Unavoidable Problems!

Today was the day that the first of the winter snow hit London and Essex which has created some problems. We had planned to start filming the car scenes on saturday, however snow and ice on roads creates many problems and also does not look very nice. Originally we wanted the car scene to be filmed down a road with trees towering over each side and golden brown leaves covering the floor, however the reality of this happening is now very slim.

DigiPacks

Today we started researching Digipacks and discussing what we should do to create our own DigiPack. A DigiPack is simply the CD cover, beck page with song listings and the booklet inside the CD which normally consists of song lyrics, notes from the band and a "thanks to list". For our DigiPack we still have not decided on a final idea, however we been discussing using some of the locations in our video such as the forest scene. I am looking forward to creating the DigiPack and think it will be an enjoyable experience.

Also we have now completed the filming for our band scenes, however we still need to film the remainder of the scenes.

Music Video Band Scene Teaser

This week we have been filming our band scene. We started last Wednesday for a practice session and produced this teaser clip. The practice session revealed the practicality of some of the shots we wanted to use and thought us about how the lighting effected the quality of the

film.

.

Shallow Focus

In the past week I have been researching online about different camera effects which we could possibly use for our music video. In some of the music videos which i have analysed on my blog I have mentioned how I like the effect of the lighting they use. Today I discovered what lighting/camera technique the producers of the video's have use, the effect is called Shallow Focus. Shallow focus is a photographic and cinematographic technique incorporating a small depth of field. In shallow focus one plane of the image is in focus while the rest is out of focus. Shallow focus is typically used to emphasize one part of the image over another. Photographers sometimes refer to the aesthetic character of the area that is out of focus as bokeh. (Taken from Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shallow_focus)

Below is a video by Majestic Micro Movies displaying Shallow Focus:

We want to use shallow focus for two scenes in our music video; one of the scenes is within the opening 20 seconds and will involve a close up of the charcters face as he closes his eyes, the shot will run along side the lyrics "I closed my eyes and you were there". The other will another close up of the main charcter for the last verse "life is such a funny thing, you lose your love to love again , then you start again."

Animatic: I Ran You Down-Tweed

Today we finished our Animatic. An Animatic is a hand drawn visualisation of a storyboard which is commonly used to pitch ideas and give investors/producers and idea of the final product. An Animatic is usually just contains pictures however we decided to add our track to it. The Animatic was a useful task which let us experiment with the basics of Final Cut Express and effects such as fades in between different shots. As a group we are quite pleased with our Animatic of how long/short some scenes may need to be.

NOTE: The scene from 0:16-0:32 shows a couple at first having fun/reflecting on good time in the past, when the screen turns red its the same scene however they are having an argument.

Framing and Camera Angles: The Streets- The Escapist

The video for the single The Escapist from Mike Skinners latest album Everything is Borrowed has a very simple basic video which was done while he was touring Europe. The video simply just shows him walking down roads, up hills and through doorways. The locations the video was shot in make the video interesting for what could of been called a boring video. As I said before nothing really happens in the video however it somehow suits the song. I don't think that another artist could get away with making a video like this however Mike Skinners unique style and meaningful lyrics allow him to create songs which are not mainstream however receive similar amount of success.

Below is the YouTube description of this video:
"During a great period of intense mixing we decided that it might be nice to shoot a video. This isn't the way the record industry works and so it was under the radar of the label and done totally for us by us on a shoe string. It was totally different from any other promo that I've made in that it was something real that we just filmed rather than trying to create something real looking using lots of people and lots of angles. I feel like it's more than a video in that sense. As well as looking quite odd without all the singing and quick cuts"

I think that it was a brave choice by The Streets to create this video and i admire the honesty normality of Mike Skinner and his public comments. In another of The Streets videos on YouTube, "Everything IS Borrowed" the description reads "An artistic piece of credit crunch drama. Album is out September 15Th." The simplicity of his words seem to have more of a meaning than a big advertising campaign, it may not appeal to as many people but it portrays him in different way to "billboard artists".

The video its self seems to tell a story which can be portrayed in many ways, to me it seems as if the main character (Mike Skinner) just wants to get away from everything. The title obviously points this out but the lyrics seem to point to him just wanting to think things over, he seems trapped the lyrics seem to support this"All these walls were never really there, Nor the ceiling or the chair Im' eking weeks of peace at the beach, I see the breezes weave the trees." I have the understanding that the song is about a point in someones life where they just want to escape reality and think things over. The locations in the video are the peaceful places he wants to escape to and through out his journey he is alone, until the final scene on the beach where he is with what seems as his friend who takes him back to reality.

Problems With Filming Inside a Car

As you can see from the previous post we recently experimented with camera angels we could use within a car. This was valuable experience that has made us realise how hard or impossible it is to film certain shots. One of the main problems we had was the limited height we had to get certain angels, this was because the car we used was a small three door hatch back. This is not the car we intend to use in our video, the car we aim to use is slightly bigger and more spacious. There was many things we had avoid such as; the camera appearing in the reflection of the mirrors, headrests getting the way and being to close to the front seats. The image on the right shows the main problem we came across when trying rear view mirror shots, we tried for around five minuets to get one shot of me in the distance. The problem was the low archer rear window of the car, in the car we aim to use in our video this problem will not occur the rear view mirror is wide and clear. In the photo above I was thirty one meters away from the car which would be the reasonable distance for a shot when the car is moving. Also the car we used was quite small inside as the picture on the left shows, but as you already know the car we wish to use in our video is proportionately bigger inside and suits the theme of the video more than the small hatch back we used to experiment.

Filming Inside a Car: Finding Plausible Camera Angels

Today we took out a digital camera and borrowed a friends car to try out angels we wish to use in out music video. We tried a number of angels from inside the car, outside the car, shots through the wing mirror, rear view mirror, in front of the car and from the side. We aim to use some slightly complicated camera angels within our video so this experience is vital to determine the practicality of the shots. Our current story board contains around five or six car scenes which involve a character getting into the car after having a row and driving off fastly, many point of view shots inside the car, low angle shots of the car passing by, our character looking through the mirrors at other people and many mid shot scenes while the car is moving. We understand filming some of the shots where the car is moving can be quite dangerous however before the actual shoot we will have a trial run. The image just above shows one of the shots we wish to use in our video, we want to use this shot as our character drives past his girlfriend (who he has had an argumentwith), we will film an over the shoulder shot of him ignoring her ashe drives past then cut to a shot of her looking at him in the wing mirror. I think this would give our video an effect which improves the technicality of the video which would award us more marks than if we had not used it. At the moment we have many ideas and are excited to start filming, however filming can be stressful and complicated and could take many attempts to produce one good quality scene. We are feeling confident that our video has a good balance of shots and scenery and we have started thinking of who will play which characters.