Showcase poster

Here is the poster for the showcase, it features stills from four of the group's final music video, ours is top right! It will be displayed around school encouraging teachers and students to attend.

Another draft

Here is the next draft, as you can see the cafe scene was cut, we did this because we both felt it didn't fit very well with our video. Seher and I learnt a couple of new techniques for Final Cut Express. We'd been pondering for a while over how to layer clips using the software, we'd managed to layer them previously but could only see one at a time! We went over to trusty YouTube and found a video explaining the very simple way of doing it:

After this we went back onto Final Cut Express and had a play around with the instrumental section of our song and some of the 360 degree shots, our new draft is the result! 

Roland Barthes

I have put together a prezi on Roland Barthes codes theory. I will use this theory to understand the codes present in my music video.

Draft

Here is another draft of our music video with some of the footage added in from the filming in the half term. We've definitely got the first minute sorted out, but after that we've just added in bits like the 360 degree shots where we think they need to go. After hearing the examiner's report from last year we've decided to include the mirrored lip syncing shots that we discussed on our blogs in the research stage. This is because the examiner stated "the narrative-based music videos moderators saw were almost always more like short films, and often had little connection to the chosen track". Even though the narrative of our music video is a reflection of the lyrical meaning of the song, we want to definitely be on the safe side and add in those lip syncing scenes. We're dragging Ryan into the media room after school tomorrow where we'll film him lip syncing with the mirrored effect on the iMac's  photobooth. We decided to film it this way rather than on a camera as it will already be mirrored so we won't have to worry about trying to work out how to edit it that way! 

Showcase

We are holding our media showcase around late March time after we have handed in our final music videos. The purpose of this evening is to show our music videos to our families, friends and actors and to hopefully get some feedback that we can reference in our evaluation process. Each group was asked to provide a still from their video that helps represent it. Seher and I chose this particular still because both characters are in shot and we can see that 'God' is there for our female character.

Today's filming

Here is the schedule we made for the filming today:

We worked exactly to schedule and ended up finishing at about 11.30-12 which was great! We had a new member on our team today, introducing Seher's sister playing the role of the younger Lucy:

It was a really good day overall, we filmed the bathroom scene first as it was raining, this only took about half an hour, after trying to maneuver ourselves around my little bathroom.

After this scene we made our way to Forty Hall with the 360 contraption where we were faced with what seemed like hundreds upon thousands of dog walkers, thick mud and the problem of trying to keep Lucy's pristine new car well... Still pristine?

Everyone had fun with the 360 thing, even if we did get some quite strange looks. 

Starbucks was our last location of the day where we filmed the cafe scene and rewarded ourselves with some nice big mugs of coffee! And here's a little review video from the film star of the day!

Another draft

I played around with the timings of the video as after we added in the church window footage, everything moved around! 

Second example of the 360 degree device

Here's some footage from the newly improved 360 device. We shortened the rod the camera sits on as Lucy is extremely small and we wouldn't have been able to see her! Video featuring me, Lucy and Lucy's Lewis trying to act 'modelesque'.

Here is a photo of the actual finished thing, we need to come up with a more media-y professional name for it! 360 degree tripod? Although it doesn't have three legs so maybe not...

360 degree tripod

Today my dad and I FINALLY made the 360 degree tripod! Well... I did the sanding and some of the drilling. Here's part of the process:

Luckily Lucy was here today to we managed to measure the plate she would stand on so that it would be big enough. We worked it out as a 19 cm diameter.

Dad then did all of the cutting out as I can't imagine I'd be any good with power tools, plus the drill bit was 'very sharp', there would've definitely been an injury! 

It was then my job to go about sanding down the edges of the lazy Susan bit and the platform Lucy would stand on.

We measured the center part at five inches, this is where the center platform will go, attached to a bit of strong oak.

Dad back to his sawing...

... And me back to my sanding.

Drilling the holes to attach the lazy Susan.

Getting the screws stuck in the whole contraption proved to be slightly problematic!

Fixing on the lazy Susan!

There will be a slight difference in appearace from the last photo here and the finishing product as dad went to see if he could make the rod with some wood, well he then came back with the whole thing finished! I haven't yet got a photo of the finishing product as last time I stood on it I broke the whole thing! Dad went back to the shed to make some improvements so hopefully I'll have a picture later. 

I filmed my dad whilst he stood on the contraption, we decided that the rod with the camera on was up too high. He's chopped a bit off of it so that the camera sits lower down, we're taking the whole thing to my Nan's later so there could be some funny footage to come! 

Vlog

I just realised that I haven't vlogged for quite a while, so here is a video disussing:

• Church windows
• Editing 
• Filming
• Digiak

Digipak planing

Today I decided to spend some time planning out some possible ideas for my four panel digipak. I haven't yet made the decision on whether or not the photos in the digipak will have reduced saturation (to fit with the colour of our music video), or whether they'll be in black and white.

After looking at some templates online I worked out the blank design of the digipak, I then filled each section with a design. After folding the digipak to see what it would look like i found out that I drew the suit section upside down and the two top panels would have to be reversed so that the back cover was first and the front cover second. Making this has been quite useful because when creating the real thing digitally I could have made a lot of mistakes! 

This is the front cover of my digipak, it is a photo of Lucy and Ryan in a mirrored position, this will fit with the mirrored lip syncing in our video. Across the top I will either have the band name in large, then the album name in a smaller font underneath. As this is the band's first album I wanted the name to be in a larger font so that people would notice it. 

I haven't yet created any song names, but I would like them to be either in the center of the panel, or in one of the corners. The background will be a simple photo of white dust to fit with the idea that our main character has an issue with drugs. 

The photo printed onto the disc will be of some burnt out matches, this represents the fact that our protagonist has lost someone close to her and their life has essentially been 'burnt out'. Behind the CD tray I will continue over the photo of the white dust.

The inside panel will be a photo of Ryan straightening his tie (I couldn't draw the hands!), Ryan plays God in our music video and he also wears a suit, I wanted people to associate this drawing with him as it suggests there's still hope for our character.

Using final cut express

For the past week Seher and I have spent our editing lessons trying to work out how to use the 'Final Cut Express' video editing software. With it being extremely different to iMovie we found it very confusing at first, but after watching a few videos on YouTube I think we grasped it.

We found this video first which taught us the basics such as how to import a video, how to cut a clip and how to delete the sound. This was quite useful because we didn't want the church organ music playing in the background.

We then wanted to find a way to make our footage more interesting, as I kept the camera very  still when recording the windows to avoid camera shake, this resulted in the footage looking like a still photo rather than video work. This effects video helped us to understand the more 'advanced' settings you can apply to footage, but after exploring Final Cut Express ourselves, we decided we just wanted to apply simple effects. 

This was the original footage imported into Final Cut Express. We wanted to remove the background noise and make the footage move in an interesting way.

The 'insect' effect was applied first, we liked the way it distorted the view of the windows. Seher and I also liked the fact that it seemed to multiply the amount of windows.

The 'ripple' video effect was then used to create a sense of movement. We agreed that this was the type of thing we were going for, however, it made the footage move a bit too fast in our opinion.

We chose to layer the two above effects together which created a moving, distorted piece of footage. We then wanted to change around the speed and colour of the video. After a while I worked out that it would be a bit too complicated trying to work out how to reduce the speed of the footage, so I exported the video file to the desktop and slowed it down in iMovie.

Overall we were quite impressed with the Final Cut Express programme we. We are considering using it to finalise and tweak the rest of our footage. 

Final Cut Express editing process

Here is the process we followed to edit our church window scene:

We started off by dragging each bit of footage into the viewer, we then selected the portion of video we wanted to use in the final footage

Then we dragged the trimmed portions of footage down into the work space 

To make the work space larger and easier to manage we pressed ctrl+z

As the sound in the video was later going to be replaced with our song in iMovie, we highlighted each bit of the original sound and pressed backspace to delete it

We then clicked on the 'ripple' effect and dragged it down onto the footage in the work space, this provided our footage with a sense of movement

As we wanted our footage to appear slightly more abstract we applied the 'insect' effect in the same way we applied the 'ripple' effect

Applying these effects left us with our footage being 'unrendered' at first we weren't sure what this meant so we spent some time researching a way to fix it on youtube 

There was quite a simple solution! Go onto sequence->render all->video and final cut sorts itself out :)