FINISHED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The time has come and we have finally finished our music video!!!
After a long long process we have been through its all come to an end.

Skills Development

Skills Development- Editing

Editing in this course of my A2 has been very different I would say than it was in AS. A skill which I really thought last year was my weakest point has become something I feel so much more confident with. 

I've literally learnt so much from editing this year. Things like the whole filtering. I had to do so much with filters in my music video, using green screen and then colours with a specific part in my music video! I think I've tried so much things for the first time and most of them worked out. I really enjoyed doing the whole split screen thing. I made sure that they were all underneath each other and then the framing was correct by making it all equal that took a bit of time as they needed to be all in sync as well. I also developed the skill of being able to use the razor blade tool to cut where I wanted to during the editing of music video.

Using markers while editing has also become something I've developed through the course of this music video. They really helped me in deciding where I placed the clips, making sure they were in sync with the original soundtrack lyrics then also on the beat when I wanted to cut them. It played a big part during the whole editing process.

Skills development

Things I have learnt this year:

• Editing on the beat - The main difference between editing this year and last year (when we made an opening to a thriller film) was that this year, the cutting between shots has to be quick and precise to the beat of the song. Our song is up-tempo and fast paced which meant that in some ways it was easier, because the beat was very obvious to follow, but also harder because it meant that we needed so much more cuts.

• Synchronising the music to video - This year it was important that the lip synching was in time to the song otherwise it wouldn't have looked realistic. We did this by picking one word in the song and matching up all our base tracks to that word so that come editing it would be easier.

• Filming base tracks - Last year we managed to just get away with using random shots and putting them in at any time because we didn't have to worry about matching it to the lyrics of the song. This year we had to constantly just film the whole song through so that when it came to using Final Cut Pro, we could just lay all the clips out and cut between them.

• Camera Movement - Last year my opening was made up of  mostly close-ups and extreme close-ups to create tension and ambiguity for the audience. This year, we the singer had to be the main focus point in the video and so we had to constantly show new and different ways to capture her. Also, we had to constantly have the camera itself actually moving so that the video didn't feel too static. We learnt how to use the figrig, which was to make moving the camera easier, though it was quite hard to have one person operating it.

• Green Screen - This year I used the green screen for the first time. Through our experimenting, we learnt that you have to have the lighting so that there was no shadow, you have to make sure that there are stray bits of hair and clothes and that the artist isn't wearing anything green.

Skill development

Since the start of A2 we have learnt a great deal about new technology and also have made our skills and have made our ability to use the editing equipment etc from AS to the best of our ability.


This year I have used technology

1.Wordle- this is a website that when you type a paragraph in it it picks out the most used words and makes a collage of it

2.Prezi- this is a site that helps you decorate a page and present your work in a bright and colourful and effective way.

3.Clip grab- this is a new technology for me because its a site that helps you get the song for different videos in order to help you edit a specific part of it. We used this in the end to capture the sound for the Misha B track.

4.Go animate- this is the site that gives you the chance to not just write a paragraph and be boring but the chance to get an animated character to talk for you on the work you have done so far.

5.Using the green screen- this year we have used the green screen in order to try and make our music video stand out from all of the rest

6.The camera- we have used the lights and the camera lights when filming because a few of our shots were in the night to make it clear. This was very difficult at first but with time we grew into the hang of it and the video has only improved

More Filming

Yesterday we went back to Southbank to take a few last minute shots so that we'd have more of a selection of base-tracks. We went to the skate-ramp at night and used the graffiti backgrounds so that it would fit our theme. Our main concern after filming the last night shots was making sure our shots were well-lit. To do this, we took with us two lights; one that you attach to the top of the camera and one that we held.

We also wanted to make sure we had enough camera movement so we used the figrig to put the camera on and moved around Rachel. The hardest part was keeping the shots well-lit in the right areas whilst both Rachel and the camera were moving because, since it wasn't choreographed, it was mostly just freestyle, we sort of just had to guess. We took long shots, side view mid and close ups.

Trey Songz New Video!!!

Trey is one of my favourite r'n'b artists and when i found out abouit his new music video being released I knew this would be something interesting I would want to blog about!

This song is called Never Again off his fifth studio album 'Chapter V'

Costume and how music has changed

Whitney came about in the 1970's and was an American recording artist, actrss,producer and model. She first starred in the film bodyguard. Whitne came out whenever black female artists were not that popular. The style at this time was very different to what we see in 2012. Whitney in her song ' I wanna dance with somebody' .

Whitney had big and frizzy curly hait just like everyone back in the 70's. Whitney
wore jeans and a leather jacket. In her music video 'I will always love you' Whitney was covered almost head to toe wearing a head scarf and a dark blazer in another section.
 

Sinead Oconner another artist from the 1970's in her song 'Nothing compares' has a shaven head and is wearing all black. Sinaead song is less fast paced in comparison to whitnet and is shot in a religious area showing her irish religous background. The videos in the 70's focused more on the beauty of a womens face whereas in contemporary times there is more focus on the female cleavage.




LADY GAGA A SEX OBJECT

WHITNEY A CLASSY LADY

 

 

 

Blogging Progress

This is just a quick vlog on how I'm finding the course and everything so far.

Youtube Video's

I was listening to the radio today and heard that the most viewed video on youtube EVER has now become the hit 'Gangnam style' (uploaded  by the Korean rapper PSY with over 832 million views. He has now taken the spot, knocking down Justin Bieber's- Baby(uploaded Feburary 2010) video which previously had 803 million views.

Feedback on the rough cut

analyis of video by kerrrybrown on GoAnimate

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Feedback (Things we may need to add/change)

Class feedback on our rough cut

This is the initial feedback we got from the class for our rough cut.

Then after we went to individuals from different Groups

Rough Cut!!

This was our rough cut, that we did. It was not complete but it has given us something more to work on.

Editing Day 3

Today was our last day to edit for our rough cut and we really wanted to make sure we did the whole green screen editing.
It was quite long, but we managed to fade out all the green screen areas.
We used 'Live type'
We also managed to fix the lightening a bit on the night scenes.

Day 2 of editing!

Today we continued editing which involved importing ALL of the footage from the hard drive into Final Cut in order to select the ones we required and delete the ones we didn't require. After editing the first 20 seconds with the night scenes we though it would be convenient to establish the main base tracks that we can use and synch them in time to the music.

Music Video- Storylines

This new video below from one of my best female artist, Keyshia Cole has a very interesting storyline. It's called 'Trust & Believe', while watching it I was trying to figure out what category it would fall under according to Andrew Goodwin's theory. I felt that amplification was used, it related to the lyrics in some cases or and at the same time it didn't but kept me engaged from the beginning.
The edits in the beginning was also very good, they were fast but it just went so well.

Please take your time to watch it!:)

Website Promotion

I recently became interested in the way that singer Rihanna has used her website to promote her new seventh studio album 'Unapologetic' .

I think her website helps to promote her songs, and other types of stuff such as her perfume line & clothing line.

I especially like the way her new album cover is, Its like explaining the artists Rihanna through the wriiten words on her body. Very attractive, this description helps to tell herself more to her target audience but also the wider audience who may not actually be stans!

Also, in terms of promoting Rihanna and her upcoming album they have shown her future plans of hern'777' tour! Getting fans and other people interested in her music to be involved and go buy tickets & albums.

Editing Music Video- Rough Cut

Change of Plan

Editing

This was our first day of editing our rough cut. So far, I feel as though we've gotten off to a good start. We managed to decide which shots fits better for what part of the song (because of the dark, romantic feel of the outdoor shots, we've decided that they fit better for the opening where vocals are slow and when the beat comes in, we will use the rest of the shots) and we managed to roughly put together most of the beginning.

Skills Development

Refilming Green screen

In these photos, we were filming the shots against the green screen. After looking at our other footage, we realised that we needed more camera movement and a variation of angles, so -- as you can see in these pictures -- we tried to film in a range of different ways.

what music means to everyone public view ?

I have used my blackberry smartphone to talk to those close to me to find out what music means to

a few of them and the basic ideas is that music is a place people can got to feel safe and to get away

from whatever they are dealing with in their lives.

Above brandon talks about music as a way of feeling close to his roots and give him the feeling of comfort when an artist or a piece of music he is listening to relates to something in his life or something he has gone through.

However billy on the left doesn't really know why he listens to music but he feels that it helps him get to another world or to be outside of his skin for a bit.

Olivia and Georgina feel that music is a release and way to escape their lives. The basic reason for music well the feeling I get from my friends is that music is a release and a way to relax.

Green Screen Filming

Today we were filming some shots in the green screen. After getting feedback from our teacher, we decided that we needed more of a variation of different types of shots and angles because most of our music video so far is made up on long and midshots. We also knew that we wanted to incorperate more shots with the camera moving to keep with the uptempo pace of the song. To do this, we experimented by moving the camera both by hand and turning it on the tripod. 

The good thing about filming by hand was that it gave us lots of freedom to move the camera how and where we wanted. The downside was that sometimes the footage came out very shaky. Similiarly, although using the tripod kept our shots straight and in frame, it restricted us from being able to pan how we wanted to.

Top Hip-Hop & R'n'B Artists

Since our kind of genre for our music video is hip hop & r'n'b I thought I'd check out the hottest people in the game right about now! According to the official Billboard charts these are the 20 artists!!
http://www.billboard.com/charts/r-b-hip-hop-songs#/charts/r-b-hip-hop-songs?begin=11&order=position  (The link)


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what makes a music video stand out for me personally ?

Music videos have to be virant full of life and tell a story to interest me there are only a few music videos that have a disjuncture feel that will catch my eye. Michael buble, he is my favourite male aritist and he normally sings about women and love and all of the lyrics within his music have a story however not all of the videos have a story being shown.

 

The music video above is a michael buble video that has nothing to do with lyrics story wise complety disjuncture. The video is set in a supermarket and is used to attract women from the age of 18 to 40 onwards. Michael covers the big band side to music but he does keep it up beat so that even when he doesn't aim for a younger audience, the music video can still be seen as interesting to the younger audiences when it hits say the top forty.

 

Music videos stand out for me when they are different and are not what you usually expect from an artist. Forr example Tulisa the female singer from the urban band N-Dubz she recently released one of her first slow and romance songs. This video and song really stood out to me because it was different to her usual club and upbeat type of music. Tulisa in this video is both the narrator and the actress, this video is one of them songs that like Paul Willis talks about will stand out to women.

Tulisa is a young lady who is used to being wild and crazy like most young and sometimes older women but just like them women has experienced the downs of love in her life.

 

Looking at other green screens

I saw this music video and I thought it was a very effective use of green screen. The whole concept for the video is very simple but it still manages to make a strong impact. It goes incredibly well with the song, changing the movement of the images with the tempo of the chorus and verses. It made me think that we can adapt the simplicity of it into our own use of green screen.

Skills Development

Planning this whole production of the music video I think went all quick. To be honest I think it was planned out properly at first but I feel people within the group kind of messed it up. So things didn't really go as planned.
In AS we were all organised and had more time , which I believe helped to make our final product to be successful.
I generally feel that I adopted the same techniques and better as last year, but I don't think it worked as much.

Lyric Videos

Recently I've been seeing quite a few artist have a lyric video as their music video, maybe its the 'new thing'. Some that I've seen actually do look quite good.
Remembering Andrew Goodwins theory I think they cannot be actually classified into one of the three categories he talks about (disjuncture, amplification, illustration) because the only relationship between the song and the video are the lyrics which are on the actual screen. There are repetitive images because of the chorus and lines which are repeated in the actual song.
As Carol Vernalis said though, the edits are actually so fast! especially because not only are they changing on the beat but are changing with the lyric in some cases. I do think this type of video is catchy but it doesn't fulfil the whole reason for a music video in my view. I would want a video where I can see the artist or where there is a storyline keeping engaged throughout.

Examples of Lyrical Music Video's:

Alicia Keys-New Day

Ke$ha- Die Young

Rihanna- Diamonds

RE-FILMING!!

So we have looked at all our clips and right now we don't seem to have enough shots!! And now have to re film some scenes.
This will help to make us be able to start our editing and give another chance to make previous scenes be more better.
As we will not have enough time to do this, we have to make sure that this is really planned and all members cooperate properly with one another.
Problems we may have with this is being able to get our dancers to come down again and film especially because half term is over it needs to be convenient for them aswell.
Some of the stuff we have planned so far to refilm is the dancers & the artist with the dancers. This time including back views, side views, long, close, medium shots so we have places top cut from when editing.
We have also decided to add a new location which isnt too far from the original ones. It is a skateboarding graffiti area in southbank since we are going for that london urban young feel. We hope to get there early as it may get busier with skateboarders.

We filmed a night scene at southbank but it came out quite dark. So we are going to re film it again in a place where there is more street lights!!

Green screen test shot2!!

After filming against the green screen for practise we noticed it was quite fuzzy when we had to filter it and everything on final cut. So again for the real thing we decided to try the whole green screen thing, didnt do much shots on it because of feeling so uneasy about the previous one.
Today we, tried to use what few seconds we filmed agains green screen and edited it including the moving background. It actually looked really good!
We are planing to film more green screen now that we have seen the good bit of it all.



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Glam To Street

Reviewing the clips we shot

After reviewing the clips we shot, we have come to the realisation that we don't have many shots where the camera is moving and various shot types where we would be able to cut and in specific; the dancers. Below is an example of Cheryl - Call My Name's video where there a various shot types of Cheryl herself and her dancers for e.g. a side view long shot, behind shot of the dancers, front mid shot and side mid shot.

diary of my filming experience

Day 1- Today we filmed in the green screen room and spent the whole day playing with the lights and the projector to try and get the best possible use out of the day. We watched as her maskup was being done and I took part in both filming and playing around with the lighting.

Day 2- Today we went filming in waterloo in the graffiti tunnel. When we were filming we found it ard to deal with all the obstacles of cars and people getting in the way of our shots. The dancers we had were with us today and we filmed all their sections today. It was god fun filming in such an urban area and we found it very useful as we found people with spray paint cans and they let us use theirs for our video.

Day 3- Today we went filming in south bank and spent the time we had settng up and trying to get the best scenery we could to make the video come across as in sync and to try and create the feel we wanted.

Day 4- Today was our last day of Filming. We had to include a new base track because we didnt have enough good niht shots. We went back down to south bank to the skater part and found a very urban and graffiti part to film in. This was the day we used the fig- rig it looks like a steering wheel. We used this to try and get more angles in our video.

I fee happy and have very much enjoyed sections of the filming process. I feel this year alot more confident with the camera and the use of th tripod etc. A massive problem we had when filming was trying to get the level on the tripod in the centre but with alittle hard work we managed to do it.

Inspiration behind spray-painting

Final Day Filming!!!

Filming Day 2, Pictures!!!!!!!

Below is a collection of pictures that we took whilst filming:

Location & Filming

Our first day of filming at Waterloo went well, we managed to get quite a lot done. The general location was very strong because it added well to the party, up-beat atmosphere that we want our music video to have. The only drawbacks was the cold weather made it difficult for the performers and the fact that random members of the public kept walking into and ruining our shot.

All in all it was a good day!

(To be finished)

Filming Day 2

Today we done some filming in Waterloo, in the tunnel where the graffiti was.
Here are some images below!!☺
As you can see I had fun taking pictures on my phone!



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