That last post was mean't to be from Dave...

During our wednesdays lesson, we had to quickly go out and film some more footage as there was few scenes in our video that daves lip syncing was impossible to get in place. We had a few other difficulties getting the lip syncing to match the music, as we wanted it to be exactly right so we played around with the speed of the video for daves syncing to slow down as it was often too fast for the music so we did in the end maange to get 90% of it lip synced perfectly as we were eager to get that skill up to scratch ready for our real music video.

If we had more time to do the music video, i would have added in N-square at the part of dave running about near the trees so we could of had some time to practice a new skill but instead we had just played around with the scale and the motion of the shots in split screen to create movement to match the visuals of dave running about with excitement.

I would have also added in the second part of the split screen in that being the cloning of the individual in the shot at the point of dave not singing to the music as that also could of just been another skill to learn and to perfect yet it would of looked more neat and could of flowed more within the video.

I will be uploading our practice video soon!!!

HEY

hello everyone, its been a while since ive posted. hehe

anyway, we've been doing alot of work in our media lessons e.g, learning how to use final cut express, and such effects. the effects are fairly simple to use once you get the hang of it, and in my group, was me and katy matthews, and we were given the task of recreating colour correction on a clip, this was very successful, and once we got the hang of it, was simple to do.

in our more recent lessons, we were given a task to make a practice video, as ella has explained in her previous blog posts! i volunteered to be the star of our video ;) because im quite obviously beautiful and funny and charming, and the group agreed of course. we chose not to use extras in our video because we felt that the video was personal to the voice that was singing. the exponent's 'why does love do this to me' was the song we were given to re-create, and i believe that the finished product is very successful purely down to my good looks. lol jk, the editing went fairly smoothly and it should be ready to view in lesson tomorrow!

FINISHED!

We are pleased to let you know from after only 2 lessons we ave actually completed our practice music video in which we managed to get it all filmed and edited ready for wednesday. We have generated a various amount of different effects and transitions to complete the links between the shots to make it flow in a much more complimenting way.We have added split screen, colour correction and  revserse slow motion shot to create a stiking effect that will capture the intensity within the audience.

The way in which we used split screen is where the line is repeated of "i dont know" so we made Daves head turn in towards the middle from the left, and again from the right to look as if he is talking to himself.

The way we used colour correction is by the purple tint when we rewound dave twirling as he is walking towards us as we just wanted it to be noticed in the change of  beat and tempo from the music so the visual effect would tribute the music.

We used split screen in a different way aswell which we hadnt tried before, so we thought we would experiment. So we played around with the motion of it so it could be moved about within the screen along with placing the shots in random places so it wouldnt look as boring as we only had the footage of dave running, so we thought we would make it more interesting.

Our practise music video...

In our music video on wednesday we were asked to produce a little section of the song 'Why does love do this to me?' by 'The Exponents' so we could produce a little practise video to get us used to the footage and how we can play around with it on Final Cut Express.

The video for that song was very bland and not many techniques and effects were being used, so our group member, Dave, volunteered to be starring in our video for this song to make it as exciting and enjoyable as possible. So far, we have been producing some footage yet also thinking about the effects that we could add to this, such as the colour correction, just so Dave will stand out a bit more, which is popular for most music videos as it all seems to be mostly about the promotion of the artist and the close up of there overall look so this is the type of idea we were going with this shot. Also thinking of adding in the reverse/rewind effect and the slow motion just so it creates the dramatic outcome to the artist.

Throughout the footage that i had filmed of dave on wednesday, i was making sure that the mouth syncing was been matched up with the lyrics in the music i was playing through my phone (to make it easier so we didnt have to keep going back to the classroom and listening to the tune and speed of the music) as we feel this is very important this should be done in our music video as it is just another skill we can add in to make it more succesful and effective with the audience.

Overall,  I think after creating this practise video, i can really progress with the filming and eventually with the editing which will hopefully mean it can be an easier process for myself and the rest of my group when it gets down to making our real music video.

Media Lessons....

In our media lessons, we have currently been practising Final Cut Express ready for when we edit our music videos. So far we have looked at Split Screen 1 and 2, Colour Correction, and N Square.

My area to look at was split screen, which was hard to pick up at first but now i have gone through it a few more times, i have learnt how to do it properly and am confident i will be making full use of it when it comes to making my own music video. The way in which we exampled split screen to the class, is that we made a short video of 3 people and split screen to make it look like a conversation between them. So there was one long landscape clip at the side then the 2 other people were split smaller to make the other side. It was very effective as we made the people in the conversation look in the right directions as to who they were speaking to at the time as some were at a lower angle and some at a higher angle.

We have also been looking at the different effects that can be used. I chose the distortion of the fish eye, then played around with the scale making it higher so it will be closer to the eye to make it look a bit mysterious and a little fightening. This effect would probably be used if you were getting a close up of the artist in your video which then could be suited for the sinister music genre.

Next week we will be looking at green screening which sounds very exciting and more definitely something we will be using in our music video.

Hype Williams

Bio


Harold Williams - also know as HYPE Williams, due to his hyperactive nature as a child


Born: July 1970 (age 41)
          Queens, New York, US

Occupation: Film director, music video director, screenwriter - since 1991 till present.

Graduated from Andrew Jackson High school of Art and Music in 1987. He grew up wanting to be a painter, yet not the traditional sort of Art - He wanted to be working towards the graffiti work.

Hypes first big break came from when he began working with Classic Concepts Video Production. But in 1983 he started his own production named 'Big Dog Films'

Other Work 

He directed his first feature film named 'Belly' in 1988. He filmed it in New York as an urban drama which stars rappers DMX, Nas and the R&B singer from TLC, who all feature in his music videos which could be an easier option for both him and the artists as it could promote their work and also a lower budget for Williams.

He is also a photographer in which he shot the photographs of Kim Kardashian in the December 2007 issue of Playboy magazine.

He has also been a script writer - he wrote the Kanye Wests 'Runaway' film which  was a short 35 minute film directed by Kanye West which included a compilation of songs from Wests album.

Key artists Hype Williams works with

He created a number of music videos for artists such as, The Notorious B.I.G, LL Cool J, Missy Elliott, Busta Rhymes, Kelis, Jay Z, Kanye West, Christina Aguilera, Beyonce, and many more. Judging from this set of artists, we can tell that Williams only seems to work with the more R&B, Hip Hop, Rap artists which comes out in the style of his music videos.

Style


Looking through many of Hype Williams music videos he has produced, I can see that he doesn't use any sort of narrative or performance, it is literally just the artist standing/dancing there and singing to the camera. But as his artists are mainly R&B, and not rock/metal genre, they don't tend to show a performance, as they are mainly there to promote their image which is normally attractive to make their music more successful as a whole. Whereas in bands/rock music, the camera normally shows the artists with them playing their instruments/equipment to really show off their skills.

His overall typical look uses a lot of colour, which occurs throughout his videos he has produced. For example, in his music video of Kayne West - 'Gold Digger' and Beyonce - 'Video Phone' has a solid colour background with a softer colour being shown in the centre of the background which gives a fading and merging together effect. This makes the artist stand out in the centre of the screen with them normally wearing brightly coloured clothes aswell.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vwNcNOTVzY

One of Hypes main motif throughout his music videos is placing shots in regular widescreen ratio, with the two bars that are split at the top and bottom. For example, this is used in Beyonce - 'Check on it,' Pharrell - 'Give it to me,' Rihanna and Kayne West - 'All of the Lights'  and Neyo - 'So sick.' In some of these videos where he splits the screen to make two bars, he often uses the bars to represent the main motif in the video. For example, in Neyo's - so sick, he has mountains constantly then himself in the middle. Also uses this effect in LL Cool J - Freeze video, to contradict the lyrics by having roaring fire in the bars to contrast the song title with what is happening on the screen.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1dUDzBdnmI

Another one of Hypes trade marks in using fisheye lens which was used in Busta Ryhmes - Gimme some more video and Missy Elliott - Can't stan the Rain. Which gives the whole video a sinister and creepy effect as it distorts the camera view around the central focus.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHHT7dTmw8U

Music Video Director Case Study

Jonas Akerlund Basic Bio:
• Born in 1965 -56 years old
• He has a son called Elvis and a daughter called Mini.
• Between 1983-1984 he was a drummer in a Swedish band called Bathory.
• He is a director known for his pornographic music videos such as Telephone – Lady Gaga featuring Beyonce and Hold it against me by Britney Spears as well as other controversy themes such as drug use and violence.


Music Video Work
• He has directed a lot of Madonna’s work. Ray of Light won a Grammy award for best music video short form. Other videos he directed were American Life and Celebration.
• This attracted some of his more recent work like Britney Spears- Hold it against me. This video shows her with little clothing, it’s very fast paced and includes loads of different effects. The video is set in space and very surreal. The video provides us with lots of colour.
• Lady Gaga featuring Beyonce “Telephone” also uses lots of colour and the women are dressed in almost nothing.
• David Guetta featuring Rihanna –includes scenes of space at the beginning and includes lots of colour.
• Christina Aguilera-Beautiful is a big contrast to the music videos above. This video includes very dull colour and disturbing scenes such as a anorexic girl and a girl getting beaten up.


Other work
• His short film ‘Spun’ made it into the Guinness book of records for having over 5000 different edits.
• “Try” another short film about a couple of drug addicts who are homeless received a review saying “It was a brilliant film but incredibly depressing to watch.”
• Commercials include – Dior “the iconic lipstick” and other designers such as D&G featuring attractive well known women like Kate Moss.


Accounts of their style
He likes to use a lot of colour in his videos which make the video really fun and interesting to watch. It is also noticed that he uses split screen and uses writing to introduce his video.
He also enjoys using lots of effects which also contributes to making his music videos fun and wacky. None of the videos I watched other than the Christina Aguilera video, Beautiful were normal.

Iconic music video from the pre 1990s...

This song is by Bros, and its called When will i be famous which was show in 1988. I thought this music video was interesting by the way they have used an narrative style into there video in which being the band walking about the streets not really sure what they are doing though. Yet this is often intercutting with the performance of the video, with the camera shots and angle mostly shown on the equipment being used such as the drums and guitar to especially show off the skills that they have. Also, close ups of the main singer which supports the idea of Goodwins theory, which suggests that the band arent only there to advertise and promote there song, but to promote there whole image as a band aswell...and also helps if they are good looking, so if there music isnt too good, most girls will be distracted with their good looks!

Another point to support Goodwins theory is the contraditory of the lyrics and visuals, as the lyrics are mostly about a girl/person asking when they will be famous, yet they think she shouldnt keep mentioning that. But in the video it doesnt really involve anyone that seems to want to be famous...

I think some of effects that they have used in this video we could include in our potential music video with the different colouring, and the style that the video is in with the narrative yet the perfomance going on aswell.

Our Media Evaluation

I hope you enjoy our evaluation. Due to our time limit, I decided to take the evaluation with me and finish it off at home. -hence more of me speaking!
Our final piece will be up on the blog soon!

ps...

A couple of pictures to show you who we are!

DONE

Our final media product has finally been completed. Overall I'm satisfied with our final piece and am pleased at how it finally came together. Our evaluation is also complete now ready to be marked. The evaluation and our final media piece will be posted on our blog soon. I hope you enjoy looking at them.

Approaching Deadline...

SO.
As our deadline approaches for our evaluation we are suprisingly on track and I am certain that by 15:50 tomorrow we will have both our film and our evaluation on the digi stick ready to be marked!!

We have tried to use as many different ideas, angles and shots as possible to keep our evaluation from looking completely run of the mill. At the moment we have used alot of cardboard signs and sped up white board writing :)

Lets hope for AMAZING marks as we are very proud of our final cut of the thriller opening and we have put super lots of work into filming and editing.

:)

Evaluation...

So far in the evaluation process, we have managed to get doen question 1, 3, 4, 5. By doing this we have done audience feedback, and we wrote the conventions on cardboard to hold up by us and other people. In the technology question, we said that we struggled with Continuity, Final cut Express, Editing and music, and so far me and hannah have spoken about them and how we have learnt from it.

Next lesson we are hoping to have got the question about our preliminary task and had emilys and daves input towards the technology question. We hope to have done all the questions in time for our deadline.

bye x

evaluation

sorry about that! i didnt mean to publish just the one line!

as i was saying before i was silly, Miss showed us a cracking example of an evaluation which acheived the full twenty marks. It was very descriptive in what it was explaining, and answered the seven questions throughly.

the viewing of the evaluation has given me the motivation to crack on with the evaluation and make it the best and worthy of the full twenty marks.

much love x

Evaluation

Once we looked at the example of an evaluation, we started to properly plan our answers for the questions.

We managed to get Harrys, Laurens, Katies and Hollys audience feedback filmed, with them telling us what they liked and what we need to improve on.

In todays media lesson, we went to a quiet room to present the question - who is our audience aimed at? The way we showed this was drawing a male and female on the white board and showing what kind of person they represent. For example, we did teenagers, adults and uni students. For adults we made them look a bit older and more sophisticated with glasses, a book and a glass of wine. With the uni student we tried to make them look as if they had just graduated with there uniforms and scroll. With the teenager we had a shopping bag in the hand of a female and a cigarette and hat on the male.

We chose for the people/ audience to look like these as its sterotypical for a clearer view of what they are meant to be.

examples of evaluation

HEY,
yesterday in miss Bannon's lesson we saw an example of a full mark evaluation.

Harry Marcham

After watching the opening he says "that it has definitely got potential as it seemed it got a little bit lost but fortunately the plot soon picked up and gathered pace. With alot of media as students you have to take it with a pinch of salt as some films try to be something they aint, but fortunately this one was solid. All in all by the end of the film i was intreged and wanted to see the sequal."

lots of love, harry xxxxxxxxx

Olly seldis

Olly Seldis, of the other media group in year 12, has said that our final video was 'sick' which in normal people talk means great.

We have also had some good feedback from various students in the sixth form. which we have taken into account and made changes to our film.

I'm abso psyched for the examiners to watch our film because we are proud of our creation and we believe it is incredible.

9th February...

Today we have finished all the editing, and now all we have to do is find some kind of music to put at the start of our opening.

Miss Hills's feedback was to cut down and shorten the clips as we were a minute over, but we have managed to cut it all down to 2:05 now. She also said to not put the music in the starting bit as she thought it was too repetitive. So we have now cut that out, and emily is going to bring in some music that she has found some music that will be suitable.

x

...

...Sorry forgot to add once we got back from filming we uploaded our footage so we got most of the editing done so we are now on a roll...

All we need to do now is edit some more of the phonecall to make the shots of dave and hannah on the phone switch from shot to shot. So after that we have officially finished our film :) :)

Emily has managed to get a couple of the questions of our evaluation planned so we have made a start on that so hopefully we won't be falling behind anymore :) x

8th February...

In our media lesson today we managed to get done some more of the filming...we have decided to cut out the car scenes and instead just added a shot of hannah getting out of the car and walking off to get becca...we have also got the roundabout and phonecall sorted which we have changed to hannah coming into the park and getting a mysterious unknown phonecall.

We have a various amount of different angle shots such as an over shoulder shot where hannah answers the phone, and we have also put the last shot of hannah write in the centre of the shot to create the effect of innocence and confusion with hannah.

X

what we did today...

We have managed to cut down a lot of our filming clips to get it down to 2 minutes instead of being a minutes over...so we have no got rid of the car scenes as we just didn't think it was that important or necessary. and we have also just shortened some of the clips altogether

We have also showed our opening of what we have done so far to some of our friends, so we have got some very useful audience feedback such as...
1.Make the flashback more clear that it is actually a flashback, so we are thinking of make the shot effect different to black and white
2. Getting hannah to speak louder and more clear when she is on the phone, as she had her back turned therefore it was difficult for the audience to know what was being said
3. Make the phone call hannah has more significant
4. Get the scripting right so the conversation is structured better to make it quicker and flow better.

What the audience liked...
They said the storyline was very mysterious and it fits well with the conventions of a thriller
The music that hannah had made on garageband creates suspense in the atmosphere
Some of the audience liked the black and white effect as it turned into a flashback
they thought the shot of the roundabout created a sinister and scary effect to the opening

Throguhout our editing we are hoping to get some more audience feedback :) x

P.s , i will be putting my bit about the director on here tomorrow, when i find it :)

BUZZZ x

Last weeeek

Hey again ladies and fellas :)

last week was a little bit stop/start, but we managed to get some decent editing done. We are well on our way to getting the film together with only a few more scenes to shoot which Emily and Rebecca are on top of :)

We also decided to use the much easier iMovie to edit our film, as Miss Hill advised us against using final cut because of the lack of time we have till the deadlines, thanks Miss :)

byesie x

Thriller Title

SO.
It seems that our title has been decided, and that my idea lost out!! :( :(

Congrats to Ella for coming up with Stolen Time as this is what we are calling our film.. that is until I think of one that is better than both of them ;)

:)

P.s! : i'm also going to take some photographs whilst myself and Becca are out filming to put on here to show that we are considering continuity! I'm very looking forward to taking her out, and it will be my first chance to play with the camera!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9h1nihExT0

Looking at other thriller films, I have found a film called Flightplan about a girl that goes missing on board an aeroplane. When her mother goes to look for her and asks the captain, she only discovers that they have no record of any girl on board. Therefore for all they know, her daughter doesn't exist. This is very similiar to the plot we have created in that Rebecca will go missing and Hannah finds out that her daughter died five years ago...
I have linked a trailer I have found on youtube.
I am currently beginning to look at music for our thriller. I have been looking at music from different thrillers such as flightplan itself, the da vinci code, seven and memento. All these thrillers have effective music but i haven't found one that really stands out to me.
I am also looking at some title sequences and like the idea of having a title followed by a shot in the film. Most films i have looked at use this style so I feel if we used it, it would go that extra mark in looking more professional.
Over the weekend, I am planning on taking my sister, Rebecca out to do some filming so hopefully by monday, all filming will be finished and I can concentrate on getting the music and title sequence sorted.

Wednesday 26th

SO. We have finally got ourselves into gear and we are making good progress!
Today we had only 3 group members, Me, Ella & Dave so we continued to edit and tried to use garage band (we were however not so great at it!) We have put together a basic first sequence. All we are waiting on is the filming of Rebecca that Emily has promised to do by Monday!
The basic sequencing has given us an idea of shots that we are not keen on and there is one scene that we would like to re-film all together, but as it involves my car, which today failed its MOT, that plan is on hold!
We have also today watched the film of another group in our class, which looks AMAZING :) and have decided that we need to make our film slightly more 'thrillerish', as what we thought would work hasn't quite. To do this we are thinking of adding some effects, for example putting the flash back in black and white.
This will be a job for Monday, So watch this space!
:)

what we did today...

We haven't had a very productive day in our lesson today as it was only me and dave here in our group as the others were away. So this obviously means we couldn't go out of school to do any last minute filming that we needed done as hannah wasn't there to drive us! But me and dave went on the website of the art of title sequence to find out some ideas on how our titles can be like in our film, and we found out from the film 'The Company' there was good titles on there showing very gloomy and myserious colours which was represent out film well.

Hopefully in our lesson tomorrow we get most of the editing done and emily can take home a camera and tripod to film the scenes with Rebecca in it, so we can have all the filming finally over and done with.

Tomorrows lesson...

In tomorrows media lesson, we are hoping to have got most of the filming done so we can all concentrate on the editing which we really need to get focused on as we have only done parts of it, and now falling behind from the rest of the class. We need to be looking up on you tube on what sounds we are going to be using as the majority of our thriller opening is muted with no dialogue except from mysterious sound effects in the background, we also need to be adding the transitions so all the shots and scenes can flow nicely.

We will be back to blogging tomorrow to tell you what we managed to get done in the lesson :) x x x

Some more filming...

It was only the three of us in our media lesson on wednesday so me and hannah thought it would be a good idea to go to Ixworth AGAIN and go and get some more filming done. We managed to get the scene where Hannah realises Rebecca had gone missing aqt the park....and where she phones Dave to 'inform' him of this. I managed to film this scene with just a handheld camera so i used my very 'steady' hand! So i think everyone should be proud of me! We thought we would film that scene using handheld camera because it created a kind of mystery, suspense effect so it was occasionally jaunty as if someone was following her....

Whilst we were doing this, Dave was in school carrying on with some editing and looking for some good titles we can add...

x x

stressy day!

still behind with the filming side but we're motivated enough to put the stress aside and do as much as we can! as soon as we get the filming done, we can start looking at title sequences and put the film into place.
Ella mentioned our very stressful media lesson today which annoyed all three of us. the weather was finally dry (which we needed for continuity) but we typically couldn't film.
I'm hoping that after such a huge disaster things can only get better!
we just need to keep this enthusiasm up and stay motivated!
Ella it wasn't your fault! :) xxx

:)

YO YO Granty again :)

pleeease keep voting for your favourite film title as it will really help us, plus we also need to make some titles, so every vote counts :)
Thanks bloggers! x

EDIT ;)

Heyyyyyyy,
sorry im a bit late, but as i remembered my password, i thought i'd blog. I started editing the footage that we have today while the rest of my amazing group were out filming the last few scenes. basically, i used final cut express to start to put together the film, it looks pretty dashing at the moment and it will be much better hopefully by tomorrow when we upload more footage and then edit that badboy. I'm enjoying editing as its a challenge and its lush.
So that was my lesson today :) x

Todays media lesson....

We had a very stressful media lesson today, which i can safely say was all my fault...

We had planned to go out of the lesson to do some filming in the park today but once we had got there i had realised that i forgot the tape for the camera, so we went back to get it and came all the way back to realise that we had a faulty camera so we couldnt get any filming done which you can tell was very frustrating for us all...

Dave is doing some of the editing though so we have some of that done now which is good, so tomorrow we should hopefully be getting some more done in our lesson as we are quite behind with our filming now.

Monday 17th January....

Sorry we haven't blogged in a while....

So now we have filmed Daves scene in the offfice, hannahs car at the park scene and the police woman/dectective (who Brogan is playing) at the house discussing what has happened.

We are having some problems with the continuity, as the weather is sometimes dry and other days mostly raining so we need to pick the right day where it isnt raining....thats why we wernt able to do any filming today as it wouldnt of been the same weather from when we had filmed last time.

We are hoping to do the scenes with Rebecca in tomorrow in our media lesson, so after that we should only have a few more shots/scenes to film then we can start with the editing :)

Monday 10th January

So. Today marked the official start of filming.

We decided to take the opportunity to film our office scene of Dave on the phone. We will edit this to fit in as a conversation that is being had with me whilst I'm at the park.

It took us along time to find the perfect setting for the office as we wanted it to include many components e.g. a computer, a phone, filing cabinet and general paperwork. As soon as we had decided on location the film ran very smoothly apart from the fact that we found it very hard not to laugh at each other for the first few tries but once we had had a few practice runs we didn't laugh and managed to get some excellent shots.

:)

Catch Up

Happy New Year To All :)

Over the christmas holidays we have not done any filming. This was a choice that we made and maybe will regret as we are seeming to be a little behind.
HOWEVER
Tomorrow we are back to 6th form and will be powering on. We plan to film straight away and as much as possible before we edit it all in one go.
:)