PRODUCTION - Filming session 1 - 24/10/13

PLANNING - Skill development

The planning of production work this year has been much more thorough than last year. I feel like the time, effort and detail i've put into it is on a much greater scale. In particular i've researched more into location and i have put emphasis on reasoning behind choosing certain settings, props, costumes etc. Also, I have planned exactly how we are going to aim our music video to our specified audience and this is something I didn't do in much detail last year. 

PLANNING - Weather update

Tomorrow is our first day of filming so i've checked the weather forecast. Luckily no rain! The little bit of sunshine was what we were aiming for while shooting our bus stop base track so we feel quite prepared for tomorrow.

analysing costume, setting and location in music videos.

SETTING/LOCATION:
The whole video is filmed in one location which seems to be a sophisticated, wealthy building. However, within this location there are several shots filmed in different places. For example the meeting room, the stair case, an ordinary room, snooker room, in a cinema room and the passageway. Even though its filmed in one place, it is edited to seem as if he's in a different location. Some shots have been given an effect to show that it was his life in the past and then its filmed normally to show what his life is now. For example when he is playing pool we can see that he's in a wealthy room which is then edited to show that he is in prison.

COSTUME:
The main artist approximately changes his clothes 5 times. He wears sophisticated wealthy clothing such as the suit to help show that his life has improved financially compared to what it used to be which is also shown when he wears the prison clothing and casual clothing such as the jumper and hat. The smart clothing works well with the location to show that the artist is in fact wealthy. He wears casual clothing such as the jacket when he is with the feature artist directly singing to the camera and also when he's watching back on the clips of his life in the cinema room. The feature artist doesn't really change her clothes which shows she isn't as important as the main artist.

I enjoyed this video because the artist shows how his life is now compared to what it was before by using effects in the editing.

Analysing original music video and how ours will differ

 

Locations: Bus, cafe, field, car and bedroom

Costumes & Props: casual clothing and note pad

Camera shots: Over shoulder, mid shots. establishing shots, tracking, close ups

Editing: Steady jump cuts, black and white colour effects,

Base tracks:
- Wide shot and mid shot of the artist on the bus
- Mid shots in the bedroom
- Midshots on field
- Mid and close ups of artist

We don't plan to replicate the video completely as we want to add in a few ideas of our own through the influence from other music video's. Our video will include night time visuals as well as day time visuals unlike the original were its mostly filmed during the day. Due it to being not possible for us to use vehicles such as cars and busses like maverick sabre did we decided to do ours differently by adding more scenery of London streets. we also plan to do our editing  differently by have more motion in our video unlike to the original and include black and white edits more over we are looking to have the base tracks as scenery with some shots where the artist can promote himself and his album.

The base tracks we plan on using are: 

Mid shot of artist waling along the river themes 

wide shot of artist walking through a park 

wide shot of artist at a bus stop

medium close up of artist sitting under a bridge 

over shoulder shot of the artist sitting on a bench at south bank

Several establishing shots of scenery in central London

Researching fans

Maverick sabre's target audience would be teenagers and young adults. Facebook is a very good place were i could find information from his fans through checking through there profile to see what type of person would listen to maverick sabre. After going through a few of his fans i could conclude that most of his fans were in college and university this specifies the age group of his target audience. 

Here you cans see his fans interact with him on Facebook, these sites are used more by the younger generation who attend his events. 

Synergy

For our remake of Maverick sabre I need we were thinking about how we could include synergy into our music video, digi pack and our magazine production to symbolise our new artist.



Heres some ideas we have:

- Our key prop is going to be this watch, this will be included into our digi pack and magazine production also our music video will contain a close up of the watch on our artist wrist

- The Artist

- Our first choice of "Devlin - London city" inspired us so we decided to have lots of scenery with our music video

- Distinctive font

- Black and white colouring in our video, digi pack and magazine production

A quick powerpoint of the base tracks we are planning to use

Analysing Artist website

PLANNING - Change of location

We have decided as a group to change the location for the bus stop we will be filming at. Instead of using the one by Southbank, we want to use one in Islington named 'Friend Street'. It is much bigger and has more space around for us to film in. Also, it doesn't get very busy as only one bus stops at it.

This is what it looks like...

PLANNING - Practice shots(for tracking)

We thought it would be a good idea to practice filming tracking shots as some of us in the group haven't done it before. Doing it gave us a rough idea of where to stand and move while filming to get the desired frame.

 

 In this attempt, it started good but as the person filming started walking back the artist caught up too quickly and the framing went wrong as he got too close and it was turning more into a close up/medium close up rather than a mid shot.

 

 To see if we could avoid this happening we tried again by standing a bit further away. We found that this worked better as we were able to keep the same distance for more than a few seconds.

Here we attempted capturing a mid tracking shot from the back. We found that at the start we were too close to the artist however after 2-3 seconds we preferred the framing(slightly further away)

PLANNING - Practice shots(for still filming/bus stop location)

We went out and did some practice filming to ensure our artist felt comfortable in front of the camera and also to get an idea of how some of our shots may look. Doing this allowed for us to notice any easily made mistake so we don't mess up in the real thing

After watching back our first attempt we realised we weren't happy with the framing. We should have placed the camera differently so we didn't get in the side of the bus stop as it creates the illusion of an off centre frame. Also, we should have used a tripod for this part of filming

We tried this as development of the first attempt. We cropped out the side of the bus stop making it more of a mid shot. Due to the fact we weren't using a tripod the filming is a bit shakey and we don't want this for this base track. Also, the framing is slightly bent to one side. This is something we will be keeping an eye on to avoid in the future

We tried this angle out to see if we liked it not for a base track but for a single shot. We were quite pleased with this appearence and may use it in the real thing

In our storyboard and animatic we have a side profile view of the artist at the bus stop so we wanted to try it out to see how it looks and if we like it. This one is from a slight angle and we weren't 100% with it

Instead we tried it from a direct side view. We were worried that we would be seen in the reflection of the glass however this didn't seem to be much of a problem