Week beginning 21st nov

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On the 21st we went to my god mothers house and films some shots that we needed for our production. The house was huge and has loads of gardens and was a really beautiful place to film. We filmed all around the house as it has a tree house, a lake and lots of interesting things inside. The key part of the day as to get some outside location shots as most of the work we had created was outside. We used the tree house and the lake for this. Inside we found a mirror that distorted our faces, so we thought we could use this in our production for the line "if im ugly then so are you", this was really effetive. Overall we had a really successful day!!

Week beginning 14th november

This week we decided that due to the school being closed, we should use this time to film some outside location footage. I work at fanhams hall, but after emailing and no reply we had to think fast and select a closer location. Hertford castle was the location we selected as it is in a very photogenic place and has large grounds. We filmed on a bridge and in the castle grounds, and this was a great place to frame us, it looked really effective.

Revise production schedule

This is our production schedule. We have included all the times we need to film for the rest of the time we have left, and Week beginning Dec 5th to complete anything or refilm.

Filming Thursday 3rd

After our lesson on Thursday, we were the only group to not receive feedback on our music video first take. This was due to the fact that in the half term Millie was in New York and both I and Gabby were at work and so this meant none of us were able to meet up! Massive problem...

This Thursday we needed to get back into filming straight away otherwise we would be failing our unit. Basically the first take of our music video needs to be shot again as we think we can do a lot better with new shots and better ideas. This time we decided to go to Hanbury Manor county house, as this place is based on massive grounds and has very beautiful landscapes. But we had the time against us! As our lesson finishes at 4 we had half an hour until it got dark so we needed to hurry.

We found a place that was full of trees and was in an open space, so here we re shot all of our lip-syncing and we did some close ups on all three of us. By the time we finished it had now started raining so we were unable to carry on and it had now also got dark. On Friday Millie and gabby then edited what we did, and I am looking forward to see what they have produced.

Tuesday 18th

Today we arrived at the lesson and we really needed to film the sequence with our main prop the mask, but Millie had left it at home, so in our two hours we had to drive to Millie's and get the mask. After we had the mask we wanted to film some people putting the mask on and of, we decided that the best place to film was in ware town although this wasn't very good idea as the people would not participate as they were camera shy. DISASTER! We really needed to film this today and things weren't looking up until we got back to school and and some very nice teachers helped us out. So we now have the shots we need for our film. Whist editing them it was quite hard for all the shots to link up as some people are taller and some people held the mask in a different place. In our next lesson we hope to have some more footage and to edit it smoothly.

Editing Thursday 13th

During Thursday’s lesson when editing that our shots done on the green screen were not working as the green screen had not been set up properly and contained shadows. This meant that the colours were not the same and the shadows would not change to black. This is a disaster as now we have to reshoot this and this is more time that we have wasted. But the shots of us when we are lip syncing on our own in front of the green screen are working well as we did them at a different time, So not all is bad!. But we still have a lot of editing to do and we need to use a lot of different transitions to make everything flow, hopefully we can get this done in time.

Filming!!

On Tuesday During the media lesson Me Gabby and Millie set up the green screen to film us lip-syncing the whole of the song. From previous experience we knew that we needed as many shots as possible to fill in gaps, as in our last test production we didn’t have enough this was back up for our production if we ran out of shots. We decide that a black and white colour scheme would keep it plain and simple.

After the lesson on this day we all went back to Millie’s house and filmed the shots for the background story in our production. Shots 1-7 were the shots we filmed and these were of, Millie and Maya. Things that made it the hard to film these shots were that shots number 1 and 2 were that Maya and Millie positioned in front of a dressing table mirror, so we had to align the camera in a perfect position so that you couldn’t see the camera in the mirror, also we wanted a smooth transition between Millie and Maya so we could ensure that they were both in the exact same position. Maya is also 9 years old so we had to keep her entertained, but she kept loosing her patience and we had to do a couple of reshoots.

This is a shot Millie in front of the dressing table:

Other shots we found really hard to do were shots 3 and 4 of Mayer’s and Millie’s eyes:

This shot was really hard as I was filming at this point, and to get the camera to focus you had to zoom very slowly otherwise it would be out of focus, we had to zoom into Millie’s eye and out from Mayer’s eye it was a very complicated process. It was also hard to select a transition between there eyes but we decided to use cross dissolve as it made it as smooth as possible but when you start to see Maya's eye you can still see a bit of Millie’s eye.

These were the eye shots on our story board

Prop List!

Props For our production!

• For our main prop we decided to use a white mask on a stick This is for the chorus. A person will put it up to their face then when they take it off it will be another person there then when they take it off their face it will be another person again, and again etc.
  


• black heels, Millie and Maya will walk in suggesting Millie looking back on when she was younger.



• a mirror for me Millie and Maya to look in to suggesting they are the same person just older and younger.
  


• a magazine that we will burn to show that the girl in our story getting upset over images of 'perfect celebrities'.

2nd filming

I and Millie decided to meet up and capture some shots for our production this took place in Millie’s house and we used her little sister in this particular shot sequence. We decided to do shots 10 and 11 which is firstly a shot of Maya walking in high heels she then walks into a room and shuts the door, then the second shot is of Millie, in the same shoes, opening the door then walking out of the room. These are shots for our background story showing me looking back on Millie being little.

The shot we decided to keep did have her slightly falling over as it suggests innocence and how little she is, with contrasting with me walking confidently suggesting Millie is older, even though you can only see there feet. This was quite hard as Maya had never walked in high heels before so she kept stumbling over, we had to keep redoing the shot. The shots were also quite hard to set up as we wanted the change to Millie’s feet from Mayas to flow and not look too set up so we decided to use the door so make it flow smoothly. The shot we did.

Editing

Its now Tuesday the 4^th, and in the lesson I and Millie edited our filming for shots 13 & 26, which are identical shots of people walking.I and Millie both took turns in editing although this was a tiny part of our production. We wanted to make the shots black and white and also in a solarised setting, this made it much clearer. We also put the first titles in to our production.

- This is the shot we edited

Me editing the shots.

First filming session on the 29th September

On Thursday after our media lesson in the morning we wanted to start filming our production. So we decided to go to Harlow to capture some film of random people walking about, we wanted to use this to then speed it up when we edit it, to use for the line in the chorus, 'people are all the same'. We needed a place where it was busy so where better than a shopping town

The struggles we faced filming people were it was hard to set up a good shot or use a tripod with out being caught filming. We didn’t want to offend people or make people feel uncomfortable by filming them so we tried to do it discreetly as possible. The other factor that came into play was the amount of people, we needed to have lots of people to keep it busy when we speeded it up, this was tough but I think we captured it quite well

This is our filming location but we needing to keep the shops and advertisement out of shot as this wouldn’t be professional we needed to keep it simple and plain.

Animatic

This is out animatic:

Production schedule!

Analysis of a professional music video "Next 2 you"

Music vid presentation

View more presentations from callison1318.

Pitch for Music Video - Ugly

The production pitch for Ugly

View more presentations from callison1318.

For this topic we were looking at music videos; our brief was to create a music video with the theme of summer. For our production we chose the song ‘Higher’ by The Saturdays in a group of three with Millie Hicks, Gabby James and Me Paige Weir. In preparation for the shoot we made a Story board of all the things we wanted to include in out project. For our filming we were taken to Knebworth House and we used the grounds and the large landscape for some interesting backgrounds and created interesting shots; I.e. on the roundabout, this was a really effective shot.

When filming on the shoot it went really well and we included everything that we needed to include, although in the post production we realised that we didn’t have enough shots for our edit to be completed. In the sapre time we had myself and Millie had to go back and shoot some more footage for the project. When we edited this in to the film it looked much better and it created a more interesting depth to the final edit. From the post production I have learnt a lot about what looks good in a music video and what type of shots we need to include, making it look more realistic and not like an amateur production. Unlike the saying Less is more in this case its always more more more!
This experience has really given me the knowledge to know what exactly we need to put in the real production to make it really successful and keep the edits tight. Also the lip syncing played a huge role in the overall success of the project and that has to be the key focus of a production of a music video for it to work.

Exam Revision Materials

All AS students please click this link: Miss Grant-Muller's Blogg for your exam revision materials!

Evaluation of Foundation Production

Script

Scene one:
Camera taking pictures (Accidentally left on filming)
Gabby: “Nicole, I think you’re filming”?
Millie: What no im not (Checks camera, looks surprised) “Oh yeah”
ALL: LAUGHS

Scene Two:
Gabby In the mirror looking concerned
Gabby: “I just cant help it, It must be like another teenage feeling maybe its just a phase? I mean what about Madonna and Brittany? They had a thing, but then they had boyfriends too. ?. Maybe I will just grow out of it. But it’s been going on for so long now I just don’t know what to do I mean I guess I could tell them”

Scene three : (Bedroom, confession starts)

Gabby: “ I have got something to tell you,(long pause)…. im a lesbian”

Paige: what!? Are you joking? (Looks at Millie very disgusted)

Millie: “Uhh I got changed in front of you”

Scene then rewinds to gabby in mirror.
Scene four:
Gabby: “No I can’t do that, she will never talk to me if I told her, it would change everything. I have liked her for like three years now I just can’t keep it inside anymore. She is just not like anyone else I know she is beautiful”.

Scene Five: Cuts to close up of phone displaying message, I need to tell you something.
Then cuts to Millie and Paige walking, just having a general chat.

Paige: “Oh my gosh, did you see brogans hair in general studies”

Millie: “Yeah it was so nice (pause) Shame about her face though”

Both: Laugh!

Scene Six: Gabby on bench.

Gabby: You alright (smiles)





Scene seven:

Paige: “Oh my look her here already!”

Millie: “oh yeah, oh my gosh he so likes her”
(Both smiling)
Scene cuts to boy walking across to meet Gabby


Scene seven:

Gabby: “what who is it” (Looks Very concerned and confused)

Paige and Millie: “Your date”


Split screen of gabby and boy

Scene eight: Boy sits on bench next to gabby; gabby is both worried and confused.

Gabby: “I just cant keep this inside anymore”!

Tiles

The titles and credits were not hard to create. We had to find an effective font that was bold and stood out. The best font that suited out production was one called Tekten pro, it is a light orange colour and is very suitable for out production, it sits in with all the pictures and filming really nicely, yet sounds out to the audience.

Locations Locations Locations !!

Filming day one - Gabbys bedroom, mirror scene Dressing Table - Mirror shots + Extreme close up's.

Filming day Two Millie's room- ! - Confession scene + Still images

Filming day three! - School PlaygroundAll three Girls + Lover boy?!

Cast!

Stacey - Played by Paige Weir

Nicole - Played by Millie Hicks

Brook - Played by Gabby Janes

Secret date - Played by will Turner

Music

Music for our film was really easy to find, im in a band and we do a lot of covers of songs so the best choice was to use one. The song we chose was naive- By the kooks. It fits in really well and can be easily faded in and out. We were not sure about the copy right of the song, but on the other hand it’s not exactly the same as the original and we have performed songs like this in public. It was a great choice for our film opening!

Production schedule