filming 3

For the third filming session we shot our 80's scene which included a aerobic class which used the stereotypical iconography of that era for example, leg warmers, headbands, bright clothes etc. The main character was shot walking into the class late an being very confused as to were she is. We had to do a lot of preparation to be able to get people in the scene as we needed to make it look as real as an aerobic class as possible, this involved having a lot of people be in the scene and making sure that they all had good clothes to wear so that they were easily highlighted to be from that date. The storyboard was stuck to as it was very important that we were able to get everyone where we wanted and what we wanted the characters to do. This was a great way to play around with working with other people and more than only the main characters, this gave us the chance to see if we were able to work with other people and if we are able to organise everyone properly.



To be able to get all of the people to be in the shot we had to make sure that they also had fun so we made it more interesting by bringing make up and putting on music and having a relaxed environment so that they didn't feel that they had to do it and it had to be done in a boring way. The group also had to make sure that we got people that weren't shy as the filming would not have looked as real as an proper class. The shot types were very important as we had to use all of the characters and show the whole of the setting and all of what the characters are wearing, this is because if the scene need to be easily distinguished and with the colours that were worn this had definitely been put across. 

filming 2

 

Today we filmed our 1950's scene in Frank B's  Diner (in Kingston). Of course we  had to ask for their permission first (from Frank B's diner and then from the Bentall Centre itself) to see if we were able to film there and luckily we were. This was the perfect location for our scene as it was in a typical American style 1950's diner, containing various items of mis en scene which could help our audience intertextuality relate to the era and conjuring up the typical connotation's of the era, such as the juke box and the authentic burgundy booths to sit in. Our actors all dressed up relevant to the occasion, though of course we paid a lot of attention to the detail of the costumes prior to the filming of the actual shoot.

We did extensive research into popular fashion trends in the 1950's and recorded the main styles worn by women during this time. We found that high waisted clothing was quite popular, a-line skirts, cropped shirts,  as well as floral print, pale colours and neck / head scarves. As well as this, skater-style dresses were quite popular where they are tight at the waist and then go out  (non-revealing clothing - skirts usually fell at knee length). 

 We did well in following our storyboard when filming, making sure we got every shot exactly how we planned and we only did extra shots from different angles after we had completed what was on our storyboard. Moreover our second shoot went very well and we luckily completed it all in the 45 minutes that we had been allocated for filming. As we were using private premises to film on they were only allowed to use the space to film for 45 minutes, which really taught us as a group about the strains of time commitment and management when filming. We always knew from the start (when we initially thought of our idea) that this could be an issue, but luckily we overcame it on this occasion setting us in good stead for further shoots (as we were prepared to be given a limited amount of time).

filming 1

Today we at last began filming the footage for our music video. Our progress and management of todays shoots were slick & orchestrated exactly how we wished them to be. However, this is one of our easiest shoot locations - we filmed in New Malden at a friends house, with contemporary costumes & mis en scene, and a limited cast & full filming team. Today was hassle free, we gathered a variety of shots, angles, camera movements and styles & attempted to create utter versatility when it came down to later editing & re-working / tweaking the original footage. 

Compared to last years project our increased planning & organisation (story boards / cast / timings) made the whole process so run much smoother and we were thus less stressed & much more creative when it came to spontaneity shots & interesting adjustments to our preparations. Additionally our actors today both have a performance history which the camera of course picked up capturing natural images for us to combine later into a compressed montage. 

However in other scenes (with mass cast) we may not be able to acquire a full cast of experienced actors / actresses which may mean we will have to spent much more time choreographing & directing our cast & catering for large volumes of people. We also managed to finish ahead of schedule & thus started the filming for our 'break up' shoot in our second location (Costa Coffee - New Malden, after receiving permission of course). 

Planning #8

Today we continued story-boarding and planning out the succession of our 1940s & 1950s scenes. We began drawing out all of our previous notes and manually story-boarding our planned shots and mes en scene from the other decades as well, in order to prepare for creating an accompanying animatic sequence. We sketched each shot onto post it notes, which meant that we could re-organize the angels & shot distances if needed, allowing a flexible structure in relation to both filming & the animatic - meaning we had the opportunity to alter decisions on set if creatively necessary. We then researched into suitable costumes  choices which we could perhaps purchase (for a small amount) from eBay or loan from a charity shot for a more authentic wardrobe. We felt that even though the acting style at times was hyperbolic and dramatized, that we still wanted to create a parallel to the past & display the extent of our research & detailed sourcing through our video. 

In today's meeting we also managed to secure the use of : x1 camera, x1 tripod and x1 set of lights for our first filming shoot (on Friday the 23rd of November). We also contacted - via emailed the band's (The Vaccines - who are chosen track 'If Ya Wanna' is originally sung by) management in order to properly secure permission for borrowing their material. We then contacted 'Costa Coffee' in New Malden to receive permission to use their cafe as a shooting location - luckily we were granted with the go ahead and now have several public (more professional looking) locations as well as our own houses, making the ratio much more even and hopefully visually more effective, it was so crucial to secure as many public places or buildings to use as possible in order to heighten the professional finish (as in life companies like Universal Music, Sony Music Entertainment, or Warner Music Group - connections & budgets & mass employees & editing & filming equipment - would aid the finish on their musical products). 

  

                        

 Finally we started to plan out shot sheets, noting down : cast, costume, props (we also managed to source & then track down an authentic 1920's silver wear dining set to use for our Jazz age scene - a key element of Mes en scene to notify with this particular decade) location, date and briefing of each of our scheduled shoots. It was a rather productive day today in which most of our admin was finalised or came close to completion. We knew ( especially when recounting on previous struggles & lack of organisation in our AS projects) that having a well thought out structure and clear division of every element was critical. Thus we spent much more time on thoroughly completing all of our prep rather than rushing into creation without a clear structure - which last year made editing a much more strenuous and stressful task!

Email to the record label

As we needed permission to use 'The Vaccines' track 'If you Wanna', we emailed the record company in order to acquire permission to use their song. 

Planning #7

In today's lesson we got on with several tasks. We went online to look up different costumes, considering the possibility of getting a flapper style dress of eBay for a cheap price, and also considered contacting charity shops to see if we could borrow clothes in return for a small donation.

We also continued with the storyboard, which is close to finished. This was good as our filming begins on the 23rd, and we aim to have the storyboard completely finished before then.

A third thing we did was touch up our blogging: we'd spent so much time discussing our work and planning our shoots, we had ended up getting slightly behind on our posts. As soon as we got the necessary planning discussions of the day done, we ensured that our blogs were up to date, helping each other where necessary.

Planning Meeting

Our TimeTable for November (Planning&Filming dates

Planning #6

Today we began to plan out the content in our animatic storyboarded sequence. We wanted to make sure we had a reliable succession of notes on hand, before creating the artwork. Meaning we would have a clear written structure to refer to before attempting to create the visual elements. We began by discussing  possibilities for our opening sequence (introduction shoot) set in the modern day; timing the pre-lyrical instrumental piece at the beginning of 'If Ya Wanna', we found that we had 19 seconds to play with & decided that in this short gap of time a compressed montage of snap shots / small snippets of film would create a better overall view for the audience of our protagonist & the artist's (lead male in the video) relationship.

  

We felt that gathering a large array of mini-shoots for this particular scene would give us a much greater chance in the editing sweet to advance these pieces into a brief yet romantic opening story - introducing our meta-narrative (love trumps it all).  We new that if we started the piece on an extremely sour note, we would break our audience connection straight away, as they would feel no empathy towards our lead singer & his partner (lead girl) and as such the passion and emotion forged into their relationship would be entirely missed and under appreciated - both emotionally and visually. Beginning with a simplistic hint at their history would help us to create a much more rounded video and also juxtapose effectively to the heightened style & fast pace  of action in the rest of the visuals. 

Additionally, though our lead singer takes A-level drama & music (something which will benefit us greatly in relation to their over-all performance and believability) we knew that any stilted romance acting may create a sense of lacked authenticity and take away from the enjoyment of the rest of the video. We felt that choosing Rhianna  (who knew the lead male well) as our lead female protagonist would help to 'break the ice' and allow the two leads to work comfortably & convincingly together - as they already have a long standing friendship. 

 We went on to list the serious of shot lengths, angles etc & discuss props / locations designed for each specific shot. We then worked through the rest of the decades -  finalising the locations & casting for each & deciding on which shots to include in bullet form (to then later bring to life on our storyboard). 

 

Finally we finalised email agreements with possible venues & rang up 'Frank B's Diner' in Kingston to speak to their manager about hiring out the restaurant for filming. We managed to secure Tuesday the 27th of November to use the diner privately after hours to create our 1950's/1960's scene. We knew it was extremely vital to secure this placement as the location is perfectly authentic and decorated timelessly. We were extremely relieved with this placement as we felt that this spaces would aid the overall professional finish of our video, and help it too not look like a very sub-standard, amateur creation. 

  

    

Storyboard and Animatics

In order to properly plan our music video, a storyboard is essential. We needed to plan our individual shots as we have quite a complicated shoot on our hands: if we didn't plan, it's likely the continuity of the scenes would not work and our shoots would go to waste. We've spent several meetings drawing out our storyboard, and now we have the final product: a book full of sketched post it notes and an animatics of our video.

 

 

Scene list

We decided to create a scene list to give us a rough idea of where, who and what we'd need for each scene: this is going to be helpful as we can now confirm when we're shooting each era and book the relevant people, equipment and places. 

Inspiration from other media texts & videos #4

The video that influenced our video was Christiana Aguilera's Candy Man. This really helped us with the idea of the era of war and the dances that they had and the costumes that they wore. The uniforms are an easy way to show the audience what ear it was, and an easy way for the listeners to be able to know what era we are showing here. This is going to be used in our video to show one of the eras, we are going to do either a dance or the men going off to war or something to show that this is what the main theme in this time. The woman in the video also wears the clothes that show when this was, this allows us to see what all the characters have to wear in order to make it look the best it can.  It gave us ideas on how we would make the scene look as real as possible. The scenes that are in this video we are looking to use so seeing what characteristics used was very helpful in seeing how we were able to portray this and show it in the most effective real way, getting it as close to the real era as we were able to.

The Filming Schedule

This is a plan for the times we plan to film right until the first showcase.

planning #4

today we started casting for our music video and we found our two main characters which is a huge step forward for us. for our male lead we are using a close friend of one of the members in our group meaning he will be reliable and confident around us. he is also a drama and music student. for our female role we decided to use Rhianna who is in our group. She is very close friends with the male role, Connor Bingham, and as she is part of the group she will always be around when filming and will be committed. we also made a scene list as we thought this would make sense to produce before we started story boarding. we made note of the location, cast needed and the story for each scene so its easy for us to see who we needed and what we were shooting for each era.

Planning #3

When we met today, we tried to get into greater detail about where specifically we would film. We decided that instead of having a dance for the 1940s, we would move the 'dance' to the 70s: to a disco. In order to have a party for the 70s scene and make it look realistic we decided that we should actually throw the party rather than asking people to be extras, as this would eliminate the need for good actors and instead just people that like costume parties. To do this, we would need to hire a hall and in this meeting we began searching up places to hire on a small budget and began emailing them.

While waiting for their replies, we started looking for places for the other scenes. We replaces the dance from the 40s with a scene in an air raid shelter: luckily, my shed is actually an old air raid shelter which we could use. As it is quite nasty inside, we decided we would film an establishing shot of the shelter and then film the scene by candlelight in a dark closet/room, therefore making it seem like the same place. Obviously, I would also try and get rid of all aspects that make the shelter seem modern.

We also decided that for our 50s/60s diner, we would find a restaurant that has kept the theme and ask to film there. After considerable research, we found Frank B's which is fairly close to us all and had a suitable theme. We have also emailed them about asking to shoot there.

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We also started casting for our video. For our male lead, we knew we needed someone who was good at acting, not shy and more of an external person. For this, we chose a friend called Connor Bingham. He is a drama and music student who plays guitar, piano and several other instruments as well as sings. This means that he would be perfect for our music video as he is used to being in front of a computer, handling instruments and singing.

  

 For the female lead, we decided that I would play her. We decided this as it's a lot of shooting work and we couldn't risk someone externally not being committed to the project and flaking out. I also know the male lead the best, which is convenient as it means when we are performing scenes in which we have to be close, there won't be any awkwardness and therefore it should hopefully look quite good. 

planning #1

During the first planning meeting we needed to finalize various decisions that would affect our music video such as the costumes, actors, settings etc. We started to look at what sort of costumes would be suitable for different eras from using our own individual knowledge as well as doing some research as well. We also finalized the era's that we would use in our music video and we settled on the 1920's, 40's, 60's, 80's and modern day 00's. we decided on using these because there is a significant gap between each era so the time change can be shown clearly and be obvious to the audience.

we also decided what sort of scenes we were going to use to represent the era that our main character is in. For the 20's we are going to do a petting party which will show the types of people there and the outfits worn will illustrate the era and make it clear to the audience. for the 1940's we decided to do something related to the war for example and end of war party or gathering between soldiers. To illustrate the 1960's we are going to do a scene from a diner where it will have traditional diner layout and for the 80's we are going to do an aerobic class as the outfits will be very colourful and will help to show the type of fashion during that period of time. For the present modern day we will show the girl going back to her boyfriend and reconnecting their love for each other in the end.