Personality of our Music Video/Artist

Our Music Video takes on a personality of its own through the shot types, the artist's personality and different elements of Mise En Scene.

- Here we have our artist as a sort of silhouette figure. The natural lighting at our venue allowed us to do this shot. The fact that we cant see her face and costume in this shot; which is at the beginning of  our Music Video builds a bit of tension from the audience's point of view as thy want to badly know what the artist looks like and the costume of the artist, building excitement levels. It also gives the artist a mysterious personality from the start.

- Here's a shot with part of our artist revealed and other parts not. This shot was to primarily showcase the utterances of artist as well as add to the mysterious personality of the artist, putting questions in the viewer's mind as to what the artist may be feeling at the time. In later shots the artists performance will answer these questions, mainly through her actions and body language.

- A shot towards the end of the Video shows our artist with black clothing and a make up mask painted on her face. A mask is used to conceal one's identity, keeping up the theme of the mysterious profile of our artist through out the Music Video. 

   

Green screen; The ups and downs

The green screen is obviously a very good and powerful tool when filming a music video because it allows for us to insert any type of background we want.

Following these steps on Final Cut Pro to remove the green background:

Though in theory it is brilliant, there were a few obstacles we faced when filming our Music Video that we will all learn from in the future.

- In order for shots to come out correctly, it is imperative to film the artist on the green screen only. The problem was when trying to film certain shots, we found it almost impossible to not include parts of the surrounding background. This meant not including planned shots because of a fear of poor Mise En Scene elements in the video.

- It was also hard to position the lighting on the green screen in order to not have bad shadows. We had allot of shots where both the camera and the artist were moving, some of which came out poorly because of the drastic shadows, which wouldn't happen on a plain black background per say.

- It was also quite time consuming to roll the green screen down; before filming and then back up; after filming. Time that could be better used elsewhere.

Production of Music Video: Basetracks

In the making of this music video, the concept of base tracks allowed us to be very efficient in how we exert our filming time and effort. A base track consists of filming the artist from the start of the track to the end of the track as opposed to just filming different sections of the track every time. The advantage of this is when a good variety of base tracks have been captured; in different locations, costumes and actions,  it is then quite simple to edit. We can now just cut bits of each base track out (the cutting tool on Final Cut Pro comes in very handy here), leaving what will be quite a smooth, free flowing video. It is very useful whether your video follows some sort of narrative or if it follows the disjuncture route.

The location is Finsbury Park, where a few of our base tracks were shot.

The green screen in the background is where our other base tracks were shot.

Production of Music Video: Green Screen Tutorial

Editing : The reason behind using 'markers'

On the left is markers which were used on in our editing process for our music video, on the right is an image of markers used for a piece of professional work. 

The markers which we used in final cut are used so our editing would be more precise of video editing and audio editing. Markers are more useful when editing the audio of a music track, so it would begin directly at the downbeat of the song. Setting markers can be difficult and frustrating at first which we experienced for ourself, to put in a marker it needs to be set whilst editing the audio at a the downbeat of a song, which we then had to add a video clip at that specific point so both video and audio would be first precise. 

To set a marker we moved the play-head to the point in our video which we wanted to use, we then pressed the 'M' key which would set a marker for the downbeat of our audio. You can see from the image above that we set a first few markers at the beginning of our song, we had to ensure that we put the markers in at the right point on the timeline to ensure that the audio corresponded correctly with the video clip. Setting to markers wasn't easy but we got the hang of it by the second day of editing which was really good, it made editing run more smoothly. 

Day 2 : Editing

Second day of editing went as planned, we got more base tracks edited and we also checked out the different effects on the green screen shots, so far I think the editing process is running smoothly and to plan, things can only get better from here !

Day 1: Editing

Production of Music Video: How to add effects to green screen shots

Above is a brief outline of how to add an effect on the green screen shots. To add an effect we had to use the 'effect' tool on final cut pro, then go to 'key' and go onto chroma key. A chroma key is used to filter out the plain green back ground on the green screen shots and to replace it with something that corresponds to what your motion image was, whether it being a video game, news-casting. In our case the chroma key was used for our music video, this technique is used in many high end music videos .

We hope by using the chroma key effect we would be able to use another effect  which would be the replacement of the green screen effect.The effect would add a boost to our music video and would entice our chosen target audience and would make them more interested when viewing our music video .

Production of Music Video: Snaps of editing

Words that are associated with editing

Production of music video: Final embedded video

Editing Process

Editing process - Using colour corrector

The above screenshot is the colour corrector which we used whilst editing to make the correct lighting so it would fit in with the other clips of our music video. We decided to use the colour corrector because when we originally filmed that scene we realised that the lighting was too dark and it was not useable. We couldn't correct the lighting manually so we decided to edit the colour by using colour corrector which in the end showed to be a positive result . 

Student feedback from the rough cut

Teachers feedback of rough cut

Above is the feedback from our teacher on our rough cut of the the music video. Away from the camera she also said that we used a variety of shots in our music video which makes it more interesting for our viewers

Final Rough Cut

Blogging Task: Progress review blog

Progress Review Blog on Prezi

Editing: Vintage Effect

 

Another possible editing technique to be used on our video?



This vintage effect is really nice especially when footage is of sunny days out, creating a friendly atmosphere or a love scene. We must take this into consideration becuase we don't exactly have the most upbeat and joyful song but it is a really nice effect to consider

Ideas for Editing

Points of Interest:

• 0:56 - Gloom with Limited Radius
• Making the video black and white to emphasise power and emotion
• 1:19 Earthquake
• 1:40 Standard Cross Dissolve with 50% Opacity
• 2:16 Mirror with Radius
• 2:40-2:45 Green and Orange Overdrive & Blue and Orange Overdrive
• 3:57 Slow Motion with Time Lapse

Quick message regarding the calendar made on photobucket

The previous blog on a calendar which was made by 'Photobucket' showed the images on a small scale, apologies for this as I was not able to upload to calendar on a normal file as it took up too much space on the blog.

Scheduled calendar

Filming Day 2 ( Finsbury Park)

Finsbury park by danielladaiuto on GoAnimate

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Production : Filming Day 1 ( Green Screen)

The first day of filming was done in the green screen which was located in college, in one of the media rooms. We booked to film in the green screen because as a group, we decided to make visual effects in the music video, which could only be done using green screen with help of editing.

The 'chroma key positioning' otherwise known as the 'green screen' is a special effect system which is used to layer images or videos together based on visual colour effects, this is what we are hoping to do when editing our music video. Green screens are mainly used in music videos, Weather forecasts and moves to add an image effect behind the person.

We scheduled to use the green screen in our three hour lessons on Friday as we thought this would be a good slot so we could get a good amount of filming done. We spent about 15-mins doing hair and make-up on the artist which would help portray an image, also the different shades of make-up used would have an effect on the lighting in the music video. Practice shots were also carried out on this day of filming to familiarise ourself with the camera angles, lighting and positioning of the camera, this would make us more confident when we filmed our first run through.

Overall, the use of the green screen would help us highly when it comes to adding an effect in our music video, the use of the green screen would make our final product of our  music video look more imaginative and professional .

<<< Artist in-front of the green screen .

Pictures from filming

Production : Editing plan

We will be using final cut pro to edit our music video. I will be explaining the different aspects of final cut pro which will help us to produce our music video to the best of our ability. 

The screen shot below shows the Timeline on final cut pro, this is where we will be placing our base tracks and different clips of the music video to edit so it all flows together to form a final piece. On the timeline we will be able to re-arange the different clips which we decide to use 

The image above shows the two screens in which we can view the clip which is used to edit and the the clips on the base track, this would help us to see which clips we need to order and re-arange to make the final edited video achieve it's potential. 

The screen- grab above shows the timeline in more detail, the green buttons on the timeline shows where we will be able to mute the artist singing, we will be muting our artist voice and replacing it withe the original artist voice, we will need to sync our mouth movement to the original artist voice so it  looks as if the voice of the original artist is coming from our artist.

Filming : Different types of lighting used

Whilst filming the music video, we used different types of lighting to make sure that the music video would come out to the best quality and also ensure that it created the effect we wanted. Fairy-lights and spotlights were used which both created a different effect, I will go into more depth about each source of lighting below.

Fairy lights were used on the artist to create an eerie effect, this is also really effective as we feel  it will give a vibrant feel to the music video when finished. The fairy-lights being placed directly on the artist will attract the audience to focus on the artist more .

The second lighting that was used was spotlights, we used this as it would focus on the artist in particular, which would again attract the audience, spotlights are used in various music videos to show the importance on the reason behind a music video, which is to promote the artist, so by using spotlights in our music video, it is a really good way to promote the artist.





Finally natural lighting was used when we went to Finsbury Park to film, a change of the contrast of lighting going from dim to bright would make a big change to the end result.

Reflecting back on the AS year: Technical strengths and weaknesses

AS; Music Video Remake

Three technical strengths:

- The artist looks enthusiastic in the video which is great as its an upbeat, elegant song. If we had an artist who's mood conflicted with the style of the song it wouldn't make much sense.

- The editing is simple but I think its effective, there are nice cuts which make the video look far more presentable than having no edits at all.

- I think the shot types we used were good, we used mainly mid shots and close ups to showcase the facial features and expressions of the artist which if done well, can really add a layer of meaning and conext to the lyrics. Also seen in the image above.

Three technical weaknesses:

- Some of the vocals are not synced up properly with the mouth movements of the artist, making the video look very unprofessional and cheaply constructed. To correct this, we should have made sure the artist knew the lyrics and also sang them in time to the original song.

- Mise-en-scene was very poor in the video. Throughout the video we see objects which shouldn't be there, visible to the audience which was just careless on our part. Furthermore this ca be easily corrected allowing for a better video instantly. The chairs to the right are visible.

- I think the lighting was very poor, a lot of shadows are seen which takes focus away from the artist which defeats the whole purpose of the video which is supposed to promote the artist in a positive light. We can also see a poor example of the lighting in the image above.

Planning for Music Video: 3 influential Music Videos

3 Influential Videos. by clintonmedia on GoAnimate

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Comparing Videos

When comparing Katy B's videos, 3 main songs of hers come to be quite similar in terms of editing and filming. All three videos include slow motion, extreme close ups and go in and out of focus through out the video. These are three key elements we are keen to use in our own video.

During 1:05-1:08 we see the camera go in and out of focus on the artist. This happens constantly during the video, possibly trying to give the video a chaotic atmosphere seeing as the genre is Dubstep which is quite fast and the setting is base in a club where the artist is performing. At 0:20-0:21 we receive an extreme close up of Katy B's lips, again which are focused in and out as she sings. We wish to use both these methods in our video as it just seems typical to have a chaotic styled video for a Dubstep song. 

Again this video is set in a club/studio, majority of the shots are mid and close up. At the beginning 0:06-0:07 we have an out of focus to and in focus shot of the artist which is very useful as it kind of introduces the artist which we would like to use in our video. Now and then the artist comes into the camera (3:03-3:06) but we feel as if this gives the video an amateurish sense of filming which we don't want. 

Having this song as our actual song choice we have already mentioned that we will be keeping the slow motion movement in our video similar to this one. Additionally this video contains some reverse editing (1:11-1:13) which we might want to use. Again there is an introduction to the artist at the beginning (0:02-0:04) of the video of  her being focused out then in.

Other Examples 

Slow Motion : 2:31-2:47

Extreme Close Up: 2:53-:2:55

Close up of Lips: 1:52-1:54

In & Out of Focus: 1:09-1:11, 1:16-1:17

Production for Music Video: Getting There

Getting to Finsbury Park from Angel wasn't at all difficult, it was a short 20-30 minute journey by bus and we had multiple options of getting there including a choice of tube and two buses. However the more difficult task was getting to the actual location which was the Parkland Walk located just outside Finsbury Park 

From Finsbury Park station to the Parkland Walk itself is a short 5 minute walk, however the specific locations we wanted were atleast a 15-20 minute walk. But we thought to make use of the walk we took, so at every break or stop we would film a base track. Some were more successful than others. Here we include some examples 

As you can see the beginning of this track was quite successful, the shot was in frame and steady but we slowly found difficulty steadying the camera as the artist started walking towards the camera.   

Comparing the Real Artist to Our Own

Katy B seems to keep her image quite casual and boyish throughout her music videos and daily life yet she still comes across as a stylish and glamourous artist. With our artist we tried to combine the two specifically with this outfit (above) which is similar to Katy B's outfit (top left corner). She is not exactly an artist who is out there and in your face with her dress sense but rather calm and collective so that she can relate to her audience yet still stays in style.  Through the artists self image this achieves appealing to our target audience of young girls who are quite laid back, outgoing and easy going and also very independent with their own COMFORTABLE style.  Our artist as a person will come across as quiet, observant and self confident in our music video, someone who is easily likeable that the audience can warm to very easily. Other outfits which we tried to keep similar to Katy B included the one below which again portrays the simplicity of Katy B's image. We didn't want to use too many outfits so we mainly kept to these two specific outfits as we wouldn't want the music video to look too chaotic.

Production for Music Video: Filming Sessions

During our practice filming we noticed how hard it was to steady the camera. Luckily the media department was kind enough to order a Fig-Rig to use which is a wheel that you attach the camera to, to steady your filming. It really came to much good use during our filming. Despite the aches in our arms, it really improved the stability of the camera.  Here are a couple of shots of us in action trying out different angles and shots.

Production of Music Video: Filming Sessions

Here is a slide show of pictures taken during our first day of filming which was based in the green screen. Here we show shots taken when the artist was being made up by the make up artist using glitter, face paint and make up which was inspired by such artists as Kesha who uses a lot of glitter styled make up in her music videos. Other looks like the black mask was just a mimick of an image we had found on google, both looks contrasting with each other: One look being light, golden and bright, the other dark, moody and mysterious.

Teacher Feedback

Hello group 27
We are rather alarmed by the lack of blogs on your page - at this point in the year we would expect your blogging count to be around 60+.  There are gaps in the blogging too - you should be blogging about the filming process at the moment and so there shouldn't be any gaps at all.  Marisa and I are keeping a very close eye on your blogging this week and we expect to see much improvement between now and the end of the week.

Get blogging!