Photo shoot of our actors

Photo-shoot of actors - Created with Haiku Deck, presentation software that inspires;

Filming

When filming our shots in Exeter (as can be seen above) there were a few obstacles we had to overcome and a few hurdles in our way, however we tried our best to film our piece to a high quality regardless. Our first hurdle was that the weather turned upon arriving at the shoot location and so we were faced with the problem of keeping our equipment dry, to do this we improvised and used a plastic bag over the camera with a hole in for the lens to film through. 

A further problem we encountered towards the end of the shoot was the charge of the camera suddenly falling, meaning that we had to rush some of the tunnel shots, however we still managed to shoot some good shots.

We did film a fair proportion of our film before this shoot, however unfortunately our main actor and protagonist dropped out of the project after filming and so we had to discard a majority of our footage from these shoots.

Location shots

In this post are a few location shots of where we plan to shoot our music video, both in Exeter in the Princesshay shopping centre and an underground walkway and also in Alex's conservatory, which we will transform to look more like a bohemian bachelor pad for the day of the shoot.

 (this would be the ideal location for the mugging scene as it is enclosed and also very urban, so is exactly the kind of location where you'd expect a mugging to occur)

(when we shoot in here we will have the table strewn with empty alcohol bottles and remove the rugs from the chairs to try to make it seem like less of a family room)

Shotlist

Risk assessment

This is a risk assessment that we created to allow us to prepare for any risks that we may face during the process and so prepare for these and know how to avoid them, some of these are quite likely to happen and others are incredibly unlikely, however it is useful to consider every possibility so you are prepared for the worst.

Choice of actors and costumes

Our music video requires only two actors so me and my partner Alex have created a list of who we think would be best suited for these roles, and also reliable to film with. luckily we were able to get two well suited actors for each role.
Our protagonist will be played by Caius (left) who is well suited to the role as he has a beard and so will look older, and will be convincing to the audience that he is of legal drinking age. Our antagonist will be played by Joe (right) who is well suited to his role as he is tall and so will look imposing over Caius and so will make him seem scarier and more powerful to the audience.

                     

For Caius' costume we would like to make him seem placid, unimposing and just like the average British male to try to draw sympathy towards him from the audience. To obtain this preferred reading we will dress him in a plaid shirt or light coloured jumper (as seen in the photo), with black or blue jeans. For joes character we would like to make him seem powerful, shady and violent, so to achieve this we will have him wearing all black, branded clothes, such as a 'The North Face' raincoat and black jeans, wearing sunglasses to make him seem even more shady and black shoes.

BAD NEWS
Caius has decided to drop out of his role as the protagonist of our piece so we have decided to use another friend, Ruben, to play this role. Below is a picture of Ruben in his normal attire.

We will have Ruben dressed as I described for Caius or possibly wearing a denim jacket as opposed to a light jumper. The only major downside of using Ruben as our actor instead of Caius is that he doesn't have a beard so will look younger, however this is unavoidable. 

PHOTOS FROM THE SHOOT

Below are photos of our cast in their full costumes from our shoot day in Exeter and from filming greenscreen footage later on.

I think that both their costumes work quite well to portray their character effectively and also conform to the conventions of both alt hip-hop and alt rock.

Primary audience feedback on my draft ancillaries

Recently I asked Jack, who goes to my school and is part of my primary audience as he is an 18 year old male, to give me some feedback on my draft ancillaries. His insight was useful and he made some good points, for example the idea to add a production company and other logo's however some suggestions such as to add feathering will not be required when the actual project is finished.

Digipak first mock up

This is my initial first draft to my digipak, I only created this to allow me to visualise certain ideas and to see what may or may not look aesthetically pleasing. I will have to make drastic changes for my final ancillaries however, as they cannot use any images from outside sources, such as the Gorillaz logo, background, heads or the eyes.

Animatic

This is our animatic that we have created from our storyboard, during the silence mid way through there will be sound effects for the action that is occurring in the scenes, such as gunshots and a voice shouting for help.

Storyboard first draft

Contacting Parlophone to ask for music rights

Alex and I sent an email to Parlophone, the company with  rights to the Gorillaz's music to ask them for permission to use the song in our music video.

Filming schedule

(this post is supposed to be a Piktochart, however due to technical errors it has decided not to work on my blog)

Secondary audience profile

This is an interview we undertook with the help of Livvy, who is part of the secondary audience for our music video. This is helpful for us in the long run as it will allow us to use her answers to widen the audience for our final product, if we were marketing our video in the real world this would increase the amount of money we would be able to make.

Primary audience profile

For my primary audience I chose to use someone I know called Isaac, he would be perfect as our primary audience as he enjoys Gorillaz and alternative hip hop, which is the band we are using for our video. 

Editing workshop with Sion Rowe

During the last week our class was visited by Professional photographer and film-maker Sion Rowe. Rowe showed us a variety of different techniques on how to make titles more engaging in our media piece, among other pro tips and shortcuts around Adobe Premier pro.

 

One of the techniques we were taught was an interesting and very eye catching effect where the video playing is seen through the text and the rest of the screen is dark. This effect is obtained by using the track matte effect on the text layer and making it so that the layer behind can be seen through this layer.

This workshop was very useful in my final product, I may not end up using this effect in my final piece, however I still learned some useful tips and tricks.

Test shot

Alex and I created a video to help illustrate the kind of effects we will want to use in our video and also to see if they would work in the way we expected so that we could eliminate any troubles we would have with the shot later on in the filming process, I think that this shot worked out rather well, however it was just a test and could have been improved with the use of a tripod. 

          

Codes and conventions I will use in my piece

Low Key lighting:
I will use low key lighting in my piece to help to enhance the feeling of sadness for the main character and also to make the feeling of the piece seem more sinister, foreshadowing the events that happen when the protagonist gets killed.

On beat editing:
We will edit on the beat throughout our music video. This is a convention of music videos and will prevent the music video from feeling disconnected and will make the whole project look better and give it a professional feel. 

A twist in the storyline:
Our pieces storyline has a twist to keep the audience captivated around two minutes, when the protagonist is killed and reanimated as a ghost. Often this is used in music videos as it allows for the audience to not gat bored with the video and stop watching.

Slow motion shots and close-ups:
The combination of slow motion shots and close ups will help to give my piece a certain 'Wow factor' that will help to draw in and appeal to both our primary and secondary audience.
 
Obviously there will be more of the codes and conventions of alt rock and alt hip-hop music videos that I will include in our piece, however these are the major ones that I plan on including at this point.

Media studies terminology

This is a slideshow created by me and my partner Alex highlighting and explaining a few of the key parts of media studies terminology that must be known and understood before creating or analysing a media project.

Gravity draft timeline

This is the draft timeline for my groups music video, it outlines the times that major events happen at throughout the song and the types of shots that we may have at these points, however these aren't the actual shots and are just ideas. this is useful as it allows us to create a storyboard and actually put times on the shots so we can plan more accurately and so trip up less further down the production process.

Collecting Quantitative audience data

(This is supposed to be a piktochart)

These are the questions that we used to collect this data:

Song choice

After a lot of thought Alex and I have decided on a song to create a video for, we have chosen the song Gravity by The Gorillaz. We were considering using a rap song or something of that type however we settled on Gravity as we decided it would suit our ideas quite well and we could do a lot with the differing sections of the song.

Audience reception theory

Audience reception theory - Created with Haiku Deck, presentation software that inspires;

Chiaroscuro and Tim Walker photoshoot

To experiment with different styles of photography we conducted a photoshoot trying to achieve the dark, tonal styles found in Carravagio's work, known as chiaroscuro, and also tried using light shades to create photos that are pleasing to the eye, like Tim Walkers photography.

An example of chiaroscuro (Adrian by Alexandria Huff)

'The dress lamp tree, England' by Tim Walker

My Tim Walker photos

    

    

   

My Chiaroscuro photos

My chiaroscuro photos all turned out blurred as I had to keep the camera on a long exposure to let in enough light, my friends found that the cameras on their phones captured the image better, however my phone camera quality is terrible so it would probably have been worse, nonetheless I do like the effect that was created through this technique.

My photoshopped movie poser

As a practice exercise I created a copy of a movie poster on photoshop, I chose to recreate the movie poster for the film 'Paul'. This exercise helped me as it allows me to hone my skills in preparation for creating my ancillary tasks, such as a page in a music magazine.

Original

My version

Alternative rock album covers

This selection of alt rock album covers shows many distinct differences between the styles used for this genre and those used in the alt hip hop genre, firstly and most noticeable is that is is much less common for the band to be seen on the album cover for an alt rock band than for an alt hip hop album, the pictures tend to be more aimed to be pleasing to look at and like a piece of art than that of alt hip-hop artists. They also tend to show very obscure images, often heavily edited to confuse and intrigue the viewer/listener or to make a statement (such as in Nirvanas 'Nevermind' album cover showing a baby chasing money, a commentary on the modern world and capitalism). I will try to use these more artistic and creative aspects in my digipak and album poster as well as showing my two characters (as is common in alt hip-hop album covers) somehow to try to show the fact that the Gorillaz's music is an amalgamation of the two genres.

Alternative hip hop album covers

These Album covers serve as an example to the range of styles that can be found throughout the alt hip-hop genre in relation to album covers and album art, often the album covers show a picture of the artist, or at least a representation or drawing of them. These album covers also tend to have very bright, vibrant colours and most have a 'parental advisory' logo on them, showing that they include explicit content. I will try to take influence from these pictures in the creation of both my digipak and album poster to try to make the genre apparent and to make them look like real products that could be found on the market.

Music video inspiration

Woodkid - Iron

The opening shot in this video shows a flag flying in the wind showing the bands logo, this shot is very artistic and the imagery of the flag evokes ideas of a kingdom or victory, the black and white used throughout the video creates an avant garde, arty feeling to the video.

This shot shows a boy silhouetted against a grey background, lying on an altar. This is a taste of the amount of symbolism that is found in this video. I like this about this music video as it causes the viewer to ask questions about the narrative and characters in the piece. Also the drum beat kicks in around this point, with the other instruments behind. because the song is very dramatic it goes well with the video.

Also, shots like this are scattered throughout the piece, many of which show or connote to aggression and anger. These shots make it seem that this is a major narrative point in the video, that the characters are rebelling or in some way angry. This particular shot is very emotive as people can look at the character and see that he is angry, this is backed up by the fact that he is holding a mace while shouting towards the viewer. furthermore the tattoos, buzzcut hairdo, piercings and necklaces all make the character seem more angry or violent.

Initial idea photos

These are the photos that we took to help spark ideas for our music video and also to show the desired style that we will be trying to achieve in our piece, they are all in a rather artsy style that gives the idea of a kind of dark, but slightly ambiguous video.

                    

Pitch

When we presented our pitch to our class we were able to obtain a lot of valuable information from our class and teacher. the main criticisms that we had were that the video would be clearer if we were not to have the colour changing effect (having the video changing from black and white to colour when the record scratches in the song) as this might confuse the viewers, we were also told that we may need to add some backstory to the protagonist as this would allow the audience to empathise better with them and so improve the quality of the video. We were also told of a possible location in Exeter where we could film the mugging scene, Overall the feedback we gained was very useful.

AS level coursework review

Practical tasks-
The practical tasks I completed in my AS level media project were my preliminary task, a comedy thriller named 'The kandy killer', and my final piece, a british gangster thriller opening named 'Run'. My group chose the comedy thriller theme for our preliminary task as we wanted the film to be light hearted and to make people laugh, with the chocolate bar themed puns scattered throughout. For our final piece however, we ditched the comedy aspect, choosing to have the opening portray darker themes and perhaps be more hard hitting to viewers. we made this change as we thought that a comedy theme would not feel as serious to the viewer and we wanted to make our final piece have some sort of an impact when watched. The use of black and white colours enhanced the gritty, violent aspect to the piece and also reflected how older gangster films were filmed. 
The comedy genre interested me as it was fun to be able to make people laugh through our piece and I think it is quite a task to be able to make a product that actually succeeds in making people smile. The gangster-thriller theme, on the other hand, was interesting to me as it allows you to play with suspense and scare the viewers.

Influences-
A media product that influenced my final piece heavily is Quentin Tarantino's 'Reservoir dogs', this films themes show through in our film opening as it has very violent themes based around the stories of a group of gangsters, Tarantino's dark style also shows through in our final piece. Our preliminary task did not have any influences, however, being a completely original piece. I think the wide array of gangster movies that influenced our final piece all showed through in the moody, dark and gritty style that we used.

Technology-
We used a vast array of technologies in the process of creating the final task, from hardware such as cameras and microphones to allow us to record the raw footage and Adobe premier pro to edit the footage and put it together in sequence to create the opening. The hardware I used the most was the camera, as I had troubles with the microphones not working so had to use the camera alone to record certain parts of the sounds, leading to it being of bad quality. The software I used the most was the program 'Adobe premier pro' a video editing program. Premier pro was very good to use as it was simple to pick up and had a very shallow learning curve, meaning that it was not hard to get straight into editing our piece quickly and effectively.

Editing-
I did learn a few things about editing during the first year of my media course, however since I was in charge of foley I have a disadvantage against the rest of the class (I'll catch up). I did, however, learn how to do audio matches to action in shot, such as footsteps, which will be very useful if I choose to create a music video, as I may have to lipsync video to audio. Some other editing skills I learned whilst creating my final and prelim pieces include how to download material from online and convert it to the correct platforms, how to export the pieces once finished, trimming and editing shots and soundclips and how to do other premier pro based tasks, such as reordering clips.

Sound and lighting-
I learned a lot about sound throughout the course, the first thing being, how to create music on Garageband for the I-pads. I created a range of songs as music for the opening, however I found it hard to create a song that suited the mood of our piece, and thought that anything that wasn't right would jeopardise the quality of our entire piece so decided against using them. The next thing I learned to do in relation to sound was to record sound through the camera, however during this process the microphone I was using stopped working so I had to resort to using the microphone built into the camera, which meant that the sound quality was not as good as id hoped. I also learned to use Premier pro to add these recorded sounds (and others i had downloaded) to our piece, this included changing the levels of the clips and cutting them to the right lengths. For lighting we took part in a lighting workshop, in which I learned the differences between different types of light (low key, high key) and haw and when to use them, I also learned how harsh light and soft light can contrast each other, amongst other things, such as candlelight. We implemented this knowledge in our final piece by using low key lighting to cement the mood we were trying to achieve.

Blog-
In my AS project I did not document my work as it progressed to the extent that I could have on my blog, this is not saying that I slacked entirely on the blog work, just that I could perhaps have created more posts, detailing what we did in each lesson and how it progressed my skills and helped me work towards my final finished product. I could have used screenshots more effectively to show the behind the scenes of how my final piece progressed. Saying all of this, however, I am still proud of how my blog came out, however think that it was a little lacking in areas.

Whats next?-
For my A level project I would like to create a music video, working in a team, perhaps with Alex Flinders, I reckon we would be a good team as I know that he has good ideas and is very proficient with everything media studies based. I am looking forward to learning more about editing and how to use premier pro to edit the video together, not only the sound, as this may be my job in the team, I will elaborate further into the types of music video that inspire me in a later post.

Welcome!

Hello, welcome to my A level media blog, I am glad to say that I made it through AS and will use this blog page to post updates on my progression through the theory and practical of this coming year, thanks for visiting.