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