First Day of Editing! - Rough Cut

I started on the editing for our rough cut today after 2 days of filming the different scenes. I was able to edit the whole video in about 5 hours without using any effects. I used the speed tool increase/decrease the speed of certain clips to match the mood of the scene in the music video. I also used the layering technique that I learned whilst doing the lip sync exercise in which I would layer each clip that involved singing on top of one another. From doing this I would select the best clips for that specific point in the music video. Throughout the music video there is one medium shot that will act as the foundation of the music video and will be shown when any close-ups or Party/London shots aren't. I placed this medium shot in the 'Video 1' slot on the timeline so it is the main clip throughout the video.

Here are some images of my editing process.

This image shows the video after I selected the each of the segments I wanted from each individual clips.

Rough Cut - Kink In Your Soul (Cover) with Audience Feedback

Hello fellow bloggers, I've just finished editing our rough cut and this is what my team and I were able to come up with, hope you like it! The finished version will be up soon.

For our audience feedback we targeted the demographic of 16-25 and asked some of the people in our class and other A Level classes what they thought of our rough cut, and the feedback we received was generally positive. We asked a sample of students the following questions:

What was your favourite scene in the music video?

Was the music video stimulating enough to prevent boredom and if not, why?

How did the editing enhance your viewing experience, if not, why?

What improvements do you recommend we implement for the final piece?

If you were to see this video on the timeline on Twitter, would you retweet, like or neither?


To gather this information from my target audience I used several social networking sites in order to get the information as this was the best place to find them.


Here are some WhatsApp conversations I had with my target audience, some of which choose not be named.

                

 



Person 2:

   

Second Day of Filming

Here is a montage of our second day of filming. On the second day we had a party scene as as well as travelling up to Westminster for the London scene. We got some weird looks whilst filming but I guess that's what happens when you film a drunken girl walking through a train station.

First Day of Filming & Meet The Band!

Today we started filming the band shots for our video in our school's drama room. Our group consisted of Abi, Ebun, Dafe, Jordan and I with some help from Celina. We had to make sure today was free and not booked out like yesterday so everything could run smooth. We used the drama lights as oppose to natural light to give our band shots a more professional look. Here's some pictures from today.

Meet the Band!

Taju

Jordan

Dafe

Here I was powdered in order stop the light from reflecting off of my forehead so much and allow myself to be seen more clearly by the camera.

Also all of us in  the band wore the same outfit to make us look like a real band and not some Media Studies students. It my own idea to go with the sunglasses, white shirt, black tie and black trousers look, as I felt that it suited the genre of the music.

Moreoever, we included all the shots stated in our shot list plus some extras as we felt we needed more for the music video to be more exciting. During filming, the dolly wasn't working too well with the tripod so we had to do plenty of free hand shots as steadily as we could, although they weren't the best, hopefully we can make up for it during editing. Also durin one of the takes I got way too excited and the microphone ended up falling apart ruining what would have been a great take. Luckily however we got through most of the song doing this. Anyway here's us in action!

Furthermore, the instruments we used included an electric guitar, bass guitar and drum-kit. Although we had to ditch the electric guitar because we had no guitar strap for it so it kept on slipping from my grip during the take which wasn't helpful. When we got rid of it and just had me as the vocalist of the band the shots improved drastically as this gave me the freedom I needed to put on a good performance. In addition, we almost got into heaps of trouble for using the drum-kit without having a real drummer in our band because Dafe was making so much noise and not drumming on beat.

Generally I'm pleased with the band shots as we were able to get in a range of shots and really utilise our work space for some really good shots. However, we didn't manage as many close-ups of Dafe on the drums as we wanted and we also had a lot of shaky shots which decreased the professionalism by some bit. Also the lighting was good however we could have used white lights to make the film look better.

Filming Postponed again :(

Unfortunately, there was an issue in the booking of the drama studio. We have postponed the filming of the band scene till tomorrow.

Introducing a new member of the team!

Meet our great friend and new addition to our team Leon Macauley.




Leon Macauley, 17, is your usual Essex lad who likes socialising and going out on the weekend to party till the sun comes up. He is part of the Robert Clack School's Rugby Academy and is a 200 metre runner for local athletics club Newham and Essex Beagles. For more ways to get in touch with the latest member of our group you can find him on the following social media.

Twitter - @_Trill100

Snapchat - trill_leon

Choosing the Track

Whilst choosing our track we had to make sure we chose an unsigned artist and ask for their permission to use their song, as we cannot use a mainstream artist such as Rihanna, Chrs Brown etc due to the risk of copyright infringement. At first our song choice was a whole different genre to the one we decided to do. It was 'What a Night To Be Alive' by the 99s http://www.unsigned.com/the99s. However we felt that this song didn't meet the fast beat pace we were looking for and didn't appeal to our target audience of 16-24. After reaching the conclusion that the song by the 99s wasn't for us and then continued the search into a different genre of music with was Indie Rock. Eventually, we came across 'Kink In Your Soul' by Red Emperor, and this was a great song as it ticked every box. It had a fast beat for majority of the song, it was young, it was hip, it could be easily interpreted into an excellent video with narrative and performance shots. Additionally, it had no foul language or offensive lyrics that would steer anyone away from our music video.

Here it is. Kink In Your Soul by Red Emperor.




She was always on her own,
She just always seemed too shy,
And she would hide her heart away, living in the ecstacy, hoping it would make her stronger,
And they would take her dreams away, save them for another day,

And it was not my choice, to let you go,
And I should have have taken more care, should have made sure,
And if I could turn back time, I would have let you know,
Oh how could I have known you had a kink in your soul?,

You've got a kink in your soul, oh oh oh oh…,
Oh how could I have known you had a kink in your soul?,
Oh oh oh oh oh…..,

Oh how could I have known?,
Oh how could I have known?,
Oh how could I have known you had a kink in your soul?,

She used to run from the one she loved,
It seems old habits never die,
And every time she'd run away, she would hide the sun away, she preferred it colder,
She should have been bolder, should have never sold her soul.

Audience Feedback

Hello bloggers!

Today was the day we recorded some audience feedback on our song choice and asked them some questions related to the song.

Here are some pictures from today's research.

When I first heard this song, I wasn't in love with it but as I took the time to really listen to it I started to picture a really good storyline so our group went along with the song. We decided to choose include some performance style shots along with some narrative to make the video more meaningful and direct to the lead singer. We also decided that our band will have myself as the lead singer. Our target audience for our video will be ages 16-24 from both genders, and this was the demographic we interviewed to see what they think.


Here are the questions we asked our target audience:

1) What three words come to mind after hearing the song?

2) Which other artist(s) does this music remind you of?

3) What are this/these artist's music videos like? What would you expect to see in their music videos?

4) How would you describe the mood of this song?

5) If the song was a colour, what colour would it be?

6) What pictures does the song create in your mind?

7) What narrative do you imagine with this song?


Here are some of the answers we received for each question:

1) Alex Coleman (Student), Long, Excitement, Lost.

2) Ed Sheeran (Really?), Boring.

3)  The Weeknd & The Kooks. - Just in case you aren't sure on what their music videos are like I've embedded some below. & The majority said they'd expect to see a dull, black and white mood to their videos including lots of close ups to emphasise emotion.







4) For this both groups of 16-24 had contrasting views, as some said they find the mood of this song very relaxing and would play it on a long car journey. Whereas the other group found the mood rather depressing and upsetting.

5) The described the colour of the video to be Grey, Red and Black, indicating that the song is very mixed with emotion. Red would normally be connotated with anger/love, whereas black would be associated with something evil and dark. We'd assume grey would be related to rather mudane material.

6) One group pictured break-ups whilst hearing this song.

One group pictured sunshine.

7) One group saw absolutely no narrative in relation to the song, whereas the others saw a typical party scene followed with a break-up because one cheated on the other.

After evaluating our song choice through our audience research, we still plan to go ahead with the song as we still believe it can appeal to our audience provided we make the appropriate adjustments to suit their needs.

Shot List - London and Party Scenes

Hello fellow bloggers! I have just finished constructing my team's shot list of the bare minimum we want to achieve when we film the London and Party scenes next week. The shot list consists of a bare minimum of 10 party shots and a minimum of 29 shots in London. This may change on the day as we may decide to include some shots not stated in the shot list that we feel may improve our music video

Shot List
Scene	Shot Number	Description
2 (Party Scene)	1	Establishing Shot.
	2	Close Up of Jessica.
	3	Close Up of Taju and Celina.
	4	Medium Shot of Taju.
	5	High angle shot of Taju and Celina.
	6	Close Up of Jessica drinking alcohol.
	7	Extreme Close Up of Jessica drinking.
	8	High angle shot of Jessica.
	9	Tracking shot of Jessica.
	10	Close up of Jessica’s face.
3 (London)	1	Wide Shot of Dagenham Heathway station.
	2	Tracking Shot of Jessica sitting down on the train.
	3	High angle shot of Jessica’s phone.
	4	High angle, Medium Shot of Jessica and Taju.
	5	High angle, tracking shot of Jessica walking up the stairs.
	6	Close up of Jessica and Taju. (Camera is being perceived as a phone camera)
	7	Medium Shot of Jessica stumbling on the bridge.
	8	Close Up of Jessica walking down the street.
	9	Medium Shot of Taju and Jessica walking down the street.
	10	Tracking shot of Jessica walking down the stairs.
	11	Medium shot of Taju and Jessica looking out to the river.
	12	Close Up of Jessica crying on the floor.
	13	Medium Shot of her walking inside towards McDonalds.
	14	Over the shoulder shot from Jessica’s perspective.
	15	Close Up of Taju and Jessica taking Photos.
	16	Wide Shot of the City.
	17	Wide Shot of the City.
	18	Wide Shot of the City.
	19	Medium Tracking Shot of Taju and Jessica walking into the arcade.
	20	Over the shoulder shot of Taju and Jessica playing Air Hockey.
	21	High Angle Tracking Shot of Jessica walking down the stairs of McDonalds.
	22	Close Up of Jessica sitting down at the McDonalds table by herself.
	23	Point of view shot from Jessica’s perspective.
	24	Over the shoulder shot from Taju’s perspective.
	25	Close up of Taju and Jessica drinking and eating.
	26	Medium Tracking Shot of Jessica entering Westminster station.
	27	Medium Shot of Jessica laying down on the bench.
	28	High angle close up of Taju.
	29	Close Up of Taju talking to Jessica.

Tomorrow's Plan

Tomorrow, our group plan to finish the storyboard for our band shots along with the shot list for our trip to London. Fingers crossed everything goes to plan.

Animatic

Today I created the animatic for our group's music video using Premiere Pro. I simply used a digital camera to make individual photos of the storyboard and then importing these images into Premiere Pro on my school's Mac computer, Here is the final animatic.