Boards

When we got back after our first day of filming, we re looked at our story board and noticed that some of the scenes we required our model to be holding signs that say 'WHAT', 'A', 'LIFE' and '?'. Adam took note of this and the next day he came into school with this all prepared. I was only expecting to see a bit of card with the words, but instead, he had managed to find a couple of pieces of wood of equal size and sprayed the letters on the board. Below is what Adam managed to create and these will be used in our filming for Glenn to hold.

Model 2... Glenn

As said in the previous post, our original model Jack pulled out in helping us with the filming so we had to find someone else, and we found Glenn! Glenn is a member of a band called Go-Zilla where him and 2 others write and perform their own songs as well as doing covers of others.  As well as musicians, the group make their own music videos so I thought it might help listening to and watching what they have created to see if we could gain any more inspiration. The video I looked at is a cover by singer/songwriter Ke$ha. The song is called Blow.
Although Glenn is not in the video much and doesn't actually sing anything, it shows that he is willing to do anything to promote himself and his band.

Glenn is a keen drummer, guitarist and keyboard player which is very useful for us as we would like our model to be playing a guitar in our video.

Glenn also took Media at A2 level last year so is familiar with what to do and could also give us some of his ideas, as there is nothing better than feedback from all areas so as we can improve our video.

Animatic Video

This is the final animatic that we created on Final Cut. It is only a very rough cut as it is simply a guide of what we are going to follow for when we actually do some shooting. I have tried to add in some different fades at the beginnng and end of the aimatic as this is an idea we wish to use in our actual video.

Animatic

Before we start filimng the video we had to plan our ideas so as when we go up to London we are not standing around deciding what to do and also so we do not mess our model around and waste his time!
In order to plan the filming, we had to storyboard our ideas. We had to delegate roles within the group to make this happen. Jay and Adam offered to do the drawing of the story board as I am not artistic at all. Because they were doing the drawings, it was my job to edit them all into the right places using Final Cut, a programme that I have used once or twice before.

After Adam and Jay had finished drawing a particular scene, we took a picture of the frame, uploaded it to the computer and I tried to fit it in to the right place within the song.

The picture on the left, shows me using the Final Cut programme and composing the animatic, and the picture on the right shows Jay and Adam creating the story boards.

Below is a picture of all of the storyboards that we created. As you can see, there are a lot of different shots that we have decided on!

The London Eye

The other idea that we had was to do with the London Eye. These are the two shots we got of the wheel. The shot from the front of the wheel was taken because we had the idea of filming the wheel front on and then speeding the footage up. Also known as over cranking we felt that showing footage of the wheel in a sped up motion would look effective to use at some point within the video. The picture below is another of the London Eye from a different angel. We were walking along a bridge and saw the view between some buildings and thought it was a very picturesque shot. We also noticed how the sun was positioned and thought we could take advantage of the different angels of the sun on different landmarks within London.

Leake Street

On Wednesday 30th November me and my group went to London to seek out a few locations that we could use in our shoot. We went to a few of the obvious places being all along Southbank and The London Eye and had a few ideas with these locations, explained in the next post. This post however is about a street that runs underneath the tracks and platform of Waterloo Station. The street is called Leake Street. Many people may know this as the 'Banksy Tunnel'. The walls are decorated with graffiti initially created during the 'Cans Festival' organised by Banksy himself. The graffiti along Leake Street is tolerated by the authorities especially as there is a claim that it is a legal wall. Below is a board of pictures that we took when we went to Leake Street to show the types of art that can be found there as well as what the tunnel actually looks like.


As you can see, the tunnel is literally covered in graffiti. There is literally not one brick below head height that can be seen. As I have said above, the picture above shows what type of art can be found. This is because the street was originally for artists to leave their work for others to see, but as you can see from the picture, this concept has been abused, probably by youths that just want to go out spraying walls because they think it is legal. A lot of the original art has been destroyed by peoples 'tags' and other art, such as the smiley face and the grey face that you can see in the mood board. When we were walking around the street, we noticed how one of the bits of graffiti said 'Life'. This gave us the idea to possibly spray our own line on the wall and film it to use in our video. we would like to have the line 'what a life' on the wall.

As well as the covered walls, the street itself was fairly busy and this is what we wanted for some shots of the video. We did not want our performer to perform somewhere with no people around at all.

Effects That We Like

There are a number of effects that we liked that other programmes and music videos have used before. One main effect that we liked as a group was the splitting of the screen with two different shots. This is what the TV programme 24 use and is an effect that we would like to use in the video. It would be effective to use instead of using basic cuts all the time and different transitions. The idea was to use this effect to show our model in two different places but singing the same part of the song. Another idea that we quite liked, was to use the shot idea from below.

The shot shows FOUR different scenes that are divided over the screen. The shots that are shown above are of exactly the same thing, peoples feet, and in the scene, each person is tapping their feet in exactly the same way. This is an idea that we would like to use in our video. The vision that we have is to have our artist in four (or more) different locations, singing the exact part of the song and in the same position in the shot. This idea would work well as we could establish four different places that we would like to shoot, and then focus on one as the screen expands one quarter of the screen.

In regards to editing, we like the idea of quick cutting when the pace of the song suddenly increases. This is shown in nearly all videos. The pictures below are from Oasis 'Stop Crying Your Heart Out'. I have already explained this in a previous post when analysing the video. The song speeds up in regards to the amount of beats. Because of this, there are rapid cuts between shots and within the space of about 5 seconds, there are a total of 10 shots.
As stated, this is an idea that we will definitely want incorporate into our video to add that extra bit of authenticity.

Location Shots

After establishing the song that we are going to produce a video to, the next thing was to decide on locations that we would want to be in our video. We could have filmed in local areas in woods, houses or town centers however a a group, we felt that local areas would take away authenticity of the video as people viewing it would identify the area and not believe it was a proper music video. We wanted to find a location that would be iconic and one that we know has been used in other videos as a central point of the video. Taking this into consideration, we felt that London would the most appropriate location to do our shoot. There are so many different locations in London that could work with our video, from the constant busy streets, to the quiet side alleys that are yet to be discovered by many people that venture up to London.

Southbank
An iconic location that could be used in our video is the famous London Southbank. It is always busy with people commuting to and from work, going out for day trips, and also with tourists. The riverside walkway also hosts a number of different famous landmarks such as The Houses of Parliament, The Mayor's Office, The London Eye and Tower Bridge, all of which are identifiable to the public as being London's tourist attractions. These places would be good to film for large crowds and also a different number of people as tourists from all over the world travel to see the different destinations.

Wembley WayWembley Way would be another great place to film. We could have a long shot of the whole of the walkway and see the stadium in the background looking at the different people that are walking below. This would give a notion of looking sense as the audience can see what other people do with their lives and either relate or differentiate it to their own life. It would be ideal to shoot this location completely empty to show how life has not yet started (due to the time of day) and then a later shot of the walkway packed with people showing how quickly life develops and how the world becomes busy.

Tube Stations
Tube stations are tricky locations to shoot in. There are so many across London that would benefit us and our video. One of our ideas for the video is to have our artist/actor singing with his guitar in a tube station watching life as it goes by. Although this could be a good idea, we have to appreciate that filming anything on the TFL (Transport For London) is very tricky due to the previous terrorist attacks. As a group, the only way we could decide on over coming this, should a tube station happen to appear in out video, and we are asked to move on, the best thing to do is plead ignorance and say we are students merrily filming some footage for our Media A-Level and we were unaware of the restrictions of filming in tube stations. The idea of the tube station, again can be used to show people moving about their everyday life and would show an audience the different types of people that live in the world.

Hyde Park

Another location that sprung to mind to appear in our music video was Hyde Park. As Christmas is just around the corner - only 5 weeks away - we thought that we could take this to our advantage and use the famous Christmas market and fair in our video. We were told by our teacher that a few students from a different school used this same location and produced a high graded finished product. As a group, we felt that the different colourful lights would have a good effect with the right camera work, and that again, there would be hundreds or even thousands of people walking around the fair going on the different rides and buying different items that are on sale. The idea was to have our artist walking around the fair watching the people on the rides and walking around and see how people enjoy their lives. It would also be good to have our artist in a neutral position as he observes a different variety of people as they pass him.

Obviously the ideas above are only rough ideas that are potential locations for filming. When we go up to London to shoot -thats even if we defenitly choose to go to London- then when travelling around, we may find areas that we feel would look good in the video and set up a camera and start filming. If later we chose not to use that part of the film, then it can easily be edited out.