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.