Proportal-Progress review 2

For the second blogging health check I got 15 out of 20 which I think is quite good but hopefully I get more blogging done to boost up the B- grade to maybe a B+ as I really do want do a media related course at university or do a foundation year.

I am no longer on cause for concern which is good as I don't need to worry about that anymore but i still need to focus on making my blog posts more visually intresting by using different media which is what my teacher said to improve.

 

28 November filming

Friday filming by Slidely Slideshow

On friday we all came in to film these are some of the pictures i took of the process. Antonia did Bernices make up but while she did that I set up the light stand and put in the memory card on to the camera. we used the dedo light and the dimmer to make give the music video an urban feel and also for the bridge of the song where its sad as shes remenising the moments she had with her ex so by having the dimmed light it gives it a good effect. The room we used was quite small so we had to take out the table and chairs so that we could have enough space and to darken the room we put a white sheet on the room so that no extra light comes in whilst we're trying to have a dimmed efffect. We also locked the door to avoid having people coming in to the room whilst we're filming plus and also so that no ectra light comes through.

Filming process 28th Nov 2014

 

 

Today we filmed our white wall scene. I was inspired to recreate this scene from Porsha Williams' music video Flatline where she too sings against a white wall and looks emotional. We weren't going to use any more shots other than the purple scene, couple scene and outside tracking scene but our teacher Rebecca told us three wouldn't be enough. We also don't use the couple scene after the chorus so it would have been difficult to cut only between 2 scenes for the rest of the video. We had the dedo light in the corner of the room and Jessica dimmed the light dimmer and brighter just to add to the sadness of our video. I made sure to focus all my shots because some of the shots I filmed last time were blurry and I didn't want to make the same mistake again. All that's left to shoot is the party scene which will be shot on Monday.

Makeup Look Number 3

For this look we decided to go for something very neutral as our artist is singing against the wall in her house and we didn't want her to look over dressed. We opted for minimal eyeshadow some eyeliner and a nude brown lip to complement our artist's skin tone. Her hair was left in a simple updo bun and she wore a camel coloured turtle neck jumper to keep within the brown to nude colour scheme that we were going for. This meant that when we turned off the light and used the dimmer, there were no unnecessary bright colours which is what we were aiming for as in this scene we want the primary focus to be the artist's performance and not her makeup or clothing.

EXTRA FOOTAGE PART 1

Rough Cut: Applying the Feedback

Now that we have gotten our feedback from our class and teacher, all being very positive and constructive. We have gone back and watched all our footages and decided that we will need extra footage, especially now that we are on the second chorus. So we will film tomorrow  party scene to illustrate the lyrics of 'getting pissed up with my new friends' and a scene where i sit in the conner in a darkened room with a semi bright spotlight that then fades away, this will be effective for us as we want to end our music video with this scene, so as the music fades/ends, light will fade out too.

Hopefully we can film both scenes tomorrow, if not then we will do the corner scene tomorrow and the party scene on monday.

Today's lesson

In todays lesson I filmed the feedback from the rough cut where we got some really good feed back. I tried to put the video on to animoto but it wouldn't play the whole part of the video it would only play 10 seconds and that would have taken way too long to cut from video to video. 

The laptop wouldn't connect to my phone so i couldn't upload it straight from my phone to the laptop so I had to email it to myself but it wouldn't let me send the whole video to myself so I had to send it to myself in 4 different part. Tomorrow I'm gonna connect my phone to my computer and upload the whole video on to blogger later as it looks like they are all 4 different videos.

I will upload it whole at home to make the blog look neater

Rough Cut Feedback-Video

Todays lesson we showed our Rough cut to the whole class which went well as we were able to get mainly good feedback we didn't get so much bad feedback which was good as our Rough cut was only to the chorus. We got told that we need to film more as we are lacking footage to put after the chorus and we can't have the same shots over and over again as it will be too repetative and so we are going to make plans to film tomorrow. We also got told that we need to dull down the colours to show that the couples scenes were in the past and the time now.

What's next?

Some of our rough feedback included points such as:

• Filming more footage for our video
• Making sure everything is exactly in frame
• Desaturating our couple scenes

So I've created a list of things we can do next:

• Film a scene with our artist drinking and partying with friends
• We can also film a scene with our artist sitting against a white wall indoors looking emotional as well as singing into and away from the camera.

Seeing as we are using Illustration as the driving force for our video, it would seem appropriate to have scenes illustrating some our lyrics for example lines such as 'Living for the moment getting pissed p with my new friends'

Rough cut

Above is a quicktime video of our rough cut we've only edited up to 1 min 3 secs of our music video. 

Tomorrow's filming

After the feedback we were given in that we needed more scenes for the second half of our video we've decided it best that we film tomorrow (Friday 28th Nov). The weather will be good hopefully and there should be no raining if the weather forecast is correct. We will all be meeting up at 2pm to film our white wall scene.

Editing process 26th Nov 2014

Today Bernice I stayed in college till 6:30pm to make some more progress on our music video. I edited whilst Bernice was beside me giving me feedback every half an hour on what she thought was strong and what could be improved. I managed to edit just past the chorus adding a new scene to our base track as soon as the chorus starts. I added in the shot of our artist standing against the wall outside and then she gets up from the wall and starts walking forwards on the pavement as the camera tracks her. I also added a pairing shot of our artist walking on the pavement from behind just to play with different angles in our video. I really to use another shot for the start of the chorus which was of our artist walking on the pavement as I personally feel they were framed close to perfectly and were very strong however there are bits where our artist laughs and so it perhaps wouldn't be ideal to use these shots as if our artist is seen to be laughing halfway through an emotional song it may take away from the seriousness of the song.

Editing process 25th Nov 2014

I was only able to edit for half an hour today and all the media classrooms were closed early however I managed to make good use of the time I had available. I added fades in between the jump cuts so that they were less harsh. But I didn't want to spend too long focusing on the special effects of our music video when we should be focusing on complete our rough cut. After the jump cut scene I added a shot from the purple scene of our artist not singing but just looking into the camera. I got this idea from Beyoncé's 1+1 video where although in the song she's singing in the music video there are parts where she doesn't appear to be singing but rather is emotionally looking away from the camera. I have been able to edit up until the chorus and I hope to have completed the whole music video by Thursday morning.

Facebook fan page

I didnt want to make a real facebook page so i made one on prezi so that ou can see in full detail what the facebook page would look like.

Editing: What's next?

With the rough cut due date fast approaching, we are yet to still add filters and special effects. We had planned not to add any effects and filters until after the rough cut as when we tried this last week it messed up the timing and position of our clips, so we have been advised by Fergus to add all special effects (slow motion) after we have finished everything, so that has to be the final thing we add or else it will wreck our footage. We found out that this problem has occurred due to us using a different camera, this was also the reason why we had to keep rendering every time we edited. Hopefully tomorrow we can finish what's left and by Thursday be able to add effects and just clean up some parts of our footage.

Along our editing process we have been inspired by other videos, recently Antonia was inspired by the Beyonce video of 1+1, particular y the part where you can hear her singing but she is simply staring at the camera with an emotional look on her face. So we used the purple scene to create this, we have found it to be effective and is a nice way to use the extra footage we had.

Editing process 24th Nov 2014

Today I managed to get our music video edited right until the chorus. Before today I had already put the scenery shots, purple scene and couple scene into the sequence. I decided to add some jump cuts to our music video just before the chorus which I feel looks very effective because it helps to distinguish the couple scenes from the other shots. I plan to add fades between all the jump cuts so that that cutting between shots doesn't appear to be very harsh. I played what I had edited so far to Bernice and she really liked the jump cut idea so I guess we're definitely going to stick with it. I also am not too comfortable with our opening scenery shot as I don't think the shot is stable enough and the lighting in comparison to our other scenery shot is a lot duller. So, tomorrow I plan to change our opening shot as well as make progress with the rest of our music video.  Our aim is to have finished editing by Wednesday.

Digipak draft 2

 I used Pixlr to edit this picture of bernice and I showed the editing process, this is just a wuick example of what i want the digi pack to look like for the album cover ect. On the right are the tools that are available to use as I don't have photoshop I use this website to make quick edits. The tools they have are very similar to photoshop e.g. crop, brightness, red eye, and text.

this is the original photo of bernice.

Here i added the text so that the audience know the name of the artist. The website is very limited so i cant really do much to the text so I will edit the picture again on photoshop later and I'll make the whole digi pack for example adding a magazine advert, album cover ect.

These are the filters that are available to use for again the website is quite limited and isn't as good as photoshop but i wanted to get a feel of what the album cover would look like.

This is the final edit I made on Pixlr

Applying The Theory: Goodwin

Andrew Goodwin's theory

Todays lesson 24/11/14

Today I wrote about Vernallis' and Goodwins theory and how it applies to our music video for example the slow motion and jump cuts. 

I tried to upload the pitch feedback video that I filmed on the day but it wouldn't let me upload it and it took too long so i'm gonna compress it or find another way of uploading the video also I can't connect my phone to the laptop or mac so I have to wait to get home or something so i can finally upload it. I've tried to upload it before but it takes too long and doesn't upload so I think ill upload the video on animoto when I get home later. 

Applying Andrew Goodwin's and Carol Vernallis' Theory

I think that our music video is illustration because the mood of the song is sad but also happy at the end as the song is about her already getting over the guy she loved and how she's moved on and how she's doing better now that he's gone. We have slow motion in our music video for some shots. We are also having some jump cuts from angle to angle for some shots for example in the flashbacks when she walks in with her ex boyfriend to the house and when they are doing some boyfriend girlfriend scenes. 

Applying The Theory: Mulvey

Editing: 24th

Today Antonia was in control of editing whilst I directed, we had managed to get up to the chorus today and hope we can finish the rest of the music video in time for the rough cut on Thursday. Before reaching the chorus, we had managed to put our purple scenes and couple scenes up and we had added our scenery shots in but did change some of them around again as we didn't like too much

Reflection on Progress blog

Last month my teacher Rebecca went over my blog and gave me a 10 out 20 for my blog. This was because I only had 28 blog posts and they weren't done in enough detail. At this stage of my course I should have at least 50 blog posts and I currently have 65 which means that I am on target. She went over my blog a second time and gave me 15 out of 20. Now I just have to keep it up and keep the hard working momentum so that hopefully I can get an A or higher.

Editing process 20th Nov 2014

Today, I came in to edit whilst Bernice went to go and shoot our scenery shots in central London. Today was a day off for all students in the college but we still made an effort to come in do some editing (That's dedication right!) Once, she had brought the shots to college we got converted the footage to fit the frame that final cut pro is set to, and began editing. We had two places where we wanted to put our scenery shots, one of them being and the very beginning and the other being after the first side shot of our artist. Our first scenery shot is a panning of central London whilst the second one is of cars moving on a motorway. As I was playing with the speed of these shots I discovered a way to reverse the car shot. So the cars are driving and on one of the beats they reverse and then video switches to the purple scene as our artist gets ready to sing the first line of the lyrics.

Male actor

This a picture the male actor which features in our music video. His name is Akeeva, and you'll be interested to know he wasn't meant to be our male actor. The original boy who was supposed to be in our music video didn't bother turning up on the day we filmed the couple scene but luckily enough Akeeva was a real gentleman and came up to me volunteering to be in our video. At first it was a bit awkward between Akeeva and Bernice (our artist) as they had only just met and had to act as if they were in love but after a few practices everyone was more relaxed. He was a perfect candidate for our music video as he is a little taller than our artist and does a bit of acting already.

Editing: Scenery Shots Part 2

I went to another location to shoot our scenery, as we didn't want to limit ourselves to one location. I went to a place named 'Shoreditch House', where my brother is a member at so this meant I was allowed into the building. We aren't actually allowed to film here but as I said it was for a school project they kindly let me go to the rooftop and quickly get some snaps and footage. As I had to be so quick, the footage didn't come out as great as i had wanted it to, also we were so high that you can't even see the view properly because there was so much fog. Sadly I don't think we will use any of the footage from 'Shoreditch House' as the footage is too shaky and is very unclear, so it has no use to us.

Above are some quick snaps I managed to take whilst I was on the rooftop.

Editing: Scenery Shots Part 1

This morning I went to record some extra shots for our music video, specifically scenery shots. As we had the day off college, I used this opportunity to go out and to get some panning movements and also some still. Whilst I was shooting Antonia was editing back at college, she had put some text stating where we would put our scenery shots once we had it, by doing this, it was easy for us to edit our scenery shots into our music video.
I took some of the footage I shot and images and made them into toGifs (see below)

Here is one of the footages i shot of cars moving, we will use this and add an effect in which the cars will go forward but then reverse, this will match the time/beat of our song.

This is a Gif of the images I took at Temple, i was standing in various places to get different angles and views, as i didn't want all the shots to be repetitive. I was on a low terrace that looked a cross the river, this also had a lot of trees that were in my view and then i went onto the pavement on the bridge.

Last but not least, I put the panning footage of the river into a gif, I also slowed it down, just to get a feel of how it will look if we were to edit it to make it slower.

Behind The Scenes

I used animoto to create a behind the scenes short video. the sound doesnt work on the videos anymore for some reason and it doesnt work on my phone either so I just put our song so that it goes with our music video.
throughout the process of filming I have been taking pictures and filming how the process is going so I wanted to show a quick preview of what the Behind the scenes would look after gathering all the footage together and putting it on to final cut pro..

Editing process 17th Nov 2014

Today, myself and Bernice stayed on after the lesson and continued to edit. My aim for editing today was to make some progress with the couple scene so that the beginning of our music video could take some shape. Before today the purple scene had been put onto our sequence at the beginning of the video.






Intially, I had started off the couple scene with a mid shot of the artist and her partner walking into their apartment but after watching it over and over decided that this wasn't necessary to include in the video. This taught although we have a lot of footage it doesn't mean we need to include every single thing we shot. That's what editing is for... to cut it down.




After much thought, I decided to have our artist walking in with a close up of her and her partner as the introducing shot for the two of them as I felt this is what was most effective. The video then cuts to the purple scene again for a short while before cutting back to the couple scene, just so that there isn't too much of the couple scene in one go and our viewers don't get bored.

  The next time I get to edit I hope to have added in more footage from the couple scene onto our sequence such as point of view shots so as to heighten the viewer experience for our music video. I also want to make sure I don't spend too long focusing on the couple scene as the rough cut deadline is almost approaching.

todays lesson

In todays lesson I tried to do some editing as I wanted to see how the footage came out and figure out what we need to fix and add in to our music video. Antonia and I put text on the timeline to show what will go there so that when we edit another day we already know what goes there so that it doesnt look like blank spaces. I like to learn knew ways of making editingeasy so I saw the short cuts I can use for example the buttons "B"(which switches to the cutting tool) and "A" (which shifts it back to the mouse icon) this made cutting and editing much easier and quicker. the fact that i know the undo short cut (ctrl+z) helped this too.

Applying The Theory: Vernallis

Our music video follows Vernallis main conventions found in music videos. These are as follows;

• Editing is rhythmic and is connected to the song

- The shots change on beat/ in time with the music. This is clear from the beginning of our music video, as it starts off with a piano instrumental which is simple and also makes it easy for us to change the shot in time to the music. What the shot is of: the shot in the beginning is of scenery and our titles of introducing the artist and the song.

- During the chorus the music speeds up, so our shots on screen will do the same, we will cut on the beat, as we feel it will be aesthetically pleasing and excite the audience.

• Camera usually moves in time with the music 

BTS

Antonia Enemuwe's Slidely by Slidely Slideshow

Editing 3: Time is against us

With the rough cut deadline coming up in a few weeks, we are feeling the pressure. We haven't gotten as far as we wanted to with our editing, but hopefully we can as we have been coming to edit outside of lesson time

Makeup look No.2

For this look we decided to have purple to compliment the purple background. I also had to touch up the artists face as we had been shooting all day and her makeup had smudged and she was sweating. Also, we had to adjust her false eyelashes as one of them was starting to come off towards the inner corner of her eye. These may seem like minor problems but I definitely saw it as a major problem. In real life, when artists are shooting for their music videos they always have a makeup artist on set to touch up their face and make sure they are looking their absolute best for the video at all times. With me taking on the makeup artist role for this video I felt it to be nothing less than my duty to ensure the artist looked her best so that the video was also be its best. The last thing wanted was for us to film all our footage and start editing and notice that our artist looked great in our first few shots but terrible in our other ones. Also we didn't want to leave room for a pool of critique from our viewers (Peeling off eyelashes, lip stains of teeth, uneven eyeliner etc)

Makeup look No.1

For this look we decided to go for a neutral colour lip as we felt as though the artist's outfit was bold enough and we didn't want there to be too much colours on the screen in one go. For this look we used one of Jessica's lipsticks, false eyelashes that I had purchased and a mixture between mine and Bernice's. When picking the foundation to use to for our artist, we made sure to use one which didn't make our artist look too caked up with makeup but rather, was camera friendly. And because this makeup look included lip gloss we made sure to bring along the lip gloss when we were filming so we would be able to reapply it to the artists lips. (The last thing we wanted was to have some shots where the artist is wearing lip gloss and some where her lips are dry!)

Editing 2: A Long Process

Today Antonia and I started to fully edit our music video, we had a problem (once again) as our files 

Editing (testing)

Editing - Created with Haiku Deck, presentation software that inspires

This is what I did in lesson but it failed as it kept saying to render the file and we had to start over again.

Editing process 7th Nov 2014

Today, was a very tiring editing session. Every time I wanted to add a shot onto our sequence or even change the speed, final cut pro kept asking me to render the video. And each time I rendered the video it took about 20 minutes each (Imagine trying to render all our footage) We called our college technicians Trevor and Fergus to help us see what the problem was and they told us that because we didn't use the college camera to film, final cut pro wasn't set to same framing as the camera we used. They then adjusted the framing to fit with final cut pro. We still have to render our footage every once in a while but it doesn't take nearly as long as before. Thank you Fergus and Trevor!

checking the footage

checking the footage was fun as we were able to laugh about the awkard couple scenes we had filmed. we first imported the song so that we know how long the music video is and so that we can put a marker at the begining of the song where the singer actually starts.

just looking over the footage that we filmed we realised that some of the shots are really bad and wobbly but we have some great shots which worked really well. when we edit we will see how we edit the slow motion and fast motion footage.

we now have instantshot that actually takes a screenshot of what we have edited every 30 seconds which is very helpful as it is hard to remember to take screenshots and theres no point of re editing for a screen shot so this method is so much easier as the screenshots get saved on to the video drive.

Editing process 6th Nov 2014

Today was our first day of editing. To begin I marked every 1st beat on our song and placed it onto our sequence. We then imported all the shots onto our project and began the process of elimination removing any of the shots we knew were weren't going to use. Once we were left with the shots we wanted we layed them all out onto our sequence, marked them all where our artist sings the first lyric and aligned them all in sync with each other. As for the rest of the shots which didn't have the artist sing in them (the couple scenes) we 'inned' and 'outed' on each shot which bits of the footage we wanted and dragged it towards the end of our sequence. Next lesson the filming begins!

Day 1 of editing

Just a quick update on what we did today, we looked through all of our footage and decided which we would most likely use, whilst also deleting footage that we will not include at all. We also marked all our footage so we can aline it with our song. We have started to place the footage onto the timeline, we will be recording more footage tomorrow but not re-shooting any current shots as we feel it is not necessary, we will be shooting location/scenery, as we realised music videos of RnB genre always have establishing shots in the intro as well as throughout the rest of the video.

Screenshot of some of the work we did.

Also we had a problem towards the end, as final cut kept asking us to render our video, this was due to us using our own camera (Nikon D5100), so we ended up having to delete the project and open up a new one, in which we converted our footage to make the editing process more smooth.

Screenshot of our rendering issue

reflection on Proportal

I got some really good feedback from my teacher and I understand what I need to do in order to improve so that I can achieve a B at the end of the year.
-  More individual blog posts
-  45 blog posts
-  Audience 1(pitch)
- More use of ICT

How I feel about the group

At the moment I think that we are working good together as we have been able to rely on each other especially in the filming process as i think we were all willing to do what we have to to make sure we can film the shots we need. My role in the group was to be the fan person and the light person, even though the light wasn't consistant and it did move a bit as we were tracking badwards so it was hard to walk backwards and keep looking at bernice as there were obsacles on the roads and there were many cracks and bumpy roads. I hope to edit soon as editing is my favourite part.

Today's Lesson

In today's lesson we reviewed the footage that we had filmed during the half term and we were pleased to see that most of it met our expectations. We also started editing today. All we have left to do is film some scenery shots.

We imported the footage as well as our song and next lesson we plan to continue editing and develop our footage into an actual video.