28/01/14

In today's lesson we continued our editing. So far we have edited up to the first chorus for our song. Editing is going really well, when an issue arises we all talk it through and decide as a group what to do. One of our main issues at the moment is trying to decide where to put the number scenes. We wanted to use them to do a countdown to the paint party, but we weren't sure if they should all go together or separately between different lip-singing shots. We thought that the clips should go together as it would make more sense that way. The next decision was whether these should go building up to the first chorus or the second. We decided that the first one should be used for more London shots and then build up the numbers for the second. If this doesn't look right when we have added in our paint-party shots that we can always move things around.

Pictures of practice shoots

* To set the scene we wanted to ensure that props that would fit the 50's setting; the tea pots, table cloth, the flowers and the cake stand where all elements we saw important in the circumstance.  We bought some cheap cakes to use as props and to keep the cast happy as we know that the filming process can be very tiring.

* We all had a turn with the camera as we all had different views on what we could film and how to film it; this was good as when it came to putting it on the editing software we had a variety of different angles and shots to work with.

* We tried to film a close up of Taran as he played the 'boring conservative husband'. He wore a suit and tie to fit in with the demographic, and we directed him to talk of about something that would appear boring to give the film a comedic feel. Although we will not be including the sound during editing, we believe that by using this technique it would make it appear more natural and realistic.

* We used props such as a mug of tea to give the film to make it seem old fashioned, traditional and dull. We also wanted the representation of the man to seem slightly chauvinistic and for the woman to be a typical 50's domestic housewife; we did this by focusing a lot of the attention on the man.

* When filming Katy throw the cake into Tarans face we had to find a comfortable position for the camera, we decided that having a close up that only displays half of his face would make the event seem more significant as the cake we used was not big, we did not want to make it seem minor or amateur.

Behind the scenes

We decided to travel to South Bank and study places that we could film, we already had a few ideas of where we would like to film, one of these was the Tower Bridge. It was very cold and we didn't want Katy to wear lots of layers as we wanted to convey a feeling of fearlessness and rebellion to match the lyrics and genre. The only problem with filming on the Tower Bridge was that it was very busy, so it meant there was less room to film and public attention was unavoidable.






We used one of the sculptures that are currently scattered around the city as a prop that we can work around in terms of free style movement. The other use we have for it is the progressive countdown that can be used when editing, leading up to some sort of explosion.

* This was one of the sculptures in London that was supposed to on Liverpool Street until May. Unfortunately, when travelling to this location we realised that it was not there, this was extremely disappointing.

* The first lesson back from filming we uploaded all the footage to Adobe Premiere. We are going to edit all of our footage so far in with the lyrics, once done we will begin to film in our next location.

Testing Makeup for Drama Studio.

I drew up some face charts for the possible makeup looks we could use for the Drama Studio. I did this as we all had quite different ideas about costume and makeup and I thought it would be easier to decide if they were visually presented. We can decide which we all like, and then add or takeaway elements. This means we should be well planned for when we come to shoot in terms of costume and makeup. I feel that in the London shoot we weren't sufficiently organized with this aspect. Therefore I think it is crucial that for this shoot we have everything sorted especially as this part of the song is quite conceptual and therefore makeup and costume are very important.

Yellow and Pink Graphic Style Eyeshadow. Pink Blush. Pink Stain Lips.

Multicolored Eyeshadow. Stars.Glitter Lips

A orange eyeshadow base. Black Eyeliner. Red Lips

Ideas for Costume: Drama Studio

Progress

Yesterday we started editing our footage. We started by editing together the opening scene, however there were some issues with this as some of the shots weren't the right frame or lacked continuity so we are considering refilming this scene. But for now we've just edited together what we have in order to get a vague visual representation of out ideas.

Group Meeting: 20th January

Today in our media lesson we uploaded our footage from the London filming. We then watched the footage back to review it. We also uploaded all our footage so far to Premier Pro and organised it all into separate bins, so we can easily find it for example, Opening, Tower Bridge, London Eye, Fillers, Numbers. etc.

We thought our footage was good and we thought about when to film our powder paint scene, and the spacey stuff in the drama studio.

Another thing we thought about was the issues we had during the London filming.  I don't feel that my performance was as strong as it could have been, so once we start editing we want to go do some more pick up shots etc around London. Also during the power scene we want to have a dance routine or something as we have noticed alot of this in our research of pop music video, its also part of Goodwins theory,  that music and visual link. Also we thought it be beneficial to discuss and practice my performance before shooting.

Filming - Issues

We planned to film the powder paint party today. However, due to the majority of people we needed to be involved in the scene being unable to attend, we have postponed filming to the 25th/26th of January in the hopes that more people will be able to make it and that we will therefore end up with a more realistic-looking 'party' (more than 5 people there).

Filming

Today we went up to London to film some shots of our artist lip syncing to the song in front of famous land marks. Unfortunately we lost some time out of the day due to people being late, but we still managed to film the majority of what we needed to get done, only missing out on filming some scenes in Camden due to the light fading. However, these shots can be easily picked up later, so it's not too much of an issue. Further issues included forgetting some of the necessary parts for the tripod, however I don't the we really needed the tripod as handheld shots achieved a better result as we were able to move around the artist and get more interesting shots. We learned throughout the day which way to film the artist achieved the best look, with the first shots having slightly too much movement - to the last shots still being visually interesting but not moving around so much as to disorientate the viewer.

Also during the day we took photos from each location for possible use in our digi-packs. My favorite photos being the ones taken at the skate park by Nicola.

 

Powder paint colouring issues

During the process of making the powder paint we decided to split up the job. To try to make some more vivid colours. This has been a challenge as the cornflour makes the colour more of a pastel colour than a vivid colour, no matter how much food colouring you add. The colour we have had a real problem with is red. As the cornflour dulls the vivid red to a lighter pink. Unfortunately we have not been able to create a vivid red. But we have decided that we can solve this problem by optimising the colour during our editing.

Making Coloured Powder

This week we made the coloured power for our music video. Here is how we did it.

Making the powder paint

Today we started making some batches of the powder paint. We decided to make green, blue, orange, pink and yellow. We also mixed pink and blue to make purple.

We decided to make the powder rather than buy it as it is cheaper to make, and also as we are filming the paint scenes on Sunday it would be quicker to make our own than to order online, therefore we'd definitely have the powder ready in time for filming.

To make the powder we simply used corn flour mixed with diluted food dye.

Afterwards we decided to the make further batches individually at home, as the more powder we have the more shots we can do with it, which will enable us to get a wide range of shots to chose from.

We also decided to additionally make red powder. We initially thought best not to use red as it would be too similar to pink, but seeing how clear the colours came out we didn't think this would be a problem.