Sunday, 11 December 2011

Post Production- Week 13

It's nearly all over! I've only got to now complete my evaluation as all our products have been handed in on time. This week my partner and I finished the editing of our music video which I'm overall pleased with however in regards to the ending,the ending is what I described but is  NOT executed in the slightest like how I had imagined. I personally feel the ending is rushed and doesn't give off the emotions and atmosphere I had intended for but won't complain as the rest of the video was near enough entirely what I wanted.

The digipak was also completed this week. My partner and I decided during the process of creating the digipak to stick with the maroon red,black and white colour scheme and added red boarders and stark whites throughout the digipak design. While taking photos of the artist for the digipak I had an idea which I believed worked better than the original CD design of Robert's face looking stunned under the CD and covering his eyes on the CD. The pattern on Roberts shirt is very interesting and got my attention when a person walking through our location commented saying "That shirt is really cool, really sticks in your head with that old school look". I then had the idea to use the "cool" shirt design as the CD design cover as it had always stuck in my head and separated Robert from a lot of mainstream artists.

I pitched it to my partner who liked the idea and in one lesson we had our CD design complete. The cover also went through a drastic change. While getting photos I didn't like the images of Robert on the piano as much as the ones on our preliminary photos and when looking at other artists' magazine ads they often had the magazine ads imagery as the cover of their CD's or digipaks. I pitched the idea to my partner backing myself up with real life examples and my partner agreed this made more sense than the original cover and we completed the design with relative ease in one lesson as the majority of the tinkering had already been done when designing the magazine ad.

I'm very happy with our three products but looking in hindsight feel that there was a LOT that we could have improved on like the ending of the music video, having more red cinematography in the music video as the video has more blue tones with a few oranges and warm colours while the magazine ad and digipak have strong emphasis on the colour red. Other things I think we could have improved on is the detail in the digipak like studio information and means for the audience to get more information on the artist.

I'm happy the production is over and look forward to evaluating my work.

Sunday, 4 December 2011

Post Production- Week 12

This week after analysing my feedback I compiled all the essential data into one document and used that as a guideline to help myself and my partner when editing my music video together.
We have completed a rough cut and are now focusing on getting our video edited to the beat to perfection. The notes that the other groups gave about video has been taken into account and has made our music video already lookl several times better than it did before.

The photos of our artist for the digipak are still yet to be done and MUST be done by tomorrow as we are running out of time to get them completed. I have done two photoshoots with the artist already but none of the photos have come out how I would like and I feel that the photos would benefit greatly from a green screen. These photos will be done tomorrow and editing on them shall begin directly after the music video is completed.

The reception from our magazine ad and current music video has been positive and I do not want to let my partner and myself down by not delivering on the digipak.

Sunday, 27 November 2011

Production- Week 11

This week my partner and I have continued to edit our footage and it is coming along very well with only minor hiccups in our editing due to our artist being slightly out of sync with our footage because we did not have speakers playing the music out aloud while we filmed him like we should have. The lip syncing isn't a huge problem and we have been able to resolve these problems fairly easily.

This week I was also able to re film the bedroom scenes with our actress. Although I only re filmed certain scenes the music video already looks much better because all the lighting has the right continuity and I was also able to film some new shots for new ideas that I devised while looking at our preliminary cut our music video that didn't go well for example the quick cuts of our actress wiping her make up off has been re filmed to her putting on make up on her eyes and lipstick in two different scenes which we have now edited into one to move the video along at a quick pace.

Shots of the computer screen in the bedroom scenes were left as they were and not re filmed because I didn't believe they needed to be re filmed and once put into our edit should blend seamlessly.

Our editing is coming along nicely and should be complete before Friday next week, tomorrow I am also going to take photographs of our artist for our digipak hopefully because the last few weeks we've been unable to due to time restraints while filming or he does not have the right attire but we should hopefully have them by tomorrow night so we can add them into our existing design so far.

Sunday, 20 November 2011

Production- Week 10

This week my partner has helped me edit the footage that I had recorded previously while I also continued to film more shots for the scenes of our artist in the hall. Filming this week was very productive and I was able to refilm scenes that we thought could have been improved while also getting more of the shots we needed.

 All the scenes of our artist in the hall have been completed and we now have all of our shots finished however myself and my partner are considering refilming scenes of our lead actress in her bedroom because they don't seem to be framed correctly in some shots and some scenes take far too long then we had planned and when edited in our video seems to ruin the flow.

This weekend my partner and I considered to do some filming at Brick Lane but decided not go forth with the idea as our actress was not available and our music video running time is already slightly over and we felt that these shots were expendable because they didn't get the message of the video across any clearer then the shots we already have had.

This week our current video edit was reviewd by other groups and all the notes of our filming have been improved on in our filming that occured this week while the few shots that were told be redone or corrected will be done early next week. These shots include refilming some of the bedroom scenes and having our actress look at herself in the mirror analaysing her body instead of pushing plates of food away which our audience didn't understand the meaning of.

Next week I have one day of pick up filming to complete ,a photoshoot for our digipak and several days worth of editing.

This week has been very productive and as long as we stay focused we shall complete all our tasks quickly and effectively.

Sunday, 13 November 2011

Production- Week 9

This week I have been away due to extremely poor health. My partner while I was away has completed our magazine ad from a photo that I emailed her. The photo surprisingly enough wasn't one of the photos from the SLR camera but one that I took from Roberts Iphone 4.My partner also notified me on areas of our music video where music is not in sync.

While I was away I have been organising filming dates and dates for us to take more photographs of our artist so that next week we have a smooth week and make up for work that has been lost out on in the last week due to my absence.

Production- Week 8

This week my partner and I have jumped head first into the heart of production and have been hard at work. We began developing all three of our texts at once by starting with our digipak and creating an abstract panel of words relating to our artist, this has been a much more time consuming process so we're very happy that we've begun work so early because if we started this later it could take up valuable time that we would require.

I also stayed back after school to film scenes in the hall with Robert which has taken off a large percentage of how much we now need to film. With the hall scenes now 75% finished this has taken a huge amount of our workload off and has put myself and my partner back into safer territory although we must stay on top. The hall is in constant use though which was the cause for our late filming and may also be a problem in the future so I must keep checking when it is free for future filming.

In addition to filming in the hall I've tried to make use of multiple forms of technology and used Roberts iphone4 to take multiple photos of him which will be used for our digipak and magazine ad. At first I was reluctant to use the iphone over an SLR camera but after researching the frame rate of the camera I was happy to give it a chance and I believe that this shows how the marketing for our artist is kept cheap to keep the budget low.

Our actress also came into school so I filmed the majority of all her scenes in the school with my partner which also reduced our filming load drastically. The shoot of this day was overall very easy and smooth however we did encounter some problems with the tracking shots of our actress through the hallways although this was easily sorted as I used a tip I had previously learnt from "Robert Rodriguez's Ten Minute Film School" on how to make a tracking shot easy.

Rodriguez in his making of documentary for "El Mariachi" says that he used a wheel chair and just held the camera while someone pushed him about for his tracking shots so we did something very similar by having the lightest person available sit in a chair with wheels holding the camera while I pushed them alongside our actress. The trick was very effective and gave us shots that were steady and manageable, only spiralling out of control once.

Zarna pointed out that our actress is wearing a different costume in the scenes at the school than she was at the scenes in the house. Next week we will begin to put together a rough cut as we have enough footage to begin doing so, with this cut we will be able to determine if the mise-en-scene is out of place enough to require a re-shoot or if it's not noticeable.