Future Now - the result of the music video

 This is the result of our music video:

Shoot day evaluation

 Before the shoot day, I prepared the props that I was supposed to bring (posters, my record player, vinyls and some fairy lights). I also prepared the plan for the shoot day that I had written weeks ago. When I woke up on the shoot day, I felt quite nervous as I was scared to forget filming some of the shots that we had planned and also nervous that we don’t have enough jars for the beach set. However, when we all met I realised we were not missing anything and that we were properly prepared for the shoot. Before we started filming, we made sure everyone was dressed with the costumes for the shack set. For the makeup, what Kate was wearing was already perfect so we didn’t need to do her makeup, and for the band, we decided they don’t need any make-up either. After that we brought out props to the set, but surprisingly we did not need to use any of the props as the shack set was already looking perfect. We only had one problem before starting to film. Although I told everyone in my group a week before, on the costume fit, that there needs to be guitarist and a bassist, no one listened and the bassist brought a guitar with her. Lily and I still fixed the problem last minute. We went around the campus running to find a base guitar as fast as possible so that we could start filming. Finally we managed to find one and we were ready to start shooting.

On the shoot day, everyone got to be one of the roles. At first Alex was the in charge of the camera, Lily was the director, Pandora was in charge of the timer on the Ipad and I was positioning the actors on the set and helping with the lighting. After a while we changed to me being in change of the camera, Alex holding the Ipad , Pandora being the director and Lily positioning people of the set, and so on. The role I enjoy the most was definitely filming and I wish I got to do it more, but other people wanted to do it as well. I think I did really well when it got to filming, especially when I filmed the handheld shot because I actually ended up using most of the shots of what I had filmed when I edited the music video. However, I must say I did not do that well when it came to directing, because I kept forgetting  what I was supposed to say. Overall we had no main problems, except missing a base guitar at the beginning of the shoot day which Lily and I managed to solve. We also had a problem with the drummer’s acting because he felt really uncomfortable, but I somehow managed to solve this when I was in charge of placing actors on set. What I did was dancing with them while everything was filmed and I was looking particularly and the drummer, trying to reming him to smile. In between the filming I went and talked to the actors telling them what to think about when we are filming and just enjoy themselves. I think the part of the shoot day was most successful was when Alex and I got to film the handheld shots of the band because when editing I realised those shots saved the whole music video due to how important movement in when filming and those were the shots that had the most movement.

I feel that as a team we did not work that well. Some times I felt Alex and I were more excited and implicated. I also had the feeling we didn’t coordinate with each other as some people were out of energy. We worked the best as a team when Pandora was the director, Lily in charge of the iPad, Alex in charge of the lighting or placing people and I was filming. What I learned was that on the shoot day you have to have a lot of energy, follow you plan and make the most of the time you have. I regret not adding more movement in some of the shots but that could not be done when everyone was filming because everyone had a different style, so I think we should have each had a fixed role. I also regret not filming the bird eye view I planned on when I did the test shoot in Imovie and that was because we were did not use the list of shots that I planned a week before which was a result of not being 100% prepared. In conclusion, I would plan everything even more before a shoot day. 

Looking at fonts

Today I looked for a suitable font for the digi packs and all the posters, because the style of the writing has to match the style of our music video of the psychedelic pop genre.

This is a screen recording of the fonts I found on the internet:

After looking for something suitable for a while, I realised nothing was good enough, so I drew the writing on my Ipad.

This is a screen recording of the process of me drawing the name of the band for the track list and possibly the digi pack.

To draw this, I looked at the Rubber Soul logo as an inspiration because it really suits the psychedelic pop genre.  

Second shoot

 Today Pandora Lily and I did a photoshoot in the photography studio. To do that, Alex (who is a photography student) talked to the teachers and booked the studio which was available for only half an hour at 5 PM.

When I went to the studio, Kate (the singer) was there on time, and shortly  after, Alex showed up with dave (the drummer) and Oscar. Ari was late as she did not know where the studio was, but I went outside to find her and show her the way. Lily showed up as well. After the whole band was there, Alex started taking the photos and I started looking at the photos I had saved on Pinterest as a source of inspiration for this studio shoot. 

The photo below on the right is a photo I found on Pinterest and we used as an inspiration as it can be seen in the photo on the left of the band. This was one of the best poses we choose and i think we might use the  photos that were taken of this pose on the digi pack.

The photos below is another example of how I used what i had found on Instagram to position the members of out band. What I found challenging was explaining them how to look at the camera and what attitude they should give off as Kate, the singer, was the only one who knew how to do that naturally.

These are some photos of Alex taking the photos and I showing the members of the band the inspiration photo and positioning them. 

In conclusion, this shoot was extremelly helpful because we now have a photo that we can put on the front of the digi pack and Alex and I can continue working on it (I am doing the font and she is editing the phtots for the digi pack). We also now have photos to give to Pandora and Lily so that they can work on the posters. The next and last shoot I am planning on doing is with Kate because she is in the same house as Alex and I and we can easily do it on Monday eavening when we arrive to the bording house after school. 

Shooting

 Yesterday Lily and I did a shooting with the whole band. The shooting took one hour in which I really struggled to organise everyone and follow the plan that Pandora had done the previous day. Some of the photos turned out to be quite successful, but in most of them either the lighting was really bad, the location looked like a school or some of the members of the band didn’t suit the role as they were having a laugh. 

These are some of the photos that I have taken:

What helped me the most on the shot day was the photos that I had saved as an inspiration of photos of bands from Pinterest. The photo in the middle has a high angle to it which first of all helped me include everyone in the photo, but also give off a trippy cool vibe to it. 

I also took this photo which was inspired by another photo from Pinterest. However, the background of it looks quite bad so I asked Lily today to edit the background in her computer. 

Conclusion: The next shoots (which are going to take place today and tomorrow) I will be more organised, and try to be more pushy with people so that everyone will be there and not just Lily and I. 

These are some screenshots of me trying to organise the shooting for today and tomorrow.

For tomorrow I planned on going on a trip to Cranleigh with all the members of the band, but I thinking about it now, I think it would be more realistic if Alex would book the photography studio for tomorrow because that way we are sure we are all going to meet and also, wo eould really need a profesional photo of all of them on for the digi pack.

Finding sources of inspiration for our Instagram account

 These are some photos I found of the style we are aiming for in the Instagram posts. To find these I typed hippie style.

I saved these photos so that when we meet we have an idea of what kind of photos we can take. To find these I typed band shots and I saved photos that could be taken in a studio, but also outside, in the school.

Looking at digipaks

To create our own digi pack we need inspiration from other products. To get inspiration, I photographed some that I thought looked similar to the stile of our music video.

At first, I choose the digi pack with on the top left and bottom right look really similar to the style that we are aiming for. The writing looks quite complex and gives off the vibe of a psychedelic pop album, just like our genre. The background looks like the space ful of stars which again, suits our music video, and even one of the scenes that we have shoot with the moon projection.

I choose to look at the second digi pack (the one on top right and bottom left) because I like the design of the background with the tree and the layout of the writing in the background. I think we could het inspiration especially from the bottom left photo for the writing, although the font of it doesn’t  suit our style that much. 

In conclusion, I will use the digipack with the writing as an inspiration for the font of the writing and the way I will place it on the digi pack.

Planning for instagram account

 Plan for instagram: 

Shooting days: Tuesday and Thursday

-        Makeup, accessories, hair, costume

LIST OF PHOTOS WE NEED TO TAKE:

    (This is a list written by Pandora Leahy)

0.00 - 5.00   -  bus photo shoot 

5.00 - 10.00 -  band room 

10.00 - 15.00. -  music tech room hall way + music tech rooms 

20.00 - 25.00 - studio pictures 

25.00 - 30.00 - band send 

30.00 - 35.00 - maths block forest 

35- 40 - fisheye - album cover 

40-45 - Kate on her own 

45-50  50 pavilion 

These are the posts Alexandra, Lily and Pandora prepared in drafts on the instagram account last week, while I was editing the music video. 

Editing

 Today I finished editing my music video. I started editing it on Tuesday when I did the performance cut for which I used only the shack set videos. To know what videos to cut I listened carefully to the song and every time I felt like one of the instruments were more emphasized, I visualised what I was heard by cutting a shot of that specific instrument. However, every time when I put a close up of an instrument, that shot would be followed by a closeup of the other hand of the musician and then his or her face and maybe even a mid shot of them. After this I would put either a wide shot or simply cut straight to the a close up of the singer. One of the scenes that I am most proud of from the performance cut is the instrumental solo of the bassist and the guitarist. The reason I like it so much is because I focused on the movement. I tried to give a sense of continuity and also show a connection between them by showing that they were looking at in the close ups. For example, when he would look at the bassist I would show a close up of her face. When she looked at her instrument I would put a close up of her bass afterwards. 

After this, on Wednesday, I spent some time changing some of the shots because after watching it, I realised some of the shots of the singer were way too long and some of the editing was not detailed enough. To change it and make it more detailed I struggled a lot to find the shots that I wand to move or cut because all the videos in the timeline were already cut and I could not see what was what as  there was no writing on them anymore. However, after a few hours I managed to do it. After making sure that the performance cut is detailed and the shots are precisely sinking with the rhythm of the song, I saved the performance cut and copied it in another timeline to prepare for the next day when I will had added the other set shots.

On Thursday, I stared adding the shots of the singer under the moon. To do that I rewatched everything and where I thought the music video would need something else to keep the viewer interested, I added the closeups of her. Most of the times implemented two shots of that set, not just one at a time so that the audience understands what that scene is. At the end though, I started adding just one shot at a time because at that point the audience would have already understood what that scene comes from. After finishing adding the ‘aura’ shots from that set, I continued by adding the aura shots. I realised, after adding some of the shots in the music video that they looked kind of too simple so I overlaid three shots that I selected from the original videos. To do that I firstly made the top two shots transparent so that the audience can’t see through the bottom third in the timeline. Then I added an effect on them called Echo. The result looked 10 times better and the overlaying technique of editing, in my opinion saved the music video as now, this makes it way more interesting for the audience.