Video Diary 3

Day Three of Filming...

Video Diary 2

Day Two of Filming...

Video Diary 1

First Day of Filming...

Revised Health and Safety

Although as a group we already had a discussion of the health and safety issues that we needed to consider, after adjusting our music video concept, a revised health and safety list seems appropriate to ensure the success of our filming. 


Black Studio:



Bright lights - As a light is going directly behind the actress we now need to be aware of the lights behind the camera so that members of our group are careful not to look directly at it.



Wires - We will have wires when straightening hair so we must be cautious of this but also when we use a fan, we must ensure no-one trips over it. We will also use an extension lead and so to overcome this hazard we can tape the wires to the floor. 


Material covering the floor - We are using black material to cover the floor but this will be loose as we will bring this to the studio. Therefore for the safety of our actress we will tape this to the floor so it is stable to stand on. 


Moving Cameras - As we have decided to mainly use the steering wheel for capturing footage, the camera person will be continually moving. This means before shooting we should know what shot they plan to film so that others can ensure their pathway is clear. 




Street Location:

Camera person walking backwards - There will be many shots of the actress walking forward in this scene hence the camera person will be tracking backwards. To ensure their safety, another member of the group will walk along the side of the street out of shot to oversee the route the camera person is walking. 


Obstructing the public - We will be filming on a public street and therefore we must be aware of the general public this means we must not obstruct by-standers and re-film if a collision is imminent. 


Holding Equipment - We will have bags and other pieces of equipment not being used all the time; we must keep these belongings with us so they are not liable to be stolen. 


Costume: High Heels - The actress will be wearing high heels in this scene and we must not walk too fast, limiting the likelihood of the actress falling. 




Flashbacks: Pub/ House


Pub:
Obstructing public - The general public will be leisurely sitting in the bar and we must ensure minimal disruption and try to limit getting in people's way. Alternatively we must ensure no harm comes to the expensive equipment we are using. 


Using pool cues - Our actors will be playing a game of pool and as the pub is not very big we must be aware not to hit others when focusing on hitting the balls.

House:
Aware of valuables - We are using a member of our group's house and therefore we must be respectful to the environment we are working in and ensure we are not a hazard to any valuable items such as televisions etc. 

Costume

    From the discussions we had as a group, we knew the sort of style that we wanted to achieve with the appearance of our artist. We tried different combinations of clothes that we deemed the right style for our video which also adhered to the mood boards we created. 

Throughout all of the images we took we used a black leather jacket. We used this item as a main focus, indicating a more rock chic genre. This is so that the style coincides with existing artists in the similar genre, such as the following. 




Katy Perry

Although a more mainstream artist, Katy Perry has a look that we wanted to achieve with our artist. She is wearing a black leather jacket with studs however it is over a short pink lace dress which connotes a more girly image, making it appeal to more mainstream audiences. The short dress shows off her figure which will encourage a target audience of females wanting to imitate her and males who are attracted to her. The long necklace also dresses the outfit up. For our artist we will look for an outfit for the black studio location that has a similar dress to the one here.







Taylor Momsen
Taylor has a much darker look that suggests a rock genre. Her hair is fairly natural and she is wearing black clothes that connote her rock music. She is also wearing a black leather jacket however it is accompanied by all black items. The main focus of the costume is on the long necklace which gives a more sophisticated and individualistic look to her image. It is also important to note her heavy use of eye make-up which suggests her rebellious nature as it is quite extreme compared with a mainstream look. For our song the costume needs to be brighter than this look as it is a more upbeat song however we will use eye liner to emphasise the eyes.  




Kelly Clarkson


Kelly's costume is for a black scene in her music video with lights in the background, similar to our concept. She is wearing a vintage grey coloured top and leather jacket which may be so that she still stands out in front of the black screen. She is wearing black 'wet look' leggings which give a stylish look to the costume. Her grey leather jacket and top looks classy and suggests a middle ground between the costumes of Taylor and Katy. She is also wearing a long necklace that sophisticates the outfit. Her eye make-up also matches being just off black. This is similar look that we want our actress to achieve in looking slightly individual but still with a mainstream song. 






Therefore from the costume experiments, we like the long necklace and we feel that this is a common convention of female artists in music videos. Slide 6 is the best depiction of the image we wanted to achieve with a fitted leather jacket. We feel that the band tops looked too casual for the street scene and black scene so these will be used in the flashback scenes. Although the dresses looked nice on slides 3 and 4, we wanted a dress that was more individualistic thus we deemed the floral dress on slide 7 to be the best outfit for the New Walke Location. 

Casting adjustments

Before filming we have made some unforeseen adjustments. Our chosen actress, Holly George, was unable to be our actress due to unanticipated circumstances. Therefore, to adhere our deadline, we have chosen to use a memeber of our group, Charlie Springthorpe, who was also short listed in our casting stages. 
As a memeber of the group we have the advantage of our new actress already knowing the song and the look that we want to achieve from the video. Therefore we will continue to follow our shooting schedule and we feel that this small adjustment will not affect the quality of our music video.  

Choice of Filming Equipment

In preparation for filming, my group and I looked closely at the equipment that would be most advantageous to us when filming our music video. 



We looked at the existing videos cameras that we used for our AS piece. These cameras although designed for filming, have a fairly low resolution in comparison to new digital cameras. Our main concern was that one of our scene has a strong use of lighting and when conducting our experiments, a large amount of noise was visible in playback. Therefore we felt that these cameras may not be the best quality for our music video. 




We decided to look for a more modern camera which had a higher resolution. Therefore we found the Flip camera which is a handheld camera that easily records and stores onto a built-in USB stick. When conducting some test shots, we found the resolution an improvement to the traditional video cameras however we felt that it was too much of a handheld camera to accurately record specific shots.




Our resolution to our issue of equipment lied in the Canon Powershot SX200 IS digital camera that are available to hire at our college.

This camera combines the power to record with a high quality lens which will give extremely high optics. These cameras are easy to use and film with as they can attach to a tripod like a camcorder. The advantage of using these cameras in relation to our music video is that when using extreme lighting, the high quality optics of the lens will allow clear footage which will show very little noise. Therefore we will use two of these cameras for different shots. Another high advantage is that the digital cameras record onto SD cards, unlike the camcorders which go onto tape. This creates a greater ease in uploading the footage onto the mac and is generally more technological.

Therefore we are using two of these cameras and we will use the biggest SD cards (8GB and 4GB) we have to increase our footage time at 640 resolution. 

Shooting Schedule

We are now at the point in our project where we have conducted our research and planned our music video. Therefore we aim to begin filming very soon and so we have created a shooting schedule that will keep us organised and up-to-date with our filming. However we are aware that this is only a rough guideline as we must take into consideration the weather conditions for our outside footage. Also we have approximately 6 weeks until the end of this term and we are aware that our filming must be completed by this time so that we can spend the majority of our time on editing our footage in post-production. 

Scene locations: 3
                           - Black studio
                           - New Walke street
                           - Narrative; pub, kitchen, sofa.


Week beginning 12th November 
Finish planning and prepare for filming,ensuring everything is ready for the first location. 

Week beginning 19th december

- Tuesday 20th - New Walke Street (morning)

- Wednesday 21st - Black Screen Studio (3pm onwards)

- Friday 23rd - Pub (afternoon)
                  - Beth's house - kitchen and living room (afternoon onwards)


Checklist:

New Walke:
- 2 Canon digital cameras
- Steering wheel camera holder
- Tripod
- Casual/pretty costume

Black Screen Studio:
- 2 Canon digital cameras
- Steering wheel camera holder
- 2 tripods
- torches
- Microphone
- Microphone stand

Narration locations:
Pub:
- 2 Canon cameras
- Steering wheel
- Tripod

Narrative adjustments

After looking more closely into existing narrations in mainstreams videos, we have established what kind of narration we feel will fit with the concept in our video. 
We have decided to include a male actor in our narration so that we have more of a narrative that fits with the song's concept. Therefore the scenes will consist of the actor and actress in scenes that exemplify the situations that the artist dislikes about her ex. The more techical aspect will derive from the transition to the narration. This is because these scene will be a flashback of her unpleasent time with her ex. Therefore the video will alternate between past and present however due to Bjornberg's theory, there will be a multiple centripedal process.

Scene 1 - We have chosen to display the characters at a pub. The actress will walk into the pub in the present and then a flashback will be established so to see her and her boyfriend romantically playing pool at the pool tables. However the boyfriend will then be presented in a bad light by flirting with another girl. 

Scene 2 - [Flashback] The boyfriend and artist will be together on a sofa in the living in room and then he will receive a call and instantly leave her. 

Scene 3 - [Flashback] A candlelight dinner will be set up and the boy and gril will be arguing.      

These narration scenes will establish the bad relationship and so this will relate with the strong women empowerment of the song. This will appeal to our target audience and so the chorus of the song will be encouraging and a response to the bad relationship.  

Lighting Experiments

My group and I conducted a lighting experiment to ensure that we are prepared for when we begin filming. We wanted to experiment with the lighting to find the desired outcome for our artist after deciding to use a conventional concept in many mainstream music videos of a bright light behind the artist. We found this to be prevalent in numerous videos that we researched into and so we wanted to experiment with our own use of this convention.

Adjustments - More Narration

Our target audience felt that we needed more of a narration in our storyboard to make the video more engaging for our audience. 

At the beginning of the project, we purposely didn't want to include too much of a narrative so that the focus was on the performance, however, after advice from our teachers we feel that for our song, a narrative is necessary. 

Our song has a mainstream sound and therefore we must adhere to some conventions of these videos. In all of the ones we have looked at there is always some kind of narrative element and it is usually an equal ratio of narrative and performance. Therefore I will look at some narrations in video to assess what type of idea we could do. 

Kelly Clarkson's Narration in 'My Life Would Suck Without You'

As I have already analysed the video as a whole I have decided to conduct some deeper analysis into the narrative element. The concept of the song is fairly similar to ours as well as the actual sound of the song. Kelly's video has a similar idea that we had of including flashbacks. 
The song alludes to the idea of two children being friends and we discover that they are the couple in the video- Kelly and her boyfriend. The narrative is able to be identified from the performance through the subtle change of effects; in the picture below the contrast filter is intensified.  

The video fluctuates between narrative shots and performance through cuts however it effectively connects the flashback scenes with the present narrative scenes. One occasion where is shown in when the camera zooms in on the young girl's necklace and then it zooms out to shows the same necklace on Kelly's arm in a new shot. This creates a synergy so that the audience is able to identify the little girl as Kelly. There are other effective ways that the video shows this and this will encourage us to come up with our own ideas from the shift between present and flashbacks. 

The main storyline in Kelly's video links very well with the song as it has a playful overtone. The narrative mainly consists of Kelly and her boyfriend always disagreeing and arguing however the song is quite upbeat and so they are playful with the concept so as to not make it too heavy. Therefore there are such scenes as teasing her boyfriend with his keys and throwing items out of their apartment window. These short pieces of narrative give a reason to the song and they link with the concept very well because even though the couple fall out and have their difference, ultimately '[her] life would such without [him]' (shown at the very end of the song when they make up and kiss). The narrative therefore shows a progression of examples of the song however at the end the concept is resolved and this is something that we need to consider about our piece - resolving the conflict in the song. This follows Andrew Goodwin's theory that the music video is meant to illustrate the audio of a song. 

Therefore after looking at Kelly Clarkson's video is has helped us to consider aspects of our own video. As her song, like ours, has an upbeat tempo we need to keep this in mind when storyboarding the acting that our characters will do, making it more playful so as to not give too much of a serious tone to the song. However our song is different in the way that Kelly's message is that although they argue they can't live without each other. However our song is aimed towards the artist's ex-boyfriend, telling him how selfish he is. Therefore we have the task of showing a fun/upbeat narrative but at the same time showing the couple to be dysfunctional. 

Additionally from Kelly's piece we feel inspired to experiment with shots to show our technological skills in presenting a synergy between flashbacks and narration. Therefore even though we have a mainstream song and may have to use conventions such as a flashback narrative, we still have the opportunity to deviate and play around with ideas of how to move from performance to narrative and other post-production effects. 

Our Initial ideas for a narrative:

- We have definitely decided to use the idea of a flashback however we are still going to discuss what to have in the flashback, whether showing the couple in love, or to show them arguing. 

- We had the idea of a Goose chase concept where the boyfriend would be constantly running after the girl. However we think the idea may be too 'cheesy' and it has already been done before in such videos as Avril Lavigne's 'What the Hell'.

- The idea of a resolution was suggested and we had an idea of showing the girl walking off with a new boyfriend. However there is a concern that this may be a bad influence for teenagers to relate to and the audience may see our artist in a bad light due to the connotations of her being the person to go with someone else. Therefore the idea was suggested to show the boyfriend in a bad light by presenting him to go off with another girl and although it fits with the revenge in the song, there is an issue of the concept being too heavy for an upbeat song. 

- The idea we had of the artist walking along a street link very well with the flashbacks as she may be walking along a road as it reminds her of the past. This also will enable more movement within the frame so the scene is more engaging for an audience. 

Adjustments - Location 1

We are now solely using the black screen as our main performance scene. We feel that this works more effectively within our video as, although more mainstream, it has a more pop/rock feel, so the black mise-en-scene works better. 

We decided to try the concept out in our college but the black screen was not wide enough however this is not the one that we are anticipating to use for the actual piece. Therefore we conducted an experiment with the background but also with lighting. We used two professional white lights and played around as to where they created the best effect on our artist. We tried one of the lights in the shot behind our artist, to create an outline of our artist. This is a similar concept used in many music videos such as my research in Kelly Clarkson's video. From the picture she was able to use numerous lights as they had a big studio however with our resources we will use one light but we aim to create a similar effect. 

Slide 5 of the presentation displays the initial shots that we tried as we had an issue of using a back light but at the same time we wanted to see the actress' face. However we found a side light was too strong as it is evident from the picture so we had to try different ideas. We tried using an overhead light but again we found the light too intense however we found a solution to the problem by solely using the light behind the actress but then having a large white screen facing the artist so that the light reflected onto her front. 

Therefore this experiment was successful in trying out the black background and the lighting. We tried some test shots and did some panning around the actress that looked very effective and professional. Additionally we got a purple glint of the lens of the camera which added to the overall effect. 

We also tried dimming the lighting and then making it even brighter at the chorus which worked well; we will be able to use this in our project to create a faster pace, also using pans to make the overall scene visually appealing to our audience. 

Initial Ideas for Adjustments

My group and I discussed ideas of the changes that we want to make to our storyboard so that it is more engaging. 

These initial ideas derive from the audience feedback that we received and our personal opinions on what needs to be changed. 

Our group has already agreed that our video needs a greater emphasis on narration. Although at the beginning of our project we wanted to base the video on a performance, we feel that it is necessary because of the nature of the song. Therefore as a group we have been listening to the song and looking deeply into what type of narration we want to achieve as well as looking at existing music videos which include narrations. 

We also had an idea to include another location which the artist would be walking to throughout the video and then the ending would be that she arrives there. However, due to the cyclical nature of videos (discussed by Bjornberg) we have the opportunity to play around with time so she is seen recording in the studio before we see her actually arrives there. We thought a recording studio would also look authentic however there is an issue that we would be using too many scenes. 

We have decided to increase the use of lighting effects. This was due to the fact that in our research, many existing artists use this effect, such as Kelly Clarkson. This would enable us to create more of a pace in our piece, dimming them before a chorus to create a greater effect in the chorus. This also applies to our audience research as they said we needed more of a pace in our piece.

 We also have decided that we want more movement in the camera, rather than it being fixed throughout the video. Many existing music video do this and there are rarely any shots that do not pan or track. Therefore we will conduct some experiments into this and we think that this will make our video look more professional and visually appealing to our audience. 

All of the people we asked thought the strongest aspect of our storyboard was the quick changing background shots. Not only to they quicken the pace but it looks visually simulating for an audience. We had the idea that we could develop this further such as having shots from the side and and having a quick cut to different locations as the artist moves along the frame. 


We are now going to develop some of these ideas which we think will work well in our video and adjust our storyboard accordingly. 

Adjustments to our storyboard

We asked people of our target audience age to watch our animatic storyboard to give us feedback on shots that need to be adjusted.

We then had another discussion as to decide how we were going to adjust our ideas to make them more appealing to our target audience. 

Slide 3 bullet points the more specific feedback the we received from our audience and so we have particularly focused on these areas to improve our music video. 

After we decided upon the adjustments we are now going to go into more detail into looking at ideas and how they will work.

Video Update

Audience feedback

               Our audience research consisted of asking people from around our college to watch our animatic storyboard (below). We gained varied types of feedback positive and negative which we have encouragingly taken as constructive criticism that we feel will benefit our music video. 

Negative Feedback

We asked some girls in our target audience age range to watch the animatic storyboard and they felt that it needed some improvements. They felt that the shots were too long and not very varied which could also be due to the fixed camera. They felt that the ratio between performance and narrative was unequal and that for our song, there needs to be more of a narrative to engage the audience. They mentioned that the pace was too slow and it needs more effective use of pacing so that the chorus is more effective. However they did like the parts where the background changes - showing they like to see more technical inventive shot ideas. What I particularly found interesting was that the girls more than the boys that we interviewed enjoyed the parts where the actress in our video moved more freely. This suggests that teenage girls like more of the interaction with the artist giving it a fun feel which reflects onto the audience. This also stresses the importance of our actress being someone that audiences (particularly girls) can relate to and to see her as a role model. Therefore this negative research has immensely aided us in our planning stages to see the dichotomy between the different genres who watch our video and to identify the parts of our storyboard that need to be adjusted.  

Neutral Feedback

We asked some male consumers to watch our piece which enabled us to see what they thought as our song is targeted more towards females. 

They were fairly positive about the storyboard and were mainly impressed with the technical side of the video. For example, like many other people, they liked the parts where the actress remained in the centre of the frame whilst the backgrounds quickly changed and they also liked the other changing background from the side. This gives us an insight into an outer target audience that we could appeal to at the same time as teenage girls. Although the song appeals to girls if we are inventive with our shots and focus on the technical parts of our music video, we may be able to engage more of an audience. 

This audience research has been particularly helpful in identifying aspects our of music video that will be the most engaging and what we need to improve. We also found after watching the animatic storyboard that there are numerous aspects that we don't like and that need to be changed. Therefore we are going to make some changes to our storyboard that may mean we have to revise our initial concepts to look at how we can engage with our audience more. We feel that all our research liked the changing backgrounds idea and we will work on the strengths of our video and look to changing the pace and particularly the ratio between narrative and performance.     

Positive Audience Feedback

Our positive feedback from our animatic storyboard encouraged us to look at the  parts of our storyboard that are working particularly well in relation to our audience. 

The majority of our feedback said that the quick paced changing backgrounds shot was very effective and we also as a group, feel that this is the strongest part of our storyboard. The lip syncing issue will be resolved in our actual filming and we are anticipating to conduct a lip syncing experiment as well to address the issue and to make it look as authentic as possible. 

Another positive piece of feedback we were given was that the storyboard particularly fits with the concept of the song. They referred to the narrative part of our piece working particularly well and as a group we may want to incorporate more of this to engage our audience with the song. 

The costume question also helped us in our planning stages of our project so that we are able to see what audiences expect from a mainstream music video.

Therefore this positive audience feedback has particularly helped us to look at the strongest parts of our storyboard so that we can possibly adjust it even more to bring out these positive features. Thus we may need to consider as a group the ratio between narrative and performance in relation to the concept of the song. 

Health & Safety

My group and I created a mind map of issues that we need to address and consider when shooting our music video. 

   

Therefore some of the main hazards that we must consider is firstly the lights.

We must be weary when handling the lights as they have three glass bulbs in each light and so we will ensure that we are careful when handling them. 

When filming, we must also be careful in our outside scenes so as to not be in a hazardous place for us and our actress. This issues, however, can be resolved by people in our group ensuring the area is safe to film before recording footage. 

Mood Board of Initial Outfit Ideas

 Floral/ Girly look

Rock Chic

City Look

Red and Black look

Aesthetics of our Artist Discussion

We are currently at the stage where we are bringing the mise-en-scene of our project together which consists of us organising costumes/props etc. In the video below we had a group discussion on the ideas we had for the costume and mise-en-scene of the artist in our video. 

One of the most vital aims of our music video is to accurately reflect and represent the feel and emotion of the song we have chosen. Therefore our discussion enabled us to confirm the look of the artist that will be effective for the video in presenting the artist to our target audience of 12-24 year olds. We will achieve this by the use of costume, with different styles for different scenes yet still adhering to the pop/rock genre of the song. 

The next step in our project is creating the mood boards for the artists costume so that we have more specific colours and clothes to use in our video.