Making Of The Picnic Scene

Below i have found some footage that gives a good insight to the making of the picnic scene which is the first date the pretty girl goes on with the average guy. This footage has some funny bloopers as well and shows the thoughts we went through when we was filming this, like a birds eye angle of the picnic date, attention to detail and a wide angle pan of the scenery.

JOSH - PLEASE READ

Hi mate, its adam

How have you been?

You do sound stressed lol

The video is coming along fine, i just need to upload the work i have done so far onto the blog. I'm guessing you can't make the monday evening slot then if you can't don't worry about it too much i will be there though blogging like mad and editing like crazy.lol

would have uploaded it sooner but it takes a age to import onto a blog post, if you know what I mean

I will try and keep my phone on but with its shocking short battery life i'm not hoping for much

try texting or something

We do need to talk about filming extra footage sometime and talking over blog posts is a very slow way of doing it. If either Perry or Alicea are reading any of this feel free to try and blog talk to us.



See you Wednesday or some other time

Adam

Thursday 16th October- work done

In this Thursday media lesson in the first week the majority of the group has been away on business studies work experience i have been editing the rough cut from the point josh edited up to when he came in on Wednesday 15th. To give the group an opportunity to make any editing changes from major changes to minor tweaks i have save a copy of the work josh has done so far so i could continue on my own copy of the rough cut in case members of the group wanted to come in and edited from the point we finished editing as a group.

To show what the progress of my edited rough cut i have quicktime the work done so far on Final Cut Express HD so I can get feedback from the members of the group that are away. The black parts would represent footage that still needs work on and therefore could not be put in yet.




feedback on this from the members of my group would be gratefully received

Week One- work done so far

This week is the first week three members of the media group has been away on business studies.
Below I have done a quick recap of what has been done by myself so far as well as mentioning additional help from members of the group that have come in on their spare time to help while still doing they work experience.

Monday 13th:
In the first lesson without the majority of the group, I gave feedback on the rough cuts of the music videos done by the other groups in our class as they also gave feedback on our rough cut. To give comprehensive feedback each group analyzed camerawork , effects, Performance/genre, Editing, Mise en scene and overall comments to mention any improvements they could include. Once this was done I typed up the rough cut feedback onto the blog and then imported the rough cut work we as group done on Friday the 10th.

Wednesday 15th:
In this lesson, josh came in during the day from 10:50am through to 14:35pm as he had spare time to carry on any editing to ensure the work gets completed by the deadline. He also helped me solve the continuity problem which Andrea spotted out which would have lost us marks if left unsolved. While Josh editing our footage, I blogged the method of solving the continuity problem and also wrote about the colour correction josh attempted after Adrea showed us how. After the lesson me and josh were allowed to work through our free period to brush up the work on the rough cut so far as well as progressing to the next scene of the picnic from finishing the locker scene and the library. This also gave me the chance to blog some more.

Thursday 16th:
In this lesson I made a copy of the rough cut so i could make my own attempt on finishing the music video. Another blog posted explains the process in more detail. I also started structuring the daft of part one (1500 words) in for Monday 2oth of October.

Editing tip from Andrea

After recent feedback from Andrea over the start of our edited music video, Andrea pointed out that different shots of the same scene see to have different brightness levels due to the angles we have been using and the position of the light. This caused continuity problems which were reflected in our editing feedback. An Example of this was the picnic scene date with the average guy and the pretty woman when looked back on after filming each shot had different shadows and shades of light.

To solve our continuity problem Andrea suggested increasing the brightness of each different shot. To apply this effect we had to highlight the desired footage and then click effects and then video filters to then apply the colour correcter from the colour correction tab. This then able to finely tune the brightness of the shot as well as the contrasts to create the lighting that suited the scene and could be easily recreated for every shot in that scene.

Rough Cut Feedback

Feedback of the Rough Cut

Camerawork:

• had some great shots
• when you half walk out of the door then edited well to flow
• locker shot cleverly done
• great use of panning with locker scene

Editing:

• good but transitions need some work
• lip syncing also needs work

Effects:
no comments

Mise en scene:

• good use of scenarios
• good simply ideas for outfits
• good involvement of using the guitars
• good locations and using props
• like the different locations

Performance/Genre:

• performances were believable

Continuity:

• the picnic scene had parts where it appeared that the bottle was teleporting

Overall Comments:

• rough cut is very good and can see what you guys are trying to acheive
• will look a lot better once finished
  

Rough Cut

Below is the rough cut footage of our progress so far in the music video

Location change

Locations we were going to film at have change because of lack of permission and time management.

Below are the locations that have changed:

Restaurant date with business man at

Address: Pizza Express
7a Jesus Lane
Cambridge
CB5 8BA

has changed to:

Address: Frankie and Benny's
Cineworld
Cambridge


Jewelry window shopping with business at

Address: Grand arcade
Cambridge
CB5 8BA

has changed to:

Address: Grafton Center
Cambridge
Cb5 8BA

Bowling alley date with player at

Address: Cineworld
Cambridge Leisure Park,
Clifton Way
Cambridge
CB1 7EA

has changed to:

Cafe date with player at

Address: Cafe Nero
Cambridge city center
CB1 7EA

Cafe meeting of girl and business man at

Address: Starbucks
Quayside
Cambridge
CB5 8AB

has changed to:

Restaurant meeting of girl and business man at

Address: Frankie and Benny's
Cineworld
Cambridge

thanks for reading

Video editing session 2- Wednesday 8th October

Plan for today's video editing session
"Wednesday 8th:
we as a group, have a media lesson second period (10:50 to 12:20) time spend in that lesson will be on editing as well as the chance to work through lunch time and third period which me and josh have taken advantage of. This gives us a three hour and fifty minute window to get editing done to best possible standard "

What we have done in this session:
In this additional video editing session to involve the members of the group that will be away from the 10th of October onwards, Josh has been continuing the editing previously done in the first additional video editing session on Monday 6th of October. The editing work that has been done by Josh is finishing off the first meeting of the average guy and the pretty woman and started editing the first meeting of the player and the pretty woman which was filmed near the lockers.

While editing we noticed huge gaps within the edited work josh had done so far that was missing vital shots that worked well with the song and linked each shot smoothly. While editing was being done i took the oppertunity to note down the missing footage we need and plan when we are going to film it as well as updating the blog mentioning the process we are going through at the time and stating changes that we have made.

In Conclusion:
A lot of progress has been achieved with the first 55 seconds of the song nearly edited well enough for the rough cut.

Plan for Thursday's Filming

Thursday is our best day for filming as we have the whole day for filming allowing us to get alot of work done without distraction.

Below I have listed the scenes we still need to film (rough idea of what needs to be done):

• meeting of the average guy and pretty woman in library
• meeting of the buisness man and pretty woman in a cafe
• first date with average guy in the park having a picnic and walking along the river
• first date with buisness man at a fancy restuarant
• first date with the player at the bowling alley at cineworld
• shots of the average guy singing the song while playing acoustic
• pretty womans choice between the guys
• ending

thanks for reading

Wednesday Filming day review

camera was booked out at 4:10 on wednesday 1st october and I have review the progress of our first evening of filming the music video. Has been done in bullet points as it was done quickly by me before i forgot what happened. Basically each point is explaining the shot, techniques used and problems we came across and how we overcome them.

Filmed three shots in the Long Road Six Form Library
(when the pretty woman catches the eye of the average guy)

Shot 1:

• went really well, shotlist came in very handy
• filmed Alicea(pretty woman) walking towards the camera

problems with Shot 1:

• problems faced with doing a side on angle on the walk because it was unsteady and couldn't be acheive with the use of the dolly as the tripod could get low enough. Hence having Alicea walk towards the camera.

Shot 2:

• the other shot worked great with height advantage for the camera which covered all the areas needed for the actors to work in.

problems with Shot 2:

• no problems with that apart from finding the right angle with enough height and distance to have the whole location in the background as me and Alicea acted in the foreground.

Shot 3:

• final shot in the library with the final shot of the average guy singing after the pretty woman passes him by.
• this went well after testing diferent angles to filming in. the end result worked well.

problems with Shot 3:

• problem was lip synching at times but was overcome by playing the song in the background to make it work better with trail and error improving the overall performance of the lip synching

Filmed three shots outside the lockers of Long Road Six Form College

(where the pretty woman meets the cool talking player)

Shot 1:

• slight problems occured before hand with cleaning out my locker and making it look more girly using props such as a girl magazine and a pink folder
• great use of shots with rotating camera pan of Alicea and Perry acting
• get a great idea of a touch of comedy when perry(the player) pops up from behind the locker door after remaing hidden which works extremely well as camera angle has Alicea look more 2d making it more of a surpise when the locker door is closed to find the player there.

problems with Shot 1:

• use of dolly was brilliant but problems appeared when the dolly path was obstucted by other lockers to get the desired angles we wanted but was overcome with smooth steady filming by Josh

Shot 2:

• is a over the shoulder angle of Alicea looking at Perry asking her out
• is a refreshed new way of doing a close up of each character when they are interacting with each other

problems with Shot 2:

• slight problem with shot bloopers but was avoided by trail and error technique until we created a impressing angle to portray the view Alicea has

Shot 3:

• final shot outside lockers showing Perry(the player) give Alicea his number, done well with good acting and body language with no on screen bloopers when it came down to filming
• camera angles was mid range to show reaction of both characters as they acted and looks realistic enough to work

problems with Shot 3:

• none simple shot required no talking

Filmed three shots of Jewellery shopping

(Alicea goes shopping after a date with Josh(the buisness man))

Shot 1:

• Josh walks Alicea home through a shopping mall after a date
• test footage of corridor filming technique worked brilliantly here as Josh and Alicea walk towards the camera.
• Walking talking to each other, telling jokes for the purpose of body language between the two (as diegetic sound will be muted for the song) and sharing eye contact to maintain the illusion of romance we are trying to create

problems with Shot 1:

• main problem here was strange looks from the general public, didnt stop us that much and planning a route for Josh and Alicea to walk so they were close enough to the jewellery store as well as a route good enough for the dolly to follow and film them. Final route chosen made the bullet points above appear much better, in my opinion.

Shot 2:

• Alicea grabs josh's hand and drags him towards a jewellery shop
• Camera angle used was a mid range shot of the both of them with the dolly following them side on and then behind them as they looked at the jewellery leading onto the next shot nicely

problems with Shot 2:

• problem here was one only as a member of the public walked in front of the camera while filming. We decided to use this to our advantage of him being a extra that made this shot more realistic. A decision to mention his contribution to this music video in the credits is still undecided.

Shot 3:

• in the final shot showing Alicea and Josh both pointing out peices of jewellery they like
• this was done with a close up of a over the shoulder camera angle so we could get the outline of both Josh and Alicea in their characters pointing out the jewellery they like. This worked well as the detail we got of the jewellery was incredible

problems with Shot 3:

• this shot was accomplished with no problems and was done in one take.

I think thats conclude our progression of the music video in the first night of filming

thanks for reading

Media Deadlines: Final Hand In

Final Part One and Two hand in

due on Moodle:
Monday, 26 November , 09:00 AM



Final Both Parts:

Final full version of essay. This is the final version for submission. If you do not upload anything here, it will be assumed that your earlier version is for submission as it stands.

Media Deadlines: Draft of Part One and Two

Full draft of both One and Two

due on Moodle:
Monday, 12 November, 09:00 AM

Full draft of part One and Two:
(roughly 3000 words)
first part (hopefully amended in the light of teacher comments) should be here with part 2

Draft of Part Two:
(roughly 1500 words)
(including about 500 for the last part on the industry)

Feedback criticism
What feedback did you get at the rough cut stage and how did you change things as a result ? Refer to what the class said, anything you got from youtube and from the video directors.

Analyse
Analyse the images and editing in the finished music video, paying close attention to characters, performance, narrative (or absence thereof), mise-en-scene and the ways in which you have constructed the video to sell the song. Make reference to Goodwin's aspects of music video as discussed in the introductory work. His list of points is available on the music video blog. Compare your video to the conventions of music video, referring to actual examples where possible. How did the audience read your finished video ? make reference to comments from class, from iCritique and from Youtube. If you got their feedback, what did the artist think of what you'd done? compare with real videos by the artist (see what's on youtube or their MySpace).

Concluding section:
the industry Make reference to the process of making a video in the music biz as outlined by Lindy Heymann or Jake Wynne. Talk about the process from commissioning through to budgets, planning, shooting, editing and screening on TV. Use the video clips from the talks to help you ! Talk about the significance of MySpace and Youtube to the music industry. Use the articles on the blog and any others you find to help you. What impact is new media having on the business ? How does what you have done relate to that ?

Media Deadlines: Draft of Part One

Full draft of writing part one
due on Moodle :
9am 20 OCT

Part one:
(roughly 1500 words)
Introduction
Explain what task you did for the AS production and how this one differs from it.(e.g. thriller/kids Tv,)

Research
Explain briefly how the work came about and what the tasks were. (Talk about learning more techniques for final Cut,analysing some real music vids and looking at student examples,talk from promo director, music range of choices, etc) Which band/artist did your group choose and why ? (give some positive reasons here) How did you ‘pitch’ for them ? (summarise briefly) Where did you get your ideas from ? cite actual examples as shown on your blog !

Planning/Time Management
What tasks had to be done in the research and planning phase? How were these handled and what could have been done to improve them ? (talk about storyboarding, animatic, organising places, props, equipment, people) How did the group come to decisions about approaches to the tasks to be completed? (what range of options did you consider and why did you opt for the choices you made?) What roles did the various people in the group take on ? Concentrate particularly on your role in the various activities. Talk about any test footage you shot. What did you learn from doing these tests and from the animatic ?

Filming/Editing
Write about the shoot. What went well/badly ? what could you have done differently ? Consider your early editing and how you reached the rough cut stage. Outline this process and discuss decision-making you undertook. What does the group feel about the rough cut ? What feedback have you had from director/ other students etc ? what still needs to be done ?

One Influence was....

One of our major influences was the blockbuster romantic comedy "There's Something about Mary" as it perfectly capture the picture of three guys going to extreme lenghts to impress the woman creating laugh out loud moments in the film. This is something we would like to acheive but without so much comedy as it could risk ruining the mood of dates.

The Plot: A high-schooler Ted (played by Ben Stiller) lands a prom date with his dream girl Mary (played by Cameron Diaz), just to have it cut short by a painfully humiliating zipper accident. Thirteen years later he's still in love with her. On the advice of his best friend Dom (played by Chris Elliot), he hires a private detective called Pat Healy (played by Matt Dilon) to track her down. Healy finds that she is an orthopedic surgeon living in Miami but falls in love with mary and resorts to lying and cheating to win her heart. Tucker, however, also turns out to be a fraud himself, who is also in love with Mary and drives potential rivals ,including a man named Brett who she almost married away by slander.

Ted drives down to Florida and seems to have won Mary's love when an anonymous letter exposes his link to Healy. While Ted confronts Healy and Tucker, Mary is confronted by Dom, who turns out to be her former boyfriend Woogie in college. Having found out that Tucker also lied about Mary's former love interest, football player Brett, Ted decides that Mary should be with Brett, as Brett was the only one who did not resort to deceit to win Mary. After reuniting Brett and Mary, Ted leaves tearfully but Mary however chases after him, preferring him to Brett. The film concludes with the two engaging in a kiss.


The kind of thing we are trying to achieve for this influence:

The way this next video has been done is almost exactly the kind of shots, effects and kind of scenes we are trying to create and has been done by taking scenes of the film and mixing them together to "Girls all the Bad Guys Want" by Bowling For Soup. This is a brilliant example of want we are trying to achieve.

The Acting Cast

The acting cast are the people that will be playing the main characters of the music video, below is a brief introduction of each person of the acting cast.

Perry Noble
Perry Noble will be playing the jock/ the player in this music video and has been doing media at long road for two years so far. Perry has also been acting as himself in two other media projects, one being " The Jungle Files" as a Australian TV presenter with co-presenters Jack Story and Josh Carter for the kids TV introduction below is the opening video.



Perry has also starred in "Double or Nothing" playing as the unlucky nervous card player who loses his cool in a high stakes poker match against king ping Mr Lee (played by Adam Roberts) with the smooth dealer(played by Jack Story) and serious player Mr Carter(played by Josh Carter) going all out to ruin Perry's characters chances of winning.



Alicea McKirdy
Alicea McKirdy will be playing the girl in this music video and has been doing media for two years so far, recently joining group T2 from T1. Alicea work has also featured in kids tv introduction of "Justine Time" starring as herself in a group of friends with the ability to stop time to save people from trouble. Below is the introduction video.




Alicea has also edited in the media horror project " devour" and couldn't star in it herself as the character list required only one female lead character. Below is the video.



Josh Carter
Josh Carter will be playing the high rolling business man and has been doing media studies for two years. For his kids TV introduction Josh co-starred with Perry Noble and Jack Story to produce a Australian version of "The Really Wild Show" called "The Jungle File" with the twist of comical relief by playing the friendly leaf. Above the video has been show.

Josh's other media project was the tense thriller called "Double or Nothing" a remix, revamp view on the modern James Bond movies.

Adam Roberts
Adam Roberts will be playing the nervous average guy and has been doing media studies for two years. Adam was previously in group T2-53 and starred in a kids TV introduction to "N00b to This" about a larger than life happy group of friends that help children learn numbers and letters while getting into mischief. Below is the video



Adam also starred in horror flick "Double Or Nothing" playing king ping Mr Lee who tightens his hold over the unlucky card player (played by perry noble) who loses alot more than he bargains.

thanks for reading

Links to more information about Joe Brooks

Below are some links we followed to get our background information about Joe Brooks and have been posted on this blog to give you more of an insight about the artist we are covering.

Joe Brooks Myspace

(Joe Brooks myspace picture)

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=10656908

















Joe Brooks Oficial website

(Joe Brooks Oficial Website Picture)

http://www.joebrooks.co.uk/

Main Idea Character information

After discussing which idea to follow in more detail to present in our pitch, we have decided to use Josh's idea of three men out to impress this one girl. To give you a better idea of what kind of men these characters are I have done short descriptions of each below.

The Geek/ The Average Guy
This character who is also the singer of the song we have chosen doesn't have extremely good looks or lots of money and gets by on a average salary that pays for his small house. This character doesn't have much to offer the girl, but does have a great time with the girl on their dates, with his personality winning her heart in the end.


The Business Man
This character is rich and successful and is never seen in any other clothing other than a smart clean suit. The Business Man owns a fast car a big house with a salary to pay for both very easily. The dates he goes on with the girl are high class restaurants, posh parties and expensive spars with shopping spree's in the thousands. His money gives him power but his personality needs more money spent on it.



The Player
The personality of the player is smooth, sly and outgoing taking any measure to get what he wants. The player is sporty, the stereotypical jock type and his good looks always attract the ladies, unfortunately brings him to his downfall with his chances with the girl.

The Photo Album Idea, in more detail

hi there, my name is adam from the group here to discuss the photo album idea. A saying I once heard in a movie helps describe this idea much better.

"You never see pictures of bad moments in a photo album but its those bad moments that lead you from one good moment caught on a photo to the next"

It went something like that, i not that sure but it helps to keep that in mind while reading this to understand where this idea is coming from.

The idea plays a key point in the presentation and storyline of our music video as a technique to change scenes smoothly according to particular verses of the song. This method allows to keep the singer present in the minds of the audience while still progressing the storyline.

The storyline begins with the lead singer sitting on a sofa or a chair looking at a photo album, as he starts to turn the pages the audience starts to realise the song is about the girl in the pictures involve with our lead singer. Each picture or alternate picture takes the audience into a new scene of song, happy scenes with the happy scenes and etc. As the pages keep turning doodles and messages come alive on the pages, moving around the page. The song would then come to a close with the book being close as the girl in the pictures joins him on the sofa.


That was a very basic idea of the photo album idea in action with numerous things to consider. The photo effect can be seen in a cover of Air Traffic's "Shooting Star" by a previous long road media group, so we know its possible but remains a time consuming progress to make the transactions between shots close to perfect.

Another effect mention above was the doodles coming to life on the page, this effect can be acheive much more easily with a short clip of a flip book in action. Another method for this effect is using apple software "istopmotion" to capture each drawing separately before putting them all together. This method simular to the one used for "The Simpsons" is much more detail that the first method to recreate this effect but much more time consuming as a result of this.

Because of all of the technical issues involve with this idea, it remains a idea.

thanks for reading