Unit 29: Music Video Production (Working Log)

Monday 9th November 2015

Today at 8:30 we travelled to Saltburn-by-the-Sea via train to capture our footage for the first day of shooting! It was a great experience going out and doing our first ever proper shoot, we learned lots and had a great time!

After we left the train station we set of on the short walk down the bank to the coast, stopping half way to get establishing shots of the pier and the cliffs. We set up our first shot at the top of the bank and took a static establishing shot of the cliff, before ticking it off our shot list. Our first shot of many was done. Me (Director) and Matty (Director of photography) spent most of the day with the camera, setting up shots, adding new ones in to our shot list and making sure the framing and lighting looked correct.

After we had taken the shots we needed from up on the bank we walked down to the pier to film the first scene of the video, my genius planning of going first thing Monday morning meant that both the beach and pier where completely empty so we could get the shots we needed without anyone being in the way or in the background. Our actors Kelsey and Reece where very good and very professional, after a few hours on the pier we rapped up our first scene and headed for our long walk up the cliffs on Saltburn to get to our next location.

After we completed the gruelling walk up the side of the cliff we began shooting the last scene of the day, the wind was really strong up there near the edge of the cliff, so as director I had to make sure everything and everyone was safe. Reece our actor in the scene was really good and I'm thankful he put up with us dragging him to the top of a cliff in the freezing cold. After a few hours on the cliff we managed to get all the footage we need and we headed back down to get some fish and chips before we got back on the train and left. 

Overall it was a great experience the crew and cast were great and fun to work with, we were productive and got lots done, it was well worth the trip for the footage we got. Oh and it didn't rain the whole time, which was either very lucky or amazing planning skills!

Tuesday 10th November 2015

Today we met in college at 10am to start shooting the rest of our music videos. The scene was set in a dark interrogation room so we booked out a meeting room at 11am and go to work gutting the furniture and blocking out the windows. Then we brought in a big light to provide intense spotlight like lighting in the room. At 12am Reece arrived and we got shooting under way, we had to work fast as we only had the room until 2pm but we got it all done in time, plus a few extra shots. We shot the whole song 4 times from different angles and then shot some other individual shots. Kieran Dixon played the part of the police officer and Reece was the criminal. They were both fantastic, Kieran was so intense and scary when we needed him to be and Reece lip synced the song excellently. Overall another good day of shooting that went pretty smoothly.

Shooting is now finished and we will begin editing tomorrow, I had allot of fun directing the video and i'm really proud of the team. I'd also like to thank the actors for being so professional during shooting Kieran, Kelsey and Reece where great to work with!

Wednesday 11th November 2015

Today I began editing our music video in premier pro. I wanted to make sure that the editing process can be as smooth and efficient as possible so before I started I got to work creating bins for all the different scenes after I exported the files onto my hard drive. After I got all of the footage off of the cameras and into the bins I began editing; I started by cutting down the length of the song, I cut out the pre instrumental at the begging of the song and chopped 5 seconds or so out of the instrumental in the middle, it took me ages to make the cut seamless by matching the beat properly. I only got as far as editing up to the introduction to the song, using the establishing shots to set the scene and adding tittles for the artist name and song.

Thursday 12th November 2015

At the start of the day we handed in our finished and completed folder full of our paper work, it felt really good handing in our first assignment and knowing that all of our paper work was done. I then went back to editing, I got quite a lot done and found it really easy to sync the singing in the video with the music so far! I have tried to use lots of different camera angles to increase the pace of the edit, cant wait to finish it!

Unit 16: Film and Video Editing Techniques (Preperation for Editing)

One of the most Important parts of editing is the preparation. Good preparation can help save time and create a smother work flow, for example this can be done by organizing footage into bins and deleting footage that isn't useful with.


Checking Material: Checking your footage is essential to making sure you are well prepared for editing, without the material there would be nothing to edit so the first step to being prepaid is to make sure that all your footage is good and looks the way you want it to taking into a count weather or not you are happy with things like the lighting or framing and checking that the audio is good. if not then the footage has to be re shot before editing can start, but if its good then it can be imported into your editing software and then placed into bins.


Bins: Bins are folders were all your footage is stored, you can use bins to organise you footage so it is easier to access and all relevant footage is in one place. This helps the edit flow smother as all the footage is labelled and easy to find.


Setting the Correct Import Settings: Without setting the correct import settings your footage will not look how you want it too, it may be cropped down and be of low quality no matter how it was shot, before starting you should always check your import settings.


Producing an Edit Decision List: These are important because it allows the director to tell the editor what he wants to do with the footage, as the editor wouldn't normally on set this is crucial so that the editor can understand the directors vision.

I started by copying the footage from the camera onto my hard drive.

 

Next I created bins. I made a bin for each scene and placed the appropriate shots into the bins, I did this so that I had a better work flow when it came to editing in premier pro. This means I could work faster and more efficiently as I could find the right shots easier

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These are the individual shots in my bins.

I then reviewed all of the shots and then deleted the bad ones.



I then opened premier pro, giving my project an appropriate name and checking that the general settings were correct.

Next I set up my sequence settings; I used an AVCHD 1080I 25fps as it is the correct format to use with the footage from the cameras. Ensuring it will be high quality.

These are my bins in premier pro, creating bins first helped me work efficiently.



After I had finished editing the clips together and making sure that the audio was synced with the visuals, I added titles to the start of the video to credit the song and artist.

 During editing I used multiple tracks to help organise my edit, I put master shots on the bottom track and overlaid the other shots with different angles above. I also used effects such as fade ins and fade outs and the start and end of my music video on both the video and audio. I ended with a dip to black to make the last shot extra dramatic.

After I was finished rendering my work area I was ready to export my music video. I exported it as a quick time file as then it would be in 1080I.

 After this I burnt my music video to disc.

As well as this me and my team created shot lists for the music video, evidence of which can be found in our production folder.

Unit 24: Writing for television and video (Story Synopsis)

We were told to start thinking of an idea for a screenplay, this is mine.

Audience: 15 to 18 year old.

Title: The Truth

Synopsis: George is a 18 year old boy from England who's always dreamed of being a young James Bond, with his parents hounding him to get a job George joins a recruitment course at 'The Agency' a spy company looking for new recruits. However Georges curious nature and lust for adventure lands him in trouble when he accidentally steals from them.

Class Task- Review: Back To The Future (1985)

On Tuesday the 20th of October I watched Back To The Future for the first time and its safe to say that it lived up to the hype!

Michael J Fox made the movie for me, he fit the role perfectly and gave the film that extra thing it needed to go from just being a good movie to a being a great movie. He played the protagonist, Marty McFly, with so much charisma that its hard to think of a cooler charterer, I loved him. Fox had bags of confidence when playing the Marty he made him funny and extremely likeable, which made the audience buy into him and his story and root for Marty in any situation. As well as this Fox brought lots of variation to the table as he also managed to pull of scenes that were dramatic and required heaps of emotion. The part of Marty was originally written for him, however at the time Fox was to busy shooting for his show 'Family Ties' and wasn't available, so Eric Stoltz got the part. After only a few weeks of filming they scrapped everything, got rid of Stoltz and brought in Fox. This risky move from Director Robert Zemeckis turned out to be a master stroke, as Fox fit right into the part and made it his own the film just wouldn't be the same without him.

Not just Marty but all of the charterers were written for fantastically by writers Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale, they made every one unique and memorable. Christopher Lloyd played his part of Doc Brown near perfectly, him and Fox played off of each other really well, the two characters felt real and gave the audience the feeling that they'd been friends for years and not just two guys on a movie set playing a character, which in turn created extra emotion during the last scenes where Doc Browns life is in danger and Marty must warn him.

As well as this the film had fantastic special effects and CGI for its time, the CGI still holds up well to this day despite the film now being 30 years old! The thing I did not enjoy about the film was the length of the ending, obviously the director chose to draw out the ending to try and create tension and I will give him that, it is tense. But it was just drawn out a little bit to much, especially in the scene where Doc is moving across the clock tower. The scene is good, the use of pathetic fallacy through the storm helps create that extra sense of danger and makes us feel on edge as Doc slowly navigates his way across the thin ledge of the clock tower however the pace of it doesn't fit the pace of the rest of the film and I think that's why it threw me off. I'd rather end on a high though! My favourite scene is the one where Marty punches Biff in the face in a packed diner whilst defending his (future) father George McFly and then is chases through the street by Biff where he manages to one up him again. Marty just makes you wish you were this cool!
Overall I would give the film 9/10 nothings perfect, but this is close!