Update

- SUCH good news - we've been able to salvage the clips we thought were lost, which is SO good as we thought we were going to have to sort out filming them again.. and they took blooomin' ages.

- Alec is living again so we can get on with filming the last shots we need of him.

- Filming is going to be a struggle this weekend as I have to work Saturday and ALL of Sunday, so maybe one day this week? But the workload from other subjects is really heavy at the moment, making it really hard to get this done.

- Annoying room changes; We should be in the media room where the macs are situated so we can begin editing the footage that we already have, as well as editing our Research & Planning video, BUT we're not because the AS group is in there instead.. not even using the macs.. it makes no sense and has happened for a couple of lessons now which we feel is really starting to hold us back with editing. I think we are sorting out a permanent room change to the media room for the rest of the year.

- Today I have a free lesson last, so instead of writing the 2 essays I have for this week.. I'm going to go to media and try and do some editing to make up for this wasted lesson.

General annoyance

Me and Anna uploaded the latest batch of footage onto the mac today, but when we watched through them to analyse which were successful or which needed re-filming etc, just general checking, we noticed that lots of the clips were missing. We looked in every folder on the memory card, and they were nowhere, and when the card was put back in the camera the shots were there? So they definitely exist and are in the same format as the others, but they won't appear on the macccyyy? At the moment we're not sure what's going to happen.. we had to leave it in the capable hands of the media technician.. but I'm so worried we won't be able to retrieve them! ALEC WILL CUT HIS HAIR and we'll have to do it ALL again if we can't upload them!

BUT yes, overall, very annoying as I was hoping to start a teeeny tiny bit of editing today, maybe just cutting some clips, ordering them etc. We'll see tomorrow morning if everything's ok..

Oh and Alec, our MAIN ACTOR WHO WE DESPERATELY NEED has got an ear AND eye infection.. filming is on a definite hold for the forseeable future!

Filming Update

Sunday 21st - Filming session at Anna's

- Dried wet leaves with a hair dryer for about half an hour so they'd float down in the right way.. now that's dedication

- Filmed several shots of throwing leaves over Alec trying to make it look right, either the leaves came in too fast, in too much of a clump, too slow etc BUT we got it about right and got a lot of footage and I think it'll be really effective once we edit all the bits and pieces together

- Attached loads of CD's to a couple of bamboo poles and held them over Alec, got some shots of that

- We captured several shots of Alec just looking into the camera, sometimes miming various lyrics - got extreme close up, close up, medium and long shots of this to use throughout video in quick cuts.

After all the leaf pampering we ran out of time, we're really pleased with the day though and feel like we achieved A LOT. More than it sounds written down.. One day this week we plan to film Alec against the wall just singing/miming the entire song through, so when it comes to editing we will definitely have singing shots for every bit of the song if we need them.

Overall, SUCCESS :)

NOOOOO

ALEC IS CUTTING HIS HAIR. This is extremo bad for us.. we spent ages and put a lot of effort into getting the book scenes last week and now he wants to cut his hair.. meaning we'll probably have to re-do all we have so far for HAIR continuity! kajshd ew8u0 w c3oqkwh salkdha sk.. We have persuaded him to postpone it till after this weekend, and we are all only available sunday, SO basically we have one day to film the entire rest of our music video :| this is going to be HAARRDDD and very very very very very stressful.......

Red Hot Chili Peppers - Can't Stop

In class we have discussed and watched examples of the different styles of music video; for example following a story narrative, or being performance based etc. Today we were shown the video for 'Can't Stop' as an example of an 'experimental' music video, which is means one without any distinguishable direction or narrative - or more simply defined as random.

This is similar to our to idea in that our video will not follow any particular narrative structure, we will have slight character definitions - the contrast between the positivity of the female character and the negativity of the male character - but there's no real story or relationship established. Our video genre is definitely more in the direction of experimental and alternative than anything else.

We really liked lots of elements of this video and some are similar to our initial ideas. The video is based in seemingly one open space, e.g. studio or warehouse, with various random objects and members of the band interacting with them in whatever ways they felt like, not relating to the song in any logical way. Although we've drawn lots of our shot ideas from some words in the lyrics e.g books, discs, darkness etc - the overall finished piece I believe will have quite a random feel - as intended from the start. We plan to base our video in an open white space, preferably a studio, but due to a non existant budget will we have to find an alternative space to use. This use of plain background I believe causes the attention to be solely on what set and props are featuring in the shot, rather than where they are, why they're there or any deeper reading than the surface appearance - even if that reading doesn't make sense - that is the point, I think, of an 'experimental' and 'alternative' music video.

Below is the music video, however the embedding rights are quite unpredictable and sometimes seem to let it play and sometimes don't.. so if the video seen below does not play, click here to visit the official YouTube broadcast.

Filming 13/11/10

Filming update -

I'm really pleased with what we achieved today, although when edited together the footage we got will only fill about 5 seconds of music.. it was still a lot of work and a really good start :)

We got the footage for the scene 'You've seen things I've only read in books..' - we basically spent hours building and demolishing towers of books in front our actor. We also captured several shots of the main actor singing bits of the chorus, which we will get a lot more of with him in different scenes.

Will upload pictures of the day later on..

Sunday - We had to cancel the planned outdoor filming session due to HEAVY rain, we will rearrange for next weekend because it gets dark too early to get these shots in the week after school. If raining again, we will compromise and accept that the outdoor scenes will be dingier than we'd wanted.. maybe we can edit them brighter? Hmm just a thought..

Gorillaz - Editing Inspiration

When analysing the video for 'Stylo' by Gorillaz I noticed in several sections there are some quick cuts between different angles and shots, that match in with the beat of the music. I thought this looked really effective and I really like how it contrasted with the rest of the video being not technically synced with the action - it made these bits stand out and look really interesting.

This video, as with almost every other I've wanted to include on my blog, have disabled the ability to embed onto other pages such as blogger - so to watch the video click here..



At 03:13 – 03:20 & 04:04 – 04:10 the editing and music sync can be seen.

In our music video, our storyboard shows we have really fast cuts and scene changes throughout the narrative, we hadn't yet thought about editing so to sync the cuts with the beat of the song, but after seeing how these short sections of the 'Stylo' video look, I think it would be a really visually effective, professional looking element to our final piece.

Music Video Analysis

We were set a task to work in our groups and find one or several music videos that feature Roland Barthe's 5 narrative codes.

The 5 codes (VERY brief summary of meaning) -
- Action - one thing leads to another
- Enigma - a puzzle
- Semic - connotation
- Symbolic - binary opposition
- Cultural - audience knowledge/ideology

CLICK HERE TO WATCH VIDEO

Action – Driving fast shows that they're on the run, the message on policemans radio is obviously warning him that they're coming – know they're being chased by the police already. The fact that they are driving really fast and unsteadily – being distracted by their pursuers – the audience knows something bad is going to happen and the speeding is building up to a climax e.g. the car crashing, or in this case it driving off the edge of a cliff.









Enigma – Speeding car with a smoking radiator and a gun shot through the windscreen – drives past a police car that – why are they speeding away? Why damaged car? What/who are they running from? What happened just before the narrative of the video began?










Semic – Policeman, battered car, shifty characters, guns etc → the audience knows there's been some sort of crime/violence. The message that comes through to the policeman's car warning him that the car's coming tells the audience that they're already being chased by other police – the audience knows some kind of chase is going to follow.










Symbolic – Black car and red car → black car is bad, the drivers are criminals/on the run, red car → blood, violence, the guy in the car has a gun and laughs when shooting them - vindictive and violent.










Cultural – Names of other songs from the album are seen several times during the video, if audience has knowledge of the band they would notice the references – billboard that the car bursts through says 'Superfast Jellyfish', the sign behind the police man says 'Sweepstakes' → both songs from the 'Plastic Beach' album. Bruce Willis → known for featuring many in action films – denoting the genre of the video to be action - guns, violence and car chases etc.

10/11/10

Today we planned to do some of our outside 'girl dancing around like a loon' shots on the school field because the weather forecast is predicting rain from tomorrow onwards, so we wanted to make the most of the shining shining sun. HOWEVER, there must be a however, once we got out to our perfect location at the end of a school field with lovely jubly fields and trees in the background - PERFECT scenery - and started getting some general shots of the female character (me embarrassing myself! Oh what I give for this project..) kicking leaves around and walking along etc.. the EMPTY, COMPLETELY EMPTY, COMPLETELY CHECKED THREE TIMES THAT IT WAS EMPTY, EMPTY memory card said 'Memory card full' after about two minutes of footage.. AND the camera (possibly to do with the stuuuuupid memory card) would not focus well and every time it was moved the image went extremely pixelated. This may also have been to do with the glare of the sun, but STILL we couldn't experiment from other angles or try anything else because of the STUPID memory card. Vair annoying. But we are going to dig out our own memory cards from last year so not to risk wasting anymore filming time with potentially broken school ones, and use those on our next lot of filming, which leads me to...

NEXT PLANNED FILMING SESH:

Saturday 13th - I finish work at 3, then will go straight to Anna's with our NEW actor in tow to start filming the indoor scenes.

Sunday 14th - Group will trek it to my house and we'll film the outside field scenes on a farmers field near my house, and get the scene with the younger girls - my sisters - done and dusted so we don't have to return to my far away house again.

GROOL

ACTOR

Finalllyyy we have found another willing MAIN MAN. Alec dearest has agreed to be the lead singer of our video, which we are extremo pleased about as Charlie wasn't able to make the filming, and other people we could have asked just all didn't have the look we were going for, but Alec was the saving grace and looked the closest to what we had in mind... close-ish.. BUT it is very good news because now we can film film film and get some footage to start working on. I CAN'T WAIT TO EDIT. So much enjoyment from editing :)

Female character

Our idea for the female character is that she should only be seen outside during the video - She is representing positivity, vitality and being one with nature. I have a very clear idea in my mind of how the actress should be styled, and what the tone of the shots should be. I have done some research and found a few images on the internet that are good inspiration for our costume and camera shots -

Although these images are very similar to the desired styling for the scenes with the female character, due to the time of year, we will have to alter the idea slightly - it will still be the same kind of concept, but the actress will wear more clothes for example: Colourful wellington boots, hat, scarf, umbrella etc.