filming blog

    Last night was a very eventful step towards the completion of the music video for our group. We started our filming process with the help of some friends. Before I start I, I want to say that my group and I did not completely finish all the filming. That was due to our friends needing to leave and the camera battery dying. We still however got a large portion of it done and next time we see our friends we shouldn't have a problem filming it rather quickly.
    Throughout filming, we constantly referred back to our story board as we followed mostly everything on it. To stick with our New York theme, we did use Young Circle as our setting. We all waited till sun down before starting. The lights surrounded young circle so it was perfect. The Christmas season also added a nice touch with a large Christmas tree that we incorporated. Our original idea was to put a wig on Elijahs head to represent Delilah but our friend Sydney came through and she was more than willing to help us. It also worked out very well because Sydney happens to be an experienced actor. We went scene by scene throughout the time we had. I personally was the singer which meant  I had to hold the guitar and lip sing to the music which I fell I did pretty well in if I do say so myself. Peter and Elijah both worked on the camera and any other things to help develop or video. In one case, the singer was supposed to climb into a tree and continue his music. The only problem was I couldn't get up on the tree. So, I stepped on Eli's back which he loved.
      While everything in the end may have worked out, we did run into a few issues, some more serious then others. For starters, we had trouble shooting the tree scene because by the tree was very dark. The camera didn't do the darkness any justice so we used our phones flash. It didn't look as good as the camera would have but it worked fine. Another serious problem we had was Elijah kept on getting bad headaches during the filming. He plays key roles in helping to develop the overall movie and we needed him. We new he was hurting though so we tried filming more quickly so we can get him home. Other than that, we didn't have may other problems and any that we did, we worked out easily. The music video is turning out well and we can't way to see the end product.

Story Board

     For our second blog, we are finishing our story board and writing about what we drew and did. The story board was no different then our last project. We planned out between us what we wanted our commercial to look like and what scenes we wanted to include. It took us a while to agree on how we wanted to film our scene but in the end we came through. The only difference is that because this video is considerably longer, so  is our story board. Instead of 6 slides, we made 12. We began by watching the original video to get some ideas. The whole video revolves around the idea of a distance relationship and the love they share. Our video complements this in the idea that when Delilah thinks hard enough about her true love, he will appear. That's exactly what goes on in our story board.
      For our first slide, it shows a man singing on his guitar sitting on a stool. The back ground is blank and he's alone with the lyrics of his song. The second slide brings us the park, or "New York." The dark sky, with the many lights lighting it up. Just like New York. This is when Delilah appears on our third slide. She's walking on the path as she thinks of of her true love some where far away. She passes a tree and the sound of her true loves voice fills the air. She turns towards the tree and see's nothing but a normal tree. It was in her head she assumes in this 6th slide. We get a medium close up of her confused expression on the 6th slide as well. It happens again in the 7th slide. His voice fills the air except this time it sounds closer. Almost real. She turns around again just to see nothing but air again in the 8th slide. She sits on a nearby bench and cries. She regrets leaving him and misses him with everything she has. She lifts her head and there he stands. He flew all the way to her and surprised her. The other times she thought she heard him may have been in her head but this time it was real. Their love brought each other together again. They hug and set down the path of lights holding hands while humming the song he made for her together.

Planning

   Coming into our next project, we have a lot of new variables to consider. These variables include location, health and safety, props, costumes, and finally our schedule. Being that our music video will have a dark kind of gloomy feel, we plan to have our variables work along with this tone. For the location, we know that we want it somewhere dark with a lot of little and pretty lights. This is as close we will get to a New York feel. A place where we know we can get this is Young Circle. Young Circle has a lot of different environment types and we plan to use all of them. From the park, to the little restaurants that surround the circle. We will be filming in a public place and people will surround us adding to the effect of a big city. With this said, some health and safety precautions must be in play while filming. For starters there will be a lot of people potentially with intentions to steal camera equipment or harm us. We will make sure our parents come and supervise while we our filming. A First aid kit will also be on site because we plan to perform a few small stunts by our actor/singer. This may include climbing a tree or sitting on a high wall. We obviously aren't gonna have our actor/singer playing the air guitar so we will be bringing a guitar. That's pretty much it for props. That brings us to costumes. We will be dressing our girl actor with regular modern clothing and our male singer/actor in modern clothing. The clothing will be the same as always. The song was made recently so the singers and actors should match the time period.
      Being that this is a time sensitive project, we have to follow very strict timelines on certain due dates throughout the two week period. We started on 11/14. Song choice, and genre convention. This was not a problem because we as a group easily picked a song. 11/20 is our planning blog. Well because i'm doing it right now and not having a problem with it, it will be turned in as planned. 11/25 will be the time to turn in our filming blog. I felt this was one of the easier blogs on our last project so turning this one in on time I think will be the easiest. We'll simply do our filming and right the processes. 12/6 is the final due date. This I know will be turned in on time because if not it will have an extreme impact on my grade. As a group, the need to finish this project and turn it in on time is a responsibility that we feel the need to fulfill. All the other turn in dates after are straight forward. You do what you have to do and turn it in on time. Should be no problem. If we do run into the possibility that we can't turn in a project on time we will pass the responsibility to one of our three group members. Either way, we will not accept a failing grade on one of our due dates and will exercise any way to make sure we do well.     

Intro to music video and research

       Today, we start the process of composing a brand new project and a new type of project. Ms. Cats explained to us that we will be working to make a music video of our final project. Beside the obvious reasons why the project is different, we also have a far less amount of time and this time we don't have to worry about the process of film. The regulations were simple. We must pick a song as a group that of course is appropriate and film the video off campus. Our new group includes Elijah Sherman, and Peter Stroe. We began by first figuring out what song would be best.
         As a group, we decided to go with the song "Hey There Delilah" by The Plain White T's. We are all very familiar with the song so that will give us a good start. We also have multiple ideas already thought of that include easy accessible actors and setting. The Music Video that's already made with the song shows a singer singing to his love far away. The video includes multiple transitions showing where the girl is and the singer singing from home. The pictures also show relevance to the lyrics in the song like a lyric about New York. The picture switches then to New York lights. We don't plan to follow this exactly but we like the idea of the girl being somewhere far way and the singer even further.
        We identified the song as being a part of the genre "Pop-Rock". We've looked through different pop-rock music videos and gathered information on some common conventions. We've noticed that a lot of the pop-rock songs include singers singing to different people. With this said, some angles we see are close-ups, tracking shots, establishing shots, eye level, and dutch. These are only the common ones but the music videos do include other shots. The common movement is so common we didn't see any other forms. We saw a pan as well as flash pan, zoom, and tracking. The sound was pretty straight forward because the song was the music implemented into the video. For editing we saw multiple forms. Jump Cuts, split screens, cross cutting, cutaway, dissolve, and action matches were all common. We also looked towards identifying the CLAMPS of the music video.
1.) Costumes were whatever the singer usually wears so jackets, pants, or sometimes vibrant colors.
2.)The lighting for some videos was very colorful with artificial light or for other very dark.
3.)For actors, the video really depended on them. If singing to someone, there was an actor to represent that someone. Or for other videos, backup dancers were used and people in the background enjoying the song.
4.)The music of course was the actual song implemented into the video.
5.)Dependent on the setting of the video, props changed from guitars, stools, or if at the beach they used things like beach balls, and hoses. All extremely dependent on the setting.
6.)The rhythm of the song commonly decided the setting. The setting changed based on the speed or meaning of the song. Some setting included, New York scene, Beach, and a stage.

Actual editing bog

     Our class before this class was supposed to be our editing day but based on everything I said in my last blog, it didn't work out that way. Our pinnacle studios was down but fortunately, we fixed the issue. Well not exactly, instead of our dinosaur desktops we used some laptops that Ms. Cats got. They clearly were not the same but at least they worked. We made the best of what we got and return we got a good product. Well almost.
     We started by importing all of our videos on to the app where we can begin editing That was the easy part. The hard part was trying to remember what all the buttons do. We then looked through all the videos and deleted the ones with mistakes and the ones we definitely weren't going to use in the commercial. After that we put all the videos we were using onto the bar and cut the videos to our liking. We added some transitions and we got a really nice view of what our commercial will turn out like in the end. It was home stretch until we faced another issue.
      We tried to add some audio to our video but for some reason every time we added it to the bar it said our video was corrupted. For starters all we know about that is that it's bad so we knew we had an issue. That wasn't even the biggest problem though. The worst was that today was the day that Ms. cats wasn't here so we were in big trouble. The commercial was due and we had no help. We went to emailing her and hoped for the best. Hopefully she understood.