Adding effects to the video - 13/02/2013

Today Jamie and I added effects to our elevator shots so that the audience are able to make a clear distinction between the elevator narrative shots and the performance shots. We added the effects "Echo" and "Bloom" which add more of a dream like appearance to the video. The "Echo" effect causes the video to split in to layers and then place a time gap between the layers causing multiple copies of one thing, one after the other. The "Bloom" effect adds a shine to light areas making them stand out against shadowed ares, drawing attention to it. We decided upon the use of these two effects because it is a convention that is often linked with fictional machines such as time machines like the famous Tardis in Doctor Who. 

Near the end of the video we added one final effect called "Earthquake" which violently jolts the screen about, depending on how high the mix is. We thought that because the video gets more upbeat it would work well with the tempo of the music, the more the video progressed at the end the more we increased the "Earthquake" effect, the mix of it increased by 10% each time so at the end it goes from 50% to 60% to 70% to 80% to 90%  to 100%. 

One key feature that has to be understood to get the most out of using effects on final cut is using keyframes, which allows for more diverse editing, this is because you are able to increase or decrease certain options of an effect over a duration allowing for more interesting finals results. Jamie and I both used key frames when adding effects to our music video, and I feel that without them the video wouldn't be as well defined as it, perhaps, is now.

Peer review - 23/01/13

Today in lesson Teni and Kayleigh reviewed what Jamie and I have edited so far in the music video. What they had to say was that we needed to add an effect or two to the narrative or elevator sequences to make a clear distinction between the narrative and performance shots. They also suggested that we should perhaps work at a faster pace as that will allow us to tweak the small fiddly aspects of the music video with more ease as we won't be pressured as much by the looming deadline.

Editing - the synching process

Today Jamie and I finished syncing up all the performance shots, we have 16 performance tracks, eight from a handy cam and eight from the HD camera. We had to sync up each take individually with the audio track which means that if we want to use a particular shot from a certain take we just have to make sure that it is the highest track on the timeline. In addition to syncing up all the video tracks we also changed the aspect ratio, the default aspect ratio is 0 but we changed it to -42 as this adds more of a professional element to the video. As we have so many tracks to work with we decided that we should hide some of the tracks on the timeline and then show the ones that we know we are going to use shots from as this will decrease the render time of the video when changes are made to it. Having such a wide variety of tracks works in our favour, although they will probably be a handful to manage, as it means that we may have more interesting shots that we can use if we need to add an eye catching performance shot.

Filming Problems

Today we were meant to be filming the bass narrative in a building of heritage called Valentines Mansion House situated in Ilford. However there was a problem, that many real production companies have to face, that occurred in the lead up to the filming. The problem was to do with something called liability insurance, initially we just had to give the company that was helping us organise the filming the liability insurance that the school is covered by, however when we managed to get the documentation sent to the company it turned out that it was for the wrong thing. The insurance was covered by the borough and not the school so we wouldn't be able to film unless a woman called Rhian Sharpe, who was helping us sort out our filming at the Mansion, was able to get a hold of the person who issued the insurance to the school. In the end she wasn't able to get a hold of him in time so we weren't able to get a filming license and we weren't able to film at the mansion. She did however state that if we wished to film at the mansion again we would just have to ask her and she would try and sort it out for us. I think our short coming came because we didn't incorporate enough time to clear the legal side of the filming procedure as it was something that we were not used to, that being said I think it was a good experience that all of us can take away and apply to situations in the future and we should attempt to film at the mansion sometime in the new year. Below is the chain of emails that details the situation of our filming troubles:

Filming Day 2

Today we completed what was arguably the biggest section of our filming, the performance aspects of the video. Our original plan was to film in Drama Room 3 as it is a small venue that can be made to look like a small concert venue in very little time. However we incurred many problems throughout the evening that consequently led to us having to change location at the last minute. Earlier in the day I had acquired the permission from the head of the music department to borrow a drum kit, that belongs to me until the end of the year at least, and move it to Drama 3 after school once all the forms had been dismissed. However upon going up to music to collect the drum kit I was then informed that we wouldn't be able to move it, for reasons that are still unclear to me, and we then had to come with an alternative. Luckily one of the members of the group had an old drum kit stored in his loft and his parents were nice enough to bring it down to the school once we had gone back to his house and packed it up. Consequently this postponed filming by roughly two hours and by the time we got back with the drum kit our original venue that we wanted to film in was no longer available and we had to change the location of our shoot to Boothroyd stage which is a much large stage and as a result harder to film on. If we had been able to borrow the drum kit from the school we would have been done filming and packed up with everyone ready to leave at a time no later than half past five, which I found out was the time the last member of the music department was leaving when I went to set the lighting for the hall. As a result we left the school at twenty to eight.

When filming we had two cameras running at once to ensure that we would have more shots to use when editing the video. One of the cameras was stationary for the majority of the filming process whilst the other one was free hand and was used to get more free flowing interesting shots that may fit faster paced sections of the song. We took multiple takes throughout the evening and after a couple of static takes everyone started to perform more to the camera. When everyone started to get into the performance the freehand camera started to follow individual members around every take, so once everyone had a camera focus on them we decided we would do one more take where the band were fooling around on stage to use all the footage for incidental shots. Overall I feel the filming went well even after the problems that we incurred before the filming process went well, it also helped that everyone was willing to stay late to make the complicated situation easier for everyone.

Filming Day 1

Today was our first day of filming as a group, however there were only three of us opposed to four as Kayleigh had prior dedications. We filmed the drum narrative in the green room in a spontaneous fashion as we didn't storyboard any of the narrative and we were going to see how this section of narrative turned out, we used the spontaneous filming technique as a test to see if the results would be good enough to use the technique again for future filming sessions. 

The drum narrative consists of the lead singer walking into the green room, when edited it will look like he has walked straight out of an elevator into the room, and finding the drummer dancing with a mop. We took a single shot, from three different angles which gives us more leeway when it comes to the editing process, where the singer walks into the room and then reacts to the sudden change in his costume as he now fits in with his surrounding area. Another interesting shot we got was an over the shoulder shot, however it wasn't a conventional shot as the figurative shoulder that the camera was looking over was of the broom looking at the drummer, this shot personifies the broom and makes it appear to be a character in its own right that can be used throughout the rest of the video, most likely for some comedic value.

We didn't just film in the two hour period we also had the set up to make the green room look more hectic and also pack it away so that it was in the same state that we found it when we left. This meant we had to manage our time in the most efficient way possible, which I feel we did. Overall I think the first day of filming was a success and we got multiple interesting shots that we will be able to use to great effect in the video. We even managed to get the footage that we captured uploaded to a Mac on the same day, so all in all everything went smoothly.