Filming Planning

Introduction
In this blog post I am going to detail the planning that I did before filming. This includes everything from location access to making props! 


Locations
The main location that I will be filming in is Underriver Church. I contacted the Church Warden earlier in the year to request permission (on another blog post). To get the key for the church I called her ahead of shooting. She informed me that I could use the church on Friday between 1pm and until daylight hours (due to insurance reasons). This is fine and I can plan the filming around this. 

Another location that I need was a kitchen table, to film a few shoots in of cast at home. To fit the lyrics "Home Alone I hang my head in sorrow". I decided that my own kitchen table would not be suitable, as it is a large open room with loads of clutter. I wanted a small plain room, which would look cosy. I phoned my neighbour and ask if she would allow be to use her table. She said yes, and agree that I could film there any time between 3pm and 4 15pm on the same Friday. 

Any other locations will be woods and fields. All of which are public footpath, so I do not need to request permission to film on them. 


Cast
The only cast member for this filming session is my friend Vincent. I selected him earlier in my blog as he fitted my requirements perfectly. He is free to film with me on Friday any time from 1pm onwards. 


Props and Costume
The props needed are:

• Guitar
• Rings
• Wedding invite 

The wedding invite I had to make myself. Luckily I had access to craft supplies. I choose random names for the invite and hand made it myself. Here are some images of it:

The costumes needed are:

• Green smart coat
• Cream Wool Jumper
• White Shirt
• Black Jeans
• Smart Shoes
• Trainers (for outside locations)

As the costumes as belong to my actor I needed to remind him what to bring. I decided that the best way to do this would be to use text messaging on our mobiles. This would ensure that he would not lost the list and I would easily resend it. Here the message that I sent:

Transport
As my filming locations are remote and away from any public transport I had to consider how me and my actor would get to the location. I have opted to drive myself, as we will also have some heavy props and filming equipment to take with us.


Lyrics to Shoot Ideas
To help remind myself of what shoots I wanted to lip sync with what lyrics, I created a lyrics to shoot page. This is basically a copy of the lyrics, which I then annotated in order to make a plan of ideas. I took this with me while filming. Here is my page:

Shoot Ideas Inspiration
I also wanted to get some artistic shoots of Vincent playing the guitar. I printed out a few images from my mood board to use as framing ideas. Here is the page:

I also used the Pinterested app on my Iphone 4 to view the mood boards I made earlier. This was brilliant as I could quickly view any of the images online. 


Equipment
The equipment needed is:

• Camera and Lens
• Tripod
• Memory Cards
• Laptop
• Laptop charger
• Guitar
• Lighting?

Kit List
To remember all of the kit which I needed for filming, I created an evernote page. Evernote (www.evernote.com) is an online notepad, which would allow my list to be viewed online or printed off. This would be useful as I could view it on my smartphone, and share the link with my actor. To view my evernote kit list please Click Here To View Online.

Here is a screen print of my evernote page in editing:

Song Recording and Production

Introduction
In this blog post I will describe the creative processes when me and my recording artist went through in order to create his version of "Wedding Bells".


Artist
My musician was Vincent Dellow, who is also my actor for my video. I wanted him to record this song for me as I needed a male voice which would sound good with a guitar. Vincent plays all so the instruments in the song is self. The two females vocals are done by two of his friends. 


Recording
To record wedding bells we had a range of microphones available to us through school and Vincents own collection. We decided upon a Zoom H2n Microphone. This was a is of a professional standard and Vincent and I both have experience working with it before. 


Editing
To editing the song Vincent and I decided that I was best that He edited and I worked with him like a client would. This was as he knew how to use the complicated software, but would still allow me creative input into the song. The editing was done using FL Studio 10. 

I told Vincent that I wanted the song to remain the same slow pace as Lissie original, however I wanted it to have more of a ghostly sad feel to it. To did this Vincent told me that he added large amounts of reverb onto the male voice, guitar and bass guitar. The long notes also needed bass enhancing effects to be added to them, so that they carried a good sustain. The female voices were added in quietly on the choruses only. This quietness add another ghostly feel to the song. Another guitar track with capo on 12th fret was added, which harmonized the guitar and made the chorus seem a lot more fuller. The drums were created digitally, although Vincent has access to a drum stick and a small amount of experience playing them. We felt that doing it digitally would make for a clearer sound which we could adapt more easily. Finally, we felt that the track need a little more fullness to it, so a choir synth was added to play throughout the entire track. 


Finished Track
To present the finished track I uploaded it to Audiour (www.audiour.com). Audiour is a website where you can upload sound shares, and it creates a unique link for you to share with people. This link can be used via social networking sites, email or any much more. 

Here is the online link to the finished song!
http://audiour.com/playlist/j1twvlam

Music Video Theory

Introduction
In this blog post I am going to research and discuss different media theorists. I will aid to include how their work will relate to my own production.  


Performance Videos
Performance video only focus mainly around showing the band or artist performing their music. These videos can become boring, due to lack of narrative, costume changes or location. To avoid this creators use shortcuts and quick edits to keep the video fast paced. This is a low budget option as many are recorded while the band is already performing a planned show. 

A very typical example of performance based music is "Wedding Bells by Lissie". This was shoot on location and a band session and focuses on showing the group performancing. 

An example of a performance based music video which I feel works very well is "The Strokes - Reptilla". In this video the focus is mainly area capturing the hands of the artistics playing. It does not include shots of the band playing as a whole. Each shot frames the body parts in interest ways which grab the viewers attention as it break the normality for this type of video. 

Narrative Videos
A narrative video is one which focuses around telling a story to its viewers. This runs throughout the whole video and can feature multiple different stories set in a variety of locations. Sometimes the story reflects the lyrics of the song or tells another story. A classic example of this type of video is "Free Falling By Tom Petty".

Some videos combine narrative and performance, an example of this is "Aerosmith - Janie's Got a Gun". This video helps to connect to two parts video use of similar lighting with a dark blue tone. 

Conceptual Videos
Conceptual videos are based around a single idea, which the video revolves around. This style of video often focuses greatly on special effects and CGI, making it very high cost. Its a much rarely style due to cost, hard to film and difficult to get right. This type of video is rarely popular as viewers can not relate and sometimes can understand the point of the video. Good examples are:
"The Chemical Brothers - Star Guitar"

"Monkey Drummer - Chris Cunningham + Aphex Twin"

Claude Levi-Strauss
The media theorist Levi-Strauss was a structuralist philosopher who focused on binary oppositions. Binary oppositions are things such as:

• night / day
• good / bad
• light / dark

Levi-Strauss noted that these oppositions tended to structured texts are stories. This also related to plays and films as wells. These binary oppositions engage the viewers as they create conflict and contrast which thickens the plot of a media product. It can be used in a conflicting manner to highlight differences between a variety of things. 

I could use this in a subtle way to highlight the contrasting emotions which the lead actor has throughout my music video. For example his grief and sadness at losing the love of his life contrasting with the acceptance of moving on. On could also use binary oppositions of colours such as light and dark. 

Focus Group

Introduction
In this blog post I will present my planning and finished focus group. I will also discuss the results. 


Planning
To film this focus group I worked in a team with my media class, Frankie and Vincent. We decided that we should use the school as a filming location as it gave as easily access to a lot of participants. As we each have very different timetables, I created a TeamUp calendar in order to be able to visually see when everyone was available and find a common time. TeamUp (http://www.teamup.com/) is a shared online calanader. It greatly helps to organise events and resources, also different some other sites are no one needs to make an account. 

The screen print to the right shows me adding different blocks of when everyone and the room we need was available. It is colour coded.

Here is my finished TeamUp:

 It can also be viewed online, if you navigate to the date January 25th 2014 and select "Day View". Use this link:

http://teamup.com/kseec43a5ed1b70529/

TeamUp made me notice that everyone was available 1pm, so this we are planning to film. 

Me and my group also decided that we should create a visual presentation of our questions. This would help the participants to understand the questions better. Together we created a powerpoint presentation for use while filming. 
Here are our questions:

Presentation:

I filmed this screen capture video of my presentation using a website called "Screencastomatic" (http://www.screencast-o-matic.com/). I allowed me film the presentation using its online screen capture software. While the software is running you can resize the capture zone and using it to film anything on the screen. Here is a screenprint of me using the software:

Filming

For the filming, we used the schools card and tripod. A tripod had to be used to avoid the issue of camera shake. I did the filming while Frankie and Vincent presented to our group. 

Camera Set Up:

Table Set Up: 

Presentation on computer visible to group: 

Editing
After filming my team each took a copy of the footage to edit separately. I used Serif MoviePlus X6 to edit my footage. This software was suitable as it allowed me to add sound effects, music, text and edit the clips all together. Here is a screenshot from my editing screen:

Finished Video
I uploaded my finished focus group onto youtube. As it can be shared easily for there. Here is the finished video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WV-qRkSUSac&feature=youtu.be

I also uploaded my video onto my record labels facebook page. This helped to share it to a larger number of viewers:

Target Audience

Introduction
In this blog post I am going to research into my target audience for my chosen genre of Indie, and of the artist of my song. I will looking at the target audience of both the original musician who created the song "Wedding Bells" Lissie, and also thinking of who my new artist "Vincent Dellow" would appeal too. 

Target Audience
My target audience is aged between 18 to 24 years old, in the same age range as my actor making it easily for them to relate. They are University students or working in lower paid jobs. Both male and female, however mostly female due to the attraction of a male singer. They are working/middle class. They enjoy listening to new and upcoming music, on genres are indie, folk and rock. Other bands they listen to include "The XX" and "The Arctic Monkeys". They are living in England, as this is where my singer comes from.