The City:
Going to the city, I hope you'll meet me there.
Gonna find the answers to all of our prayers.
And I wont have to look hard, when your by my side.
The suitcases and skyscrapers and traffic lights.
(This Is repeated throughout the song and are the only lyrics, there for making us feel we did not have to over complicate our music video but try and keep it simple)
Sunday, 13 December 2009
Thursday, 3 December 2009
Filming in the city
We originally thought that in our Music video we would show Josh travelling to and around the city to do this we were going to use many different forms of transport Like cars, bus and train. As we got further in to the project we realised that this idea was not a strong enough story-line to keep our target audience interest for the duration of the song, so we came up with a new idea, we will just use a performance from Josh on the bench and cut away to multiple shots of the city and other random city related things to keep our audience interested also through this we hope to show different sides of the city. We did use transport in the form of a car, not to help show josh actually getting to the city but to film some shots on the road to show Josh's longing to go to the city, here we got to use our original idea but with a different meaning behind it. These shots were very useable and if feel will add a sense of movement and direction to our film.
We needed to film some more city shots so we decided to do these at night-time to get some of the city nightlife into our music video. We Set-up outside of 'The Hippodrome' and started to film the traffic as it passed by the traffic-lights. This was a really good shot as we see both the traffic and cars lights (due to it being night) this helped make the shot seem more atmospheric. We re-filmed a few of our earlier test shots to get a better angles and see if they looked better at night.
One more thing we needed to do was have some more different and interesting shots to cut away to. We created a cryptic symbolic message, to add an abstract feel to the video (arrow + heart = ?) this sum actually means; deciding where to go (arrow) and finding your love (heart) leads to not being able to make a decision about what to do (?). We decided to use these symbols as a recurring motif throughout our film. We got many different people to hold them in various different places, this helped us to convey the feeling of confusion and not knowing what to do is common amongst lots of people.
We now felt we had enough footage to start editing together, so we now start the editing process on imovie using our rough cut as an outline.
We needed to film some more city shots so we decided to do these at night-time to get some of the city nightlife into our music video. We Set-up outside of 'The Hippodrome' and started to film the traffic as it passed by the traffic-lights. This was a really good shot as we see both the traffic and cars lights (due to it being night) this helped make the shot seem more atmospheric. We re-filmed a few of our earlier test shots to get a better angles and see if they looked better at night.
One more thing we needed to do was have some more different and interesting shots to cut away to. We created a cryptic symbolic message, to add an abstract feel to the video (arrow + heart = ?) this sum actually means; deciding where to go (arrow) and finding your love (heart) leads to not being able to make a decision about what to do (?). We decided to use these symbols as a recurring motif throughout our film. We got many different people to hold them in various different places, this helped us to convey the feeling of confusion and not knowing what to do is common amongst lots of people.
We now felt we had enough footage to start editing together, so we now start the editing process on imovie using our rough cut as an outline.
Wednesday, 25 November 2009
Filming Josh
Plan:
We felt we were now ready to film our singer/songwriter Josh Embury performing his song. We wanted the location of this performance to be perfect and realized we couldn’t use the location of a rough cut as it was to urban. Here are so of our favourite benches that we found:
After lots of research into the rural locations of benchs we found our perfesct bench on Brandon Hill in Bristol that highly contrasted the city.
Here is me showing what it would look like for the performance:
Filming:
Karin was unable to attend the filming session as she had to go to work but me and Mattie were both able to attend. We both knew what our aims of the day were and what needed to be achieved before they set off, this enabled us to get on with the filming straight away. We sat Josh on the bench we had chosen with his guitar then we set up the ipod and speakers for him to play along to, making sure they were as close as possible without being in shot, helping josh keep in time to the song. We filmed the whole performance from three different angles ,like in the rough cut, but we filmed each angle multiple times ensuring we definitely had good footage.
Photographs:
We also decided to take some photographs of Josh to help us begin thinking about what we could possibly do for our auxillary tasks. These looked really good when we looked at them on the computer, so with a little bit of editing on Photoshop we were able to create some powerfull images to represent the artist and the song.
We felt we were now ready to film our singer/songwriter Josh Embury performing his song. We wanted the location of this performance to be perfect and realized we couldn’t use the location of a rough cut as it was to urban. Here are so of our favourite benches that we found:
After lots of research into the rural locations of benchs we found our perfesct bench on Brandon Hill in Bristol that highly contrasted the city.
Here is me showing what it would look like for the performance:
Filming:
Karin was unable to attend the filming session as she had to go to work but me and Mattie were both able to attend. We both knew what our aims of the day were and what needed to be achieved before they set off, this enabled us to get on with the filming straight away. We sat Josh on the bench we had chosen with his guitar then we set up the ipod and speakers for him to play along to, making sure they were as close as possible without being in shot, helping josh keep in time to the song. We filmed the whole performance from three different angles ,like in the rough cut, but we filmed each angle multiple times ensuring we definitely had good footage.
Photographs:
We also decided to take some photographs of Josh to help us begin thinking about what we could possibly do for our auxillary tasks. These looked really good when we looked at them on the computer, so with a little bit of editing on Photoshop we were able to create some powerfull images to represent the artist and the song.
Editing our rough cut
Importing Footage:
We imported all our footage for the rough cut into imovie to begin the editing. To stop our shots from Letter-boxing we changed imovie’s preference’s as letter-boxing is not what we want for our video and it saves a lot of time due to letter-boxing possibly taking hours, also we did not feel that our end product needed to be letter-boxed.
Editing:
Once we had imported both the rough cut footage and song we started cutting the Footage into Individual Shots/takes then into short clips to match the phrases within the song. Using these key pauses and breaks within the melody will help us match our cuts and transitions to the music and help us keep in time.
We decided to use one of our establishing shots over Bristol as our opening. This was to help set the city scene; also it shows the contrast between the urban city and the rural bench he is sitting. To keep the contrast of locations we will keep cutting back to different shots of the city between some of the phrases of music.
Final Rough Cut:
We left some gaps within our rough cut, this was to due to us not being able to film all the shots that we would have liked due to weather and we wanted to show we knew where we would be put them. This gave an accurate overview of the timings of when and where our cuts and the shots would be.
We imported all our footage for the rough cut into imovie to begin the editing. To stop our shots from Letter-boxing we changed imovie’s preference’s as letter-boxing is not what we want for our video and it saves a lot of time due to letter-boxing possibly taking hours, also we did not feel that our end product needed to be letter-boxed.
Editing:
Once we had imported both the rough cut footage and song we started cutting the Footage into Individual Shots/takes then into short clips to match the phrases within the song. Using these key pauses and breaks within the melody will help us match our cuts and transitions to the music and help us keep in time.
We decided to use one of our establishing shots over Bristol as our opening. This was to help set the city scene; also it shows the contrast between the urban city and the rural bench he is sitting. To keep the contrast of locations we will keep cutting back to different shots of the city between some of the phrases of music.
Final Rough Cut:
We left some gaps within our rough cut, this was to due to us not being able to film all the shots that we would have liked due to weather and we wanted to show we knew where we would be put them. This gave an accurate overview of the timings of when and where our cuts and the shots would be.
Filming the Rough cut
Location:
We decided to film the performance element of the music video with our actor (Josh) sat on a bench secluded from city life to symbolise the isolation of where he is compared to within the city. We took a trip to The Lake-grounds in Portishead and found on Battery Point there were lots of benches with potential for us to use. We wanted a bench that didn't have anything around that would distract the viewer’s attention from the performance.
Shooting:
For the rough cut I stepped in to perform the song in his place. This arrangement was made because due to British weather we couldn't film at the time of day we had planned to film there for Josh was not available to film the rough cut.
Equipment List:
1 Video Camera
2 Tripod
3 Still Camera
4 Ipod and Speakers
5 Guitar (for performance)
We used 3 different shots to film our rough cut these were:
Straight on medium close up, side on close up of guitar and low angle.
So I could stay in time to the song we played the song on the speakers, also this would help us to know where in the song we are when editing. I had one run through to get used to the song, after this we got straight to recording. Whilst I was recording Mattie and Karin explained to anyone who walked by what was happening and made sure they didn’t get in shot.
We decided to film the performance element of the music video with our actor (Josh) sat on a bench secluded from city life to symbolise the isolation of where he is compared to within the city. We took a trip to The Lake-grounds in Portishead and found on Battery Point there were lots of benches with potential for us to use. We wanted a bench that didn't have anything around that would distract the viewer’s attention from the performance.
Shooting:
For the rough cut I stepped in to perform the song in his place. This arrangement was made because due to British weather we couldn't film at the time of day we had planned to film there for Josh was not available to film the rough cut.
Equipment List:
1 Video Camera
2 Tripod
3 Still Camera
4 Ipod and Speakers
5 Guitar (for performance)
We used 3 different shots to film our rough cut these were:
Straight on medium close up, side on close up of guitar and low angle.
So I could stay in time to the song we played the song on the speakers, also this would help us to know where in the song we are when editing. I had one run through to get used to the song, after this we got straight to recording. Whilst I was recording Mattie and Karin explained to anyone who walked by what was happening and made sure they didn’t get in shot.
Film Planning
This was our original storyboard of ideas
We filmed some test shots of the city to decide on where our best locations could be. Along with all the equipment for filming we also took a stills camera to take pictures of our favourite locations so we could produce a neat and accurate story board. We found a wide variety of places we could have used to portray the city in and around Bristol but we eventually narrowed our shots down to:
• Outside 'The Hippodrome' - Traffic lights and traffic shot
• On top of the NCP Car Park - establishing
• Brandon Hill - establishing
• Cabot Circus - general city shots
We imported all our footage into iMovie and started experimenting with a range of effects, we also tested what the shots would look like with parts of the song. We discovered that the traffic shots looked good in black and white and also made quicker with an added effect of ghost trails to give the blur of busy traffic.
We filmed some test shots of the city to decide on where our best locations could be. Along with all the equipment for filming we also took a stills camera to take pictures of our favourite locations so we could produce a neat and accurate story board. We found a wide variety of places we could have used to portray the city in and around Bristol but we eventually narrowed our shots down to:
• Outside 'The Hippodrome' - Traffic lights and traffic shot
• On top of the NCP Car Park - establishing
• Brandon Hill - establishing
• Cabot Circus - general city shots
We imported all our footage into iMovie and started experimenting with a range of effects, we also tested what the shots would look like with parts of the song. We discovered that the traffic shots looked good in black and white and also made quicker with an added effect of ghost trails to give the blur of busy traffic.
Thursday, 1 October 2009
Research and planning for music video
We got in to a group of three (Me, Mattie and Karin) as we worked together last year.
We decided to research number of different songs By a Variety of different artists. We looked at their Music videos and we also looked at their websites, this was to try and figure out a trend in the different styles of song. Once we were told that we were unable to use copyrighted music we felt we were rather limited. We aproached a member of staff who we knew was in a band but his music was copyrighted, but he did have a supply of non-copyrighted songs which he supplied us. We decided not use Any of the songs because we found another possible song by friend of ours who had recently recorded a song he had written on a music technology trip that Me and Karin went on. After we had listen to the song a few times and had clear images that a good music video could be made, we looked at the lyrics in more detail and thought about more speceific narritives and possible locations.
Jason Mraz is one artist that we feel is within the same genre as our song and would have a substantial influence on what we include in our music video. This is what his video for 'I'm Yours' included:
* Silhouettes
* Narrative and performance
* Slow motion group shots
* Establishing shots
* Handheld style shots
Jack Johnson was another one of the artists that we decided to research. His video for 'Better Together' included the following techniques:
* Montage of photos and video
* Black and White
* Close up of face to show emotions
Here are our ideas for possible filming locations for our music video:
* Beach
* City
* Car
* Woods
* Airport/Bus Station/Train Station
* Park
* Rooftop
We also talked about possible techniques we could use thinking ahead to editing the footage we were planning on getting, these were:
* Slow motion
* Black and White
* Sepia tone
* Double layered shots
we decided on the outline we would like to use for the layout of our music video to this went like:
* Performance Element: On a bench with guitar to show the isolation. Singing whilst walking.
* Flashback shots of relationship
* Shots of the City
* Traffic and Transport shots
* Montage of all the above
* End as began
We decided to research number of different songs By a Variety of different artists. We looked at their Music videos and we also looked at their websites, this was to try and figure out a trend in the different styles of song. Once we were told that we were unable to use copyrighted music we felt we were rather limited. We aproached a member of staff who we knew was in a band but his music was copyrighted, but he did have a supply of non-copyrighted songs which he supplied us. We decided not use Any of the songs because we found another possible song by friend of ours who had recently recorded a song he had written on a music technology trip that Me and Karin went on. After we had listen to the song a few times and had clear images that a good music video could be made, we looked at the lyrics in more detail and thought about more speceific narritives and possible locations.
Jason Mraz is one artist that we feel is within the same genre as our song and would have a substantial influence on what we include in our music video. This is what his video for 'I'm Yours' included:
* Silhouettes
* Narrative and performance
* Slow motion group shots
* Establishing shots
* Handheld style shots
Jack Johnson was another one of the artists that we decided to research. His video for 'Better Together' included the following techniques:
* Montage of photos and video
* Black and White
* Close up of face to show emotions
Here are our ideas for possible filming locations for our music video:
* Beach
* City
* Car
* Woods
* Airport/Bus Station/Train Station
* Park
* Rooftop
We also talked about possible techniques we could use thinking ahead to editing the footage we were planning on getting, these were:
* Slow motion
* Black and White
* Sepia tone
* Double layered shots
we decided on the outline we would like to use for the layout of our music video to this went like:
* Performance Element: On a bench with guitar to show the isolation. Singing whilst walking.
* Flashback shots of relationship
* Shots of the City
* Traffic and Transport shots
* Montage of all the above
* End as began
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