Comparition between AS production and A2 production

At first, this video production and last year's AS video production may not seem that different; you get a camera, plan what to film and then go film it, all the while recording what you did on the blog. However once you start looker more closely, you'll realise that both productions are nearly worlds apart.

The first difference is with the style of filming and what's being filmed. In the AS media production last year, we were tasked with filming the opening sequence of a film. In the medium of films, the camera usually stays in the same place for most of the time on a tripod or a similar device, with it following the action by having the camera rotate. In most music videos however, the camera is moving around most of the time, either by tracking or moving freely. This makes planning shots more differcult then just having the actor do all the work, now the cameraman has to move too. Also last year, we were free to to make a scirpt ourselves, and thus we could choose the way it should be shoot. However, with this year's production, we had to take a mainstream song and make a video based around that. Its quite hard not to copy ideas from the song's orginal video as we could think up ideas and then write around these ideas. Futhermore in the AS piece we could have long shot and long gaps between edits, but in music videos this is rarely done so you have to change your mind set completly to know what to film, something that I had to do myself.

The next key difference would be in the editing. Last year, the editing was use to help add emotion to film or help estabish the atmosphere the group is looking for. Also, the editing of film compared to music videos is very simple; in film its about portraying a story so the editing is done in a way so all story-related elements to the viewer. The amount of cuts are come low during story-driven parts to help shows details that the audience need to pick up on so they can understand the story. Visual effects are also under used at these parts so as not to distract the viewer from the experience. On the other hand however, music videos have a different style of editing altogether. Rather than story, they are more about spectacle, drawing you attention to the video and also the song. As most music videos usually have little to no story at all, so there isn't any need to draw attention to that aspect of the video. Furthermore, because the aim it to draw the attention of the viewer, visual effects like fades and screen blurs are commonly used. Finally, the speed of the editing mostly depends on the tempo of the music. In our groups case the tempo is high, so the editing will be fast with many fast cuts, adding to overall effect of the video on the viewer and highlighting the song's beat.

Another key difference between the two video projects was in the performance aspect. In films, the dialogue is spoken on set and is recorded on the day of filming. The emotion portrayed though the lines of dialogue are usually decided by the director, the actor or what is stated in the script. The actor's movements are also dictated by the script; say weather it is a scene with high stress or a slow melodramatic scene. Also the person chosen to act in the production doesn't have to move around that much, depending on the scene. In the A2 production however, a lot more is asked from the performer. Not only do they have to move around the chosen area to film in, but they have act and dance around the beat of the music. Furthermore, they have to try and lip-sync to an already existing piece of singing, where all the choices they made with dialogue in last year's video being stripped away from them.

Diary for this week - 17-24/11/11

17th November - Today we did some more editing as well as filming. The first day we went out filming, the footage of Kane in the mirror, was not as good as we thought it could be, so we decided we would re-film the shot. We heading down to the dance studio in college to film the footage. We also took the picture which we would use to put in the frame which we decided we would smash to symbolise the end of the relationship.

24th November - Today we recorded our final pieces of footage. It was mostly the end including smashing the frame. We also filmed sending and receiving the texts for the beginning of the video. We also did some filming in the studio and finished off editing the video.

Equipment and technology

We used a variety of equipment and software to aid us throughout the production. Some were key to finishing the production while some helped enhanced the finished product.

The first three pieces of equipment were a necessity during the filing process. The first of these was essential to any video production, the camera. To be more specific, the camera was a Canon Legria FS406 . All clips and photos for either filming or the blog was done with this camera. The camera may not have had the greatest of quality, but it was the only camera available to us so we had to make do with what we had. Also due to its small size and weight we could easily handle it handheld-style. It was also very user friendly and easily to use, which meant that even someone who was wasn't very experienced with camera could use and handle it with ease.

The next piece of equipment we used was an asset to the camera, the tripod. Specifically designed so the camera could be securely mounted on top, this kept the camera steady whenever it wasn't moving. The part of the tripod with the mount was also able to swivel side-to-side and tilt up and down, so it allowed us to have good smooth panning shots and easily follow any on-screen action with ease. The legs of the tripod were also able to be extended, which allowed to have shots from a high angle.

The third and last piece of equipment was another camera asset; the Jib. Similar to a camera crane, the camera is mount on top of the Jib on a platform separate to the main structure of the Jib. Then through the use of a handle located at the other end of the Jib, the platform can be turned up and down at a various number of degrees. This permitted us to have camera movements mimicking those of a camera mounted a crane, with shots going from high shots to low shots in a smooth fashion. This also made executing high and low shots easier as we didn't need someone with the camera to be placed on a high object or to lie down on the floor. The Jib was also able to extend higher allowing for shots that were higher then first thought.

Next, we moved into the equipment in the studio area to film some performance shots. While working in there, we made use of the Spotlights positioned in there. We could move the lights around so we could use them to achieve the mood we were looking for. We could also change the brightness of the lights helping to further set the mood of the shot. They also help us achieve shots that would normally be hard to do; for example, our performer walks out of the shadows and up to the mic. This would normally be done with visual effects, but it has been easily achieved by lighting.

On the software side of things, the editing program we used was Final Cut Pro. Being a professional editing program and used by many Hollywood editors, Final Cut Pro was an ideal system to use. Although it is not easy to use unless you have experience with the program, it is probably the simplest and best way to edit anything; it has a wide variety of special effects and most importantly it allows non-liniaer editing. Basically this means that if we wanted to re-edit the beginning part, instead of having start over again like in the days of film editing, we simply scroll back to the start and edit away. Furthermore, the Mac computers we had access to had two screens, allowing Final Cut Pro to be used on both screens, giving us a clearer view on what we were editing.

Diary for this week - 3-14/11/11

3rd Nov - Today we started looking at how we were going to edit the video. Matthew CM is very strong when it comes to editing so we decided to put each of our strengths to use and let him edit the majority of the video. We also did more blog work and looked at where and what we were going to film next.

7th Nov - Today we continued filming at Kane's house. We filmed more of the outside shots and decided to re-film some of the shots which we thought we could do better- either because of the acting or because the camera wasn't steady enough or we didn't like the positioning. We also filmed Kane being 'kicked out' of the house by Steph, where Kane is pushed from the door, his coat is thrown at him, and he then throws his coat over the camera. This was one of the ideas we came up with to change the scene.

10th Nov - Today we did some more editing, as well as some more test shots of extreme close up of Kane's lip-syncing in the Music recording studio at college. This was very tedious as we had to position the camera very specifically in order to see Kane's lip syncing as much as possible. This took a lot of time and very small camera movements.

14th Nov - Today we went out filming again. We visited the rather large area underneath Mancunian Way, except when we got there we realised that work had been started since we last checked the area. Fortunately the area that was under construction did not take up the entire area, and the scaffolding was only on one pillar. We started off by taking a couple of shots in the subways and the footpaths leading up to them. Then we did the shot where Kane is stood beneath two of the pillars and kicks a bag of cement creating a lot of dust. We kept having to re-film this bit because we were filming using the crane on a slope, and there was a lot of gravel, the footage looked very unsteady and unprofessional. After re-shooting this a couple of times we became better and more able to film steadily. The reason we used the crane was so that we could film both high-angle shots and low-angle shots as well as normal shots. We also had Kane jumping off the top of a pile of sandbags. Having the crane meant we could film him jumping more easily. We also did a shot which involved us moving in between two other pillars and having Kane stay on the other pillars. This was effective because it let us view from a different angle so that we can switch between different shots and let people who are watching see more of the surrounding area.

By Steph Cullen

Possible Album Advert For Audience

The Two pictures you can see below are of advertisements I have designed to go onto video player sites as a potential way they would be advertised if we were actukly making the album cover, both the advertisments are the same but I have put them on different websites for a reason, the first one is of youtube, this was be good because it is view by thousands of people and show a wide variety of video weather they be comedy, action, sketch, music and animation.

The second one is of VEVO, i thought this one would be better to use because unlike youtube, VEVO is dedicated to just music videos, therefore there would be more chance of the appropiate audience type seeing the advertisment which could potentially mean selling an album.

Deadlines

'The deadline for the completed music video is Friday 25th November. It is essential that videos are fully completed by this date as they will be marked early the following week.'

'You then have until Friday 9th December to finish the blog and the print-based work.'

We have nearly finished filming now and we have started our editing. We will be filming the last shot of Kane in a field later on this week/early next week. And then we will continue to edit our video and we will finish it some time in the next 2 weeks. We have started work on the album cover, and have created one already. We are exploring our other ideas and will look at our covers and decide which one we feel is best and submit that one. We will then work on our poster, so we can put a picture of our cd cover on the poster. We will then evaluate our video, album cover, and poster, and post it on the blog. We will aim to have this finished a couple of days in advance to give time to check over everything and make sure that we have covered everything in as much detail as possible.

By Steph Cullen

Album Covers

I like very simple album covers, where there is just a picture of the person, and there is nothing else really going on, except for the name of the artist and the song. Here are a few examples of album covers which I really like.

• Eminem – The Hits and Unreleased

I like this one because it is in black and white, and Eminem’s face is hard to read. Also because it is extremely simple.

• Rihanna - Loud

I like this one because the lighting is very bright, to reflect the bright make-up she is wearing.

• Usher – Raymond v Raymond

I think this one because it is very relaxed and very simple, and its just usher resting on his hands. He looks sad and upset, but his facial expression is very confusing, and it could have a double meaning. The lighting is also very dark, which also contributes to the simplicity of the album cover.

• Pixie Lott – Young Foolish Happy

This album cover is in black and white, with the big ‘x’ being the only thing in colour on the cover. This draws attention to the ‘x’, which obviously is symbolic to the ‘x’ in Pixie, as it overlaps. The picture look very natural, and the make up used is also very simple. She also looks quite windswept, which usually is used to portray minimalism.

• Alexis Jordan – Alexis Jordan

This album cover is also extremely simple, and the make up and pose is very natural. But there is a pink tint to the cover.

by Steph Cullen

Very Basic Explanation Of How A Album Cover Develops

Step 1: First I got the original picture we took and rotated it slightly as the picture was off center and changed the contrast to make certain parts of the image stand out.

Step 2: I then got a separate image of Kane sitting in the middle of the bench and took him away from the background using a tool in photoshop called the Pen Tool were i had to carefully trace around the part of the image i wanted.


Step 3: The Kane I cutout was then transferred over to the original picture and put in place, this process took a while as i had to keep making changes to the cutout making sure it wasn't over lapping and that it fitted in place.

Step 4: To create the effect shown above I competed the same steps i had taken in 2 & 3 to put the image of the two Kanes and Steph onto a bright sunny background which also took a while. The contrast of the background image was also changed in order to make it appear brighter.

Step 5: The left and right hand side of the image were then change to extreme low key lighting to show that it is the Kane to the left and Steph that are "Regretting" Life whilst the middle Kane is smiling and in bright Naturalistic lighting.

Step 6: This last image shows the picture with the finishing details on it which include the name of the Album "No Regrets" and also the P.A. Logo at the bottom.

(This Description is just a brief outline of how the image was made there were a lot of fiddly bits in between that would have taken quite a while to explain over a paragraph. This was done in order to give onlookers an understanding into how Photoshop works and how it was used to develop and idea.)

Program To Design Album Covers & Posters

Photoshop

The program that will be used for Matthew Caine-Mckenzie to design the album covers and posters on will be Photoshop CS5, this program is a proffesional program used by graphic designers to create and design. It is the program of chose because it has many features which can aid and help develop proffessional looking designs, below shows the packaging that comes with the program (Which Is Worth Over £500) and also the look and workspace that Photoshop uses.

Locations and other research

The following research is relevant to our production because each of the above sections helped us to recognize common traits in music videos and helped us choose ideas for our music video.

Clichés seen in most hip/hop music videos:

• Cornfields; Seen in “Love The Way You Lie”, “Stan”, “You and I”, and various Rihanna music videos. Unable to find a reason why cornfields are used so much; possibly linked to Fields – Emotional Locations
• Roof of a tall building: This allows for many wide sweeping shots to add emotion to when the music build-ups and when the music reaches a crescendo. Also shows the cityscape in the background, a easily recognizable and effective backdrop.
• Fade editing: Again adds emotion, mainly at the chorus of a song. Takes also allows for cuts to take place while not breaking the rhythm of the song.
• A house estate or area: shows a stereotypical area for gangsters and gangs to live.

Ideas for our music video:

Emotional locations:

· See Cliché – Roof of a tall building

• · Fields, e.g. cornfields, parks etc. Can either been used to emphasize “big” parts in a song (No Regrets – Dappy) or to make a song seem more depressing (Love the way you lie – Eminem ft. Rihanna).
• · A rough estate where good people are pulled into a gangster lifestyle, showing a different side of the gangster stereotype. Therefore, we see poor people living in these areas and then they make a life for themselves.

Camera shots that may be used:

• · Medium close ups; so we can see our “Dappy” lip-syncing to the lyrics, a key aspect of any music video.
• · Mid-shots; shows the appearance of our “Dappy”.
• · Long shots to add effect to the crescendos’ in the music. E.G. As seen in the video for No Regrets, Dappy is seen on top of a building. This allows for wide sweeping shots to give emotion to parts of the song where there is a build up or a crescendo.

Research collected by Matthew Molnar and Kane Allen

Prop List

Phones: Blackberry, Iphone
Picture Frame
Spotlights
Concrete Dust
Microphone
Mirrors
Coats
Snapbacks
Chains
Scalf
Bag
Chair

Problems Faced When Making Video

When making the video we faced alot of problems as a group, some of theses included budget, transport, traffic, weather etc.

When starting we didnt really allocat e a budget for ourselfs, we tended to spend the money as we went along, this was different for different people this was because some people already used bus as a way of transport and therefore had a bus pass, wearas I had to spend extra money in order to get the bus back and forth from location to location.

Also as we done most of our filming during college hours this meant that we had limited time when filming as we would have to get back to college in order to be back in time for our lessons.

The weather was also a major problem for us when we were filming, as we needed bright naturalistic lighting from the sun, but as the filming took place over the winter we didnt have many days where the sun was shining brightly or it wasnt raining.