Feedback from our 2nd cut of production

On Thursday we had to show our second draft of our production to recieve some more feedback and see if we are any closer to achieving our target grade.

The feedback we recieved was:

Holding a shot steady: 'mostly very good', but opening masks shots of us 3 need refilming as they're too jumpy.

Framing a shot: the shot of me and Maya walking in heels still isnt working, although we have slowed it down, so we are going to have to think of a new idea of how to show the contrast between mine and her feet. We are still thinking of the idea of using Paiges shoes as she has a lot bigger shoes than me so you'll be able to see it more clearly that the shoes are too big for Maya. Also 'some really nice framing of your external shots'.

Appropriate material: good use of mask, magazine covers and fashion items, all things that represent beauty.

Selecting mise en scene: same suggestion to put masks on a stick so you dont have to see peoples hands. In the shot of Maya sat down in a chair when shes reading she should be reading a fashion magazine to fit in with the theme of image and beauty. Good locations.

Editing for meaning: cut shot of Maya sat down reading before hand comes in the shot.

Varied shot transitions, caption and other FX: some good ideas for green screen, but also thought of an idea where on the first shot of Gabby where she looks like shes on a magazine cover, we thought she could start off being a still image and then start moving after. Also the idea of speeded up people on the chorus is a good idea.

Use of sound with images/editing: we need to check Gabbys lip syncing in the outdoor location because it is slightly out.

Overall comment: 'definetly improving showing advanced skills in green screen'

After recieving this feedback, the main things we need to improve on is:

• improving mask shots
• improving Maya shots
• getting more images to do with fashion

Research on music videos

Keeping in mind the idea for using a magazine cover on our green screen we did some research to try to find some examples of what we want to create with this idea.


Cher Lloyd - Want U Back

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inwAc-ZBpx0&ob=av2e

This is an example from the music video of Cher Lloyd on a magazine. We think this is a really good example so we are going to try and use this as inspiration and hopefully create a similar idea!

Week beginning 12th Dec

During our Tuesday's production lesson we were editing our production and putting a background on our green screen. We had another look on the internet to try and find some ideas for magazine covers but we decided to use the second magazine cover I found below. We used it to put behind our shots on our own as we didnt fit properly when we was all together. This was quite hard to do as we had to position and resize ourselves on the magazine cover so you could still see all the writing on it.

Then we used the fashion montage I found below also to put behind the shots of all 3 of us lip syncing together. We decided to use both of these images to keep with the idea of beauty and image. We were happy with how these looked!

Research

Thinking about tomorrows lesson, I thought I would do some research on what we could replace our green screen with and put behind us.

Keeping to the idea of us being on the front of a magazine cover I have been trying to search for magazine templates.

These appear to be quite hard to find as you have to pay for a lot of them but I have found some for example, the one above which is from http://www.printwithmypic.com/pictureframes/magazine7.php

I have also found this one, which I think is alot better:

I will show Gabby and Paige tomorrow to see what they think!

Things to do!

Looking back at our feedback from showing our production first draft, we realise there is still some things we need to do, bearing in mind our deadline date is fast approaching! We are still planning on:

• refilming some/if not all of our mask shots



• refilming the shot of me and Maya walking in high heels

Once we have done these things we are planning on seeing if we have enough time and if we do, we are also planning on:

• adding some more shots of Maya throughout the production

However, because we have filled our timeline, it would mean that we would have to take out some shots. Tomorrow we are planning on analysing these shots about whether we could make them better with more shots of Maya or whether to just leave them how they are.

Week beginning 5th Dec

During our Tuesday lesson we reshot some of us lip syncing in front of the green screen. We had to reshoot some of the green screen shots as we didnt set it up properly so you could see shadows behind us so when we tried to change the background it didnt work well. We ensured we set up the green screen properly this time by using a diagram our teacher drew for us about where everything had to be positioned.

After filming we edited our shots from the lesson and replaced them with our previous green screen shots. We made sure by using the chroma key effect that we could change the background properly and that there was no shadows. Thankfully it worked but we now need to decided on a background to put behind us! We are thinking of doing the idea that we recieved from our feedback session about making it look like we are on the front of a magazine cover or a montage of fashion magazine images to keep with the idea of image and beauty.

Week beginning 21st Nov

At the start of our production we planned to go to Paige's godmothers house as she told us it was really big and had alot of good potential shots. However, she was always busy and hard to get hold of so we never managed to get there! But Paige told us today that she managed to speak to her and we could film there today! The house was huge and was so beautiful, it had really nice grounds which we used as she had a big lake, a treehouse and other photogenic sceneries. Here are some shots of the location:

Also inside the house we found a mirror that made us look distorted. We did some filming in this as we thought it would be appropriate for the theme of the song of how it doesnt matter what you look like on the outside but also make a joke out of it to make it more light hearted.

We are planning on using these shots to replace some of the outdoor shots in Hanbury Manor that Mrs said was uninteresting and possibly in the chorus.

Week beginning 14th Nov

Due to the school being closed this Thursday we had our theory lesson on Tuesday this week meaning we had Thursdays lesson to get some of our filming done. We were planning on filming at Fanhams Hall, where Paige works, but although we had emailed them asking permission they had not come back to us. Being on a tight schedule we decided to think of another outside location to replace some of the shots at Hanbury Manor. We decided to film at the grounds of Hertford castle as it is quite photogenic. We used a bridge which we thought looked quite effective and used an old building which worked well as it had an old doorway so we used it for interesting framing. However, if Fanhams do email back we are still planning on going there to try to do some filming in case it is a more interesting location.

Revised production schedule

This is our production schedule for the rest of the time we have to complete our production. We have included all the time we need to film the rest of our footage but also left enough time week beginning Dec 5th to complete anything or refilm anything that needs to be done which we haven't realised about now.

Feedback from our 1st cut of production

On Tuesday we showed a first draft of our production to our class and teacher. The feedback we recieved from this session was really helpful as it gave us confidence but also ideas on how to make it better.

For holding shot steady: some negative comments we recieved was that a our first shot of Paige with the mask wasn't held totally steady which is very noticable, but the shot of me and Maya held from behind was well held.

For framing a shot: Hanbury manor shots are not very interesting so we should film in a better outside location and we should use 'manual zoom' to stay in control of focus when zooming in to my eye.

For appropriate material: the 3 shots of us that we filmed in Hanbury manor were 'nice but unexciting', so we're planning to refilm them in a more exciting location but still outside somewhere. Also the shot of me and Maya walking in the shoes was good but mrs said that it isn't quite working, so we had the idea that we should use bigger shoes so you can clearly see the difference between me and my sisters feet so it works better.

For selecting mise-en-scene: we had an idea to put our mask on a stick to avoid hands in shot to make it look more clean cut and to make the transitions between the shots look smoother. Also in the shot where Maya is reading a book we have agreed that we are going to make her read a glossy fashion magazine to fit more in with the theme of the song about how she is self concious about her looks when she is young and wants to look like the people in the magazines. We were also given an idea of what we can put behind our greenscreen. A montage of images from magazines or make ourselves look as though we are on a front cover of a magazine.

For editing for meaning: good use of dissolve between Maya and Millie.

For varied shot transitions, caption and other FX: with greenscreen there is problems with the shadows which we knew about before. And with the crowd scene on the chorus, for the second time we use it we were told to try another effect to make it more interesting and varied.

After recieving our feedback we have agreed to do the following to improve our production:

• refilm our green screen shots
• refilm our mask shots
• refilm the shots of me and Maya walking in heels
• film more shots of Maya to make the background story carry on all the way through the production
• refilm outside location shots in a more interesting place

1st cut of our production

Week beginning 31st Oct

We was meant to show our first draft of our production on Tuesday but because we didn't manage to finish off filming our outside locations we were given another week to finish off filming and finish our first draft. We can then recieve advice on how to improve our production and see what our class and teacher thinks, although they wouldnt be our target audience, as our target market is teenage/young adult females, it would be good to hear what they think. On Thursday after our lesson we successfully finished filming the rest of our outside locations in the grounds of Hanbury Manor. As we thought that the location was really pretty and photogenic. On Friday me and Gabby went in after school to edit what we had done.

Week beginning 24th Oct

This was half term week but I was in New York up until Thursday so we was planning on filming towards the end of the week, however unfortunately we couldn't all get together so we decided to do some on Monday. When we got together after school we went out to film our outside locations but by the time we set up and decided where we was going to position ourselves it had turned dark! disaster!

Week beginning 17th Oct

On Tuesday during our lesson we had planned to film our mask footage where someone held up the mask then when they put it down it was someone else. We planned to do this in our local town as we knew their would be lots of people and we needed people that looked different of all ages. So we bought a piece of black card which we was planning on putting behind the persons face to keep the background the same for all of them but when we got into town the weather was horrible and no one wanted to stop to be filmed so we had a big problem. We decided to go back to school and ended up asking teachers and students to help us, which worked out well thankfully! We set it up by sticking black card up behind the person and just filming a close up of their face.
When we started to edit this footage it proved a lot harder than we thought it would be as we had to ensure that the actors were positioned in exactly the same place as to make the transitions work well and make it look like the first person flowed into the next one. We used inspiration from Michael Jackson's video, 'Black or White':

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2AitTPI5U0 from 5:27 to 6:13.

We wanted it to look like this as each person forms and flows into the next person but we thought this would be too difficult which is why we decided to use a mask but we want to use the same sort of merging effect.

Week beginning 10th Oct

On Thursday during the lesson we did some editing of all the shots we had done on Tuesday. While doing this we found that we had a major problem as we realised that the shots that we had done in front of the green screen had not been set up properly as we had put the lights in the wrong position so you could see our shadows behind us. So when we was trying to change the background of the green screen, because bits of it was different shades it wasn't working properly as we couldnt get rid of our shadows. However the shots of us when we are lip syncing on our own in front of the green screen are working well as we did them at a different time! We are just going to have to reshoot all of us lipsyncing the whole of the song in front of the green screen again! The other shots are working really well, we are using a lot of 'fade to black' for transitions between the shots for our background story to make it look dramatic and that there is meaning to the story. We also decided to change the background of one of my bits in front of the green screen to the video of the people walking that we use in the chorus but then when the lyrics sing 'people are all the same' I disappear using a fade to black to show just the video of the people walking, so the audience can see it clearly.

Week beginning 10th Oct

On Tuesday during our media lesson me, Paige and Gabby recorded ourselves lip syncing the whole song in front of the green screen. We did this as we knew from our pratice music video that we shot in Knebworth we need as many shots as possible! So we always had us lipsyncing the whole of the song if we ever ran out of shots. We all wore black and white to keep to our simplicity theme. Then after school we all went back to my house and filmed the shots the background story in our production. We filmed shots 1-7, which were all just of me and maya. The things that made it the hard to film these shots are that for shots number 1 and 2 we had to film me and Maya sat in front of a dressing table, because we are going to try to make it a smooth transition between the shots we had to ensure that I was sat in exactly the same position as Maya was. Another factor that made it hard was that because Maya is only 9, she didn't have a lot of patience so although we did reshots of everything it was hard to keep her entertained and to get her to act all the shots well.

This is a shot of me sat in front of the dressing table:

Other shots we found really hard to do was shots 3 and 4 of mine and Mayas eyes:

We found this hard as we had to zoom in on my eye then use a transition to Mayas eyes then zoom out on Maya's eyes. Although we planned to do it the opposite way round and film Mayas eye first we thought it looked better the way we filmed it. It was hard to shoot as sometimes when we zoomed in on the eye the camera went out of focus or we couldn't keep it steady. It was also hard to select a transition between our eyes but we decided to use cross dissolve as it made it as smooth as possible as when you start to see Maya's eye you can still see a bit of mine.

Week beginning 3rd Oct

On Thursday me and gabby decided to do filming using the green screen. We had to just do the shots of us lip syncing on our own as Paige wasn't in so we couldn't do the shots of all 3 of us together. We decided to stick to a colour scheme of black and white costume to follow the theme of the song and keep it simple, as it supports the idea that beauty is within and it doesn't matter what you look like on the outside so we didn't want to wear glamourous clothing or wear lots of make-up. When we edit these shots we plan to change the background to white or another simple colour to again, keep within the theme of the message of the song to not make the video glamourised.

The things that made it hard when using the green screen is that it is quite hard to set up as it is big and we had to use a seperate room in the school.

Prop list

The props that we are going to use in our production are:

• our main prop will be a white mask on a stick to use in the chorus, someone will put it up to their face then when they take it off it will be someone else then when they take it off their face it will be another person again, and again etc.
  


• black heels for me and Maya to walk in, suggesting me looking back on when I was younger.



• a mirror for me and Maya to look in to suggest we are the same person just older and younger.
  


• a magazine that we will burn to show that the girl in our story getting upset over images of 'perfect celebrities'.

Filming

Today after our lesson me and Paige decided to do some of the first filming of my little sister, Maya. We decided to do shots 10 and 11 which is firstly a shot of Maya walking in my high heels she then walks into a room and shuts the door, then the second shot is of me, in the same shoes, opening the door then walking out of the room. These are shots for our background story showing me looking back on being little.

Doing these shots we're quite hard as Maya had never walked in high heels before so she kept stumbling over so we had to keep redoing the shot. However, the shot we decided to keep did have her slightly falling over as it suggests innocence and how little she is, with contrasting with me walking confidently suggesting I am older, even though you can only see our feet. The shots were also quite hard to set up as we wanted the change to my feet from Mayas to flow and not look too set up so we decided to use the door so make it flow smoothly.

Week beginning 3rd Oct

During our lesson on Tuesday the 4th, we edited our filming for shots 13 & 26, which are identical shots of people walking. This is an image of the shot off our storyboard:

Me and Paige both took turns in editing the first small part of our production, we decided to put the shots in black and white and put them in solarized setting to make the images like sharper and more vivid black and white to make them stand out more. We also put the first titles in to our production.

First filming session! 29th Sep

On Thursday after our media lesson in the morning we decided to start our filming. For quite a lot of our production we are using my sister as an actor in the background story, but we couldn't film any of her as it was during the day and she was at school. Instead we chose to do the shots where we planned to film lots of people walking and then speed it up when we edit it, to use for the line in the chorus, 'people are all the same'. We thought we should film in a place that would be busy so it gives the best effect, which is why we decided to film in Harlow, where lots of people go to shop.


This is a picture of our first filming location but we decided to not include any of the shops or advertisement, just the people, to keep it simple.

The things that were hardest in filming people was that it was hard to set up the camera in a place where it would not be in anyones way and to not offend people or make people feel uncomfortable by filming them so we tried to do it discreetly as possible. Another factor which was made it difficult was that sometimes it went quiet and there wasn't a lot of people so we had to film for quite a long time to make sure we got the right shots we were looking for.

Our animatic

Analysis of a professional music video - The Saturdays - 'Notorious'

Analysis of a professional music video - The Saturdays - 'Notorious'

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Production schedule

Week beginning 19th Sep

This week on our Tuesday and Thursday lessons we were creating our production schedule for us to follow to make sure we completed our work on time and our storyboard to decide where we was going to fit our ideas into the song. We used post-it notes on a black bit of card to draw what we wanted to include in the images in our production and to what lyrics they would go with.

Pitch for Music Video - Ugly

The production pitch for Ugly

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Practice music video! Filmed at Knebworth

Knebworth music video filming

On the 12th of July we visited Knebworth house.

This was to gather material to use for a music video, which we were practising making to see if we wanted to do this for our main A2 project. We had to make a summer themed video which was why we chose to do the song, 'Higher' by 'The Saturdays'. I was working with Paige Weir and Gabby Janes so it was easier to choose a song as we all had the same sort of music taste. In preperation before our visit we made a storyboard to plan out our shots so we knew what we had to do when we got there to avoid wasting time. The total planning time we had was over 2 weeks which was good as it meant we could prepare ourselves properly and do the best job we could to get a real idea of what it would be like to make a music video. At Knebworth we had 2 hours in total to film all we could. On return to the school when we looked back at our footage we found that we didnt really have enough varied shots and we found that especially in the chorus we only had one shot throughout some periods. We found that the main thing we thought worked was the shots where we were on the roundabout so the background was spinning but we was standing still. I think this has really helped me to prepare for an A2 production as it has made me more confident in my ability to produce a music video and it has also made me realise what i would need to do better next time.

Exam Revision Materials

All AS students please click this link: Miss Grant-Muller's Blogg for your exam revision materials!

Group evaluation of foundation production

Titles

The font we used was called Tekton pro, the titles weren't hard to create although we had to make sure they fitted our genre and mood of our film, we also had to decide where to put the titles and what colour they were going to be. We decided to put the titles in the bottom corners as then the audience could see the images on the screen easily.

Script

Scene one:Camera taking pictures (Accidentally left on filming)
Gabby: “Nicole, I think you’re filming”?
Millie: What no im not (Checks camera, looks surprised) “Oh yeah”
ALL: LAUGHS
Scene Two:Gabby In the mirror looking concerned
Gabby: “I just cant help it, It must be like another teenage feeling maybe its just a phase? I mean what about Madonna and Brittany? They had a thing, but then they had boyfriends too. ?. Maybe I will just grow out of it. But it’s been going on for so long now I just don’t know what to do I mean I guess I could tell them”
Scene three : (Bedroom, confession starts)Gabby: “ I have got something to tell you,(long pause)…. im a lesbian”
Paige: what!? Are you joking? (Looks at Millie very disgusted)
Millie: “Uhh I got changed in front of you”Scene then rewinds to gabby in mirror.
Scene four:Gabby: “No I can’t do that, she will never talk to me if I told her, it would change everything. I have liked her for like three years now I just can’t keep it inside anymore. She is just not like anyone else I know she is beautiful”.
Scene Five: Cuts to close up of phone displaying message, I need to tell you something.Then cuts to Millie and Paige walking, just having a general chat.
Paige: “Oh my gosh, did you see brogans hair in general studies”
Millie: “Yeah it was so nice (pause) Shame about her face though”
Both: Laugh!
Scene Six: Gabby on bench.
Gabby: You alright (smiles)
Scene seven:
Paige: “Oh my look her here already!”
Millie: “oh yeah, oh my gosh he so likes her”(Both smiling)
Scene cuts to boy walking across to meet Gabby
Scene seven:
Gabby: “what who is it” (Looks Very concerned and confused)
Paige and Millie: “Your date”Split screen of gabby and boy
Scene eight: Boy sits on bench next to gabby; gabby is both worried and confused.
Gabby: “I just cant keep this inside anymore”!

Finishing our production

Our deadline for our final film opening was on the 16th of December, we had to made sure we'd done everything we could to make sure our project was finished and was at the best standard. On the 14th of Decemeber we was due to finish off editing, add titles in, and add some special effects but me and Gabby were both ill! Which meant that neither of us could attend the lesson, we felt sorry for Paige but knew that we could count on her to finish the project. However, there was too much for her to do on her own on that day so we were given the Thursday the 16ths lesson aswell so Paige could make the final few changes. She managed to do the heart animation on flash which will be used over shot 2, over the picture of Gabby and me (who plays the lesbian and who she fancies), we are really happy with the final effect it gives. Its all finished now and we think we did everything we could!