Animatic Storyboard

Planning - Location

 This is the bedroom we will be filming in.

This is the photography studio we will be using to film Jake pulling the tape out of the cassett.

Planning - Risk Assessment

Planning - Shot list

Planning: Target audience

As we know, our video will be able to have the best outcome if we regularly take into consideration views and opinions from our target audience. We set  up a focus group on Facebook where we could regularly post updates and receive feedback here's an example from our Facebook focus group on the feedback of my digipak and advert 

The feedback my digipak and advert received was positive and meant that there was nothing that needed changing. As the images are small and the feedback is hard to read I have enlarged it

Emma Parker Reallt like the idea behind this shoot. I like the metaphore of being tied up in the music.


Laura Court-Jones The idea for this is genuis, i like there is a running theme of the tape film on all of the pictures, it gives is a professional feel. The text font and colour matches the photos and doesn't distract from the pictures but is viable.

Laura Court-Jones Simple effective but bold, love it.

Emma Parker Great layout of information, very striking image.

Test shoot

This was a test shot. We took the short clip as a practice for the transition shot we will be making for Jake to go from his room to the Malvern Hills. This shot only took about 20minutes to film and put together so it was very simple yet very successful as I think you would agree? However there where a couple of issues that came up which from the practice we now know not to make the same mistake in the actually filming of our music video. The issues we found was that originally Kate was filming me, however she wasn't tall enough and  when doing the whip pan kept loosing my face out the shot so we know in our actually filming someone taller will need to do the filming of this shot. The other problem was that after we swapped and I was filming Kate. I went counter clockwise in the inside shot and clockwise on the outside shot which didn't make the transition as clear as it should have been.

Planning - Costumes and Props

 

Jake will be playing a guitar throughout our video, the person in charge 

of getting this prop will be me, I am borrowing this off my Dad. There will be no cost.

Jake will be dressed in slim fit jeans, a white t-shirt, and a coloured hoodie with plain pump style shoes. This is similar to the outfit he wore for both of our digipak's and advert and therefore keeps the recurring theme. As Jake has all of this items in his wardrobe, there will be no cost. I am in charge of making sure Jake is wearing this on the day.

 

Amy does not feature in the video as much as Jake, but she still needs to look inkeeping with the indie genre. She will wear patterned leggings, a black baggy top, black boots and a green parka coat, she already has all of this items in her wardrobe so there will be no cost. I will be in charge of making sure Amy knows exactly what she has to wear.

 

Performer and Casting

We need to characters to be the main features in our video. A boy who will be the main role with the singing part and a girl who will be the girl who he's singing about.

                                            The Main Actor: Jake Glass

                                           The Main Actress: Amy Ledgerwood

We know that these two people will be reliable. As Jake is featuring in my video I am featuring in his. This means we both have to be reliable and stick to times and dates if we want both of our video's shot when is planned. Also Jake has featured in both mine and Kate's digipacks and has never been late or unreliable as far.

Final Digipack and advert

This is my completed digipak and advert.

Print research: Conclusion

Through the analysis of these two digipacks and 2 magazine adverts I have come to the conclusion, that to have a successful outcome in the next task and the creation of my own digipack & advert I will need to include a mix of entropic and redundant imagery. However if the images are highly entropic others must be highly redundant as if the balance isn't right then the images can become very confusing and not make any sense. The entrophy is needed to make the image interesting to look at, no matter what levels of it they use entrophy has been used in both digipacks and adverts and I have found the ones with more entropic imagery are the most successful.
                 When working on my own digipack and advert a theme must be kept throughout. This should include colours, lighting, props, locations, people, text size and font. All research I have done would tell me it is crutial to include all of this if I want my final outcome to be a success.Without this the digipack will have no clear meaning. It will appear messy, unfinished and unprofessional.

Print research: Magazine Adverts

                ( Noah And The Whale: Last Night On Earth)

                     

This advert was placed in 'Q magazine' as the band are in the indie genre the image appears to be done a a low budget. It is a picture of the band with a blend into a picture of a street. Nothing out of the ordinary is with the street, Its just a simple English street with nothing fancy. Keeping with the theme of being an authentic inidie band. Although the group are an Indie band and have a lower budget for advertisement they have managed to have a full page in the magazine. The major reason for this being they are one of the leading indie bands and 'Q magazine' regularly promote bands such as these.
    The advert contains an image of the band as described above, with the title of the band, the title of the album. Which is obviously needed to inform the customer of what the product actually is. It has a release date and the headlining single. The record company logo and a quotation of some positive feedback given by the publisher of the magazine. This is done to encourage the customer to want to buy the album.

                      ( Mr. Hudson: Straight No Chaser )

                          
The advert used for Mr. Hudson's album differs to Noah And The Wales. This one appears to be done on a higher budget, it seems less authentic classic indie and a much more mainstream artist who's values to the genre name 'Indie' is in small supply. However it is still clear to the audience though as to which genre this artist belongs to due to his image and costume. this advert is a very successful one. It is set on a very minimalistic white background, it has a sans bold black text for the artist and album name. The image on the advert is of the artist, there are several photos and as the pictures head back from the front picture they get fainter. The advert features a majority of the things a normal advert would, It has the artist and album name, a picture of the artist, the artist label, an album release date and a list of the top tracks featuring on the album. It would appear totally normal to a traditional advert except this one hasn't got a review. 

                                    

Print research: Digipacks

                                     Good Charlotte: Good Morning Revival ( Digipack Analysis)

This digipack appears to be very inviting. It keeps a similar theme throughout. This includes font type, colours and the graphic aspects. It is done to a high standard and the images are of excellent quality.

    The shot type used on the front cover of 'Good Charlotte's, Good Morning Revival' Album is a long shot which includes all of the band in the distance playing. It is set on a very minimal white background. It is done this way to draw attention to the orange text ,crosses and the band wearing all black. The simple aspects of the background actually connotes that the band are all about the music. They don't need the over the top effects to get attention. Their music what there about, a real group and don't want all the superficial stuff.

The back cover features everything a normal back cover of an album has. It has Track listing, 

year of release, the distributor, warning on copyright, the record label, the producer, band manager, the bands official website and barcode. It is set on a dark grey pavement looking background with the orange cross faintly. It has a white text with all the information on, in a small sans serif text. There are black and white pictures of the band which appear to be stuck to the picture with tape. This works well and is a really authentic look, which fits in well with the genre.

This is the actual disk for the bands album. Again this is a white background with the orange text and and crosses. White writing on the orange cross, background and it also has the bands logo in very light grey. This digipack is very successful as it can easily be related to the genre it belongs to, although plain it draws you in, it is very clean, well presented and manages to maintain the same theme all the way through.

The Killers: Sam's Town (Digipack Analysis)

This digipack manages to keep the same theme throughout. It is a black and white colour design, with the killers band logo in black and the album name 'sam's town' in serif red text. This digipack differs to the last as it has images that are entropic. One being the 'Goat' and the 'Woman in a bikini' what makes it entropic is the fact they would not normally be seen in this environment and especially wouldn't be seen together or by a caravan. Also The pictures taken do not have the main parts of the image in a central position as it looks better on camera.




The back cover has a picture of the band a very redundant image, again in black and white it has the track numbers in red and the track names in capital serif text in white. This image appears to be in the same location again with the caravan in the background. Like the last digipack It has Track listing, year of release, the distributor, warning on copyright, the record label, the producer, band manager, the bands official website and barcode.


With the design on the CD they have continued the entropic imagery with a graphical design of the mountain goats head and what appears to be a human torso. Making the image a lot more interesting to view, but in this case also adds a level of confusion. Again the image is in black and white. This digipack manages to keep a similar theme again, with a colour scheme throughout and a good mix of redundant and entropic imagery to create an interesting and different but understandable theme.

The Pitch

The feedback that came from our pitch was fairly mixed. One comment that seemed to come up repeatedly was "how we would make our video original"? As our video is from the indie genre and is about 'Love' it is difficult to find a way of creating something completely new and original as it has pretty much all been done before. So we took aspects from already made, well known music videos and decided to merge certain parts together and through the mix actually create something new and original.
  Another negative point that seemed to appear a few times was as the location was on the Malvern hills, "just how we would get there" and "how would we get the equipment there safely"?  However transportation is not an issue. My group partner and male actor 'Jake' are both able to drive meaning it would be a short car journey to Malvern, park as close to the hills as possible and walk with the equipment to the top. We were also asked "what would we do about the weather"? Considering we are filming in the middle of January this is a valid point. Although we cannot control what the weather does, we can prepare for the worst and just hope the weather hold out for us. We have decided we will check the forecast on the days prior to filming and pick the best day possible for filming. We have also selected an actor and actress who we can get full co-operation from will be reliable and willing to go out in poor weather.

Creativity

Creativity is is the thoughts or outcome of an origional idea that has value.Have the ability to say what you think and take risks without the fear of being wrong. Ken Robinson believes that creativity is being squeezed out of us during our time in education. He states when we are younger we are more likely to take a risk in life
eithought fear of being incorrect. "If kids dont know they will have a go, they are not frightrned of being wrong" Tought to comform in a way that means if they believe they know the answer to a question raise their hsnd and answer. However such a young person in vunerable in situations like this and if the answer is incorrect and as a result will not contribute in future and begin to stop thinking creativily in fear of being 'wrong'.
        To be able to be more createful, we need to loose this fear of being incorrect. Risks must be taken and we must act upon our thoughts spontaineously. Only when we prepare to be wrong will we come out with something right, a new origional idea. It is said there are three ways to improve and maintain creative thoughts. These being sleep, exercise and continuing eduction. Sleep is needed as allows you to access, maintain and retrieve more information from your head when your are not tired. This helps as the more information you have access to the more likely you are to mix multiple thoughts together to find something new. Exercise helps as it is said for up to around an hour after exercise things are released into the body, and the things released actually allow you to think more creativily. Continuing education is needed because in further education you learn new skills, use different equiptment and experiment with different sources of information. This helps as you could mix multiple thoughts together, this could be a simple thought or action learnt in primary school education with something learnt in higher education e.g make potato shapes, paint them but make a story with the prints and upload them to premier and turn it into a short movie clip rather than just a picture.
         We are not creative by choice. It is believe it is something you are born with. Just as others have the ability to be academically smart or a natural ability to be good at sport. However this is not to say the most creative people were always that way. This skill to be creative could be chanelled through the options made in education, or the hobbies you choose to pick up. You can practice the skill to be creative and actually improve on it.
         In the AS and A2 course of media it would be a challenge to study these subjects without being createful. It has a huge influence on the work e.g the music videos, without creativity they would be very basic, have the most simple shots, wouldnt be enjoyable to watch and would actually be very boring. This is why the creativity task was set. To make us think about what we are doing a bit more, try and unlock the talent. We want to harnice this skill and use it to its full effect to come up with an exciting, enjoyable and original video.

Creativity Skills Learning

Over the creativity week as a class we were asked to use methods like drawing and making things out of play-doh to show synasthesia to sevel music tracks. It was not necassarily to match i,ages to the lyrics but to match to the music itself and the sounds of the instruments to give them a whole new meaning. The point of the task was to create some new ideas, something different. not the same generic music video to match the majority in the same genr of music playing.

     Individually in our groups a task was set, for us to come up with some 'Creative' ideas maybe to be used for our own music video. Me and my partner had decided to experiment with stop motion. We took approximately 60 shots of the construction of a pencil house, then a short story of two lovers which where also made using pencil. Once each individual shot had been taken we uploaded them to the computer. As the task was to be creative we chose instead of putting the shots into premier and putting them together electronically to make a short video we would place all the shots into photoshop, make each shot the same size with a small black frame, print them off, cut them out and then staple together in order to make a flick book.

 

 

   

         

I found this exercise very worth while as it allowed me to think more open minded about the origionality of the video im going to mske. I also found that creativity is something that can just happen in an instant. I believe iif you try to hard too think of something new and different it will be almost impossible, however if you actually turn of from the thought process it will just come to you and it is best to bullet point options/idea or jot them as notes, in a pad, or phone. Write the ideas whilst there still fresh as they dont stay in your mind for long.

Music video analysis sheet. Ed sheeran A-team

 

There are various shot types used the video from Ed Sheeran's single A-team. Each used to create this feeling of this girl who is cast away from reality, isolated from all around her.

 This shots above are the second shot in the sequence but also the second from last. It is a high angled close up. It actually is a shot of the lead character in this video. It shows a sad emotion, it is a pull focus shot too. The pull focus is used to connote that the emotion is actually no longer significant as she has passed away.

 This shot above left is the establishing shot. From this shot the type of music video it is going to be has been set. We see this is going to be a dark and sad video this is also connoted by the dim lighting and colour design of the black and white.  It is also a close up reaction shot to the above right shot. It shows her crying. It is portraying emotion towards this person who is lay dead.

This mid shot shows a few of the mise-en-scene characteristics. We see the location which is a empty park, there is a bench and some bare tree's in the back ground. The props used would be the blanket she is holding around her and the costume used are some ragged clothes which are too big for her. This is all done to emphasise the fact she lives a fairly tramp type life and doesn't have a lot of money. This is very similar to other videos in this genre or music. Not necessarily that women are tramps but that they aren't sexualised and have more to them however the end of this video does share some of those aspects.
                                    
Throughout the video pull focus shots are used quite frequently and the three to the right are just a few examples of this. The shots are used to show she is separated from the rest of the world. Connoting that her
as a person is non significant. She is unimportant to anyone, that she is just a blurred figure in the eyes of everyone else and hardly noticeable.

                                                   The top left long shot is also a slight high angled shot. It shows the women sat outside a shop with her blanket over herself selling 'the big issue' a very stereotypical view of a tramp. The proximities of this shot every are seen in the background and very distant from her, like they don't want to go near her. Its like she is dirty, she is an infection and people want to avoid her. However this changes in the top right mid shot. You see a person actually approaching her and talking to her and buying a copy of the magazine. This shot is also a low angles shot, the person who approaches her is the singer of the song 'ed sheeran' and this is his only appearance in the video. The camera is position. Shot taken in low angle to show he is more important than all other characters except the women.  However this show his being helpful, he is the good Samaritan connoting he is above the rest of society.

This next shot is a close up. We see the women's emotion, her pain and vulnerability. She is crying, tears and make up running down her face perhaps her tears are a comparison to her life, running away from her.

Post Production: Digital Technology

After filming we were left with the task of transfering the clips from the cameras' SD memory card to the computor and editing each individual shot to make the video. Although this probably should have been one of the easiest parts of the whole projects we made a slight mistake and actually ended up loosing some of clips from the first day which we immediately had to re-shoot. Also we had found the shots had saved as a file type different to what we where expecting, however this was no major problem and was easily changed.
 I didnt find any initial problems when it come to the actual editing as this was all done on 'Premier Pro' a programme I was already familiar with as I had used it for work in my AS Media studies course. However this was different to the previous video I had made as the last one was the titles for a title scene to a film and did not need to necassarily be in time with the music. However this being a music video all of the shots taken of an actor/actress where they were singing had to be in sing with the mouth movements. Although I had previously done a lip sync task in preporation to this it was made harder as the previous shot was one long shot and this was lots of different shots that all had to link.

In the editing I found tools such as the speed/duration button a big help as it ment I could speed certain shots up and slow others down to make the lip sync match up. Also it helped as in the real video there is a point where a pencil is dropped from the table to the floor and obviously as you cant film in slow motion without this tool i wouldnt be able to do the shot and make it so realistic to the real video. The zoom option on the bottom bar as it meant I was able to break down the shots, analysise them,cut it down and edit them in more detail. This helped as regularly I had found myself just milliseconds off a perfect shot but without it would not be able to make the change needed.

Production

Involved in the filming of the video there was approximately 10 of us. This meant there was alot of thoughts and opinions on what would give the best outcome. Although this is different to how our final A2 video will be recorded, as there will only be two to a group. It was good practice to listen and take in the different views of a lot of other people who you probably would not interact with and manage to work together as a team.
The shooting of our video went very smoothly taking around a lesson and half (2hours) to do all the filming. I believe it ran so well as the shotlist helped the people in control of the camera to get each shot filmed as quickly and time efficiently as possible and the storyboard helped the actors/actresses know exactly what they where ment to be doing meaning there was no delay to the filming.
As there was a large number of actors/actresses in the real video and we had not planned to get any outside people in the plays the minor roles we made a deal that when there was a shot featuring a large group of people in at one time we would be in their video at that shot aslong as they where in ours. This can be seen in the final shot with the people in the background who jump. This just means in the future when we do our video we must make sure we remember to cast everyone in advance.
No major problems occured during the filming. A couple of group members had been away the lesson prior to filming and where not informed to bring uniform however that was easily sorted on the day as they where just used in the background of shots and luckily where not ever cast as the main characters anyway. However when such a task is undertook in the future we must make sure everyone is aware of the dates of filming and everyone brings approriate clothing.

Pre Production: Digital technology

During the pre production of the video I found I didn't really gain any more skills or progress the knowledge already obtained further. I was already familiar in all of the the digital aspects of the process to at least a basic level of skill such as print screening to create a storyboard in photoshop

Research and Planning

Initially when we got put into groups we made the decision to stop working as one and give each individual a specific task. The jobs being Creating a shotlist or storyboard, casting for the video and doing a health and safety assessment. I helped with the storyboard.

 
The two images above show screen grabs of the storyboards. We had a total of 6 pages of the storyboarding showing just shy of 30 shots. For 45 seconds worth of filming. It helped alot though as when it come to filming we new exactly how many shots and exactly what shots types were needed.

We had a shot list was created. This was done to decide when each shot would be filmed in which order. When making a decision on this we took into concideration that some shots where very similar and some different shots had the same actors/actresses in etc. This was planned in such a way to make it as least time consuming as possible. As each shot was filmed we ticked it off so that there was no confussion as to which shots we had filmed and which we had not.

When planning on doing a task such as filming, a risk assessment has to be to make sure there is no harm to any of the cast or crew members. It must list potential dangers and what we are going to do to stop these.

During A2 media studies and when we shoot our own clip in the future we are going to make sure we have a shotlist, storyboard, prop list, cast list, location list and a health and safety risk assessment