip slightly forwards or backwards on the timeline you had to zoom in and then drag it to the desired second on the timeline.
We created our first cuts, which was using the footage of the girls on the sofa. On the filming day we filmed our three lead girls sitting one by one onto a sofa. We wanted to create a jump effect so that the audience wouldn't see the girls walk into shot, but would just appear on the sofa. The cuts were successful, but we discovered that it was too slow and didn't fit the music, so we decided to shorten the clips so that the girls would appear on beat and this reinforced the jumpy, party beat.
ADD SCREENSHOTS
Next lesson we aim to start adding the three different scenarios in and editing it so the music video starts to flow.
In todays lesson we sorted the footage into folders, so that it would be convenient for us to find the exact shots we want and the shots we don't really need. It also helps us to organise our editing timeline and allows us to find the exact shots we want to put onto the timeline.
We put in the audio, "In The Bag" and learnt how to drag the footage onto the timeline and mute the sound from the footage.
For next lesson we are aiming to start layering up the footage and cutting between each shot to start the flow of the music video.
Today we uploaded the footage and viewed all the filming we had done. We also learnt how to use the new editing software (Premiere Pro) and how to upload the footage. I got to view the night shots that were filmed when I wasn't there and the rest of the group got to see the daytime shots that they didn't see Ilarna and I film.
We were able to gain a variety of lip syncing shots. This is good as it will give something interesting for the audience to view, instead of the audience watching the same thing without any change of background or shot type.
Our extras were really cooperative and were willing to listen to our instructions and work well with the other extras.
The mise-en-scene that we used were really good and it definitely created the party setting allowing us to work with the props and incorporate it into the different shots.
What didn't go well:
We weren't able to film many shots outside, because of the rainy weather. This meant that many of the shots we wanted weren't produced and we had to come up with new ideas to film inside.
It was hard to create a party that looked like there were a lot of people, when we didn't have many extras, but we got around this problem by using a smaller room, so it looked like there was quite a lot of people.
A sunroom was used as our location, which meant that we had to wait to film until it was very dark, so we could create the party atmosphere as the sun would ruin the party mood.
A lot of dark shots were filmed, which means that when we edit we will have to make the contrast and brightness higher so the audience can actually see the footage.
We filmed our music video for "In The Bag" yesterday at Ilarna's house. To create a party setting we used a variety of props. Balloons, glow sticks, party poppers, cups, iPod, speakers, food and drink are the props we used to create a party setting.
One problem that occurred yesterday was that I could not stay for the whole day for filming, so I arrived early and helped set up and Ilarna and I filmed a few extra shots that would be good to use as cutaways in between the narrative of the music video. We filmed lip syncing shots of Ilarna singing the verses (since she was the main music artist) and we filmed lip syncing of me singing the chorus. All of this filming was done in the daytime.
In the evening the narrative was filmed. The first shot that was filmed was our main actor walking through the door and arriving at the party. The next few scenes filmed were of people dancing and spraying silly string. To give a contrast in angles we filmed low angle shots of feet dancing. The dancing and silly string shots were all done with the camera being held.
The next part of the filming was the 3 different scenarios. The first scenario that was filmed was our main actor walking into the shot and sitting down next a girl and being slapped. This was filmed several times, some shots were medium, others were over the shoulder shots and a few were close ups. The second scenario was of the main actor walking into shot sitting down next to a different girl and the girl popping a balloon in his face. For this shot we only filmed a medium shot. For the last scenario the actor walks into shot and sits down next to a couple. He taps her on the shoulder and gets water thrown on him. This was filmed only as a medium shot as well. All the medium shots were stationary and the other types of shots were handheld.
After that a fight scene was filmed. This was all filmed so that handheld shots were produced. For this we filmed from many different angles, there were over the shoulder shots from over the main actors shoulder and over the opposite actors shoulder. The camera was also used as the point of view of the main actor and the camera was rolled back to create make it look like the actor got punched in the face.
A runway scene was filmed as well, this was of people taking turns dancing in the middle of the room.
More lip syncing shots were filmed that evening. Some were filmed whilst the camera was stationary and some were with camera being held. One shot was with Ilarna singing and people dancing in the background, another was with her sitting on the sofa and one was of her standing up by herself in a empty room.
Today we continued to edit for our music video. We had to produce a finished video for the rough cut deadline.
We decided to target the lipsyncing scenes as we needed to show variations in the lip-syncher's performance. This was very challenging because we recorded several footage and we needed to show a good amount of each clip.
Uploading the music video took some time which was a pain but still we managed to get our video finished. We used a random clip as a filler to replace he empty spaces.
I am hoping now to get people to evaluate our music video so that we can use their feedback to improve our video.
I did a questionnaire and asked 20 people who have watched my rough cut 5 yes or no questions, then I interviewed 3 people on what they thought overall about the video.
Questionnaire
Most of the people i questioned were between 16-18 year olds. Below i wrote the demographics.
13 16-18 year olds
3 over 25 year olds
4 under 10 year olds
Question 1
Is the narrative of the music video clear?
96% Yes 4% No
Question 2
Is the music video clear to see?
12% Yes 88% No
Question 3
Is there a balance of the performance and narrative?
72% Yes 28% No
Question 4
Is the lipsyncing in sync with the music ?
24% Yes 76% No
Question 5
Is the star persona clear?
67% Yes 33% No
Evaluation from Questionnaire
From the questionnaire I have found out that we do have a clear narrative of the story because we have clearly shown what is happening. Most people said the music video was very dark and needed brightening as they restricted in what they could see. They thought that the narrative and performance gelled well together but 28% commonly agreed that sometime they were confused when the performance was happening. 74% said that the lip syncing wasn't clear but they stated that it was mostly when the performer was performing with people in the background. The majority said that there was a star persona but they thought the star persona could have been elaborated a bit more.
Interview Feedback
I asked 3 different people from the different demographics to be interviewed on what they thought about the music video rough cut.
Person 1 (under 10)
"At the beginning of the video there was no sound, so i thought it wasn't working. It was hard to see the video because it was dark. Sometimes the person singing wasn't singing like the music. I love the bit where the boy get a balloon popped in his face and water thrown on him."
Person 2 (16-18)
"The music video is very dark. Some scenes in the music video are very shaky but I don't know whether it was meant
to be like that. The beginning of the music video doesn't flow smoothly because of cut interruptions. I
noticed that the lip syncing scenes
are not in sync in some parts. The runway scenes in the music
video are very effective and they are in time with the music I like the cut a
ways from the narrative to the performance as it is balanced fairly. The
performer acts very well in this music video and really plays the part of the rapper."
Person 3 (over 25's)
"There are no titles in this music video so I'm not clear what the song is called or who is singing it.
the beginning is a bit long and
there is no sound. The camera is a bit shaky and the ending of the music video is
very long but it is very effective. I like the way it pans in a circle but would have liked it to be a bit shorter. I feel that the music is a bit loud and I would like to see more
people in the shot because it doesn't come across like a party. I like the storyline and
it is very funny as the main character acts really well and I would like to see more
of him. I feel like you need to introduce him at the start as you only see him
walk through the door I was confused what the performer was doing at the start
because I didn't know what they were going to do. I would have like to see the video
being brighter as it was hard to see what was going on. However I don't get why the performer is
playing with a pool table because I think it's irrelevant"
Evaluation of interview Feedback
The feedback given from the different demographics were quite interesting. When interviewing person 1 i had to guide them a little on what they should feedback on but the feedback they gave me showed that this video would appeal to that age group as they understood the story and found it funny. I have taken on board that the 3 people i interviewed said that our music video was dark and so with that said, we will definitely be brightening our music video. Person 3 gave a good piece of feedback by saying that there were no titles in our music video. This said we will hopefully add the Name of the song and the artist in so that the audience know what the song is called.
Person 2 were more of our target audience for our video because they people in the video were all around there age. This is why i took in account what they were feeding back. Person 2 love the storyline of our video and found that there was a good balance between the narrative and performance.
What happened during filming and what could be done through post production to help improve the outlook of our music video?
On Saturday October 12th 2013, our group filmed our music video for our final project. We picked up our equipment on the day prior to filming and spent around an hour or so beforehand setting up our filming location.
Because our music video is a house party, we needed a large group of people as well as ourselves there to help create the party atmosphere. The initial worry with this was that many people we had invited to our "party" had other commitments on the night of filming and were unable to make it. However, we had enough people there in the end to make it convincing. Before they arrived and after we had set up, we filmed some external shots to make a party atmosphere with balloons, glow sticks and party poppers. We also took some shots of playing pool, shot glasses and some lip synching. These were done in the daylight but it contrasts with the night time shots we took for the core of the music video. The rainy weather restricted our idea of taking some shots outside.
What went well?
The people who turned up for our music video were very professional and cooperative which made the filming more efficient and easier to film. Charlie, our main protagonist, played a very good part and was convincing helping us enhance our narrative for the video. We did the same shots and scenarios from different angles which is helping us in the post production stage as we can cut from one angle to another efficiently. Finally, the overall mise-en-scene was good as our location looked like a party due to the little lighting and props such as balloons and glow sticks.
What could have been improved?
Due to the weather, we were unable to do the opening the way we initially planned. We did film the introduction we wanted, but we didn't do as many shots as desired. Despite the efficiency of our extras, the music video scenes were shot in no particular order so it may make post production more difficult as the music video may not have a continuing progression and some shots may be shorted than required. Our location was in Illarna's sun room so the tripod and camera may be visible in some of the shots. The window behind the sofa also reflects extras who were standing behind the camera at the time of filming that particular shot.
Today we did some editing, we accomplished a lot today however we have a short amount of time before the rough cut. We managed to finish adding in the scenarios but it we have managed to put any post production effects in. The thing we have done most is a cutting the clips with the razor and placing them in different places.
We need to focus on the lip synching tomorrow as we need to balance out the different scenes.
[insert screenshot here]
Premier Pro is a challenge as it is new to us so it is time consuming but we managed to get the narrative part in so we have a storyline, we just need to add in the lip-synching parts and if we have time external shots.
The introduction needs more works as does the ending so we are just focusing on the song for now.
Today we continued editing for our Music Video. As everything was in a folder we found it easy to identify where everything was. As we have a rough cut deadline for the 23/10/13 we wanted to make sure we got the lip syncing clips and scenario clips in first.
It was a struggle matching the videos with the music which would cause it to look out of time so it was a time consuming process.
[insert screenshot here]
We managed to add our first effect in. We applied the scene where the audience are introduced to the girls, we marked where we wanted the clip to start and end with all three girls, then we use the razor tool to separate them into 3 different clips. We then joined them together however they weren't in time with the music and we felt that they were a bit too long so we cut it down even more.
[insert screenshot here]
Next time we need to finish putting in the scenarios in the correct places and hopefully get a rough draft of the video finished.
This is Skepta's Digipack front cover for his single Lush.
As you can see the title is in the middle standing out, then the artist is the second biggest, however the audience might misinterpret which title is the song or the artist; to make it further misleading it has 'boy better know' at the top which adds to the confusion. Only a Grime fan would understand that Skepta is the artist, Lush is the song title and boy better know is his record label. In comparison to Adele's Rolling in the deep single cd see doesn't have the record label name on the front as she is a well known person who doesn't need to promote anything unlike Skepta.
Another Example of a Grime digipack front cover is Dizze Rascal's Flex
This is a clear design of the artist as he is on the front cover with a stripy background behind him with a contrast of purple and white. The fonts compliment that background using a unique font that wouldn't be common on other digipacks. This already creates a star persona on Dizzee Rascal as whenever someone sees that font, they would think of him.
Wiley's 'Wearing my Rolex' digipacks follows the same direction as Skepta's. As does Chipmunk's Chip Diddy Chip. The font is bold and clear and despite being similar what I have noticed is that they all have there own distinctive font which what separates theirs from everyone else's. It's clear to see that it is common to not include an image of the artist but it must depend on the artist as Dizzee Rascal decided to include himself on the cover.
After looking through some of Grime artists digipacks, I feel that the route we should take is having just the font over a intriguing background. I have a feeling that it should be a neon background as we want to to emphasise lighting into our project. Especially as we plan to use glow sticks and neon balloons, we could highlight this in our background.
On the other hand as Wiley is the artist we decided to do ours on we should follow his pattern of digipack covers.
I know how to treat a women cus i got it in the bag
.......
Verse 1
she don't wanna be a trophy
she wants to be the queen of the place
I spent an hour just clocking
i was just reading her face
Gotta do it for myself
cus i might need the lovin
she might need it too
we both out clubbin
So it's only right i approach her like im no one
Whose Wiley i don't know flo dat
that attitude
Im a new guy
I got a style thats hotter than July
Chorus
(eskie boi)
verse2
Its in the bag like shopping
but im steady rockin
to the song thats playing in the dance
but she wants to act stoshe pricey like the ounce of the cush
all i really gotta do is make her laugh
Is that a giggle there baby
taking it to heart
on the groaner ting follow me Lets depart
Tell your friend come too
Ive got a friend she can run too
and we can do anything that you want to
Go teach smile its all over me
Your all over
we are all sober
baby im a stroller
with it
i take time innit
just give me a minute
i will show ya
Every single word im living its so coaster
im reeling the most get the most of
now let me see your lips getting closer
and take a couple sips on the sofa
Today we did editing. It took us some time to sort out the footage and organise them into different folders. This is so that we could easily find them when we wanted. This was time consuming and took up most of the lesson, but at least when we come to do it next lesson, we are able to work effeicently as we know where to find them.
We decided to use Premier Pro which is a contrast from Final Cut express from the thrillers. We are trying to adjust to the program as it is very different but at the same time very detailed.
We managed by the end of the lesson to finish insert the audio of our song 'In the Bag' and add a few footages.
We added in our first effect which was a fade out. However the effect was a bit quick and so it we hope to prolong it next time.
Yesterday we filmed our music video. On the friday we picked up the equipment we needed for it. As the location was at my house my group came a bit earlier to set up.
My initial worry was that not everyone would have turned up as we had people rejecting due to other commitments. On the other hand before other people arrived, we spent that time filming external shots for the music video and creating a party atmosphere by blowing balloons and popping party poppers.
After filming shots during daylight, we wanted to contrast it with night light shots so we filmed some in the evening. These shots looked at lot better in my opinion as it really brought out the glow sticks and neon balloons that we used.
The weather did restrict us to doing outside shots as it was raining and so we had to lose that idea.
What went well?
The efficiency of filming the video went very well as our extras were very professional and cooperative.
Our main protagonist was really good and was able to portray the character very well. This should help us present the comical side into music video.
We managed to get lots of different shots from different angles which should help us in post production as we will have a variety to choose from.
The mise en scene was well established as it looked like a party, the props brought helped with the atmosphere.
What could have been improved?
The introduction could have been done a bit better but due to the rain we were restricted to the amount of times we could have done it.
The music video was shot in a randomised order and so the continuity of the music video might not flow.
With our location being in a sunroom, their might be a few shots where the tripod or camera is visible due to the glass.
Copyright is an important issue and therefore after asking Wiley for permission to use his song, I wanted to research on copyright in the music industry.
How can we improve our music video using different effects in the post production stage?
Post production is the time where the video can come alive as you can control everything from the length of the shots, the colours used, the transitions from shot to shot, add creative fonts to create a credit sequence or titles for artist and song names and many more. As we are reaching the time of filming and shortly after that production, it was time to research videos that involve a variety of effects which were achieved through post production to add a spark of vibrancy to the video to give us some inspiration for effects we can use in our own music video project.
Dance The Pain Away by Benny Benassi ft. John Legend
This particular video is set in a normal beach location with a simple concept, but due to it's over use of effects, it has brought the video to life and makes the viewer see it in a different light. The beginning of the video involves a series of titles/credits but the viewer can only see what is going on in the music video through the shaping of the letters in the titles.
Title screen
The second use of effects is the reversed screen. It is an element we were thinking of using in our music video. Adding a title sequence, especially similar to the way it is used in this video, is effective because it highlights boldly to the viewer who the video is both created by and who provides the vocals. The split screen in this video is particularly effective because the shot of John Legend is mirrored. There is another example of split screen which involves the shot been mirrored inwards rather than outwards.
Reversed/mirrored screens
Another effect used is that is used several times throughout the video is the overlapping of two shots. In a vast majority of these type of shots, it is used with John Legend with smoke in the background lightly overlapping on his face. It is also used with some of the shots of the video girl.
Overlapping of two shots
Coloured effects
There is also a use of shapes such as circles and diamonds to scope certain landscape shots. These usually occur over the top of another landscape shot and the saturation and brightness has been altered inside the shape to make it stand out for the viewer. Although the video is filmed in black and white, every so often there is a burst of bright colours such as pinks, greens and yellows. They use a flashing transition to match the beat of the music. As well as colouring, there is also a few uses of inverted colour quickly switching on some shots to add a supernatural effect. During the second chorus of the song, we see a shot where Benny Benassi drives the car down the road. As this shot is playing in front, another shot is flashing in the back which you can see through the edges of the boxed frame. The flashing again follows the beat of the music.
Some of the effects used in this video we can interpret into our music video such as the title screens and the coloured effects. However, some of the effects may be a bit too ambitious to use and we may not be able to make them work with the software we use to produce our final piece.
In a number of modern day music videos, they feature a specific ending. It is usually a trademark of their brand or something that resembles them as an artist (for example a logo). This element is different from the credits of the artists names and title of the song commonly featured at the beginning of the video. This could be a feature we could add to the ending of our own music video. I think it would work well with our song because of the fuzzy transition sound effect it makes at the end adding the effect of a cut from music to trademark. This could be achieved by using text, logo or trademark image or a combination of the two.
These videos all feature specific trademark endings:
Boyfriend by Justin Bieber
Trademark logo/image used - Believe logo promoting album is displayed at the end as the music fades out.
Lose Yourself to Dance by Daft Punk
Trademark logo/image used - Daft Punk's symbol used as part of a transition. The photo is split in half and joins together as the music stops forming the end trademark image.
Grime is a style of british music which was emerged from the early 2000's. Now we have a full range of artists which have managed to break grime into the charts; these artists are Wiley, Dizzee Rascal, Roll Deep, Kano and Skepta.
Grime consists of uk garage, drum & bass, hip hop and dancehall.
However despite our song 'in the bag' by Wiley moving towards the hip hop genre, Wiley has still managed to fit in the genre of grime because of the his fast flow and use of break beats.
A lot of people relate grime to gangs and crime, because of the way grime is represented as gritty and dirty. Especially in East London where it originated, grime 'slang' are commonly used.
Grime is a very urban genre, unlike hip hop you tend to see grime artist very laid back and not go over the top, where as in Hip hop, you see them spending cash, driving around in fast cars, exploiting women. This is probably due to fact that Grime doesn't bring in that much money.
The song BedRock is from the hip hop genre. In BedRock by Young Money you see those very conventions that I talked about.
Giant by Devlin is from the grime genre. As you see in this music video Delvin isn't expressing his song by driving fast cars and spending money.
Grime artists tend not to earn much money as there music isn't as mainstream as Hip hop and so serve to a smaller target audience. Their record label is very independent and so many artist in that genre don't tend to break global recognition.
Bedrock on youtube currently has 106,799,578
On the other hand Delvin's video currently has 1,447,948 ; however Delvin is a established Grime artist who has managed to break into the charts in England.
Costume
As you can see these Artist dress in a similar way to each other. In grime they tend to wear the snapbacks or Hats, expensive Jewellery and dark colours. Connoting that this Genre is dark and mysterious.
Hair
As you can see they like to shave their hair and add patterns to it or even put on a bald cap.
Today, I tried to contact our artist (Wiley) to seek permission in using his song for our music video which is for educational purposes. I decided to contact him through Twitter as it is a great social networking site for communicating with artist.
The link above is Wiley's twitter account. It has a verified tick next to his account which proves that he is the actual person and not just some spoof account.
This is me writing a tweet to Wiley.
With fans tweeting this artist everyday, it's hard for him to look at every message.
The ipod influence we got from Cher Lloyd's Swagger Jagger video. Even though Cher uses a Boom box instead of an Ipod we like the way it was structured. We liked the idea of starting the music within the music video instead of the music starting straight away. We also got inspiration of playing the song digeticly before implementing the song in post production. With this idea in mind we looked at other similar videos that did the same.
In Rizzle Kicks, Mama Do the Hump. Their Music video gave us the idea of starting at the door. We thought that it was a really good element if we could start with narrative as it would make the audience feel apart of the atmosphere. The ambient sound would be useful to set the starting atmosphere of the party with cheers and party poppers.
In Selena Gomez's music video Birthday. We got the inspiration of what to do during the part. We noticed that their was alot of handheld shots accompanied by stationary shots. We noticed that she used the same location for the music video but used different parts of the room of the location. We thought this was a clever way to make the location look bigger. We also thought that the clips of Selena singing with party guests in the background looked really effective. We also had inspiration from the speed of some of the clips. It included some clips in rewind and fast forward. We noticed that with the Rizzle Kicks video and Selena video, it ended with some form of dialogue which has inspired us to take that into account. The lighting used in this music video consist of many internal lighting which we could use to provide subtle lighting.
In JLS do you feel what I feel, they have a party due to the fact that the parents are out of the house. The gave the opportunity for a little narrative. They also included some narrative at the beginning which is gave us the idea to use some in ours. They use Goodwin's point frequently about linking the visuals with the lyrics as you see the link when they say "got my car and it's waiting outside" You see the Volvo car outside. This is also product placement because you see the Volvo frequently throughout the video. and "I wanna kiss you..." This is where they are seen kissing lots of girls. This has given us the idea to use that convention as our song tells a story in a way.
In music video, they have lots of people as extras, so we need to implement that into our music video as that way we can continue typical conventions of a party.
Overall we have gained alot of inspiration from a various of music videos and pictures. I think that the cuts in our music video should follow Goodwins convention of connecting the visuals with the music as it is an upbeat song and we have seen from a lot of music videos that this is a common thing to do in those type songs. Another thing i noticed from the music videos is that the party have lots of internal lighting from sources such as phones, glowsticks and lamps. Most of these party music videos seen don't seem to show any clear narrative which is something we could take into account and use to challenge this convention.
Our Target audience is a niche market, some of the people I questioned didn't even know what Grime was but knew hip hop. That's how small the market is in terms of Genre. However from my research some people did recognise some grime artists which concludes that we need to promote the genre more than the artist because the artist has already created a star persona for themselves.
Asking 30 people i got did a questionnaire and below is the results.
As you can see 89% of people knew Hip Hop and only 17% knew what Grime was, we have a very small market which is probably why it hard to break into the market with Grime Music. That's why for our video we need to show our star persona, advertise, promote and gain awareness. Peopl
