WEEK 13

Presentation Feedback

Main Task

(music video; film trailer; local newspaper; short film; tv news)  My music video had started to take form. I struggled in the beginning because I was new to using Adobe pro premiere 1.5 but as I went along I started to use it with no problems. Some of my clips in my time line were too long and I needed to cut it down in order fit my narrative into 3 minutes. I showed my peers what I had done so far and they found it 'funny' 'hilarious yet sad because the main character doesn't get his food or the girl'. Below are some of their comments: Lisa : I think that it is really funny and not just because I am in it. The part where the main male character walks into the shopping mall and I spot him is good. I found the point of view shots very good because the audience is able to see each characters emotions. I (who plays the girls who he is trying to run away from) am very excited and you can see that in my face. Whereas Chuks is not feeling the same way which is also apparent. When it in chuks's point of view the camera is it at a low angle which shows that he is looking down because I am short. In between our conversation there is a shot of Cinderella walking off then it switches to Chuks looking past me at her, this is good because it keeps the story going but when I walk off after him that scene is a bit too long so you need to cut it down.

Presentation

(Clarity & Control, Key points, Analysis (of creative process), Visual Appeal, Overall Impact)  My presentation is developing more. My creative ideas were well presented. My presentation is very colourful and very attractive. The pictures in it shows some of the comic side to the video's. My ideas from my previous presentation has started to come alive. The audience can now see how my ideas in my head had come out to form my music video. The snap shot of the boys in Mc Donalds made the audience laugh because they could see the facial expressions of the boys in Mc Donalds and they could relate to it.

Blog/Evaluation

(Target Audience, Decision-Making, Semiotic Analysis, Multimedia, Engagement)  I  have put pictures of what my editing looks like. I like the way it looks because I can now see how much I am progressing. By using a range of multimedias my blog looks interesting and more attractive. I have put in a full account of how I started to edit my main task and I have also placed in pictures for people to see. I have also put in a tutorial because I thought that it would help everyone to have a clear idea of how I started to construct my music video. The target audience's feedback from week two had been brought to life. This is evident in the pictures that I took, the music video is comical and a love story.

WEEK 11

In this week I had moved onto editing the end of my music video. This part was filmed on escalator's so it was quite easy to put things together. I decided to use the escalator scene when the song says..(You and I)
Like when galaxies collide babe (you and I)
(you and I) and our bodys come alive girl (you and I)
I see planets in your eyes babe(you and I)
Filled with clear blue skys (you and I)

This part of the song goes along nicely with the escalator scene because the tempo of the song speeds up as he is running up the escalator. It shoes just how tense things are at this point. The protagonists pushes two young ladies in this scene (the one on the phone and the one of the escalator) once again creating a sense of comedy within the music video.

Cinderella is on the escalator before the main character gets on it so that the audience know why he is running. When Cinderella gets to the lift i use cut scene from her and the protagonist so that we can see how close he is to getting her and how eager he is. It also allows the audience to get even more involved. This was the case wehn I asked a teacher to watch my music video. He told me that at this point he started to cheer the protagonist on and was eager to see whether or not he finally gets her.

As Cinderella gets into the lift, the protagonist is still running and as he gets to her the door closes on her. These shots were not tight enough so I had to speed up the duration of this clip. I did this by clicking the right button on my mouse and clicking onto 'speed/duration' I then changed the speed from 100.00 to 130.00. This made the closing of the lift doors more realistic.

Once he gets into the lift I noticed that, that part was too fast so I had to slow down the speed of this scene. I did this in the same way as I did when i sped up the pace before but just lowered the speed duration this time I lowered it from 100.00 to 80.00. This went well with the slow tempo at the end of the track because it showed how all of the events that had occured had come to an end.

The lowered speed duration was also used when he slid his phone down after reading the text message and the lift closed. This allowed my shots to be tighter beacause everything went well together. I found that as soon as the doors closed the music was coming to an end. I made sure that I did a close up of the phone and the text message so that the audience could see what it said. I also used a medium shot when the lift was about to close so that the audience could see him for one last time.

 

WEEK 10

During this week I managed to complete the first 2 minutes of my music video. Firstly I edited the second obstacle where we find the protagonist bumping into an old friend. I decided to use pointo of view shots and mid shots for this part because it allowed the audience to see the emotions of the characters. The female actress was very happy and excited to see the male character but he was not even interested and was too busy looking for Cinderella who was walking in the distance.

I asked a peer for their opinion when I showed this part to them and they laughed all the way through it. They said that it was very funny because you could see the characters emotionas and relate to them. It made the audience feel more involved because it was as if the characters were talking to them. This was my intention because I wanted my music video to be comical and not serious like normal r'n'b videos. These point of view shots reminds me of a song I was looking at a few weeks ago, which was Kanye West's 'All falls down' in this video most of it is filmed through his eyes and just like my protagonist he too is on a quest battling against time to get his girlfriend on a plane. Just like my protagonist, Kanye faces many obstacles too.

                                    

I ended it with a mid shot so that the audience could see the protagonist run off leaving the female character looking confused. My peer said that this part also made her laugh because it showed Cinderella is a very powerful woman if shes making a boy chase after her. Not knowing that the real reason that the protagonist was chasing her just to get a free meal.

After this I moved onto editing the third obsatcle, where we find the protagonist getting into trouble when he pushes a girl as she is walking with her boyfriend. I used asn birds eye view shot this time so that the audience could have more access to what was going on. Before this Cinderella walks past, linking back to the mise-en-scene her red dress symbolises the upcoming danger. The point of view shots allows the audience to see how angry the boy is when his girlfriend gets pushed. I wanted the comic side of my music video to be seen again.

I also used a two shot when the boy was arguing with the protagonist with his girlfriend.

WEEK 9

These two weeks were for post-production: introduction to video-editing or re-drafting layouts. I continued to use Adobe Premiere Pro 1.5 to edit my product. I had learnt how to do over lay edits although I did not use it. I also downloaded 'Sexy Cinderella' by Lynden David Hall and put it in my time line underneath my clips. By putting the music in I was able to arrange my clips in a way that there was still ambient sounds underneath the music. I am still editing footage that I had saved as 'Cinderella 1', I did this by double clicking on it in my project folder so that it came up on the source monitor and trimming it before I inserted it into my time line. I played the footage and used the inpoint and out point tool to trim the part that I wanted to keep and then I dragged it into my time line. Above is a picture of one of the shots I did out side of Mc Donalds just so that my target audience could see where the characters were.
Here is what my timeline looked like as I started to put my clips from 'Cinderella 1' into it. By using the imput and output tools I was able to get bit and pieces from 'Cinderella 1' and play around with them until I was satisfied. I then started to edit the first obsatcle that gets into the protagonists way. I found this very difficult because my hands were very shakey and the characters and the people I used as props (random people doing their shopping) were walking too fast. I was only able to get a few shots that looked good enough to be trimmed and put into my timeline. I used a mid shot of the main male character telling the NHS man that he doesn't want to sign up. I then moved on to edit the part before that which is when the main male character walks into Mc Donalds to meet his friends.

My time line had started to develop allowing me to see what my music video looked like sor far. When I asked for feedback from a peer he said that the beginning of the video looked good so far but I just need to use tighter shots and maybe add in some special effects. I think that the special effects will be used nearer to the end of the production stage.

WEEK 8

This week I finally finished shooting my music video, however there was a slight problem. My male character forgot to wear the right clothing, instead of wearing the clothes he started off with he wore a different jacket, t shirt and he was not wearing a scarf or gloves. I started to panic because I realised that there would be a continuity problem in my music video. I then came up with the idea of creating a scene in the middle of my music video where the protagonists friends called him to ask about his progress and the protagonist r it isn't going to well and that he has to change his clothing because sone spilt something on his top etc. This would then solve the continuity problem and the audience would not think that my video doesn't make sense.
I also filmed my 'Cinderella' character, I placed her in a red dress, heels and made sure she had long hair in. In links to the idea of the 'male gaze' and how men are drawn and how men are drawn into a lustful frenzy because a women's appearance. Cinderella plays a minor role but she is very significant to the story and music video. Filming her was easy because all she really had to do was walk around the shopping centre and finally enter the elevator where we see the protagonist running up an escalator to get to her. Cinderella then goes into the elevator and closes on the protagonist.
This week I started editting in the production room, here I uploaded all of my tapes onto the computer. I forgot to strip my tapes before recording so this took a while. The programme I am using to create my producting by editing is Adobe Pro Premiere 1.5. This is my first time using it so it took me a while to figure out how to cut shots from the original tape and edit them.

The format of the programme looked like this:

Adobe Premiere is a video design and creation software suite used to create web videos, DVD movies, and more. Use this package to create animations, add or edit audio, use special effects, and more.
I watched a tutorial on the interenet by going on to http://tv.adobe.com/show/learn-premiere-pro-cs4/ although I'm not using Adobe Premiere pro CS4 this tutorial was very helpful because the layout of software was still the same.
http://tv.adobe.com/watch/learn-premiere-pro-cs4/getting-started-03-capturing-video-from-tape/from thisI learnt how to capture board shots and save them. By recording and saving my shots I was able to gain a number of recordings that I could use for editting.
I then watched another tutorial which taught me how to up clips onto a timeline which would fit all of my clips together to create my final product. I started off editing footage that I had saved as 'Cinderella 1', I did this by double clicking on it in my project folder so that it came up on the source monitor and trimming it before I inserted it into my time line. I played the footage and used the inpoint and out point tool to trim the part that I wanted to keep and then I dragged it into my time line. My opening scene was now put together, here you see the two boys sitting in the shop window insulting girls.
http://tv.adobe.com/watch/learn-premiere-pro-cs4/getting-started-06-editing-your-video/

This is what Adobe premiere pro 1.5 looked like when I was trying to cut clips to put in my timeline.

Week 7

Presentation Feedback

Main Task

(music video; film trailer; local newspaper; short film; tv news)  My camera skills had improved over the weeks because my handheld camera shots were not shaky like before. The fact that I had used various shots whilst filming was an excellent ideas as it would give me a chance to play with different shots. By picking local scenery it allowed the audience to identify where the music video was shot and also feel like they could relate to the video because they had been there before. I need to make sure that Cinderella is presented very early in the music video so that the audience can identify her as soon as possible so that the story flows instantly. The fact that I am trying to make a post modern music video is good because it will build up my knowledge for when I am writing for section B in the exam. It also shows that I am using different media concepts to create my main task.

Presentation

(Clarity & Control, Key points, Analysis (of creative process), Visual Appeal, Overall Impact)  My presentation is coming along nicely. My research and thoughts are recorded and was well explained to the audience. The audience thought that I was confident in my speech and I was able to explain my story line very clearly. They were excited to hear that I was going to create a music video that mocked the traditional Cinderella story by reversing the roles of the Prince and the Cinderella. My classmate told me that I should add more pictures in the next slides and change the back ground of the presentation because it was too dark.

Blog/Evaluation

(Target Audience, Decision-Making, Semiotic Analysis, Multimedia, Engagement) My blog is started to from nicely. There is a wider range of multimedia's since my last evaluation. I had also learnt how to attach the actual YouTube link to my blog so that viewers can see the videos that I post instantly. I am presenting my ideas and evaluating more than I was in the previous weeks. My decisions and reason for adding or changing things to do with my main task are constantly being recorded. My ideas and my shooting have been shown and I think that my narrative will be appealing to the target audience because I have created a narrative that would suit them by basing it on the feedback that I got by handing out questionnaires in week 2.

Week 6

This week I went back to Croydon to shoot the beginning scene of my music video where we find to boys sitting in Mc Donalds, insulting girls that are passing by through the window. This scene took me an hour to film because I wanted to make sure that I had used a range of shots so that I could play around with them when I begin to edit.

However instead of using the Canon video camera and tripod I used a Canon DC19 camcorder instead because I had watched ThomasVinterberg's 'Festen' (1998). Vinterberg created a 'Dogme 95 manifesto' which were rules to create filmmaking based on the traditional values of story, acting and theme, and excluding the use of elaborate special effects or technology. 'Festen' was filmed entirely with a hand held camera it had no special effects and it looked very cheap and low budgeted. But despite all of that the movie was a success and I decided that I wanted to follow parts of Vinterberg's manifesto and use a hand held camera to film my whole video.

After I had filmed the two boys in Mc Donalds, I filmed the protagonist walking into Mc Donalds to meet his friends. Once again I used a range of shots such as mid shots, panning from left to right and so on. This was done so that I had a range of shots to fiddle with when I had finished filming nd started to edit. At first I found it very difficult to use that camcorder because my hands were very shakey but after a while I had got used to it.

For props I made sure that the boys were dressed very casual, in hoodies and jeans so that the target audience could relate to the music video. I felt that they would be attracted to the characters because they were dressed how the audience would dress. In terms of the Mise-en-scene I wanted the props to symbolise the characters emotions or relate to the plot of the music video. I decided to put Cinderella in a Red dress to symbolise lust, power, danger etc. This is beacause the main male character is lusting over her and I wanted it to be known to the audience. The boy that sists on the left hand side is wearing a green hoody which represent envy. The main male character is envious of his friends food. You can say that my music has the elemnts of the seven deadly sins for example gluttony is linked to the main characters urge for food. This week I filmed all of the obstacles, the second obstacle involved the protagonist bumping into an old friend who wanted to catch up but he sees 'cinderella' walking off into the distance and quickly tells her that he has to go. The chase then proceeds but once again his quest is interupted when he bumps into a boy and his girlfriend. They get into a little dispute and the boy and his girlfriend walk off. Sadly my battery died so I could not carry on after this and so I have to finish next week.