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.