Finished!

We have now (unofficially) finished our project!


That includes our music video, album cover and myspace homepage for our artist.


We will have a screening with our class next Tuesday and then make any changes we need to...and then we are DONE!!!

Editing, Album Cover and Myspace Page

We are getting even closer to our deadline with only about a week to go. I have summarised our progress so far in terms of all three products.


Editing

It is going well so far, but we only have a week left and still don't have all our footage! We are going to reshoot this weekend and I think we have enough time to edit the new footage. The only thing left is the ending. So in the meantime we have been working on the rest of the song. We were trying to listen to the lyrics and so when the song says 'I'm taking it slow' we have deliberately edited at a slower pace. We have also been adding more effects such as cross dissolves at this point in the song and at the beginning to make it more dreamy.

We need to get feedback from a teacher next week to find out if anything needs changing.

Album Cover


At the moment we are still planning and discussing our ideas for the fornt of the album. We already have the shot for the back, which is a ELS of Mia in the tunnel where only her silhouette can be seen.


For the front cover, we have been looking at album covers from the same genre as our song and artist, which is alternative/indie rock. We want to convey the genre and therefore have been analysing their signiifers. The main convention is that the image and style is unique and often abstract and weird.


Some of our ideas have been based around mythical imagery or images associated with nature such as trees. One idea was to use the silhouette of tree branches. We do not want to use an actual photo of a tree but only a image that is almost cartoon like. However, with a photo of Mia alongside this the feedback we have got is that it would be weird.

Myspace Page

We have not decided on the name of our artist and so have not created a Myspace yet. However, in preparation for the creation of it, we have looked at the myspace pages of other artists such as Kate Nash who we have taken much inspiration from. Her page is very personal and she has put a lot of herself and her personality into it. We like this idea and have decided to try and do something similar for our artist's myspace.

Editing: Progression

Now that we have footage from all our locations (although we are not going to use all of it) we have started editing. We captured the footage on Monday and Tuesday and then began putting together sequences.

We began working on was the sequence of the main girl waking up. We wanted swap between shots in the tunnel and forest using graphic matching but we found that the footage of this in the tunnel did not work or match with the one in the forest, which we much preferred. Therefore we will have to have a reshoot in the tunnel.

I began putting shots of the main girl walking in the forest and then also shots of the masked figure without properly revealing her.

So the editing is going well! Once we have the correct footage it will come together much better.

Shoot 1: Tunnel in New Southgate

Yesterday we had our first proper shoot and it was actually quite productive as we got a lot of the shots we wanted.

Costume

MAIN GIRL (Mia)
sparkly silver/black dress
Make-up - Quite heavy eye-make up, predominantly black
Silver and black jewellery
Black sandals

MAIN MASKED FIGURE (Selina)
Faded blue jeans
Suit jacket
Half-face white mask
Make-up - red lipstick

Props

Tealights
Candles
Smashed mirror
Black stick

We decided that the shots in the tunnel would be where Mia would lip-synch, which is what we did. We filmed some static shots for instance a MCU of Mia sitting against a wall and static shots at the end of the tunnel with Mia walking towards and away from the camera. We also did the same shot with Selina as the masked figure.

We also got some handheld shots of both the main girl and the masked figure. For some shots, we placed the tealights in a circle with Mia in the middle and a mirror. We got some shots of the masked figure in the reflection of the mirror. Reflections is also going to be a reccuring theme in our video so it was important ot use the mirror. We also used the tealights along with the candles in other shots by placing them along the sides of the tunnel. Mia then walked through the tunnel stopping to look at the flames every so often. This looked really good on camera.

In terms of performance, both our actors performed extremely well and soon really got into their role, so there are no problems there!

Problems/Lessons Learnt

Main issue: lighting!

We may have had a problem with lighting (will have to watch the footage back to be certain). We knew this might have been an issue as we didn't have any paglights to gain more lighting.
We also haven't got all the shots we need from the tunnel. One of the main shots we need is of the main girl smashing the mirror so that there are broken bits of the mirror scattered everywhere. We also now need to get a new mirror.

Test Shoot 2: Grovelands Park

Now we have changed our song and idea this test shoot was for the song 'Eyes on Fire'.

Costume

MAIN GIRL
Sparkly dress
Black glove
Tights
Converse

Props

Glitter
Wool

I think this test went very well, especially in comparison to our last one! We found a spot in the woodlands part of the park that Mia and Selina had earlier come across. We set up there and began filming shots of the main girl played by Mia walking through the trees in character. The shots were mainly handheld.

Problems/Lessons Learnt

Having looked back at the footage, I think the lighting may have been an issue. Although we had enough lighting as we used paglights, the lighting from them makes the shot look unnatural. I think natural lighting looks better and so we will probably have to shoot earlier in the day. We also need more still shots to have a combination of handheld and still camera work in the video.

Test Shoot

We had our test shoot yesterday in the tunnel in New Southgate. It didn't go that well and so we decided we didnt want to do 'Fences' by Paramore for a number of reasons. First of all we are not sure we could get all the actors needed to perform in the band apart from Mia and Selina. We also weren't clear about our idea from the start and had massively over-complicated things. So we thought it woudn't be practical to continue.

So we have a new possible track called 'Eyes on Fire' by Blue Foundation that is featured in the Twilight film. It is way more atmospheric and we discussed more abstract ideas for this track that our actually practical and can be done with mainly one actress, most likely to be Mia.

So I will post more on this track once we are sure we can do it.