Advanced Production

Friday, 29 November 2013

This is an update of our most recent up to date progress of our final music video. With a week till the deadline, we still have lots to do including continuity editing to make the music video flow in conjunctive to the music, for example changing the cutting of the clips to the beat of the song; and having appropriate cutting rates and clips when the mood of the song changes.
We have progressed a lot in this week, however we need to tweak and parts of the footage where appropriate and one of our priorities is to sort out a clear transition from the real world to the boys memories and back again, making it clear that this is what is happening.
There are parts of the video that are not in line with the music as well for example when we use the Psycho clip, which will either need to sort or remove all together.

Over the last several days, I have taken the role of editor. On the 26th of November I aimed to link all the footage with the sound. Meaning when there's a change in the tempo of the music, the cutting rate and speed of shot mirrors this.
As well as this, I have colour washed all the clips of the house scene in order to make it look a melancholy place. However I only used the effects on Premiere and aim to use After Effects in order to completely colour wash all shots, and potentially use the colour wash as a transition.
Furthemore on the 28th of November, we looked at the domestic violence scene. After analysing it several times, we altered the arrangement of the shots and looked to time lapse and slow down some shots in order to make them more emotional and deliver more structuralisation.
With this video being aimed at a target audience of positive technological determinists, we feel as a group that we need to perfect the domestic violence scene. In order to make it serious and moving, rather than a comical sequence.
Finally, making the video as smooth as possible is hard. This is because we are not using a fabula, and this may cause narrative fuzz. As well as this we are trying to follow the meta-narrative and conventions of Bastille, which is often authenticity.

Today I have continued with development of our digipak, I Have been changing the colours through the variation tool in which I can change the background colour of the photo.
I have chosen to highlight the photos with a yellow background as it represents the happiness and the dream world associated with the video production.
A screenshot is shown below of the format I have been using to edit the digipak.

With our advertisements we have tried to follow the Bastille themes that we have displayed on our digipack and is used on the singles. We have done this by using the same block, simplistic font and the overlapping style of the text.
We have used stills as the main background in both adverts with a text overlay. Both photos are conjunctive to the narrative of our music video and features our key main role, the young boy.
Mise en scene was important in the background as the locations and actions in the photo has to be eye catching as well as relevant to our music video. One is shot in Trafalgar Square in London where part of our music video is filmed and the other is on a carousel fun fair ride, both making a feature in the video.

On Monday we exported and received feedback on our rough cut. Since then we have edited a lot of our footage on Premier by going through all of our shots we have saved. We have nearly filled in our timeline for the song, however are yet to edit the final part of footage
Today we went over our work in more detail with our teacher. From looking over our work we decided that with our abuse scene we need to slow some of the shots down and make it a more significant part of the video as it happens very quickly.
Furthermore during the 'dream state' footage in London we need to refer back to the narrative of his relationship with his Father; as though it is always in the back of his mind and to reinforce that it is not just a day trip to London.

Today we presented a rough cut of our music production to our peers. we recieved comments and reviews on how we could improve over the next few weeks.
One comment we recieved was that after our Psycho opening that the first shot could slowly colour out following the black and white theme of the film progressivly getting lighter as the shot pans up. We would have to do this on Premier through colour grading or on After Effects to achiever the change over time in the shot.
It was suggested that the 'dream world' should show more interaction between the mother and son which is key to the narrative to show the relationship between the 2 key characters.
Cutbacks or flashbacks from the dream state back to reality where the child is unhappy with his relationship with his father. The flashbacks to the abuse would show the contrast between when he is his happiest and then saddest.
All of these comments we have taken on board and i think we are more than capable of adjusting, we have more footage availibe and can improve our final production by the deadline.

On Tuesday the 19th of November we decided to go on a 3rd shoot at my house again.
The main goal of this shoot was to film more powerful shots of the abusive scene between the father and son in our music video. In our first filming session we managed to film the plot, however the footage we had lacked depth of shot and didn't have enough content to cover such a vital part of our production. Ideally we needed shots that showed more interaction between the two characters i.e. both characters in the same shot rather than cutting from either character.
We also needed to film a conclusion or ending to our music video.
Overall our shoot went very successfully. We used a variety of different shots that promote the dominance of the male character over the boy in contrast to the loving relationship the boy has with his mother which is key to developing the narrative in our music video.