Main Task: Filming log.

Today we re-filmed our scenes shot in the wood location and I feel like this went very well.

The lighting today was a lot better than it had been previously as there was a lot more sun which meant the camera could pick up on more intricate details. As we are going to be darkening all the shots to make it seem scarier anyway, it does not really matter about the actual sunlight however having it just means that when we do darken the shots it wont be grainy and unfocused.

The problem that this presents is that it may be difficult to match the wood scenes we have just filmed with the old ones, as some may be of a different quality, and this may ruin the continuity of the shots, which is really something we need to avoid.

To combat this we could put all of the wood scenes in black and white, or sepia. As well as being practical this could also enhance our video as both black and white and sepia connotes a different time period, or something a bit surreal and this would work with our apocalypse theme.

Ancillary Task: Digipak-Band Photo

One of our ideas for our Digipak includes a picture of the band. We have decided that we don't want to use a picture of the band for the front cover of the album as we feel this does not really fit in with the genre of music. Although some metal bands do use a photo of themselves it is a more common marketing technique for popular artists as these artists are more generally image focused than metal/heavy rock bands. We instead think we may use a photo of the band for the inside cover as this is quite common for our genre as it still markets them as a band but suggests they are less concious of their image.

To make sure that our photo fits in with the conventions of our genre we have looked at a variety of photos from other bands in the same genre although all slightly different sub-genres.

Lamb of God- Heavy Metal/ New-wave metal.

Lamb of God are a semi-recent band, starting in the 1990s and are mostly known as heavy metal or New wave heavy metal due to their influences from punk rock and hardcore. Known by their 'European-style riffing and throaty vocals.' and are also part of the movement said to be 'bringing heavy metal back into the mainstream.' Other bands like them are Slipknot, Pantera and Machine Head.
They are a good band for us to look at as they have a huge fan base and are a highly thought of heavy metal band, meaning their marketing and branding must be very good at capturing an audience and interesting the target market. They are a similar band to Ravenface and this deconstruction of one of their photos will help when we set up our own shoot.

AC/DC- Hard rock/ classic rock/ heavy metal.

AC/DC are a hard band to put into a genre and have been called many different things but the band describe themselves as 'simply rock and roll.' They are an older band, starting out in the early 1970's but they are still one of the most relevant 'alternative' bands around. Famous for their power chord songs and catchy choruses as well as Angus Young's guitar solos they are one of the highest grossing bands ever. Other bands like them are Metallica, Iron Maiden and Led Zepplin.
As they are one of the oldest metal band to still be going strong today they are a good band to look at as they have been the inspiration for many modern bands and we could perhaps hint to this in our marketing and branding.

Bring me the Horizon- Metalcore/screamo

BMTH are a recent band, formed in 2004. This band are known by their image, which is quite 'emo' and their vocalist, Oli Sykes is considered a 'poster boy for heavy metal.' What is notable about them is that they mix having an attractive image and sex appeal, much like many boy bands and pop artists, with very heavy music. This is interesting as often in heavy metal the band do not focus as much on their image, like their clothes and hair whereas Sykes is known for his heavily fringed hairstyle and own clothing brand.
This makes them a very interesting band for us to look at as they have achieved mainstream popularity by mixing up their image and they have been branded very well indeed. It also makes sense to look at them as they are very recent for today's market. Other bands like them are Aiden, The Devil Wears Parda and As I lay dying.

Black Veil Brides-Rock/PostHardcore/Emo

Black Veil Brides are another recent band, formed in 2006, and they too have an interesting image. Whilst their music is quite often associated with emo and screamo they have an image highly influenced by the glam rock movement, which is quite uncommon in recent times. However they have proved to be very popular even though their image does not quite correspond with their music, a lot like BMTH.  They are famous for their anti-bullying lyrics and for promoting awareness for self harm and depression in teens, which could be why they are so often referred to as 'emo.' Other bands like them are Escape the Fate, Bless the Fall and Falling in Reverse.
They are a good band to look at as their image is unconventional and it will be good for us to see what could work with RavenFace as well, such as the theatrical use of make up.

Main Task: Story Narrative

We have decided to expand on our story narrative within our music video as at the moment it is quite ambiguous as the only clues the audience get is that the band are running away from something through a wood. We have developed our narrative by using old objects such as, a photo in a photo frame that's been smashed, an old pocket watch and a teddy bear, and having the band run past these objects as they lay in the wood.

This gives it a much more recognisable feel of an apocalypse as it is more obvious that something has happened which lead to all these items being scattered around a wood. I also feel that it gives it a much more creepy feel, especially the teddy bear as this normally has connotations of childhood and innocence but as it is dirty and left abandoned in a wood it becomes quite scary.

I think using these objects will give our music video another level and will make it more interesting for the audience as they will now be asking questions about these objects and it will make them more engaged in the video and they are therefore less likely to switch the video off.

Ancillary Task-Digipak: Planning.

As we can't film until the 29th in lessons we have decided to concentrate on our ancillary tasks and have chosen to focus on the digipak first. We have discussed what sort of themes should be explored in our digipak as this will effect what images we use for it. We also looked at some other digipaks online to see what they look like. After thinking of images we thought of content, a lot of digipaks include things like, lyrics from all the songs on the albums, extra photos, thanks from the band, description of the band and things along those lines. We are still not one hundred percent certain on how many of these things, if any at all, we should include but have done some research into it.

Our ideas

Nine Inch Nails Digipak

Main task: Re-filming.

We now have conformation of when we are next filming.

Thursday 29th November- Performance shots.

Saturday 1st December- wood shots.

We are hoping this will be the last time we have to shoot as we have prepared ourselves well so that we know exactly what we have to shoot. 

We also have remembered that we need to make sure the actors wear the same clothes that they did before to make sure there are no continuity errors and so we watched all our footage in lesson and wrote down what they were all wearing to avoid this happening. 

Main Task: Editing

We have now edited a lot of our footage to our song and it has started to look quite good, however it has become apparent that we still need to film more footage as we have some gaps in our timeline where we need new footage. As well as new footage we also need to re-film some shots as although we like the concept of them, the actual shot is slightly out of focus or just isn't quite right. So to combat this we watched our video all the way through last lesson and made a shot list of all the things we need top film. We also contacted our actors to find out when the can film next and we should have our filming schedule soon.

New Shot List
Re-film establishing shot of wood
Film solitary note being played by guitar at start
Re-film vocalist jumping over camera-get the jump in middle of shot
Replace birds eye view shot of band with a better angle x2-creates more enigma
Re-film drum shots- make sure we can sync visuals to audio
Replace band helping guitarist up when he falls- doesn't fit in with genre
Re-film band siking up- make acting believable
Re-film last slow-motion shot of band running away
Film more close ups and mid shots of instruments
Film vocalist singing into camera-close ups
Film guitar battle
Film more close ups in the wood.

Main Task: Editing.

We have now uploaded all footage from both shoots, the car park and wood scenes, and started editing it. Throughout the editing process we have been using a variety of different effects on Final Cut Pro, such as:

• Colour correcter- We have been using the three wheel colour correcter to edit the lighting in our shots, both wood and car park. We are using this effect to dim the shots as they look a bit bright and this is making them appear too happy, which does not fit with the dark and brooding atmosphere we wanted to create. So far we have edited the highlights down to 214, the blacks to 88 and whites down to -12 and this has made them look a lot more gloomy which fits the stereotypical atmosphere in our genre music videos.

• Strobes and Blink- We have decided that we don't want to use the strobe effect that we learnt earlier throughout all of the performance shots as this can get a bit off putting and would draw attention away from our shots and just make people focus on the flashing. For this reason we have only started applying it to certain shots within the breakdown of the song. As well as strobes we have used Blink on its own, which means the shot flashes black and this is also quite effective. The only thing hard about using these effects is changing the speed so that it goes right with the tempo.

• Motion, Scale- We have also used scale to zoom in on our shots on Final Cut Pro and this means that we can cut into certain parts of the shot quickly, without having to film the close-ups separately, which could lead to some continuity errors. Whilst this is good, for extreme close ups we will have to film these separately as the quality of the shots goes down the more we zoom in and we don't want any shots to look unfocused and grainy as this makes them appear more ammature. 

• Speed- We have also been changing some shots to half-speed, such as the opening shot of water dripping. This is because it makes the shot a lot more effective as it makes it seem more dramatic and it means the ripples of the water are easier to see and this corresponds with the pace of the beginning of the song, as it is a lot slower at the start. 

Main Task:Filming Log

Yesterday we went out to our location, a car park, to film the performance aspect of our music video. We had to bring all the instruments with us, including a drum kit, two guitars, and a microphone, as well as amps.
When we first got there the car park was quite busy so we decided to start setting up outside and see how well we could film there, however soon it got dark and people started leaving the car park so we could film in there like we originally planned. Whilst we got some good footage outside that we may be able to use, the majority will be from inside the car park.

I think that the filming went very well although we will probably need to re-film another day so that we get the best possible shots we can, this is because it started getting quite late and it was hard to keep the energy necessary for performance shots up as it got later and people got tired. However we got lots of good footage that we can start editing tomorrow.

Research&Planning: Final Storyboard

This is our finished storyboard, complete with timings, pictures and annotations.

Research&Planning: Current Animatic.

Recently I have been experimenting with a new software which makes its easier to create animatics as it helps with drawing and stop motion.

As we haven't finished our storyboard quite yet I only have 40seconds of animatic at the moment but I hope to make one for the whole song.

Research&Planning: Post-Production experimentation.

In class today we decided to experiment with the different effects that final cut pro let us add to our footage. We wanted to find out how to make the scene appear darker, like it was filmed later in the day or on a more overcast day as the test footage that we have at the moment was filmed on quite a sunny day. To do this we played around with the effects until we found how to change the saturation and this is what we used to change the lighting of a shot.

After doing this successfully we thought we should try to see if we edit on a strobe lighting effect on in post-production as at the moment we only own a few small strobe lights and we thought these might look a little weak for the shots we want to achieve. Also we have heard that when filming with strobe lights the after effect cannot look great due to the camera not being able to pick up details with the constantly changing lights.  So with this in mind we found a really good YouTube tutorial which explained how this could be done, we then attempted it ourselves.

At first it was quite tricky as we weren’t sure what all of the different colour levels did and how far to adjust them to create the best look for our footage however after a lot of playing around with the controls I feel we managed to get a really good effect.  

To make a strobe light effect on final cut pro we first chose the footage we wanted, then duplicated it, placing one lot of footage over the other by layering it. Then we altered the top layer by making the white level higher which made the scene brighter, we also changed the saturation and mid tones slightly so that it didn’t go grainy. Then we changed the second layer in the opposite way, making the black more prominent which creates the effect it was filmed in the dark. After this we used the video transition effect Blink which means the video alternates between light and dark, as if it were filmed with strobes. The final thing we did was change the speed of the transition so that it moved quicker so that it looked more effective.

The video tutorial we watched

 

Our attempt at strobes.

Research&Planning: Lyric analysis.

These are the lyrics to our chosen song This is Annihilation by RavenFace and below is my analysis of them.

Research&Planning: Shane Drake.

Shane Drake is a cross-genre music video director who has worked with the likes of hard rock bands, Trivium, Between the Buried and Me and Papa Roach as well as more pop/rock bands such as Panic! At the Disco, Fall Out Boy and Paramore all the way to artists like Dappy, Flo Rider and Gym Class Heroes.  He is known for his artistic and stylised videos, which often have a film-like quality about them, which may come about because he has also co-produced three films.


On himself Drake says “My original intention was to make feature films. Directors such as Martin Scorsese, Stanley Kubrick, Terry Gilliam, Oliver Stone and Milos Forman, as well as newcomers Tim Burton, Quentin Tarantino, P.T. Anderson, and more helped to shape my artistic coming of age. My first significant mentor happened, however, to be a music video director, hence my foray into the world Musical Cinema.”

Although a lot of his music videos are for less heavy bands than RavenFace I still think we can learn a lot from watching his videos as he is known for his high energy and inspiring ideas which are skills that can be transferred to any type of music video.

One of my favourite videos by him is Panic! At the Disco-The Ballad of Mona Lisa

The overall feel of this video is very dynamic and theatrical, which is not that all that common in popular music videos. The mise-en-scene is very interesting and obviously a lot of thought went into it, the general theme being steampunk with devices such as the net gun and costume including tops hats, goggles and waistcoats. Panic! Are a band known for their kooky dress sense and this mis-en-scene ties in beautifully with their image and other videos such as I write Sins Not Tragedies (also directed by Drake won the MTV Video Music Award for Video of the Year).  In my opinion the video suits the song perfectly and is fantastically directed, incorporating performance from the band and a story narrative all whilst being set in this steampunk environment. Throughout the video there are lots of interesting shots and use of the camera such as the extreme close up on Brendon (lead singer) at the end and the enigma created at the start where the shots vary from a tilt down to Brendon, starting at the top of his top hat and an empty, derelict room covered in cobwebs. There is also a lot of camera movement throughout the video and not very many static shots and this is something that maybe I should think about when filming my video, although I would have to be careful not to make it look amature. The editing is also superb with the camera zooming into Brendon's coat and when it comes back it is now his alter ego.

There is a 'the filming of' video for this music video where Spencer and Bendon talk about Drake and this is a really nice way of them describing what kind of director he is.

ResearchPlanning: Audience.

To get some deeper audience research I went on to RavenFace's youtube channel and looked at some peoples profiles who have subscribed/like/comented on RaveFace's music and from this I got some god ideas of what else their audidence likes.

Other bands 'liked' by RavenFace listeners.

Evelensence
Sonic Koco
Aerosmith
Joan Jett
Scoropions
Cradle of Filth
Trivium
Capture the Crown

Other topics watched.

Assisins Creed
Skyrim
Britians got Talent
Derren Brown
Tattoos
ASMR role play
Doctor Who

This could give us some ideas about intertexuality in our music video.

Research&Planning: Pitch!

Here is the link to our media pitch in class.

The focus of the pitch was selling our ideas and concept for our music video to the rest of the class and get feedback on if they think it will be effective.

We gt some good ideas from the class and they highlighted that we must be careful when filming at night as it may be too dark for the camera to pick up, even when using lights an this made us think that maybe wee will film slightly earlier than first planned.

http://prezi.com/illppc_g02wg/pitch/

Research&Planning: Props Research.

 

After coming up with the idea for our music video we realised that certain props would be needed to create the effect that we are going for. We then looked at other videos to see what sort of props they used and if we could recreate this ourselves.

Musical instruments are obviously going to be needed in our video as we want to show the band performing however certain models of instruments are more popular than others.

The 'Flying V' and Explorer guitar shape is common in metal music videos as it looks different to the normal guitar shape and is often used by well known metal bands.



It is also common for bands to have their band name or logo on the bass drum of the drum kit rather than the make who made it so we are looking into creating a new skin for the drum that will have RavenFace on it as this will make the video look more professional.

We will try and find instruments which correspond with these so that our music video looks as professional as possible.

 

 

 

 

 

Research&Planning: Visualisations.

After listening to the selected track and thinking of an initial concept we found a few images which visualised what we were seeing in our heads.

Eyes watching the band in the dark, the idea of voyeurism.
 

Scary woods, typical of this genre.

An abandoned house/building.

This gave us some images to work with and helped us get a clearer notion of what we were trying to create in our music video.

Research&Planning: Music Video deconstruction.

Bullet For My Valentine - Your Betrayal

I think this music video, released in 2010 under JIVE records, is a perfect example of a metal music video as it incorporates a lot of different things into one video.

Throughout the video a red tint has been edited into the footage of the band whilst the footage of a woman cut into the performance shots has a yellow tint, this helps to distinguish and emphasize the difference between the two shots and also helps establish the flames that are present in some shots as red and yellow are the colour of fire.

Extreme close-ups are used in this video, such as on Matt Tucks face when he is singing and on the guitar in instrumental moments of the song. The camera is also constantly moving around the scene and this gives a sense of disorientation as it never really focusing on one thing a long enough, this goes with the fast tempo of the song.

There are a lot of interesting angles used such as at 0:30 a birds eye view is used above the drums to show Michael Thomas playing the beat out, as the drums have a very prominent part in this part of the song this works well. However if we were to reconstruct this idea of using shots like this we would have to edit it very well so that the visuals match up perfectly with the music.

The video is also based around the seven deadly sins, however there isn't that much emphasis on this part of the story but when watching closely the scenes with the woman in have the sins, eg. Pride at the beginning, written behind her. This is quite a good way to use the seven deadly sins as it makes it subtle as some may argue that they are quite overdone.

Throughout the video zoom is used a lot as the camera zooms in on certain parts of the instruments or band members, however with the equipment available to us I do not know if it would be possible to recapture this or if ours may end up looking a lot more amateur, however it is something we can practice with when doing some test shots.

There are also shots of the band head banging as they play which is something we would also like to use in our music video as we think it gives the video an energy and also head banging is something very popular with the sub culture of metal heads who are our target audience. Focus is used a lot in this music video, with the camera losing it or swapping focus from the foreground to the background and this creates the same effect of the disorientation. Whilst Tuck is singing most of the shots are dedicated to him, with him standing in the middle of the screen, or close ups of his face to show him lip syncing the words, whilst when it is an instrumental part the shots are split evenly between the other band members, this is quite common as in most bands the lead singer is the main focus.

As well as the two narratives of the performance and the seven deadly sins woman there are some more slightly random shots that are of a disturbing nature, such as the shots of maggots crawling.

Overall this music video has given me a lot to think about, both on camera technique and creative ideas.

Research&Planning: Voyeurism practical.

After studying the theoretical side of voyeurism we then put our knowledge into practical work where we filmed a series of voyeuristic shots. First we made a quick storyboard based on our shot list from the last lesson.

 

We then took the camera to the common room and tried to film these shots by using tracking shots, tilting and panning. We found that it was a lot harder than we had initially thought and we also ended up filming a lot of different shots which would hadn't planned but some of these worked quite well.

 

This exercise was very interesting and helpful as we realised that due to the genre and nature of our music video we should try to avoid using these shots too much as we don't really want to create an overall theme of voyeurism in our music video. However we would like some POV shots but we would use these to create enigma more than voyeurism.

 

Research&Planning:Voyeurism.

In class we started looking at the use of voyeurism in music videos, how this is achieved and what effect it creates on an audience. We started the discussion by watching a current music video to Heat Wave by Wiley.

We then wrote our initial reactions to the video on the board to collect everyone's thoughts and feelings to it.




We made many interesting points about the music video, especially on representation. For example we realised that there were only white girls in the music video and so race was not being portrayed
in a fair way. We also thought that the representation of women in general was quite demeaning and linked it to Laura Mulvey's male gaze theory.

Then we looked at wikipedia's definition of voyeurism:

Voyeurism is the sexual interest in or practise of spying on people engaged in intimate behaviours, such as undressing, sexual activity, or other actions usually considered to be of a private nature.^[1]

However, in today's society the concept of voyeurism has evolved, especially in popular culture. Non-pornographic reality television programs such as Survivor and The Real World, are prime examples of voyeurism, where viewers (the voyeur) are granted an intimate interaction with a subject group or individual. Although not necessarily "voyeurism" in its original definition, as individuals in these given situations are aware of their audience, the concept behind "reality TV" is to allow unscripted social interaction with limited outside interference or influence. As such, the term still maintains its sexual connotations.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyeurism

We then simplified this and made our own definitions:

Voyeurism is the act of looking in at someone, similar to spying, whilst they are engaging in acts of a private nature, eg. undressing. However in today's society it can also be the idea of having a glimpse into someones life, mostly seen in reality TV shows, eg. Big Brother.

We also briefly looked at a quote:
\
'There is frequently reference to the notion of looking (mirrors, screens within screens, stages etc.) and particularly voyeuristic treatment of the female body'- Andrew Goodwin-Dancing in the Distraction Factory (1992).

Even though this was expressed in 1992 it is still relevant today and it is incredible that the same things are expressed today as they were 10 years ago.

Lastly we thought about how we could recapture some voyeuristic shots our self and came up with a list of some voyeuristic shots we would like to try and capture

• Tilt up the body from the feet
• Panning across the midrift area
• Close-Ups
• Peeking shots
• POV shots.

Research&Planning: Portfolio work.

Whilst researching for my A2 music video I decided to experiment with the technique Stop Frame animation. To do this I used my phone to take a series of photographs which I then put to some jazz music.  This helped my knowledge of other ways to create music videos instead of just filming live motion.

Stop motion animation:

Research&Planning: Continued storyboard.

Over the last couple of lessons we have continued our storyboard:

Research&Planning-Creativity Vs knowledge.

We discussed this question today in class and came up with a lot of interesting points on the subject. Initially a lot of us were on the fence about this, however after discussing it in depth I feel that creativity and knowledge are both needed to make something, such as a music video, and that they both feed into each other. Knowledge can inspire creativity as by learning new things you are thinking about them and thinking of how to put your own spin on them, however it can also be restricting as you may end up copying someone else's work instead of getting creative yourself.

Some people argue that by having knowledge of already existing products, such as music videos in this example, you will create something that fits with all the conventions of the pre-existing products and not strive to make them different, therefore not using all your creativity, however I believe that you can still be creative while sticking to conventions and it is all about making something that may have been done before exciting and engaging again to an audience.

It was also said that the most creative ideas are going to come from someone with no former knowledge of the subject as they are more likely to think of something completely new as their thoughts haven't been tainted with what other people have done. Yet I don't think this is true because even without going into specific research about music videos everyone has seen them, or seen films, or television programs, read books, seen plays, ect. and all of this it what helps you create your own ideas. So no one can pull an idea entirely out of the air, it is always going to be inspired by something they have seen or heard, even if they don't consciously know that is where it is coming from.

Personally I believe that there can be no such thing as 'too much knowledge' and that knowledge will only limit creativity if you let it.

Other people's opinion can be seen on the Yahoo Answers page:
Creativity Vs Knowledge

Research&Planning: Class work-Branding.

In class we were given the task of rebranding the already well known band Bedouin Soundclash and coming up with a concept for one of their songs, we were given some information on the band, such as a press release about them, some photos including one of them live and promo shots, and also their wikipedia page. We also listened to a couple of their songs as well as the one we were coming up with a concept with as this gave us a wider knowledge of their 'sound' and we could make creative decisions based on this.

We started our creative process by brainstorming and mind mapping some ideas.

The first thing that we thought about was the genre of the band and from our own opinions and the package we were given we thought that they were a cross between Indie/mainstream and Reggae, this then led to us thinking of other bands like them as this would give us some context and we thought they sounded a lot like Mumford and Sons, King Charles, Madness and The Specials. We then discussed what type of audience these bands have and we thought it would be quite general so from about 16-30 and both genders though probably mainly male.

The next thing we thought of what initial reaction we got to the band and just generally what the music video could be like and we thought it would be a mixture of performance and narrative with an abstract, psychedelic feel.

We then started to think more deeply about the music video and thought it could be located in a park, pub, near the rail lines, desert, beach or Toronto as they are Canadian.

Lastly we thought about where we would market them, we thought they would play gigs like the Carling festivals (Reading and Leeds) as well as smaller gigs. We decided we would put a picture of the band on the album cover as they are all good looking and so this could increase the chance of sales, it is also a convention of their genre to have a picture of them on the cover.

For the cover of the album we wanted to link it back to them being Canadian as it could be a USP for them and a lot of English bands use the union flag whilst American bands have the stars and stripes so we decided to have the Canadian flag in the background but we coloured it in different colours to give in a weird/reggae vibe.