EVALUATION TASK 1: IN WHAT WAYS DO YOUR MEDIA PRODUCTS USE, DEVELOP OR CHALLENGE FORMS AND CONVENTIONS OF REAL MEDIA PRODUCTS?

DIRECT ADDRESS

One convention which is pretty much always used in pop promos is the use of ‘Direct Address’, this ensures that the performer performs directly to the audience, it gives them a sense of involvement – the use of this convention is to build a relationship between the audience and the performer. The direct address is used to give the audience an emotional connection to the band, the video presents itself based more on the style of the band image rather than the connotation of the lyrics, which contain a serious underlying meaning. Therefore maintaining direct address is an inevitable part of the music video, especially ours as the audience has to feel a connection with the duo in order to build up this fan based relationship which should follow. Above is an example, of a commercial artist, Lady Gaga – she is looking evidently straight towards the camera this entices the audience in to build up a relationship with them. Below, is a clip from our pop video where our lead singer gives the audience direct address to create this relationship. Also, we have decided to film at eye level as this gives a feeling of comradeship between both the performer and the target audience as the mode of address is on same level as audiences. When she looks away – it teases the audiences as it draws them in wanting more, as the star image is something they cannot have, they are then excluded if the star looks away making the audience hungry for more, it encourages repeated consumption. Even videos which are from Electronic Shamen use this convention, for example, ‘The Prodigy’ with ‘Warriors Dance’ and ‘The Chemical Brothers’ with ‘The Salmon Dance’, even though they do not have an actual person in their video it is still important for a connection to be made between the audience and the song itself, so therefore the performer, in this case the ‘salmon’ looks and sings straight towards the camera, therefore giving direct address, which supports this relationship.

LIGHTING

Lighting is a key aspect of all music videos, often depending on the light used depends on the way in which the band and the song is portrayed to the audience. In our video we used high key lighting to connote a happy, peaceful environment.
We decided to use high key lighting as it juxtaposes the bitter sweet lyrics and the upbeat sound of the music, as this helps to portray more of the stars image rather than the song itself. By using this type of lighting on both our male and female stars, it promotes a positive image to our audience, which is what they are primarily based upon. In contrast, The Ting Tings are a two person band, with their song ‘We walk’ the video is very darkly lit using low key lighting. This may be because they are trying to portray a darker underlying tone and meaning to either their video or themselves as a TV Bard band.

PERFORMANCE CLIPS (SVEN CARLSSON: AUDIO VISUAL POETRY)

Throughout our pop video, a key aspect of our promo is the performance clips – like most music videos this is an inevitable aspect. The performance part of our video was a main element, although we wanted it to fit with the genre and style of the band, therefore, the performance shots were set up in this naturalistic environment. They are playing their instruments in the setting in which they feel most comfortable and which best suits their individual style. As Keith Negus categorized bands and artists, our duo come across as a more organic act, thus, these performance clips meet the needs of the band and their target audience.We decided Melena would not only sing but also play the keyboard. This was quite a key part which was ongoing throughout the video as we mixed both wide shots and close ups of her playing her instrument. Whereas, our male singer, William, played the base guitar – the colours of his guitar are quite rustic which are again to emphasize their organic, natural image. Also, we purposely chose to keep the amplifier in the shot, as it again connoted this rural feel and again highlighted this naturalistic environment and their normality as a band.

Not only did the performance aspect make an ongoing appearance in the pop promo, but we extended the use of performance into the CD cover. The back of our CD cover also used the image of the amplifier – we decided to use this as it clearly highlights who they are as a band and that they are primarily interested in their music rather than being just a commercialized group. Again, the colours used also draw attention to their organic style.

The performance aspect is a vital part in all pop videos, below is an image taken from one of ‘The Ting Tings’ music videos. As a group they are quite similar in terms of they are also made up of a male and female artist, however, they have very much been commercialized rather than being a TV Bard band which Faulkes are. Although, they too use this key aspect of performance clips, the image below is just of the female singer with her microphone but also throughout the video many clips are used of the drums and also the base guitar to try and reinforce this performance aspect. But for Faulkes, it is very vital to have performance as one of the main features as this is their style and this is what their target audience desires from them.

CONCEPT CLIPS (SVEN CARLSSON)

Our pop video consisted of two different concept aspects, one being the band riding on bicycles and the other being them out in a rowing boat. Both these features give a sense of getting and being set free – being a TV Bard band aimed at a more teenage, young adult audience the idea of freedom is inevitable and therefore, this clearly meets their audiences needs and makes them feel connected with the band as they seem to be like-minded.

Both these concept sections do not primarily fit with the lyrics, but again we made a conscious decision to make the pop video primarily based around their style and star image rather than the connotations of the lyrics. Also, both the above shots of the duo cycling and the below shot of them rowing demonstrates this sense of naturalist, rustic image that they wish to portray to their audience, which highlights their art school background. Due to them having this creative background these concept clips perfectly fit with their style and image, even though it does not connote the lyrics, it still works effectively.

Although, most pop videos have a balance of both performance and concept clips – the concepts are often very contrasting. For example, looking at Lady Gaga’s video of ‘Bad Romance’, it is extremely abstract and creative. Everything she does is very peculiar, for example, one of the concept parts was all these ‘alien creatures’ coming out of white body boxes, this just proves her wacky style. Although this is so contrasting to our bands video, it is likely that they may somewhat appeal to a similar audience, as they are both artistically creative and abstract – this could be what our target audience may like. However, our video has a more natural approach to creativeness in both the concept aspects of the video.

MODE OF ADDRESS

Clearly, the mode of address is a very key element of most music videos. Our video portrays a clear, happy, upbeat style and mode of address. Although, this does not necessarily connote the lyrics of this particular song, as a band – they have this happy persona.

Throughout the piece, we have used autumnal rich colours which give the music video a soft, organic feel. There is a wind of change in public consciousness leaning towards a distrust of the synthetic nature of commodities, for example becoming and being more environmentally friendly – now even food companies are advertising more economic ways of packaging. Therefore, at present, this type of organic and natural environment is likely to appeal greatly to a wider audience as it is likely to fit these organic needs of the audience. The mode of address in our video shows an organic integrity that mirrors this public attitude, so appealing more to ‘trendies’. We have this alternative approach from the mass culture commercialized acts, and therefore, targeting and appealing to our specific target audience as it reflects their mind-set.
However, our video does also challenge some aspect of this convention. A common mode of address would be to have to female lead singer to be in the middle of the frame, if using the rule of thirds, as this is purposely design for the male gaze. Even, if the band is only a duo made of just a male and female then this convention is still used, for example, in the above still shot from one of ‘The Ting Tings’ pop videos – the male is not even in this shot, reinforcing this element of trying to appeal to the male gaze. By challenging this feature it reinforces this creative, artistic approach we have tried to create. Below is a still from our video, both singers are in the frame but Melena is to the right of the shot and in front of William, even though this challenges this convention, the shot still appeals to the male gaze as she is the one pulling in the focus even though she is not in the centre.

Moreover, the finalized product clearly demonstrates this organic image and style Faulkes are trying to create. Their positive and upbeat attitudes are evident throughout the piece which reinforces their band image.

USE OF SPFX

Special effects are a key feature that we have continually used throughout our video. For two out of the three different sections we used a blue screen, for the performance clips we had this artistic, textile piece in which one of our members of our group created which we used after affects to project it in the background. This created this natural, organic, arty environment we wished to create; it is a perfect mix with the autumn leaves covering the studio floor.
Whereas, the second use of blue screen was to create this sense of cycling, we shot them on bikes which were on frames so they were still, and used to blue screen and had a combination of pictures from a country lane to show them moving and cycling. It is quite clear that it is a fake scenario – but that was the idea. Also, by using a setting of the countryside again reinforces this organic, natural environment.

However, we did have some problems when it came to editing with the blue screen, as at times the image was slightly fuzzy due to the quality of the screen. But overall, it defiantly created the effect we wanted to.

Moreover, we also tried to challenge this stereotypical convention; we tried to create our own special effects, with our third concept section we wanted to create this scene where they were out rowing. Although, we could have used the blue screen again to create this, we decided to make these ourselves, again emphasizing this artistic environment, in which the target audience would greatly like. The whole approach to our special effects had this organic, natural setting – we wished to create this arty environment and it was defiantly highlighted throughout our pop video.

Task one

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FINAL PRODUCT

Unfortunately half of the screen is cut off so if you wish to view the whole thing then click on this link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RAUrXGYFeQ&feature=PlayList&p=0C6D19B2C1DEE896&playnext_from=PL&playnext=1&index=4

POST PRODUCTION AND EDITING

For our first few sessions of editing we began by taking the rushes, cutting them up and putting them into sub-clips. This was to make it easier in collecting the exact shots we wished to use, as they would all be titled and in separate bins which we had created. Once this was done we already had our filmed timeline in place, so we decided to just put the somewhat relevant clips in their correct position on the timeline. However, this proved more difficult than it sounds, as some of the shots we had drawn for our story board we had not actually filmed, so we just placed what we had down to give us a basic structure. Moreover, we found it very difficult to all cooperate at first, as there was a continuous battle to get on the mouse, so eventually we decided on just two people to move on with this, whilst the others got on with completing the background.


Once we had a basic structure down on the timeline, we actually realised that our initial idea of having a more narrative driven pop video was not actually working very well. Therefore, we decided to scrap this idea and start from the beginning, still keeping the same themes in place but now using a more of a montage effect. So we started to place things down on the timeline, however, myself and another member came to great difficulty in finding the actual beat. This was making it very difficult to cut in time – this was a great struggle that we defiantly had not over come quite yet but we are trying to get better. We wanted the pace of editing to be spot on and we wanted the right mode of address to be conveyed to the audience, so our slight technical problem was evidently becoming more and more difficult to over come.


We decided to just battle on and try and work through our problem, even though it was beginning to really get us down. So we continued to just getting the sequences down on the timeline in the correct order, however, we were somewhat just seeing where it took us rather than having an exact plan. We knew the general direction in which we wished to take our video, and how it was to be split up into three sections -it was just getting that perfect balance of these, and getting the pace of the editing in the correct position. Although, another problem that we were beginning to encounter was the lip sync, both our actors did not know their lyrics very well, this made it very difficult during these editing sessions, as shots we wished to use we couldn’t in the end because the singer was obviously singing the wrong lyrics, and this would jeopardise the overall look of the video. Therefore, getting the right shots with the singers singing the correct lyrics was becoming a very lengthy process, as were often having to cut in and out of more shots because of this factor. Nonetheless, it was making the video look all the much better as it was so much more precise.


Today, we have somewhat encountered a small problem, we seem to have overwritten our filmed and edited storyboards, and now we do not have them nor the original drawn out version. However, because we had very much moved on in our editing process and we actually realised we did not need them, nonetheless it would have been useful when it came to evaluating the product and reflect on what we did differently.


We have been spending a lot of our free time editing, just refining all the shots and making sure that the pace of editing is to the correct beat (which we are still continuously struggling with) and making sure it conveys to the audience what we wished to show, reinforcing this autumnal, organic aspect. We were coming up to the last few stages in this initial part of the process, as I think tomorrow we are going to start working in AfterEffects. Our pop video, without any of the blue screen shots are all placed down, so we just need to do this last part now.


Today, we started our editing session with an introduction into how to use the programme AfterEffects, undoubtedly this process was very complex and defiantly set us some great challenges. The first thing we did was initially went through all the shots in the video with the blue screen, we then had to export them individually into AfterEffects. This was all we managed in the first lesson, as this process was very time consuming and we had about 50 shots to consider.


Following our initial work, once they were all in AfterEffects, we went through each shot one by one and ‘Chromokeyed’ in the background. All of this was very tedious and time consuming but it was a repetitive process, and luckily myself and Lily just got on with it together, so it somewhat relieved a lot of pressure. Eventually, once our textile background was now in place, we began to put them on the timeline with markers, which enabled each background to move – as this was the effect we wished to create. Although, we noticed that some shots were travelling more than others, so we had to continuously make sure there was this balance. However, we did encounter an even bigger problem, many of our blue screen shots seemed fuzzy, this was inevitable as the blue screen we used was a thick, course material, so it was somewhat expected that it ended up looking slightly ‘fuzzy’, nonetheless there was very little we could do about it as this was a technical fault, that was pretty much impossible to completely overcome.


We now have sorted out the ‘bike scenes’, this process was slightly different. We uploaded all the pictures we had taken on a digital camera of a country road into AfterEffects, then we created a sequence with each shot lasting approximately one second – this created a montage effect.


We have now finished all the shots in AfterEffects and today we put it back into Final Cut Pro, once it was in there we decided to change some of the colours by using the enhance key, to make it look as authentic as possible.

PHOTOS OF THE SHOOT

A few photos from the shoot day

ACCOUNT OF SHOOT

At 4pm this afternoon, we were able to begin setting up in the studio in preparation for the following days shoot. By doing this it enabled us to go on tomorrow being ready to get going straight away. Also, we established that if we had not gone in tonight we would not be able to shoot very much tomorrow. As we soon realised that we had no where near enough leaves to cover the entire studio floor – as this was part of our set it would have set us greatly behind if we had not sorted out the minor problem this evening. Between two of us we went and collected another 12 black bags of leaves, even though this was a mad rush to get it all set up and ready by 6pm, we did achieve this. We spread the leaves across the floor and placed the tree trunks, amp and keyboard into position so we were able to get on shooting quickly in the morning.


We arrived at the studio about 9 o’clock in the morning. We wanted the day to be as relaxed as possible and for our performers to feel comfortable. However, I realised that I had left the storyboards athome, this was potentially a huge problem, but luckily we knew what a lot of the shots were to get going in the morning. Fortunately, my mother brought them into school so we had them for the afternoon. However, we had to get going regardless, so we begun the day by getting both our female and male singer ready, we wanted our look to be fairly of the norm and simple. Both our band members wore jeans and white tops; this look was simple yet really showed who they really were and their organic, natural approach to music etc. However, Melena wore some slightly kooky make-up, this was used to enhance her individuality and show that she is a bit unique in her style. Once the duo were all set and ready to go, we just put the music on repeat and let them both get into the mood and play around with what kind of choreography they felt comfortable doing. We wanted them both to feel relaxed as this would make the final piece look so much better.

Nearing 10 o’clock, we begun filming – we just did a few takes of the whole song, from start to finish in wide, as this would be the basis of our performance element of the video. However, once we got underway we realised that the positioning was not quite right, so we began to rearrange the performers in order to gain the best shot possible, placing William further the centre of the shot. Also, once the cameras began rolling Melena found it quite difficult to move and sing directly towards the camera, because we wanted this sequence to look extremely natural, it was very important that we got this in the end, and she did really up her game, but still at times she was very unaware of where the camera was positioned. As, we only had a day to shoot this we had to move on fast, as we all knew roughly what we wanted to be shot. Once we had filmed the wide shot of the performance section we moved onto close ups of the instruments. Again, this seemed to take a lot longer than it should have, as ‘William’ (Callum) cannot actually play base, in the wide it was not noticeable that he was not actually playing but in a close up it was very. Therefore, we had to spend a little time going through some of the basics, although this put us behind schedule a little; it enabled us to get the shots we needed. With Melena, it was fairly simple – we just wanted to shoot close ups of her singing really at this moment rather than on the keyboard. Although, we again encountered this problem of not looking directly into the camera, but we had to work with what we got.

We realised we were running on a very tight schedule, we still had more shots to film in this setting before we took a break for lunch. We hoped to break at 12.30, but that did not happen – we broke at 1pm, as we had to shoot the more ‘fun’ side to the duo, the shots of them messing around the leaves and Melena wandering up and down the tree trunks. Around this time, my group had a little argument, because one of the members of our group wanted to try out this new shot she had thought of, we were all willing to go along with it, however, it was not going as expected and this person would not give up until she got what she wanted, but this was being proven very difficult. Cutting, the story short we were just all trying to speed up the process, saying how it was necessary to move on as we needed to complete the filming in our time scale. Eventually, she did give in and we did move on – but as we were approaching our lunch break it was a bit of a mad rush to finish all these shot in time, it was impossible. In the end, we broke for lunch without quite finishing what we had anticipated. However, this made us all come together as a team during our break and realised that we had to just get on and not waste any time in the afternoon.

We came back for 2 o’clock, and we had set ourselves a task of getting these shots completed in fifteen minutes, all we wanted was shots of William sitting on the bench singing whilst Melena danced around him – although we wanted to experiment with angles we had to just get on with it and shoot what we could.

Around half past two, it was vital we moved on. The next set was ‘the bikes’. Both the bicycles were already set up on the platforms ready for us to begin shooting. We positioned them into the centre of the studio. We wanted to create a windy day scenario, so we had the fans blowing from a short distance away to make sure it was not over powering as some leaves were blowing across the shot. We decided to just get on with the following footage, for this set we mainly just needed to go through the whole song a few times of them singing, performing and ‘cycling’ and most importantly having fun. After a couple of takes, our female performer had a small accident and fell off the bike, thankfully she was completely fine and just laughed it off, although we were all quite worried it would knock her confidence and then not give us the performance we really needed from her. However, we took a quick break to boost up her energy and then continued with this set. Throughout this set it was easy for our group to take turns being on camera and be creative with the shot types as the set was quite simple etc.

After about an hour of this set, we realised we had to move on and move on quickly. Our final set was ‘the boat’; this meant we had to completely clear everything in the studio. We got everyone involved, ensuring all the leaves were swept up and put back into the black bags. Once everything was clear we were able to bring in the wooden waves and place the material along the studio back wall. All in all, this took about thirty minutes to set up and then we were ready to shoot the final concept part of our pop promo. By this time, everyone was beginning to get tired but we all picked ourselves up and tried to make the last hour as fun as possible. Our wooden waves were very large, so we grabbed a few friends to move them to help create the moving wave effect we wanted. Again, the shots we needed were mainly in wide of the duo just joking around and having a laugh, so again we were all able to take turns filming on the camera and on the playback, all being able to get involved was really good as we were able to get a feel of both being on camera and also just being involved in terms of creativity and getting our opinions and ideas across. The last hour of the shoot day was however very fun as we all knew it was drawing to a close shortly and we wanted to get the best out of the day. Both our performers were very relaxed by this time and were really able to go for it to finish off the day.

About half past five we finished, our time frame was up and we had completed our shoot day. We then had to clear out the studio, to allow the following group to set up.

As a whole, I felt our shoot day went extremely well. There was a very relaxed atmosphere throughout the day and it allowed everyone to feel comfortable and for us to really get all the shots we wanted. However, obviously there were some moments which were fairly tedious, either our group were having a disagreement in the shot types or the performers were lacking energy and we were just pushing on at them to really deliver. But all in all, I defiantly believe we have a wide variety of footage, and hopefully we can now edit the footage successfully in order for our pop promo to be of a high standard that we wish to achieve.

PREPING FOR THE SHOOT INCL. RUNNING ORDER

Preparation for the shoot:

Props:

• Casio White Keyboard
• Bass Guitar
• Amp
• Logs - tree stumps
• Leaves - enough to cover studio floor
• Roses
• Front of wooden rowing boat
• 2 bikes
• Wooden waves
• Fabric - blues and whites to make waves
• Pasasol
• Gold refelectors
• Face paints

Location - Studio

• Set 1 - Performance element. We want leaves to cover the studio floor and logs diagonally across. We want a naturalistic setting.
• Set 2 - Bikes. Again we want to keep the leaves covering studio floor with 2 bikes on a platform infront of a blue screen.
• Set 3 - Boat. We want to create this fake but real setting, using fake waves and a boat to make it look as if out on a sunny day. The waves being the width of the studio and the boat slightly bobbing up and down.

Here are a few logs of our promo preparation I have kept over a period of time:

Running order for the day:

9:00-10:00

Make -up and costume for Marlene and William

10:00 -11:30

SHOOT Performance concept both Marlene and William

11:30 -12:3

SHOOT Performance concepts Marlene

SET CHANGE AT LUNCH

1:15- 3:15

SHOOT Bike concept both Marlene and William

BREAK : SET CHANGE

4:00- 5:30

SHOOT Boat concept both Marlene and William

5:30- 6:00

DE RIG STUDIO SET

COMPLETE GET-OUT

We have had to take into consideration how long its going to take to shoot our story boards plus leave a little time on the end of each to experiment a little. We had also taken in to account how long each set change is going to be. One will definitely take us 45 minutes as we have to clear the leaves away and change the bike set for the boat set which will require a team of six to do. Seeing as there are only three of use we have hired a few other people to help with the set changes, the moving of the waves, and the lighting changes.
We also had to take into account the time table of both our performers and work out a system that would work around them.



I have now made a list of all the props that need to buy before the day of our shoot for example the roses. At the moment we are debating whether to buy the roses and then hang them so that they dry out or to buy them at a later date when they are read and softer. We are thinking that although the dried out color of the roses would give a more vintage and worn look we feel that a deeper and more lushes red would bring out the reds in the backdrop. So we have settled on buying the roses the night before the shoot and having a budget of £80.00 We have also decided it best to buy them from Tesco’s as they are £5.00 for 10 small roses and £8.00 for five medium size roses.


Now we have arranged all the set design elements for two concepts we have moved on to colleting the leaves and instruments for out performance layout. We have decided to start collecting now as we want to keep the leaves crisp and seeing as there are to be heavy showers up until our shoot date if we leave it any longer we may not have enough time to collect the amount of leaves we need and if we do they will most likely be wet. We feel that it is better to have to many leaves than to have to little as so we have colleted 15 black bag full that we are cretin will be more than enough.

We originally decided that we wanted a white or cream keyboard but we have since had trouble finding one the we can afford and so we have settled on using my old retro keyboard and to match my black acoustic guitar. I also felt to tie everything to get the leaves and the instruments my leather amplifier would be quit I nice tough and would add to our vintage, retro sort of style of the video.


Today we went onto the internet to hire bike stands for our shoot as we need to give the appearance that Marlene and William are riding bikes yet we are filming in a studio with a blue screen and so moving bike will not be doable. As a group we searched the Internet to find a compromise that would allow us to capture this effect and we did. We have now set a date for our shoot and have been able to inform the bike hirers when we will need the two stands and for how long.



As a group we now have a master folder in which we kept a log of all our lighting plans, set plans, costumes changes and prop lists in order to make our preparation for our shoot day as accurate as possible and as easy and quit as possible.

One set in particular requires a lot of time and careful consideration. This concept is the boat scene and the reason why it has take so much time is because we have had to create a boat and waves. We had to build these ourselves as we don’t have the money to go out and buy the kind of boat we want and we have not bean able to rent. In building the boat we began by building a simple frame out of wood and then to create the base instead of using wood as it was more complex we used modrock and then painted the boat a dark brown. In theriou this was not ideal and we wanted a real boat but we decided as we had the materials already that we should most probably try and see if we could create something that would work. Lucky we have and we are all very please with the outcome. Having achieved this we since felt very confident that our fake wooden wave will also be successful and after another weeks work we have now finished sawing out chipboard waves have began to paint them a variant of blues. Up against the boat they look great and we know that when we get the material for the backdrop everything will hopefully tie in nicely and will give the strange naturalistic and artistic style we are looking to achieve.

STORYBOARDING

Today, we began the process of getting our ideas down onto paper to help us with our shoot day as it will give us more of an idea on the day as to exactly what we wish to shoot. Since this is our first lesson, we each sat down alone and just started drawing out the different shots we felt we wanted, this was just to help get us into the right frame of mind and put us onto the right track. This way by doing this individually we could do whatever we wanted, as this was just our initial ideas. We each set ourselves the target to complete between ten and fifteen shots each so that next lesson we could begin with coming back and discussing our own ideas, and that way it will trigger and generate more innovative ideas and be more progressive next lesson.


We set off straight away today with a discussion of all our own ideas, as this helped with letting the whole group have a general direction as to where we all wanted to go. As one of our members of our group was away we split up again – each choosing one of the three different sections to our pop promo. I concentrated on the middle section, which was ‘the bikes’. In this, I just drew out a number of different shot types, ranging from mid to close ups of both the male and female singer. Also I drew close up shots, of different things to make the shots varied, e.g. a close up of the handle of the bicycle. Again, we set ourselves a goal of completing a certain amount of different shots; we each did between fifteen and twenty so we then had a good amount of shots to work with for our shoot day.


In the lesson today, we just began to make the finishing touches to our storyboards, going very them with a fine-liner and adding some colour to help give more of an idea as to what we want the shots to actually look like. Then we began to organise them into an order, the order in which at the moment we want our pop promo to look like. As this way we can immediately begin filming our storyboard in the correct order in tomorrow’s lesson.


Today, we filmed our storyboard to turn it into an animatic to transfer it onto a timeline in Final cut pro–this will show us a rough cut of. This will then be really useful when it comes to editing our final piece as it will help with getting the right shots in the right place as well as for the right amount of time. Although, it is likely many of the shots will change on the shoot day. Jay and I set up the camera JVC 1500E, we pinned each shot up and filmed each one for approximately 20 seconds.

Now we had our storyboards filmed, we began editing it. We have spent about two lessons on it, today and yesterday and we made a rough cut of the order and the shot lengths. As this, we felt would give us a clear vision to work with when it came to filming our finalised video. We used Final Cut Pro to edit our storyboard – we put all the clips down onto the timeline and then broke it up and made sure we put the right clip to the right piece of music. We used our timeline, which we had previously made to help us with this as we were then aware of when the three different sections were. As this was only a rough cut we did not do this too accurately as we were aware that after our filming day our shots were going to be very different so it was just an initial outline as to what we wanted our pop promo to look like.

TEXTILE COLLAGES FOR BACKDROP BLUESCREEN

Here are the three collages I created for our backdrop, which we will photograph, scan into photoshop and then transfer into After Effects in Final Cut Pro once we reach the post-production phase. I talked a little about what inspierd me with my group concerning our concept ideas. I have been hugly inflenced by Robert Rauschenberg.

Here are a few images of his work:







And here are photographs of my pieces:

LIGHTING PLANS

Post 14:
Here are our lighting and set plans for our shoot.
We have decided to shoot all of our video in a studio seeing as it is the most effective way to capture our concept of creating this more artistic un-naturalistic depiction of nature. Shooting in a studio will also allow us artificial lighting adding to the un-naturalistic bright atmosphere. Yet most importantly it allows use to use the blue screen which is vital to for two of our layouts performance and our bike concept.

COSTUME IDEAS

Post 13:
Prop and costume preparation:


Here are our initial costume ideas for Marlene and William.
When we tried these costumes on in preparation for our shoot we realized that we need to make them appear a little more relaxed and not obviously matching. However we wanted them to still complement each other and so we chose to really simplify by making her ware a lose festival logo white t-shirt and for William a plane white t-shirt. Them both wearing gray jeans did not work so we changed Marlene into black worn jeans. We then decided to make them both wear worn leather short boots. Altogether this worked really effectively they complimented each other in a relaxed and casual way.

THE SET

Today, we begun devising the set. We had all discussed exactly what we had to create it just was now getting on with it.

We had to make the waves, as the rest of the set were things we were able to bring in or buy. We bought some large pieces of chipboard, and spent the afternoon, with the help of some of our friends, cutting out the shape of the waves with an electric saw. With paints used from the schools art department we got on with painting them. The waves were quite large, they were around ten metres in length and about one metre high, and we made three of them, as they had to fit the studio. We wanted the set look theatrical, but also have an artistic creative spin on it to reinforce the bands creative flare. Between about six of us in all, we painted all three of the waves and got them looking exactly how we liked.

Also, we had to re-paint the platforms for the bicycles. Luckily, our school had things of the sort that we were able to adapt and use for our music video. So, we ended up finishing off the day by re-painting the existing platforms and getting them prepared for our shoot day.

VISUAL CONCEPT

Post 5: Concept section

As a group we have been looking at different ways we could depict our over all concept which is to present their own personal background of art and the friendship they have formed over the years. The performance concept was one I was particularly keen to develop as I had had many idea as to the ways in which we could create an effective backdrop that would depict their artistic roots. I thought what better way to present a organic band that to set their concepts around nature. Nature in all music videos we had looked at and analysed seem to create a free, lively and joyful atmosphere also representing how they are very much ordinary people who enjoy mostly doing ordinary day to day things. This idea of presenting the norm is something most organic bands try to do as apposed to synthetic artists who seem to strive for an untouchable look. We want our audience to relate to the Falkus and we felt that using two concept idea such as riding a bike and going out in a boat were all concepts the youth could relate to reflecting summer and autumn antics. We though of other idea similar to these such as scooters and cars but then we decided to keep it environmentally friendly as well as presenting how one can have fun for free.

With all of this in mind we still wanted to add another level to the concept that would further identify their unique star image as being rather tropical and different as they are Two young Swedes who with great ambition and originality and a genuine approach to everything have made it in the UK. We then started at looking at ways we could present this we looked to other music videos for inspiration.



For example Florence and the Machines for their organic and yet artistic concept. However we felt that this was a little to floatie and elegant and fairytale like for our consept never the less it was the use of nature that we felt was so effective with in the performance sections and decided that set both Marilena and William with in a naturalistic setting such as leaves would be highly effective and would fit our objective.
Then as I looked at her album cover I began to get the idea for our backdrop.



The leaves in this image I feel work particularly well and the cut outs of the animals add such a unique levels to her concept and more importantly to her surreal fairytale like start image. Yet what I liked most about this was the colour and the sort of synthetic playful tone. I then made a sample for the group to see of a collage I made of multiple materials that I had collected and had found that I tightly stitched together using a sowing mashie. I came up with this idea as I have been focusing on presenting my ancestors historical memorabilia with in a collage. Yet I decided to use music notes, lyrics and photographs all of which were significant to the Falkus and their star image. The colours I included we more earthly seeing as we had settled on using autumn leaves for the ground never the less I used suttle and warm colours to elevate the young, free and joyful tone to our concept.

We then felt that we would have to sustain the almost unreal element of the backdrop into our consept idea so we discussed using the blue screen we all concepts and with our bike section we could piece together images of a lane and which the boat we could use synthetic cut out waves and a boat to create a river. Leaning everything towards a more synthetic and non-naturalistic concept we would add that individual layer to their star image and different in a quirky way is of course attractive to an audience.

We had also thought about going in the complete opposite way and looked at cartoons, like the set of the brit awards in 2009 where everything was synthetic outdoors.




It had a really happy, exciting and young feel to the set and I felt the design elements were very effective and suitable theme for the Brits whose viewers are mostly 15-25. Yet we all agreed that there was something a little too bright and potentially childish about presenting our concept in this highly summery un-naturalistic way. So we decided that instead of presenting a vibrant animated plastic feel we would present a lively, playful yet and more artistic style. Also to prevent it from looking to cartoon like we decided use autumn colours instead of summer colours.