Performance Filming 2

So eventually we finished filming, changing the location to Canbury Gardens, which was the prefect location as it was a lot prettier and looked a lot better for that type of footage we wanted. We used Grace's SLR to film the footage as there are still no cameras this gave us really great quality footage, even though it means it is going to take longer to upload because the files are larger. Last time we tried to film one of the issues that the group faced was that the main character didn't know the lyrics to the song which was fine but it meant that he had to read it form a sheet which meant that he didn't have eye contact with the camera, so the next time we filmed we gave him enough time to learn the lyrics. The other issue we had was that we didn't have a tripod or a dolly to film the tracking shots and because this was the central part of the footage we had to use it handheld which does meant that we have the risk of the footage being a bit shaky, however this potentially could be a look that would fit with the storyline. To sum up mine and the whole groups feelings of today is that we are all very pleased and that it went really well, although it took although it took a lot of planning, it showed that the worked well as a group and we are hoping that the planning and effort that we put in pays off and the footage is great! 

Performance filming 1

After an unfortunate illness & the robbery we have finally got round to starting our performance filming! In freezing conditions we ventured our onto a common to attempt to shoot our protagonist (Bing) & create the lyrics performance of 'If ya wanna'. It was starting to grate on us all that this hadn't been completed yet, we knew that we had to have around a 60/40 or 50/50 breakdown of the narrative & performance and thus our lack of the latter was worrying! However when we began filming we realised that though the other productions had taken weeks of extensive planning & preparation & costume sourcing as supposed to this relatively gentle shoot with little pre-prep in relation to mis en scene & costume, we did however have to intimately work with our one actor more than with the masses on other shoots. We did several forward tracking shots ( mainly using close up as this length of shot was one which we had neglected in our other shoots and we desperately needed more of, in order for our audience to buy in our band -'Suburban Typo' and connect to our artist -'Bing'), of Bing singing along to the lyrics, although his lack of confidence in knowing the words really made our jobs a lot harder. We held up the lyrics for him to see, however this really effected his eye contact and this lack of passionate communication really showed up on camera. It was so hard for him to ease up, mainly because of the context - cold field, winter, alone singing, with no warm up. Of course if one was to train him properly for a piece of acting or singing vocal & physical exercises would need to be undergone, however seeing as he was voluntarily helping us out, we felt that coming down to hard on him may intimidate the ability we knew he had. Therefore we all tried to be personally active, sing along to the lyrics, and give positive praise in order to spur on his ego & abilities. We got several shots in this first location, though we knew we would have to reschedule another day (hopefully a warmer one) to film more of the external shots. We then went on to a new location to photograph Bing & shots some of him looking depressed and slobbish surrounded by messy objects and a lack of coherence without our female lead. Overall the shoot was a mixed experience but we have booked friday the 1st of March to continue with our performance filming - giving us more time to look through the footage from today & decide which shots we are missing or need to create a polished finish.

Filming&Editing

Filming and editing updates

18-01-13
There is a slight delay at the moment involving filming the last couple of eras and the performance. This is due to the exam process that all of the members of our group are currently in the middle of. This has resulted in a pause in the filming process. This made it very difficult to get everyone in the group together, and also the cast members as they are also in exams. Even though this is a set back, there is nothing that is going to stop us getting back into the filming process very quickly, not letting this have an effect on the film being finished for the date that has been set.

28-01-13
We had scheduled our performance for this Monday, but unfortunately it had to be cancelled. When getting in contact with Connor (our lead singer), we found out that he had come down with an illness and had to miss one of his A level exams due to this. Obviously, this has put a spanner in the works for us as the deadline is constantly getting nearer and we need to get our filming done. Also, because we've filmed and edited our beginning montage, which was complicated to edit, we need to use the same person to make our concept work and avoid having to change it at all costs. We hope he gets better soon!

Editing

Even though we haven't fully finished our shoot yet, we decided to start editing our footage in our Media Studies lessons in order to get our music video completed as soon as possible and move our focus to our ancillary tasks.

For the very beginning of our video, we had planned quite a complicated edit. The concept of the beginning scenes was to show the closeness of our two main characters' relationship, and we had filmed it in preparation for a montage. However, as this part of the narrative was particularly key for making our video make sense, we wanted to highlight it even further. We decided to do this by presenting the scenes as moving photographs, with the video playing inside a picture frame.

The first thing we had to do to do this was find a suitable frame. We chose a Polaroid photo as the frame as we felt this was the best way we could show the moving photo concept, as normal photographs do not generally have borders. As we could not just add a frame onto the clip on Final Cut Express, we decided to download a picture and layer the two items.

We did this by placing the Polaroid image on one track, and the moving image clip on the track above it. This meant that when you viewed the project, the clip would be ordered in front of the frame, which was idea. These were both placed above a photo of a wooden table top, which would serve as our background. When the clip was covered by another Polaroid, it would eventually finish and the previous Polaroid would be blank: we didn't want this, so we also decided to repeat the clip just to give off the impression it was still playing in the background.

We then needed to crop and rotate the clip in order to make it fit the Polaroid. We did this by double clicking the clip, and going into the 'Motion' tab which gave us the option to crop. Although we could also rotate from there, we preferred doing it by enabling the 'Image+Wireframe' setting and using the options on the wireframe to rotate it.

We had to do this several times: once for each clip, and then for each Polaroid as well. As we wanted to give off the impression that they were stacking up, this meant we had to layer each new Polaroid and relating clip on top of the existing ones. In the end we ended up with 31 tracks, and 15 Polaroids.