Blog 17- Rejected Footage

These are some of the shots that we could not use due to various problems with them. For example, the lighting may have been wrong or there may have been things in the shot that we did not want include.

Sun going down

Half of this shot was not used as towards the end of the capturing back, a technical fault meant that the FIREWIRE cable was pulled out when it wasn't ready to be meaning we lost some of the middle of the film. Using the beginning and end of the sunset didn't look good so we left out the end part.

Shoe in way

We didn't use this shot, as as you can see, in the bottom left hand corner of the screen someones welly is visible.

Poor lighting

We decided not to use this shot as the sun went behind the clouds and left us with poor lighting. We didn't want to change the shutter speed on the camera as we were pleased with all the other shots that we had from that day.

Laughing/Forehead cut out

This shot is when she sits up after waking up. It took us many attempts to execute it correctly as we kept coming up too slow with the camera and therefore chopping off her forehead. She also laughed in this shot as well so we couldn't use it.

Head piece falls over face

We had to get rid of this shot as when she was rolling around singing on the floor, the head piece that we had made out of leaves fell down over her eyes so that she couldn't see.

Hammering

We could not use this shot as we had tried many materials to make it look like he was hammering wood. In this instance he was in fact hammering some cardboard covering a blanket and sawdust however when he starts hammering the blanket underneath is clearly visible.

Fell off log

We could not use this shot, as when dancing on the log our main character fell off and then the rest of us were laughing.

Changed Idea

This shot we didn't use as it is the shot depicting when our main characters face begins to grow aged. By the time we started editing however we had all decided to scrap this idea as for the length of the song it was not worth it as things would start getting confusing for our audience.

Camera Shake

We really wanted a shot of our main character running through the field which we would then slow down. However, filming it hand held meant that it was incredibly shaky, especially in the wind. We therefore set up the tripod and filmed it again.

Bags in shot

This shot was a disappointment as we were really pleased with how it turned out as it was the introduction of the dancers. However, when looking back in the editing room we realised that all of our bags were in fact in the background of the shot!

When we were editing our video we realised what needed to be removed as otherwise our video would not have been of a good quality. If we were to film again, we would now be more aware about things like bad lighting conditions and making sure that none of our props are in the way of the shot in the filming area. We also learnt through mistakes that the best way to film was on the tripod, not through using the handheld camera as the quality of the film is much better and not so jerky. Editing helped us overcome many of the issues however the above examples are where we have learnt from our mistakes and would probably not make as many mistakes in the future.

Blog 13- Shooting Schedule

This was our call sheet for when we were filming and included all of the numbers of everyone involved and that of the technician at school and our media tutor. It enabled us to contact all co collaborators at any stage of the production. It saves time and allowed us to contact anyone involved in the film at short notice. We had the contact details of all our contributors including Dann our media tutor and Craig the media technician meaning that we had our project organised from the initial stages through to completion.

This is a copy of our shooting schedule: https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0B0DnGj06WOfoYmUzMmQ2MjQtMzJjMy00YTcxLWIxMGItNzQ2Yjk5MWExY2U2&hl=en

So that my project will run smoothly, I am creating a Shooting Schedule so that myself and my group are clear about when we are filming and so that everything is filmed on time to edit. It will also ensure that we stick to deadlines.

The dates for shooting are as follows:

Reccy & Photo taking in Seaford- Friston Forest

The Reccy was vital as it helped identify with how we could go about filming in the forest. It also meant that we could check on any problems that may arise, for example whether the forest was owned by anyone and we needed permission to be there.

Filming in Seaford- 6th February 2011

12pm

Here we filmed the beginning sequence of the music video.

Equipment list:

-Camera

-Camera Batteries

-Camera Tripod

-Outfits for dancers and Florence- black clothing and face makeup

Filming at College- 15th February 2011

3.40pm

In this time filming at college we used another student, George, and used him as the boy sung about in the song making the coffins.

Equipment list:

-Camera

- Camera Battery

- Tripod

-Lights

-Hammer & nails

- Sawdust

- Wood

Filming in Uckfield- 20th March 2011

12pm

We filmed in some woods behind my house, here we got shots of Lucy who is playing the part of Florence miming the song, some group dance shots and some locational shots of the woods.

Equipment list:

-Camera

-Camera Batteries

-Tripod

-2 DV Tapes

- Costumes- Black clothing to connote death and therefore representing the theme of coffins in the title of the song.

Blog 11- Storyboard

These are mine and my groups Story Board for what we want our music video to look something like.

The first 4 slides show a close up of our main characters face, we want her to just be waking up as she is effectively coming alive at the beginning of the day. Because the song is about how everyone will one day eventually die, we want to effectively show the idea of a lifetime in a day. We also want another story running alongside hers, of the boy she sings about building coffins. Because he is un-named in the song, we want him to be just as mysterious in the video, so his whole face will never be shown. The last part of this page shows a group dancing shot, as in all of Florence and the Machines music videos, she incorporates some kind of group dance shot, with synchronised moves. We want mise en scene to show everyone wearing black, as this connotes death and therefore matches the theme of our song.

The second slides show our main character still waking up, we want her to crawl out of a grave or even if we can get hold of one, a coffin.

Because we want to be filming in a forest, we would like some establishing shots to determine to the audience where the video is taking place.

Here we see our main character after she wakes up, taking a walk through the woodland around her, disorientated. On her way she will meet random dancers and instrumentalists to capture the dream like status that Florence's videos often take.

Mid to long shots of the group walking through the forest will be dissolved or faded into mid shots to close ups of her boy building coffins.

More establishing shots determine the earthy and weird aura of the forest. Because we want to create a lifetime in a day, as the song goes on we would like the main character and the dancer'c clothes to gradually become ripped and more distressed. We will also use facial makeup to create the appearance of ageing.

We want to be able to use some slow motion so we thought it would be effective to have one of the main character running through the forest. We want to capture the run from different angles and fast editing will create a dramatic feel to this part of the video. The pictures below show the angles we would like to take of this run. It begins with a long shot and then as she gets closer to the camera, it becomes a side angled shot.

The main character continues on her walk gradually getting older. We liked this hill, shown below as we thought on a windy day if she was to stand on it with lots of floaty black clothing blowing around her, surrounded by dancers it could look really effective.

The character is actually making a loop, and after continuing to walk, will eventually find herself back at the graveyard that she woke up in, this time to go back to sleep. A tracking shot is shown below.

The final shots picture a close up of the face as we see our main character lie back down and close her eyes. The final shot depicts a single leaf twirling and falling from a tree onto the ground. This would be effective as it is showing the life of this leaf/tree as well as that of our main character.

Blog 10- Mise en Scene

Detailed notes on planned mise-en-scene – setting/location, props, colour, costume and make-up (with images – photos of proposed locations/costume designs etc). For each part you should comment on how that element of the mise-en-scene contributes to the representation, targets the audience, reflects the genre and communicates the story and the ideas.

What is Mise en Scene?

Mise en Scene, translated to "placing on stage", is used to describe the design aspects of film or theatre production. When applied to film, mise en scene refers to anything that appears before the camera, for example, actors, set, costumes, props and lighting.

Planning our mise en scene:

Setting/ Location

We want our music video to be shot in woodland as this is common in Florence and the Machines personal videos. It is ideal as it is easy to find somewhere we can shoot and no booking or payments have to be made.

For the shots of the boy building the coffins, we are going to set up a room at college, preferably with a brick wall like a studio with lighting that will emphasise the shadows on the wall that we can also film.

Props

Essentially for our props, all we needed a Hammer, for the scenes where we wanted a 'mysterious' boy hammering/making his coffins. We also bought black vest tops for our dancers, however the cold weather conditions meant that they needed to wear cardigans etc, but we still managed to keep all of the clothing black, like we had planned.

Colour

We want the colours in our video to stay natural like the forest we filmed in. We edited the contrast on the camera to make it a little darker and the colours a bit richer but the greens and browns of the forest came through really well.

Costume and Makeup

For our costumes, we wanted Lucy who was playing Florence and all of the dancers to wear black. This is because the colour black connotes death, and seeing as the song is all about this topic and the building of coffins we thought that this would work effectively in our video. We let our dancers use their own makeup. One of our ideas was to make our dancers and main characters look aged towards the end of the film, to show a lifetime in a day. We experiemented with makeup to make our character look old.

We achieved this old look by covering Lucy's face in a white powder. We then used a grey/silver eye shadow to give the impression of bags under the eyes and liver spots. We then got Lucy to scrunch up her face in different ways, and where her face creased up, we used a brown eyeliner to fill in the creases and therefore give the impression of wrinkles. From a distance, the makeup looked quite effective but we decided to not use the old theme/ lifetime in a day idea as we didn't want our music video to get too complicated and confusing for anyone watching it.

Lighting

The lighting for the majority of filming will be natural lighting however we can adjust the shutter speed to let more or less light into the camera. When recording the hammering scenes, we will be relying on lamp light to give the room a natural looking glow that will emphasise the shadows.

Blog 16- Advert

For this part of the blog, we had to analyse two adverts from our chosen artist or artists from a similar genre. This is the first advert that I found for Florence and the Machine.

The advert is promoting Florence and the Machine for the store HMV. The advert talks about what her inspiration is for her song "You've got the love". The advert is effective because it is all done in black and white apart from the statement pink for the

HMV logo. The photo of Florence is a mid- close up shot, and is effective as she is looking at the audience and therefore connecting with them. I like this idea and therefore might use it in my own advert. It also looks like she is singing, and this is reinstated with some of the lyrics that are flashed across the page. The white font also stands out against the black and white background.

The second advert that I analysed was that of the Friendly Fires advert for their UK tour, as they fall into the same 'indie' genre as Florence and the Machine.

The advert is effective as it uses quite simple colours, for example the black background with the white writing. The main picture is effective as it is quite ambiguous however it gives the impression of shattered glass and also makes me think of the human eye. The overall effect is quite quirky and would be something that Florence and the Mac

hine may possibly use in her own adverts.

After looking at both the adverts, I would like to have a simple black and white main picture mixed with some greens and browns to match the theme of the forest in our video. I would either like the photo of Florence to be a close up like the HMV advert where she is connecting with the audience or for Florence to be shown in floaty clothing pictured dancing in the forest with cinematography of a long shot.

These are my flat plans for the advertisement.

My first flat plan design includes a tree and a small coffin in the background. I chose the tree as it looks quite simple on the page and I liked the idea of the titles to be running down the branches of the tree. The plan follows my idea about having continuation with the music video which is why I have incorporated the tree as the majority of our video is filmed in the woods. The coffin is included as it fits with the title "My Boy Builds Coffins."

My second flat plan design follows my idea about a long shot of the forest and Florence shown dancing within the shot. I chose to make the advert landscape as you will be able to fit more of the landscape into the advert. The text would be at the side of the advert so that you can clearly see Florence and so that it does not follow the easy planning of running along the top. The browns and greens give the advert a woodland theme and the black font stands out well against it. I want the font for "Florence and the Machine" to be curly as after looking at her website, I feel this is a font type that would capture her style well.

This is a screen shot of the font that is used on Florence and the Machine's website. It has a curly font and I want to capture this on my advert also.

This is my third digipack flat plan. From looking at the previous adverts I tried one with a mid shot of Florence. She has her eyes shut, almost as if she is sleeping or in a coffin.

This is my finished advert:

To view it bigger, this is the link for Google documents.

https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0B0DnGj06WOfoZjA0Zjk0OTktYjlmMy00OTA5LTg1MzAtNGQxZmIyNWVlYThk&hl=en

I decided to go for my flat plan that depicts Florence standing at an extreme long shot in the centre of the forest. Mise en scene shows her to be wearing black which shows continuation with the music video and the digipack, as it connotes death. I chose to keep the colour scheme with greens and brown as it represents the woodland that she is standing in and would also appeal to both males and females of a more mature age group which is what I am targeting with my demographical audience. I am really pleased with the outcome of this advertisement as I feel that it stands out as Florence/Lucy is not easily recognisable to begin with.

Feedback I got was that I hadn't actually included that it was advertising a digipack, so I recently included the text reading "IN EXCLUSIVE DIGIPACK FORMAT" so that onlookers are sure about what is being advertised and maybe tempted to go out and buy the digipack.

If I was to change anything about this advert, I would probably lighten the contrast a little more on the background picture so that I could make my text white so as to match the digipack rather than it being yellow. I would also learn a few more skills on Photoshop so that I could do something like edit in some birds flying out of Lucy/Florence, representing Freedom as it is something that comes across in many of her other music videos. It would also look quite effective.

In conclusion, I feel like I have learnt many new things from learning how to use Adobe Photoshop and my skills have definitely improved since using it last year for my college magazine. By using these skills on Photoshop I now know how to do things that I wanted to achieve, for example changing the font colour, adding text and changing contrast etc.

Blog 12- Health and Safety

We learned about the precautions needed to ensure cast and crew are safe when filming the video. By law, you are expected to adopt risk management techniques to ensure everyone is safe at all times. Before we started filming, we had to go out to our location and do a 'reccy' to ensure that where we wanted to film would be safe. A systematic approach meant that we walked round all the areas we were thinking of filming at and decided what risks were present. We had to think about what kind of hazards may become a problem, work out who may be harmed and the think of ways to overcome these risks.

Risks that may occur when filming:

- The un-even ground in the woodland may cause accidents due to tripping or falling

- The camera may not be correctly connected to the tripod and joined with the problem of un-even ground this could lead to the camera falling off of the tripod and breaking.

Problems that may affect filming:

- As the video is being filmed outside, bad weather conditions such as rain could make it impossible to film due to the camera getting wet and breaking.

- Since everyone in our group has jobs and our college timetables are very different, it may be hard to find a day when we can all get together and film.

When filming in the studio, we also had to be careful about any trailing wires that you could trip up on. We were also using lighting which got especially hot. If we wanted to change the angle of the head of the lamp, we had to wear gloves so that we did not burn our hands.

Blog 7- Copying an existing video

https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0B0DnGj06WOfoNGUyYjRmYTUtZGFmZC00NGJiLWIzM2MtNGYxODBhOTJjNDE3&hl=en

This is my groups version of the Teenage Dirtbag video by Wheatus. Here is a link for the original video:

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/sy-1761951110/wheatus_teenage_dirtbag_official_music_video/

This is a picture of the shooting script that we put together for our Teenage Dirtbag video. The shooting script was used when filming and allowed us to set up a schedule for the filming and included a list of shots that we intended to film. It also meant we could log what shots were good and what shots weren't, and this saved time when editing. We will be using a shooting script for our own music video as it allows for an organised and detailed plan for shooting and will make it much easier for us when it comes to editing.

When making this video, I learnt a lot about how to use the camera and about successfully putting together the scenes to make up the video. We were shown what buttons to use to change the light and contrast on the camera and how to zoom in and out.

We were also shown how helpful using clapper boards are as when it came to editing the video we were sure on where each scene needed to go. This is something we will be using in shooting for our final video.

Doing this preliminary short video also taught us some skills about how to use the editing equipment on the Macbooks. We were taught basic skills such as how to cut out takes we didn't want to use, using the razor tool and then other skills such as fading out a take. These are all things that we will want to know when it comes to editing our final filming. In lesson we learnt how to correctly use the recording camera that we will be using to shoot our music videos and how to use the tripod that the camera sits on. By learning this we now know how to safely use the equipment and how to steer clear of breakages.

We were shown the on/off button, how to change white balance and exposure and how to zoom in and out. We were also shown how to fix the camera onto the tripod using the screw on plates and how to adjust the tripod in height and also so that it will give the camera a different tilt and panning speed.

We also learnt how to use a shooting script. A shooting script is a version of the screenplay that is used to assist the directors, camera-workers and actors etc on how to produce the scene. The shooting script can be used to determine whether a take was successful or not and can speed up editing when used alongside a clapper board during filming which can tell you which takes are being filmed. We were taught how important communication is on set, a clapper board is also important as it enables you to log the amount of takes you take to get the correct shot that you want. It will also help when editing as you will know what shots were good and what ones were not.

We were taught about: White Balance and the 4 different settings;

- Automatic White Balance (AMB) - Which can prove unreliable

- Indoor Setting - Picture of a lightbulb -

Outdoor Setting - Picture of a sun

- Manual Setting Exposure;

- Shutter speed - 1/12, 1/50 & 1/1000 - (This is the fastest)

How to use the controls;

- Press the middle button 3 times = Automatic White Balance

- Use controls to select setting

- Bottom button = Shutter Speed

We were taught how to edit our shot in Final Cut Pro and how to connect the camera to the laptop using a FIREWIRE cable. The camera connection was recognised by changing the setting to VCR/Playback.

In this country, we were taught that the PAL (Phase Alternating Line) should be set to 24 frames per second. We were also taught about Scratch Disks and their use, this is te destination for all captured footage.

We also learnt that we can actually control the camera via the computer through 'Device Contol'.

When editing, it was important to distinguish which shots were good enough to include in the final edit. The shots that we didn't want to use could be removed using the 'Razor' tool. An 'Assembly edit' could also be used to seperate the poor shots from the good ones.

We also learnt some creative camera use like how to execute a Timelapse shoot. This is something that our group is interested in using as it fits in well with the idea of a lifetime in a day and so could show how quickly the days go past. Here was the result of our Timelapse shooting: