Shoot 3: Shoot: 29th November

We shot today and the shoot didn't exactly go according to plan because we ran out of valuable time, we also only used two locations as appose to the three/four we were planning on using, also again light was a problem as we were shooting towards the end of daylight hours.

Nevertheless we managed to shoot two key scenes and sequences that we amy be using in our final cut.  These were a shot we were experimenting with on a mattress we were using. Our main character would be rolling around on this emphasising his lack of sleep. We also used the chair prop in a different location with a field in  the backdrop and we plan on using the layering editing tool to overlap theses shots into one.

Therefore, we will be using our shooting schedule for this shoot for our forth shoot to save time because we have missed some vital shots and scenes that still need to be done. As a result, it is arguable to say that we are behind now however, we will be using the time we have left efficiently to get our full rough cut shot and edited by the 4th of december or the 6th if time is needed.

Shoot 3: Planning: 28th November, field, skatepark, Ilkley, graffiti wall

This is a post on our planning for the third shoot we are going to do we have focused on the key locations where we will be shooting at, and will be shooting both narrative and performance footage and hopefully we will have enough footage to create our first rough cut. From previous experiences we know that we have to plan our shoots before hand to use our time a lot more efficiently. 

Here is our shooting schedule for our third shoot



For our third shoot we are planning on shooting at five different locations as you can see from the shooting schedule above. Luckily two members of the group can drive therefore we can fit the chair in the back of the car and use it in any ideal location.

Sample scene 4 feedback

Sample scene 3 feedback

Sample scene 2 feedback no.2

Sample Scene 2 feedback

This is feedback for our time lapse experiment, the outcome was very good and what we are hoping to hear when we get audience feedback. Also she gave relevant ways to improve the video which was good as they were only slight improvements that can be altered quickly.

Sample Scene 1 feedback

This is our first piece of audience feedback we got from our sample sequence one. Our feedback was from our target audience which is god as we could get ideas from our peers as well as them being our target audience. This was the edit that Declan did with the layering of our main character sitting in his chair. In the final cut pour character will be lip syncing in these performance shots.

JW: Twitter Page

DeJaCu's Twitter Page

Our twitter page

Our group have created a new Twitter with the username TeamDeJaCu. We will use this twitter as an advertising tool and to let people know about our group and what we're planning to do. Here is our twitter account!
















As well as just setting up our twitter and tweeting we have also followed influential twitter pages. One of these pages was beggars group media. A media group responsible for videos from the likes of Bon Iver. They are an english group and they are a company we take inspiration from.
We also followed Faithless as he is the artist of the video we are doing and we take many ideas from his work as inspiration.                                                                                                         

JW: Sample Scene 4

Sample scene 4

When shooting we shot lots of me lip synching. We did this on the chair and lip synched the whole thing. Here is the outcome and a few points about it:

Mise En Scene
When shooting we took advantage of what we think is great mise en scene. We asked people what they thought of the background and they loved it, as it was urban and looked very effective. The graffiti is used in lots of music videos like Blue-one love as it gives the video an urban feel.


Feedback

We then got feedback on our video. The main piece of feedback was that there should be more emphasis when lip synching the words. People said i didn't put enough emotion into it and could be more clear with my lip synching. However they liked the mise en scene and some of the footage they said was really good but the best bits need cutting and small bits put into the video not one long bit

Editing
The editing of this clip was incredibly easy as i just matched the audio to the visuals of me lip synching. As soon as i did this the clip started to look very good and our team were happy with the results. As well as just dragging the audio, with like all of the other videos we chose the black and white effect to represent the dark place he is in.

JW: Sample Scene 3

JW: Sample Scene 3

 When on our shoot we decided to have a shot of me tapping my foot against the wall to the beat as we thought it would be an effective shot and have seen it in many different music videos like George Michaels Faith. I then edited the clip to the beat and found it quite effective.







As we have gone with the idea of having a black and white music video, when editing we always use the black and white to see how it looks. This is because it is not a definitive decision to go with black and white. if it looks good in colour we can discuss and decide whether or not we should keep with the black and white idea

Editing Experiment 2: Time lapse and tint

On this post i am experimenting with time lapsing my clips to see if they work effectively, this also give me a chance to look at the different tints that can be applied to the clips and which ones work well and which ones don't.



This is my experimental clip for the time lapse we plan on using as well as the added tint of black and
white. Obviously this isn't very continuous however i can get a feel for how it will look like which is good.

There are a few flaws such as the clips being repeated however, for our next shoot we plan on making this sequence a lot longer as the character moves into different positions. We plan for it to be in one continuous shot so there are no cuts in between any clips.

Take The Long Way Home

Another thing we plan on maybe using for this sequence would be the green screen behind it, the downside to this is that it would limit the shot types we could use to MS, CU and ECU which could also work but this would be something we would have to experiment with. The clip from Take The Long Way Home would be a shot like the one we be trying to achieve.

Audience feedback:
It would be good to use the slow motion effect also

Tint applied to our shot

We were experimenting with the different filters that could be applied to our shots. I tried one called the 'faded sun' which gave the the shot an abstract colour and did work rather well. However, it doesn't really go with the conventions of our music video which is rather dark and abstract, with this filter it still shows a sign of colour to the shot and i don't think it would give the same feel to the music video if this tint was used.

Faded sun tint

Sample scene 2

This is our sample scene two where i experimented with different editing techniques. This is rough but it gives us and idea of how it will look when it comes to the actual shoot and we know what we need to do when it comes to changing it.

DW: Sample scene 1

Sample Scene 1

From our shoot on the 16th November we managed to get a scene where our main character is sat in an arm chair on a field, and in this scene we wanted to see if duplicating the character in the armchair would work, and to do this we had to keep the camera rolling in one long take and in the same position whiles we moved the armchair in different positions.

Editing:
With the editing for this scene we had to use the blade tool to chop up the long take that we took and then separate the clips that had the armchair in different positions, we then re-timed each clip so that they were all the same length and then layered them over the top of each other by cropping each clip to the point where you could see each clip in the same scene.

The Clip:

Benji Boko Feat. Maxi Jazz - Where My Heart Is

This music video i have looked at i near enough one continuous take, of the same shots repeated or reversed. The video is just constant performance footage with the occasional flash in shot of another face.

0.14 min

There are a few things that can be taken from this music video that we may consider putting into our
work one of which is the effect of layering clips over one another and reversing one of them so it is at the opposite way round, the opacity is then decreased therefore, one face is more dominant than the other. This can all be done on Final Cut Pro X and would be rather easy to do when it comes to editing.

1.35 min

I did notice a problem that we could solve, as this is used on a green screen as the shot uses a downwards transition, his body is cut off under the shoulders. This doesn't look to good and can be soled by creating a cover that shapes normally round the body for example cutting out a piece of cardboard and shaping it around the bottom of the characters face. This way the full circle of the head would be shown on the screen and there would be no straight lines. If we were to use something like this in our music video it could work well as it could relate to our characters nightmares, having a green screen face looming in the background of a specific shot or popping up in different places of the video.

In my opinion this is a really boring video, because it is one continuous shot pretty much there is no narrative whats so ever its arguable that there is some concept involved. However, this has no effect on the video. Their is no hook to keep the audience watching which is what i would want from a music video such as his previous videos, Faithless - God is a Dj does this really well as the build up of the song links in with the visuals and the narrative/performance works really well.

I think as group we can do a lot better than this video because the editing in the video is minimalistic. Our video will also contain a narrative structure to it as well as performance footage and from the past videos i have seen of Faithless this has worked really well.

Editing experiments:

Tint applied to our shot

We were experimenting with the different filters that could be applied to our shots. I tried one called the 'faded sun' which gave the the shot an abstract colour and did work rather well. However, it doesn't really go with the conventions of our music video which is rather dark and abstract, with this filter it still shows a sign of colour to the shot and i don't think it would give the same feel to the music video if this tint was used.

Faded sun tint

Mise en scene: The Chair

The Chair:

Muhammed Ali

What we have found is that in many of Faithless' music videos is that Maxi Jazz when he is lip syncing is usually in a stationary position. He is usually either standing up straight or sitting down.

We took particular interest in the music video Take The Long Way Home by Faithless as they use an old looking armchair for Maxi Jazz to sit on whiles he's singing, and we're planning on incorporating this in our music video and will form an intertextual link with Faithless' other videos, but also it's common

Take The Long Way Home

for juxtaposition to be used in Faithless' videos
for example in Take The Long Way Home Maxi Jazz
is seen sitting on an arm chair in front of a moon in his
 armchair and these two things are very juxtaposed, and
with our music video we're planning on shooting with an
 armchair in the middle of a field to achieve juxtaposition.

Like in the video Take The Long Way Home we are in the process of planning our green screen shot where we plan on shooting our main character sat in his chair with the green screen behind him. One of the main factors of this is choosing the visuals that will go behind our character whether they will be moving or a still image, it may be the safe option to use a still image however, using a moving background could be equally effective.

Shoot 2: 16th November, graffiti wall, field shot

On the 16th of November we decided that we would shoot during our media lesson at 9.00 Am due to our locations brainstorm we knew the locations we would be shooting at. Because of problems last time due to lack of planning we fully prepared with our storyboard. Therefore, we shot everything we set out to do, which was to get the lip syncing footage from two different locations, these were:

• The Ben rhydding field behind Declans house 
• The graffiti wall

These locations were ideal for some of our lip syncing sequences because we used an abstract backdrop which worked extremely well as the mise en scene of the graffiti on the back wall signifies a 'badboy' role which is what we hope will be our preferred reading from our target audience.

Here is our behind the scenes footage:

In this shoot we used a major prop which was the arm chair, when looking at faithless' previous music videos he seems to be sitting down frequently and we thought it may be a good idea to experiment with a shot like this. In the end we decided we really liked the look of our character lip syncing whilst he is sat in the chair. These are shots we plan to experiment entirely with to get the perfect shot of our character.

We used one shot where we kept the camera in the same position but moved our character in his chair to different parts of the field that our character was in which worked very well as we plan on cropping clips and layering them over one another to get a consistent shot of our character in 5 different positions in one shot.

Also we plan on using a time lapse, for this we filmed the chair in one location as our character sat in many different positions. when speeded up we feel that this will look very effective.

On our next shoot we plan to:

• Use storyboards more frequently
• Be prepared for weather conditions (umbrellas ect.)
• Shoot the narrative aspect of our video
• Have a full call sheet written up in which we can refer to when shooting

Call Sheet TBC

DW: Faithless - Take The Long Way Home

ACT: Faithless

TRACK: Take The Long Way Home

YEAR:  1998

0-47

1.  The framing in this shot is a key element to some of Faithless's video as they frame the artist, Maxi Jazz, at the bottom rather than centre framed , and they have a larger image in the background. 

Long shot 0-43

2. This scene uses juxtaposition well and it's common for Faithless to incorporate juxtaposed ideas in the music videos, it works well here as there's Maxi Jazz sat in an arm chair in the centre of the frame with the moon behind him in the background, and this is juxtaposed as these two elements don't look right together.

Black&White

3. It's also common for his videos to be dark and for his clothing to be dark, in this scene they've applied a black and white tint over the scene to give it this dark effect.

DW: Faithless - Bombs

Juxtaposition 1-00mins

 1. Juxtaposition is used well within this music video to signify political and social issues, for example this shot where the school children are running with the Navy ship in the background firing. The juxtaposition is with the harmless children and the dangerous Navy ship.

Medium Close-up 2-10mins

2. Also what's common in his music videos is his presence and shots of him lip syncing with a medium close-up on his face directly singing to the camera.

T.V shot 3-27

3.  What also works well is this scene with the T.V as they've obviously made the effort to program the T.V for the scene as it fits in with the narrative.

JW: Faithless - Bring My Family Back

In this video, like many other faithless videos he approaches poverty and alot of the videos are set in poverty inflicted areas. This is emphasised by the mise en scene which has been graffitied.









In alot of videos like this one, instruments are included in the mise en scene. This represents that it is a music video.

Maxi Jazz wears alot of long coats and dark clothes. This is going to be used in our music video in our costume choice. We will wear dark clothes and if there is one available, a long coat

JW: Faithless - Music Matters

 Act: Faithless
Song: Music Matters

1) This video like many others is very abstract. The effect used is very effective and makes the video entertaining. It is used on the face and if can be done will be used in our final piece.

2) The video is one long continuous take that is edited with many different effects. There is one frame with different scenes of different things happening each time.







3) Here a lightning like effect is used with many different colours. It is used to give a rave feel to the video and is used in many different dance videos to give a nightclub feel.

JW: Idea update

Idea Update 1

There are a few updates to our idea:

• Instead of a girl being the nightmare that the sufferer has, we now have decided to go with a mask to provide  a scarier nightmare. This mask will be borrowed from a friend or someone at school, we will use many different angles and effects to anchor the preferred reading.
• From the ASFF: 
• The use of smoke machines could be very effective. 
• An effect that signifies insanity. Here is the video in which the effect was used:
• Another idea we have had is a close up of the main character (me) tapping my feet on the floor along with the music.
• We also took major inspiration from the faithless videos that we observed. A key feature of almost all faithless videos is him sitting down in a chair lip synching. We are going to use this shot but add a bit of a difference by shooting in the middle of a field.

Shoot 2: Planning (Graffiti wall and chair)

Planning for our second shoot

Taking into account our previous shoot we have decided to approach our next one in a more professional manor, we will be using storyboards and call sheets so we know exactly what we are going to film and where ect. In addition to this our time will be used much more effectively as we won't be worrying about what shots to shoot we will already know as we have planned before hand.

Faithless - Mass Destruction

0.27

There is an ECU used on his mouth to create an interesting visual effect because it is an unusual shot. This can also act as a transition between shots also it gives the video an entertainment value as its really abstract.

0.34

A juxtaposition is used when the character switches to a young boy instead of Maxi Jazz, as the young boy sits in his seat. Also the girl members in the background, the female drummer and guitarist are counter-stereotypical as rock instruments are played by women.

Faithless - Tarantula

In this video when the beat drops, the shot from Maxi Jazz cuts immediately to a shot of a club and people dancing, this is one of the key signifiers of the genre. The lighting effects used are also abstract to go along with the theme of the video however its is a drastic change form him laying in his bed.

Faithless - Muhammed Ali

There is a lot of footage of Maxi Jazz' performance in this video as he sits in a stand as if he's watching a big match. The shot types vary on the lyrics the shot types are usually MCU, CU, ECU and MS.

2.23

This is other performance footage in the video which links the lyrics in with the visuals which he does quite a lot in his videos i have found. This is something that we should take into consideration in our planning.

2.30

Again there is dance footage included in the video however this isn't all synchronised.

Faithless Videos

Key points and what we may include in our video:

• Juxtaposition, in certain environments to create an entertainment value, being rebelious almost.
• Idelogical issues are explored and political questions. 
• Having things filmed and put them on a TV screen in the background. Shot of tv can be used well we can experiment using our main characters ace on the TV.
• Link with the lyrics and visuals.