Digipak ideas

 

I have been researching album covers to take inspiration from for our band 'Don't Kill The Road Kill' and these are few I feel relate to our genre. We looked at both Noah and The Whale and The Kooks when choosing our song but decided on Two Door Cinema Club. I like the idea of the band members sitting down playing guitars as I feel we would be able to add effects similar to Noah and The Whale's album cover. The Two Door Cinema Clubs album cover is very random and will fit our music video but I feel we could have a better video if we use a similar cover to The Kooks and Noah and The Whale.

Feedback on the Roough Cut

We were lucky enough to be able to get strong feedback both negative and positive from both students and teachers. Teachers told us we were working at an A grade standard but it was a relatively low level A, this was due to the shots being quite static and repetitive even though we show good consistency throughout. The teachers also commented on our high level and detailed planning of our music video. We made sure locations, costumes, times and dates were all specifically laid out, this meant filming could take place almost immediately on the filming day as all the aspects had been intricately planned. This feedback lead to us as a group deciding to add some special effects to our video as the majority of our favorite shots were only filmed from static positions.

Romantic Element

We decided as a group to include a romantic element to our music video. We felt it would be a different aspect for the music video instead of the same edits and people throughout. This meant we needed to find a girl to play a female's role in the music video, we managed to get a girl called Olivia who even though wasn't a media student was willing to play a part in our music video. She was perfect for the role as her image was ideal for an indie music video and typical of the genre. Our idea was to have her at the slow parts of the song with the main singer, this worked out to be a very good element to add to our music video.

Final Cut

Finally Finished Editing

We have now finished the editing process, and are exporting it into a quicktime movie.

Our secret weapon - The Girl

We decided our video needed something else, something more. SO one member from my group asked a very nice friend of his, (her name is Olivia) if she would be in our video. She doesn't do Media but agreed anyway.


Her image - which, coincidently, is very 'Indie' like - fitted in well with the location where we were filming (Regent's park - bandstand). 


We had ideas about where shots of her would go - the slower parts of the song: 'And she spoke words that would melt in your hands/and she spoke words of wisdom.' Although this would mean that our video would seem less disjuncture than what we originally wanted, we thought it would be a good idea to add an extra element.

Production // Feedback from Rough Cut

Since posting our Rough Cut, we have had positive feedback from teachers and peers, with added comments for improvement. We've been told that our video is currently an A grade. However, we was also told that it is a low A. Although the video is good, and consistency is shown, the teachers feel the shots are too static and repetitive. 


Although they've told us this, our teachers also mentioned that shots do show good planning and shows that we have kept to our plan. This is another reason our video has a positive response - our planning. As we planned everything carefully and made sure we covered every aspect before filming, we could get straight down and do it. As we had a strong idea with combining costume and locations, both of our teachers say it makes our video interesting. 


Now we have our feedback, we can work on improvements. We've decided to experiment with different transitions and effects - to try to make the shots appear less static.

Rough Cut Feedback

I feel that our rough cut is currently at a very high level, however i am not entirely happy with it as i feel that something is missing. The teachers say that it is around a grade A, but not a very high A at the moment. We are going to add in some special effects and slide transitions in the part near the end where there are no cuts and hopefully this should push the grade up and improve our grade. I also feel that i should put more footage of the girl in the video, but unfortunately we did not take enough footage of her. Moreover, there are few cuts at the beginning that i wish to change as i feel they don't particularly work. However overall i am happy with what with have edited so far and we will continue to make improvements.

Our other teacher says that we have strength in our mise en scene, good planned locations and costume that have worked very well for the video. We have a clear conceptual idea for the video, having the same shot in different locations with different clothes on had worked well, however in practice when editing the idea has not seemed as exciting as anticipated, therefore we need something else to give it that edge.

The Girl in the Video

The girl in the video (who goes by the name of olivia) is not in our media group, infact she does not even do media. However we chose to include her in the music video because at certain points in the song there is a mention of a girl, so we thought it would make our video more interesting by making it a little less disjuncture than origonally planned. Including her was a real success as she looks like a indie girl which colaberates with the image of our band and fits in nicely with our style If we had a girl who looked more stereo typically into rap music, then it would have looked strange and out of place in our music video.

Rough Cut

Health and Safety

During the editing process we were reminded of the important aspects of health and safety, and all the rules we strictly followed while filming:

• Check the weather on outdoor filming days incase there is rain
• Make sure the tripod is set up correctly and is not on a slant
• Place the memory cards carefully into the camera and look after them
• Always ensure the battery is attached to the camera and check the power remaining throughout filming so not to be surprised by the camera running out of power
• Ensure the camera is securely attached to the tripod and ensure the camera is left in the bag when not filming

Sticking with the plan

Due to the difficult nature of the editing process a member of our group suggested a different course of action. This member wanted to slow down the edits and have a much simpler video. I decided against this as I felt if we were to complete the editing in line with the plan we could achieve a higher grade. We therefore went back and looked at the old clips which inspired us to create the video in the first place.

This video was our main inspiration and helped us to realise that it was vital we continued with the same ideas and edited the video in line with the plan to achieve the highest grades possible. 

Why Did We Choose These Locations?

Now we've started the editing process, I thought I would give an insight into why we chose our locations. Looking over the footage for editing, I can see that our locations work well with each other.

Fuzail's Balcony:

One member of my group (Fuzail) was kind enough to offer his house for filming. From the balcony, we could see flats, trees and sky. 

Regent's Park:

We decided on Regent's park because it was a nice, open spaced area that offered a wide variety locations within the location. We found a bandstand that fitted in with the video - and attracted quite an audience! We also have a nice, pretty, flowery area, luckily the sun was out!

Barbican Centre:

My group chose the Barbican Centre because the surrounding area was nice and contrasted well with the guys' costumes of pyjamas.


The Dragon

After not being able to go to one of our originally intended locations, we still needed a forth. So, after an intense hour or so looking for somewhere decent, we found THE DRAGON! We found this outside 'The Guard's Museum' by St Jame's Park. The guys were wearing 'scruffy' looking tracksuits which contrasted with the area.

Editing- Process

During editing we were faced with the major problem of organisation. With such a complex idea difficult edits are needed throughout and are very frequent. This then led to many of the cuts becoming muddled up and a mess was created due to the frequency of the edits. I then decided to re-align the edits to make the editing process clearer and easier, so we synchronised many different clips so they were ready for use at any time and made the editing much simpler.

Editing- New skills

I now feel a lot more confident editing and feel i have improved my editing skills massively. I was forced to improve my editing skills as the AS course only required an average level of editing. This year the editing was going to be a lot faster as this was the main basis for our video idea. I wanted fast interchanging edits and the difficulty of this compared to AS is tremendous, this meant vast improvements were needed to be made to my editing ability to make sure my ideas could be implemented correctly.

Production // Editing the Footage (Part Two)

Although we've edited more than twice, here are a couple of photos from another editing session. 

Here, my group are working and editing together.

With the footage files on the right computer screen, and final cut open on the left, we could all see properly what was going on and work to together to make the cuts just right.

What Creates The 'Indie' Genre and 'Indie' Music Videos?

'Indie' is created by many elements. You have to have the looks, the instruments and the personality. Indie is a sub-genre of Alternative rock and has a very diverse range: pop, soft rock, dance and many more.

Artists from the Indie genre generally wear skinny or super-skinny jeans, sometimes with rips at the knees and their t-shirts are normally either printed or plain with short sleeves, but some do wear long sleeves. Converses are sometimes worn. Also, they commonly have their hair cut in a range of styles - long one side, short the other, fringe cut to a slant over one eye, straightened. 

The main instruments used are guitars (which can be used as the main feature of a video), drums, sometimes keyboards and vocals. Most of the time, a considerable amount of the video is taken up by footage of the lead singer.

Production // Research Development

In my AS project, research and planning was set to a minimum. We chose one location to film in and costumes were also planned to stay the same for continuity reasons.

However now i am able to plan more advanced situations and research further. We had to plan filming in 4 different locations, however the locations must contrast the costumes, and vice versa. The shots were also planned beforehand, and we each had ideas on how the final version should come out. Each shot was planned, we used measurements to make sure we were in exact/similar positions to that of the original shot to make editing easier and the overall outcome of the video to look professional.

Production // Improvements...

There are a few improvements i feel as though we should have addressed during filming, such as 

• The measurements should have been made consistent throughout ALL the locations.
• The shots used should have matched the shots made in the earlier location.
• If those two had been followed correctly, during our editing it would have made the part where our shots cut very rapidly look extremely good and professional. it would have seemed as though the actors infront of the camera are STILL and only the locations change.
• We could have had more close ups of lip sync.
• More moving shots of the actors singing and playing to the song.
• ...And possibly more locations choices.

Production // Editing the Footage (Part One)

This is a mini - video of our first editing session. We were in the process of matching the footage with the song.

Production: Photo's from filming day three (part two)

Filming day three - The Dragon.

Production: Photo's from filming day three

Filming day three - Barbican Centre.

Day Two Filming

Our second day out filming was in regents park, this was our location where we would dress in a indie style and shoot on a band stand. One of our group members was not able to make it, so he was replaced with someone else who doesn't do media, or even go to city and islington. We needed him to play and pause the song, and carry equipment. Another difference in personnel was that we had a guest appearance from olivia, who was gona be the girl in our video. The day started well and was very productive, apart from olivia getting lost on her way to regents park, but once she managed to find us we got a lot of work done.

Production: Photo's from filming day two

Filming day two -  Regent's Park. We used a band stand and a area with flowers for our locations.

Shots showing us working with positioning the camera in different places.

Production: Photo's from filming day one

Filming day one  - Fuzail's house. We used his balcony for our first location.

The above shots show our interaction with the camera and examples of different positions we were in for each shot.

Planning // Resemblances to Other Videos (Part Two)

A new advert for 'NEXT' has recently been released and bares a strong resemblance to our idea for our music video. It includes multiple costume changes and different backgrounds to go with each change of clothes. Although the meaning behind the advert - advertising women's clothing - is completely different, the aspects of the video make it seem like we took our idea from this.

http://www.next.co.uk/tv/ - The advert is on the website.

Production // Filming Session Three (Imperial War Museum)

Contemporary set-up again

Jem's Costume contrasting with the location

Zak's Costume contrasting with location

Production // Filming Session Three (Barbican Centre)

Contemporary Set-up changed to show some signs of unique shots

Costumes contrasting location

Contemporary set-up also changed here 

Production // Issues We Came Across...

There were several issues we came across whilst filming our music video...

Firstly we had to measure the distance between the camera and the Actors infront of the camera to make sure it was consistent between all the shots in the different locations...

The problem with this was in this shot we filmed on my balcony and because of the restricted space, the shot came out slightly different than the rest so we had to include less shots of this location and more of the rest as the shots can be noticed as slightly different when the cuts were made during editing.

We also had the problem of people walking in the background since the areas we chose to film in were public locations and pretty busy. We also had a weird rush of wind during filming in this location which slightly ruined the shots because Jem's hair was flying around and also because they were wearing baggy clothing it was flapping about during the shots.

There were also issues with the sound, as we didn't have speakers powerful enough for our actors to hearing and lip sync with ease, however it was loud enough for them to attempt and was not really much of an issue when they got used to it. 

Day One Filming

We started our first day of filming bright and early, around 8am. It was not out of choice that we started so early, we was forced to as we only had the camera for one day and it had be back before 3pm. The location for our first filming session was a member of our groups balcony, as it had a very nice backdrop that would go well with the image we were going for in our music video. We were wearing suits to contrast the mise en scene and to look like a band that could dress in suits. The day did not start of as planned, as the member of the group that we asked to pick up the camera forgot that when you pick up the camera, you are also meant to pick up the memory cards, so you fell at the first hurdle.
     This meant we had to make a detour and go to college to pick up what he had forgotten, this wasted valuable time as their was a lot of traffic, we got back to his house with the memory cards at around 12, this gave us 3 hours to knuckle down at get the footage. I believe it was because of this time contraint that we worked so fast and efficient, we got about 1hour worth of footage with many different types of shots. So even though it was a slow start, we ended on a high and went home happy.