As we had to film all of the house scenes again, we decided to use
Jessica's house once again. For our second day of filming, we used two
cameras and two tripods so that we could get the filming done more
efficiently. We knew the scenes we had to shoot as we already had that
planned out, so we began filming once we had everything set up.
The shots that we done the
previous week was shot with little lighting so we had to redo the shots this week
as the videos turned out with too much noise. The second set of
recording had better lighting and less noise which is what we wanted.
Since we had two cameras to use, we was able to film simultaneously from
different angles which saved us a lot of time and allowed us to record
from a fixed point.
Resources used
During this filming session we used two DSLR cameras,
two tripods, a dolly, and lights. Other props that were used during
this filming session were costume, roses, bath foam, champagne, food,
clocks, laptop, and phone. Overcoming problem In this session of filming we did not come across
many problems however we did not have the big studio lighting that we
had available last time. However with the lighting we had available and
we managed to get good footage with a lot less noise than last time. Next steps
To finish the last few scenes we had left to film in order to complete the video.
Done By Jessica Our first day of filming was a great experience for us as a group and as individuals. Maybe because it a was the first time we set out to do a task like that, but we all seemed very enthusiastic about it all. The venue or location we used in our music video was Jessica's house. There were several rooms we filmed in:
Bathroom
Dinning Room/Kitchen
Bedroom
In order to make this work we needed to make sure that
Bedroom - (Narrative & Performance)
The bedroom is where we will be filming majority of the performance. We purposely choose to structure because of the concept of the song '4AM and her lover is not home'. Moreover to implement this into our music video we decide that by filming our main actress in the bedroom by herself would put more emphasis on the concept.
Bathroom - (Narrative)
The bathroom we shall filming the intimate part of our music video. With the help of rose petals and a bubble bath we tend to create the illusion that our actress is supposed to have a romantic evening with her boyfriend; as well showing her preparing for their romantic evening.
Kitchen - (Narrative)
Kitchen is another part of our narrative, in which we intend to use the kitchen to show her preparing for her romantic night - cooking the food etc.
Dinning Room - (Narrative/filmed in our second meeting)
The dinning room is one of the important part of a narrative; this will show our actress waiting on her boyfriend by herself, as well as attempting to call him.
Props used
Nikon and Cannon camera
Tripod
Tracking equipments
Bed
Studio Light
Bedroom Light
Natural Light
Torch
Lamp Light
Fairy Liquid
Rose and daisy petals and buds
After coming to an understand of what we will be filming in my house we arranged to meet at my house (_). Our first filming everyone arrived at my house around 6pm - filming at 6pm was essential because it was the darkest earliest time we could meet, the darkness played a great role in our music video. Before we began filming, we recapped over our plan:
- We decided to divide our filming session into sections
- The bedroom
- Kitchen
- Bathroom
Luckily we had both Mrs Mclukie's camera and Sath's camera, this made our filming move much faster.
Outcome
Bedroom
- Setting up
Setting up the bedroom for the performance was rather easy as everything was in place, however the problem we faced was our lighting - we were struggling to create the night time illusion without our actress coming across dark on camera. We found the light bulb was not light enough, moreover we decided to use studio lights (supplied by Prince), although the extent in which the studio lights, lit up the room completely destroyed the night illusion. We placed the studio lights in several positions to reduce the amount of the light; as you see in the short clip,Prince tired placing the studio light in the corner of my wardrobe - this created a nice glow to room however our actress still came across dark. Nonetheless we resulted in using a torch along with the studio lights; positioning the torch on the actress face which allowed her to come across much lighter on the camera. (place video) Additionally one of the problems which slowed down our filming significantly is our actress constant forgetting the lyrics, this wasted a lot of time.
- Costumes
Our actress got changed in one of the other rooms. We wanted our viewers to view the couple as an intimate couple as well as them getting the impression she was/is so much in love with the guy. Moreover we dressed her in a black basketball jersey (supplied by Joshua - my brother), but made her where a necklace in order for her to still have a feminine look in male clothing. (insert picture)
- Camera Shots
The shots which we used in filming the bedroom scene were:
Medium Shots
Close up shots
Pan
Long shots
2. Bathroom
- Setting up
Similar to the bedroom, setting up was quite easy as we did not have to install any appliances. To create the bubble bath we used cold water and added a lot of Fairy Up liquid - this failed greatly as the water produced a few bubbles and stayed green (which completely diminished the romantic, intimate scene we were trying to create). We tired to disguised the green water by adding a lot of flowers, unfortunately for us we were unable to find red rose, therefore we were force to result in using pink flowers and daisy flowers. The pink flowers and daisy flowers caused problems as they seemed to wrinkle in the cold water and not float long enough.
- Costumes
We made our actress Queen wear a simple black vest top and leggings, in which she covered with a comfy bathroom robe. We made sure robe completely hid the fact that she was wearing a vest top and positioned the camera to hide her leggings, in order to create the illusion that she is not wearing anything underneath - adding to our intimate scene.
- Camera Shots
We took only two types of shots in the bathroom:
Extreme close up
Close up
We wanted to focus greatly on the bath and the flowers in the bath.
3. Kitchen
- Setting up
In the kitchen we recorded the preparation of the meal, we also used the kitchen to in some ways carry on the intimate atmosphere we created first in the bathroom. We used large florescent lights (fitted already in the kitchen) to light up our scene, by lighting up one half of our kitchen we were able to avoid eliminating the night time illusions.
- Costumes
As the kitchen is used to show the progression in her preparation we made sure our actress had a change of clothing. We dressed her in black shiny leggings with a white peplum top and a gold statement necklace, along with black opened toe.
- Camera Shots The camera shots we took in the kitchen were:
During the construction and editing of our music video we were faced with several problems. As no one in our group was a pro at using final cut it meant in some areas of our music video where we had a good idea and wanted to create it, could not be done. This for us as a group was stressful, as our knowledge of final cut was limiting our progress and our ideas. Luckily we had final cut pros at our disposal...the internet. We found that most of the problems that occured, when searched on the internet or youtube could be easily overcome. This gave us so much relief as a group and as individuals. There were so many tutorials at our disposal it was incredible, we were able to learn more about final cut so easily and free.
Here is one of the videos we used to help keep us on track and keep us out of any trouble:
From watching this short video you would probably have an idea of what type of problem we encountered during the editing. Well, on recording day where we went to shoot our videos we thought we had done a great job in terms of lighting, the song and...the lip syncing. But we were later proved wrong when we were exposed by final cut. We put in a clip into final cut and made sure it corresponded with the sound track and found that our artist had come out of lip sync or was too slow or too fast half way in a verse. This was a problem, a very big problem and with the deadline for our rough cut just days away and no time to record, we needed to find a way to overcome this problem. This is where the help of this video came in. We simply used one of the tools on final cut to speed up or slow down the video so that the lip syncing and the sound track went together!
Here is how we did it:
First i had to locate the problem or the part of the clip which i want to edit and either make slower or faster. When this was done i highlighted/selected the part of the clip. I then i went to "Modify - Speed"
How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
Apart from creating a music video, we also had to make from scratch a digipack and magazine advert for our artist. The aim of this was to try and promote our artist in a creative and appropriate way whilst keeping in mind our target audience.
I feel that the combination of our music video and our ancillary task flowed together and worked well. As a group we thought it would be a good idea to use an upcoming artist. We decided to use the song ‘4am’ by Melanie Fiona. The song belongs to the genre of RnB and the artist is seen in several music videos to act out love scenes or to have trouble withher love life but at the end of the day is able to stand strong as an independent woman. We felt that it was important that we show this through both our ancillary task and music video, whether it was thought the colour or even throught the image. In most cases it is hard to relate a music video to products such as magazines and digipack when it comes to music, but I guess there must be at least one aspect, no matter how small which could be seen to be consistent in all three products. We took this into consideration and thought about little things we could include into our music video to help us when we started our ancillary tasks.
When it came to making the digipak and the magazine for our ancillary task we found relating them both was unproblematic, whereas when we attempted to related it to the music video we found it quite complicated. It was around this point of our produton we realised that there was one thing that could be used to bring all three products together with ease, the image. This i guess was great for us as we had put our ancillary task in the back of our minds when making our music video and had taken the initiative to use some of thefilming days as not on ly a chance to film our music video but to also use it as a photoshot. This meant that we were able to include some of the clothing that was used in the certain shots in our music video also in our ancillary task. After successfully finding a way to connect our three products together we had to use our research into the connections of digipak/album covers and magazine adverts to find a way to capture our readers attention.
I guess looking into the detail of what a album cover and magazine cover consists of was helpful. We found that most of the music magazines had certain and specific details such as the date of release, where to buy the music from, the name of the album, the name of a well known hit in the album. This could also be seen in album covers where they included the price, list of tracks included, name of artist, barcode etc. All these small and simple pieces of detail accumulate and help seek and capture our consumers attention.
What we also thought was essential to adopt was the use of housestyle across our two products. Initially our first attempt to do this failed due to several complications and communications, but we were fast to make up for the lack of housestyle and soon produeced a piece that showed some sort of consistency. We made sure that factors such as font size, text positioning, font style and images had some sort of consitstentcy throughout our three products. We had to show that housestyle was a very important, this was mainly because most artists are identified by hoiusyle of products, this could be related to the promotion and the branding of an artist. So the use of housestyle was essential when it came to meeting the aims and objectives of our project as if they did not show some sort of promotion then being able to identify our artist through our three products would have been hard and difficult.
Another way we related our anciliary to our music video was through the use of colour. This was pointed out a lot in our interveiw with our target audeince. What we did was that we did was before our music video we did a photoshoot with our artist. We made sure that the camera took in as much colour as possible for example lipstick, chain colour, earings, hair colour and the obvious. We were then able to transfewr these pictures to photoshop where we delevoped them further, making sure that certain colours stood out. We tried our best to make colour a representative when it came to our viewers identifying and relating to our artist. Althought the quality and use of colour in our musci could have been a bit better, there is still some relationship between it and our ancillary task.
Our initial album cover and magazine cover did not meet our expectation as a team so we had to redo them. This time we had time to consider the images and coours we wanted to use. We decided that we would use slightly similar imagaes for our magazine and algbum cover to make sure that it was effective and related. In order to do this we picked images for both of our products with our artist wearing the same clothing but in different outfits. This was good i guess as it allowed ouro audience to identify the artist with ease. It was also a great idea as our audience were also able to relate our music video to our ancilalry task because the clothing is also used in the music video.
In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge
forms and conventions of real products?
The artist we based our music video and promotional package was Melanie Fiona who is a an RnB artist from America. RnB music is a very popular genre, not only in America but all around the world. The conventions of RnB music differs from that of other genres. In RnB music the conventions consist of the main singer/artist singing mainly about love or being heartbroken. There is normally one male and or two females (vice versa) and its either that one of them is cheating or there is a problem in the relationship. Other Characteristics and conventions are:
Variety of shots, but mainly close ups, medium shots
Shots that favour the artist are predominantly used
Tends to be a narrative throughout the music video
Main artist is normally on their own in most of the scenes
Mainly shot in a house or party
Some special effects used but not all the time
Filmed/shot in a calm setting
The time of setting reflect the mood and pace of the song
We decided as a group that we will follow a narrative similar to the music video of the song we were using. We decided this as we felt as a group If we were to change the narrative it may not be as strong as if we were to act out the initial narrative but with our only characters, and the objective as a group is to show and display our talent both as a group and as individuals. We decided to do research into different types of RnB music videos and some videos that a level student from other schools had made. We found good and bad points of the videos made and used it as a guide to set standards and also to show what should be avoided and mistakes we should not make.
Ways in which I am going to show/explain how as a group we developed/challenged form and conventions of real products is through analysing some of the shots that we used in our main task/music video:
For example at 0:52 we have a medium shot of our artist in a room on her own sitting on her bed. This situation is very typical for an Rnb music video. We made sure in this shot that the actor looks the part. To do this we had to take into consideration the clothing, in this case she I swearing a dress. Also make up and hair, also in this shot our actor has her make up done very well and looks and plays the part especially when It comes to her appearance and hair. So overall we had to make sure that she fit the description and conventions of a RnB music video when it came to appearance. Lighting was another issue, this was a delicate matter because lighting can make or break a music video from research. As we looked at professional music videos we found that in most of the cases were the artist was on their on in a room the lighting was not bright but wasn't too dark We decided it would be a good idea to recreate this in our own music video. This shot shows the lighting we used. In terms of the type of shot. I personally did research into the type of shots that we mainly used in music videos of our genre. From my research and analysis I found that the most shots that used in music video like such as close up and medium shots. Its one thing to be able to point out what shots are predominantly used in music videos and its another to know why, what they are try to imply, what effect are they trying to get across. This helped us as we were able to understand what message these shots should send out to our audience. Another was the angle of our shots. Camera angle are not used to much in these music but when they are used they must be used properly and in the right way.
It was noticed from our research that in most RnB and Rap music videos there is some sort of promotion for a popular product included. This is done by big companies, whether food, drink or cigars, that pay to have their drinks shown on a music video. This is mainly seen in the music videos of popular artists. For example in most of Rick Ross's (rap artist) music video we see several clips or shots of him holding or drink either Ciroc or Bel Air(Rosay). This can be big money for both the artist as the company as the artist is being payed to promote the drink and the company make money from the promotion especially when its a popular artist as the more views, the more people who view the video and the more people might by the drink it self. We decided that we should use this technique or idea in our music video as it adds a bit more realism to the video it self. From most of the music videos we watched, the artist is either holding the drink or the drink is being placed on the table. We decided that we would have the drink placed on the table but in a interesting way. We thought the best way to promote the drink itself would be to have a close up shot of the brand logo as it was placed on the table. What i think worked even best for us was the time in which we decided to include the shot. It was not place randomly in the music video. Luckily for us there was a verse in the song where Melanie Fiona said "Pour me up a drink i swear i need it". This i guess this was the perfect time to not only included but promote the drink as everything linked. I guess there was more emphasis on the shot than anything else but we had to take into consideration what type of drink were going to use. We wanted a drink that would look somewhat interesting and not boring, we also had to consider the colours used. I think that the drink used in the video was a good one as it had a unique logo and look something that most of the music videos in professional music videos had. We made sure that when it came to this part of the music video that the lighting was clear and good enough to see the drink and label and to create an effect. One thing that was tricky but we still were able to do was to make sure that the placing of the drink on the table and the music was in sync. We found this hard and in most cases had to speed up and slow down the clip. We eventually were able to get the music and the movement of the drink in sync which when done looked very good.
Another shot Im going to analyse is at 1:39 when she is walking alone In the kitchen. This bit of the music video is meant to send out a message to the audience. Starting of with lighting...This was not as hard as it was for the bedroom scene. It was quite basic and easy, we used the kitchen light and then edited it in final cut to give it a different sort of effect and colour. The shot itself was used in the music video. We thought it would be a great idea if we included it in our music video as well. The shot we used was a close up, which only allowed the audience to see below her ankle. What we noticed from the music video is that Melanie Fiona was wearing nice heels, we had to make sure that the same thing was done in our music video. We made sure she wore something nice and something played the part.
A typical place or location that music videos of this genre are set, is indoors. For example, either in a house, a club or even at a party. The location normally has to be relevant to the song and how it would be performed, for example if it was narrative. THis is very important as the song cannot be about a man cheating on his girl and the location is a club and every one is just partying, there must be some sort of relevance.
For example Melanie Fiona - 4am. The song is about a woman who thinks her husband is cheating on her. Just from watching the video you can tell that everything has been well thought about. The song and location has some sort of relevance. As she is singing about what she feels is going on, we the audience get to see what the husband is doing. The environment where they put him is a place where you would think he would cheat on her. So they have related the location to the song, and where is the best place to put the lady while all this is happening?...at home, all alone.
Another example to show the importance of location is in the Usher video - Confessions part 2. This song and artist also fall into the RnB genre. In this video usher is talking about everything he has done wrong e.g cheating. There are many places where you can film the video for this but the director has cleverly put him in an enclosed room. When I watched it I wondered, why an enclosed room and not outside?...well setting it outside could symbolise some sort of freedom and the point or the message the video is trying to get across would not be successful. Placing him in an enclosed room tells us that he is locked in, emotionally and physically, he has done some thing wrong and he is confused. What the artist is thinking now is how is going to get out of this mess.
For our music video, we came up with a number of locations that we felt would suit our genre. After re-evaluating these places, we came to a conclusion that it would be better if we followed the structure of music video our artist performed. The main reasons for this was that the message the artists music video was trying to get out was very successful, we understood what was going on very well. If we were to follow the same structure and steps, we were sure to accomplish the same thing. There were only two locations that we used, that was the girls house and the boyfriends how. We were not able to secure a club like venue, this was either due to funds or availability.
The types of clothing and accessories and artist wears in a music video is not only dependent on the genre but it also depends on whether the video is narrative or performance. Clothing is also a very important fact and artists can be judged or recognised by the clothing they wear. For example Michael Jackson and Lady gaga, who's clothing determined their iconography. I decided to look into what artists of the same genre wore and did my best to apply that to our music video. We had to make sure what our artist was wearing was not too flashy but not too simple and related to the scene and lyrics at a particular point. For example if our artist was singing about laying in bed, giving our artist a flashy dress and classy heels at this point of the song would be ridiculous. In almost every RnB music video the artist is well dressed and we needed to get this across to our audience, in order to do this outfits we carefully selected for our model.
Our music video genre did not require a lot of camera movement, just a variety of shots that complimented our artist. We made sure that we embedded this in our music video as it was important. A variety of camera shots were mainly used when tension in the song started to grow, this was mainly in the middle and the end of the song. A this point different shots of our artist at different angles were used, this created an authentic and dynamic feel to our narrative video. The use of the camera shots in the beginning of our music video was typical of our genre. The song normally starts of quite slow, at this point there are a limited amount of camera shots and angles used, they are normally faded into each other so that everything flows.
Another convention we manage to follow and stick to was including the logo for our song. At first we were going to ignore this factor, but the importance of the logo was later drawn to our attention after we researched the forms and conventions for music videos in our genre. We chose for our music video to appear on MTV BASE as it was the type of channel that not only because a lot of our music genre was played by them but also because it fitted in with the artist as her music is similar to the artists of the same genre that are played on this channel. The logo was placed on the top left of our music video and stayed there throughout the song.
A lot of thought was required when we were making our magazine advert. We did not have a lot ideas when it came to carrying our ancillary task as there was a limited amount of examples of existing posters and digipak available on the internet.
So I guess for this part of our project we had to be very creative. We looked into the lay out of the few posters that we could obtain and found several relationships. For example, the relationship between the colour used and the image. The image and the colours used whether fonts or anything else needed to have some sort of connection. This was definitely applied in our poster.
We found that on most of the posters there was a release date, giving the audience an idea of when to expect the product to some our. We did not think twice about adding this.
We also found that on some of the poster, there was some sort of record label or organisation placed either on the top or the bottom of the poster, we thought it would be a good idea to adopt this as it could help our magazine advert look more appealing and professional
Before we created our ancillary tasks, the influence
of existing products was very important. We looked at many existing digipaks
before creating our own so we could understand the typical things we needed to
include such as barcodes, copyright information, a website and labels. We
also needed to look into albums from our genre of music to get an understanding
of their layout and colour schemes.
We found that the images on
the front cover of a digipak were mainly pictures of our artist. We thought that the best way to link
our three products would be to have the artist on the cover of the digipak
and also include them on the advert. We saw that the majority of album covers
with the artists on the front had a layered image. We used this style
of image on our digipak to show the importance of the singer, create a
connection to the audience and show the band together.
As we are filming our music video indoors, we will need to consider a range of potential risk that can occur on set. To made sure we have covered all potential threats, I created a table which highlights the potential hazards we could encounter and how we can prevent these hazards. From research music videos and how they are created, I learnt that risk assessments are extremely important because they reduce the risks of accidents and ill health to me, my team members and anyone involved in the filming; additionally in the long run it is helpful financially.
What is the a Risk Assessment?
The identification, evaluation, and estimation of the levels of risks involved in a situation, their comparisonagainstbenchmarks or standards, and determination of an acceptable level of risk. A risk assessment is important step in protecting whoever we will be working with, as well as complying with the law, it helps us to focus on the risk that really matter - the ones that can cause potential hazards.
It was essential that everyone In our group read this before we carried out our project so that we were all aware of what was going on. Here is a short video which sums up how to make a risk assessment and the analysis of risks:
Below is an image of the risk assessment created in
Microsoft Word.
Thanks to Jessica, a new copyright letter was sent to Sony music asking for permission to use there song. This was needed as we found that melanie fiona's song was copyright. So to avoid being sued or getting into trouble we decided to email them this.
The copyright permission email is very similar to the Miguel - Adorn
copyright permission email, however we had to alter some of our wording:
I think finding a location to film our music would be in the top 10 problems we encountered as a group. We have had problems with locations at least two time until we found a place. The first time when we were using our first song (Miguel - Adorn) the place we had book went under new manage meant just a few days before recording. This for us as a group was chaios and things started getting worse when we could not find any where else to record. It was either that the place did not fit our genre of music or the price for the venue was too high. So after all that trouble and other problems we decided to change our song to something a little bit easier. It was much easier as all the venue we needed was an ordinary house, anyones, anywhere, just a house. Luckily one of our group memebers (Jessica) agreed to film at her house, which was just what we needed. The location was great, the bedroom fitted the description and so did all the other rooms.
We were all given choices as to whether we wanted to work on our own or in a group when it came to our project. When it comes to situations like this some people may prefer to work on there own or in a group. I guess both have there own advantages and disadvantages. For example working on you own means that there is a lot of pressure and hard work involved, work must be done and thoroughly thought about, but at the end of the day knowing you worked on your own and produce great work says a lot about you and your ability. Also working in a group, everybody must be up on their toes and hard working, if one person is not working up to the standards that was agreed by team, it will show and may be a disadvantage to a group. But the advantage of this is that it allows everyone to add their own creative ideas and thoughts.
Well...my group I guess is made up of talented individuals who possess different skills and attributes and Im very sure our final piece of work will show what type of individuals we are and how well we good we are when it comes to working as a group.
In order to make our animatic we had to draw up a storyboard. Our storyboard consisted of important events, shots and camera angles drawn up that will be shown in our music video. We took our time to think of what should be included in our storyboard as we had to make sure that everything flowed and nothing was jumpy or didn't make sense. We also drew up a storyboard in a way that we it could be used as a guide for us during the making of our video. I was nominated by my group to draw the storyboard, we all met together to agree on what type of shots we would like to include in our animatic then they were given to me to draw up. It was not an easy job as I am not the best drawer around, but I guess I tried my best to make it as clear and neat as possible. So...here it the storyboard I drew:
