Our filming

This is proof to how much we have filmed, but as you can see our footage is too dark or too grainy. Because our niche is lights, we need to use our still cameras in order for the quality to be perfect.

Why we chose to use stop frame

Alanah and I chose to use stop frame after some problems we had with getting access to the film cameras school provide, because of my partner becoming banned from using the film cameras, we decided to purchase our own as we thought it would be more convieniant and better quality. We then started to experiment with mine and Alanahs still cameras. The quality made so much difference, and the jerky movement of the camera as we changed positions when taking photos matched the beat to our music perfectly. We could also experiment with better angles.

After filming 1hour and 45minutes of film, we watched over the footage we had already filmed, the footage was dark and grainy and we knew we would get marked down for this greatly.

We decided that the stop frame animation works better with the genre of music, the beat is fast and now we have the option to get transitions of the beat.




 

Equipment we used

Serif Page Plus 11 - for ancillary tasks


Nikon D40 and Sony DSC-T300 - for stills


Apple Mac and Imovie - for editing

Canon mini DV film cameras - for shooting

We used the filming camera to start off with, we filmed 1hour 44min and 50seconds of film, because the quality wasnt very good, we have only used two peices of shooting material in our video which was the red hand being set alight by using purfume and a lighter, we also used the motorway using the other film camera.
We decided to use stills for our video. The quality is so much better, we could even use dark locations or dim lighting because the camera still picked up enough light and was of good quality.

Digi pack

A little bit about our artist

font

This is a font cloud me and Alanah created, we did this to test out some fonts that we liked.

still images/ story board

All images displayed like these are our story board. Because we are using hundreds of still photos, it would be unpractical for me to draw out every single photo.
As you can see we have a lamp seen in different camera angles, medium close-ups to long shots. This is so when seen as a video, it would give a jerky effect to go with the beat of our fast paced music. The images are of a lamp going around a house plugging itself into different plug sockets. This is a representation of cheating. Me and Alanah, seeing as our video is concept based, decieded to do something 'out of the box'. A lamp should only have one plug socket to gain energy from, so to represent cheating we have it stealing the energy source from other plugs, heading its way upto a bedroom.



From all our planning below, this is a big change, the idea cae out of nowhere. We thought that having lots of different lights would look odd when put all together, sort of like we just placed anything anywhere, and we werent sure how to make them not look random. So we came up with one main light source which was this lamp and the idea behind it so again... it wasnt random! We then thought if we had a main light source, we could use different ones now and again in our mucis video such as a candle or fairy lights and car lights of the motorway. I feel this idea was decided abit to late but i have confidence in me and my partner that we will finish it for the deadline!

email to Evelyn Burke

We emailed Evelyn Burke to see if she wanted anything in particular to be put into our digi pack. We also thought by not asking her or writing the wrong information we might offend the artist , which is the last thing we want to do.

digi pack ideas

This is a template layout for a digi pack which we searched for in pdf form, we are going to use this design to help plan out our digi pack.







Idea one:

This is our first draft. Here we are playing around with colour, font, and the layout of our digi pack. This is unfinished as we are not sure and still planning on what we will have inside. At the moment we have chosen to have the lyrics to 'Red Hands' the track we are making our music video too. We have chosen the photo of sparklers spelling out 'red' for the photo at the back, inwhich lyrics will be placed around the word. The front image is of Alanah with a red hand print on her face.




Idea two:

The font 'Georgia' in italics has been used in both ideas.

Cd cover

Just taken some images with my SLR camera on slow shutter of the word RED spelt out in sparklers, this captured the light of the sparklers and spelt out the word. As the photo was backwards I had to edit it to rotate.

I also tried spelling out the individual letters, these are them with out editing/ rotating

Filming

I have just been out filming, I took still images of the motorway slowing down the shutter to make a really good effect which emphasises the light from the cars, I also used another effect by playing with the light exposure meaning although the time we captured these images was in the pitch black, it detects light more so it looks like it is light. Alanah and I planned to record the sunset but we have not been lucky enough to catch this so if I use the still images in our music video and speed them up,it gives the same effect of the motorway in the day time turning to night time, I'm really pleased with the out come and the quality of the images.
I also recorded a fifteen mins of the motor way, and me and Alanah have decided to not use the school cameras as the outcome of the new one we purchased is of higher quality and standard.

Stereotype and ideas

Me and Alanah have come to the conclusion that the target audience for our music video is teenagers and young adults, both sex (but mostly women) of between the ages 14-30. We have chosen to aim our video at this age group so we chose to have our video a concept based video. This is because it will suit the wide range.
I felt that the actual sound of the music appeals to a female audience more than a male audience, this is because she has a delicate, feminine voice, the start of the song to me also sounds like a twinkle noise, the music doesnt have a heavy beat to it, and is quite relaxing to be honest, this is why i dont think it will appeal to many males.
But me and Alanah plan to still have our video concept based, with the star motif of lights, and red hands throughout the video so it suits both sex.
We have letely decided to have a singer in our video. This is because we were finding it quite hard to connect all the different scenes we had recorded smoothly and so it didnt look like a slide show. It is hard to explain, but we didnt think this was working aswell as it would if we had someone in our video.
Currently we are undecided weather Alanah will mime or to get someone else to do it. But our aim is to have a modern fashionable young woman, to attract and relate to our stereotype.

At the moment our ideas are to have the opening of the music video with the dolly shot of the lights one by one flickering on, as the camer moves along the floor, the camera with then slowly focus up to a young woman standing in attractive but not revealing clothes infront of a floral or patterned piece of material to set a scene. We then can use layers on an editing effect on the macs and fade the video out underneath the woman singing, and then switching, so the woman will fade to the back and the other scenes will be he main focus.

I feel this will work really well, and I am excited to see the end result.

Our progress

This is our list of dates for when we are filming what.
Unfortunatly because Alanah cannot take school cameras out, and I was ill on the last day of term, we are a week behind. We are still very organised in getting our shooting done, but we have had to make alot of changes, espeically from the rain we have had!

Dates;
Friday 15th October - Car Shot 'Traveling' capturing surroundings around us, and editing the speed.
Tuesday 19th October - Glow Sticks and Sparklers
Sunday 24th October - Motorway shot, woods also?
Tuesday 26th October - Dolly shot as well as bedroom
Wednesday 27th October - Amusement lights down at South-end on sea
Friday 29th October - Woods Shot as well as Glitter/ Red hand prints
Sunday 31st October - Glitter Falling as well as woods shot

Unfortunatly the shooting schedual has changed, and at the moment, this is out progress in filming.

Friday 15th October - Car shot 'Traveling' capturing surroundings around us, and editing with the speed. This is done.
Tuesday 19th October - Glow sticks This is done, we were unable to get sparklers because neither of us were 18 and we couldnt find any on sale.
Sunday 24th October - Motorway scene of cars lights driving by. This is done.
Wednesday 27th October - I turned 18, but sparklers were not on sale yet.
This is when Alanah was baned from the cameras, so we were not able to record for a while.
Monday 1st November - shots taken with red hands printed on Alanahs face.
Thursday 4thh November - Location shots.
Tuesday 9th November - new camera was brought, motorway scenes and sparklers were filmed. This is done.

Filming

Last night unfortunatly was really bad weather, so i did not want to risk the camera in the rain getting soaked. I have brought 100 sparklers, some plain and some coloured.
I took photos of what I aim to do last night on a normal camera. I had the idea of having a still image of the sparklers spelling out the word 'red' which links into our track name, I can do this my slowing down the shutter on the camera, I think this would look really nice at the back of the CD album, with the photo of Alanah with a red hand print on her face for the front of the CD cover.
I am going to film the sparkler scene tonight, take some still photos, and re-film some of the cars under the motor way bridge in welwyn now the camera quality is so much better!!

Problems!

We are starting to have problems with the camera we are using. Because mine and Alanah's main focus is to capture light in our music video, it is so hard to capture the image without it being grainy and generally a bad quiality caption. So yesturday I went out and brought a decent video camera with much better quality. This will make it alot easier for me because my partner has been banned from using the school equipment, meaning we dont have limited time in using the cameras and have the annoyance of booking it out and in every day. I think this will make mine and my partners project work so much more better.

Filming

both me and Alanah went out Saturday night to film at Baldock bypass, unfortunatly the road was really quiet, so we then decided to move to a different loacation, to a motor way bridge. This worked well as it was really busy, the only problem we had was the quality of the school cameras, the camera would not focus properly. When we went to edit this scene of out music video, the effect of this did work really nicely, we cropped the extra empty space around the motorway, so the screen was filled more with the lights from the cars. We made the music video play backwards and sped it up. This really fitted to the beat of our music.

Idea for CD cover 1

My partner Alanah Sullivan took some photo's for the CD cover, this is just one example of our idea's. We struggled with the glitter so we thought of using cellophane and printing a red hand over the top, w also thought of using a pane of glass and printing the hand over it, then holding the glass over whilst we take a photo.

presentation

Last week, me and my partener Alanah presented our ideas to other media students.
We had our blogs on show, we handed our lyrics out so they can have a look and we had our music playing in the background. We were recorded by a teacher, to our advantage of putting the recordings on to our blogs.

We showed the class;
-The locations we will use and why
-How we are going to match visuals to lyrics
-What our star motif is
-Our editing ideas
-Camera shots we will use
-And transitions.

The class gave us feedback about our ideas, every single one of them was possitive.
We were inspired by a few ideas, when the words 'red hands' are sung, to have a red hand presented. I expalned this idea, and thought of having a clentched had (so you cannot see anything on the plam) and to have the hand painted red. And when the lyrics 'red hands' come on at the begining of the song, as it is repetitve, to have the hand quickly release their hand at the camera, so we see flashes of red.

The advice we took also, was to think more on our transitions, which is what we will work on.

This was very helpful to get an opinion on a target audeince which is right for our music video feedback.
Me and my partner are very confident now, and are excited to get filming this week!

Textural Analysis

The director Anothony Mandler has made sure the music and visuals accuratly match together, by having every cut matching to the beat of the music. I counted 54 cuts in the middle of this video. The cuts are a lot faster than you think; I counted this four times to make sure I was accurate.
We see close-ups of the artist Rhianna throughout this music video, we also see Laetitia Casta (the woman with Rhianna) eyes and other features of her face in a close up. The direct address used from both girls in the video engages the audience, especially male watchers. The notion of looking influences the audience to look at them, with their seductive poses and body language.

This music video is narrative based; the video represents a love story between two young women, creating a lot of tension in the music video, and a seductive nature.

Our locations

Alanahs Bed room will be the best place to film our fairy lights shot, as it is big and open it's going to be easy to shoot and have us two in the room and the camera on the tripod. Here, also we will have no problems with lighting as we will be incontroll of how light and dim we have it.

-Alanahs living room

We want to use this location because it is quite a big open area with enough space to place our lights/lamps all around the room. Because her floor is wooden flooring, we can easily use a chair with wheels to create a smooth piece of film when capturing the lights, instead of carpet which would not work aswell.

With the white walls, this will make the audeiences eye focus onto the light turning on, and will be brighter when filming, so this aswell is another advantage.

Because we are in controll of the lighting, we will not have any issues of it being to dark or too bright.

-Digswell Woods
I know this woods really well, so i have lots of places we can go to film.
The main place will be the carpark. My car will be parked facing down the pathway at dusk.
We will have to film this at the right time, or it will be too dark disorting the image, or too light meaning to will not be able to create the siloutte.

The carpark is right behind this pathway, so when i park my car and put the full beams on, i can shine it down this pathway, to create the silloutte.

I like this because it has a big open space and we can use the benches to create different angles. I was thinking for this set to have sparklers being moves around in somebodys hands really fast to create a good effect of light.











- Motorway
This motorway is opposite the woods where we are also filming in, so this fits into our scedual, and because this location is in welwyn, it is quite far from where Alanah ( my partener) lives, so to film this all in one day will be a huge advantage.
We want this motorway bridge because

Camera work and editing ideas

Our music video is going to be concept based. We feel this would compliment the music and the lyrics.

The niche we are creating is lights, we want to capture as many lights we can in our music video, we think this suits the music and will be different to attract the audiences eye.

Our ideas so far;
Dolly shot - Lots of lights placed round a room, we will have an adapter to plug the lights in when the camera reaches them. We have to do it like this because otherwise the camera will get us in the shot running to turn the switches on. We will have a chair with wheels on, with someone sitting on it with the camera, slowly capturing all the lights, so it is smooth and constant. Whilst the other person will be switching the plugs in as the camera reaches the light.

We will be using my car in a darkened place, with my full beams on with someone infront of the car. Creating a siloutte effect, we are hoping it will rain also, as we feel that will create a good effect, and suit one particular part of the music where the song sounds like raindrops.

Motorway- we will be standing on a motorway bridge looking down at the cars, we will have the camera on a tripod. This will take a long time, as we want to capture the sun going down and the lights rushing by, so we need to speed the filming up.

Fairy lights- The two of us are in a dimmed bedroom wrapped in them, we are going to film for a few seconds, then pause the camera, move positions, and record for a few second. This will take a lot of time and we will have to edit us out of the shot when we go to pause the camera. But the outcome will be really effective, with two people wrapped in lights dotting around the room getting closer and closer to the camera. I had the idea of becoming closer to the camera from one of Lady Gaga's videos ( bad romance).

Rain- I found a video of rain pouring ontop of a hard flat surface from a particular angle, it looked really effective and i staight away wanted to use it for my music video.
I thought of having headlights bleaming at a table, or have mycar parked under a street lamp, and capturing the same image as they did. This would really suit the beat to our music we have chosen.

Streetlamps- We want to capture a steretlamp flickering, and it have it at the end of our msuic video, i think this would be a good image to fade our music at the end.

Stea,- My last idea so far, is to capture the steam of something using a light.
I saw this the other day, and i thought it looked effective, espeically as our music video is going to be very abstract with the niche of lights.

Lyrics

                      

Red Hands

Verse 1:

I’ve been caught red handed                               Red hands blurred, then focusing in.

I’ve been caught in the act                                    Red having connotations of danger & lust

I’ve been caught red handed                               Having a girl on a bed, matching lyrics to

I’ve been caught breaking your rules               visuals 

I’ve been caught in bed with                               Bedroom shoot ( fairy lights )

I’ve been caught in bed with                               Jump cuts of the bed scene

I’ve been caught in bed with

Another memory

Pre Chorus:

So pull the sheets and lets forget everything that you’ve just seen,

So pull the sheets and lets forget ‘cause

Chorus:

I, I don’t know what to do,

I don’t know what to say anymore

This house is always open,

I, I’ve been told what to do,

I’ve been told what to say for a little too long

Here we go now

Verse 2:

I’ve been handed in and

I’ve been asked to explain

Why I’m caught red handed,

Why I’m caught breaking your rules

It’s a little harder

What you’re trying to admit

When you’re caught in bed with,

Another memory

Pre Chorus:

So pull the sheets and lets forget everything that you’ve just seen,

So pull the sheets and lets forget ‘cause

Chorus:

I, I don’t know what to do,

I don’t know what to say anymore

This house is always open,

I, I’ve been told what to do,

I’ve been told what to say for a little too long

Here we go now

Bridge:

Here we go now (X16)

Go now go now go now go ‘cause

Chorus X2











To attract the audiences eye with the notion of looking, we are going to have a shot of red hands, it will be blurred so the audience is interested to see what it is, then slowly become in focus.
We will havwe direct adress when we are wrapped in fairy lights comming closer and closer to the camera which will be on a tripod.

Branding

Branding can be done through stickers, badges, posters, lighters, flyers and so on. They work to establish a brand identity of the artist/band because everytime we see there logo we can identify who the band is.

The merchandise are successful, they create a niche because of the colours the band have chosen, the style of the item and what items they wish to sell.
It advertises the band, and gives fans what they want (something more than listening to their music).