Our Lady friend...

Our next shot required assistance again from Lauren who acted as Darrens (Ed Sheeran's) girlfreind. This was noce again another shot wehere we attempted to show footage that correlated to the specific lyrics of the song. This shot was a close up of Laurens whole body starting from the bottom of her and slowly going up to her body and ending at her face. The lyrics for this video clip qouted "Your body is my ball point pen". This is why there was emphesis on Laurens body.

Straight after the close up laurens body we shot a clip of darren kissing lauren on the head. This once again related to the song lyrics as the song then goes on to say "your mind is my new best friends". His love for her mind is displayed by the kiss on the head which we atempted to capture through a normal medium shot.

SMASH!

We were out taking shots again and this time we had all our props that we needed in order to shoot the POV shot. As I explained in my last post this shot was supposed to capture Darren (Ed Sheeran) Drinking, passing out and smashing the bottle. The whole motive of this shot was once again to associate with the specific lyrics of the song. This is something that we plan to have running through the whole video.

In this part of the song the lyrics quote "This drink is a liver killer, my chest is a pillow for your weary head to lay to rest". The shot was to capture Darren passing out from the effects of the alcohol and ending up with a shot of his head resting on the concrete pavement. This shot was supposed to capture what the song was saying in video footage. When actually attempting to shoot this we realised that when we did tried to do a POV shot it didn’t look very good at all. This is because to achieve this shot we had to make the camera do what our main character is believed to be doing and so we spun the camera 36o degrees for the desired effect of our main character spinning round. After this we tipped the tripod in a downwards motion so that the camera was essentially falling.

When we looked at this footage on the camera we realised that everything just looked blurry. We believed that die to the quality of the camera, it couldn’t pick up all the details of the surroundings when spinning around. This meant that everything just looked like one big blur with no clear imagery. Because of this we decided that we wouldn’t do a POV shot and instead just use a normal close up shot to capture the story and actions that we were trying to portray.

Out taking shots...

Todays shots were quite intersting and challenging. This time we all went out as a group to shoot the neccessary scenes. Our initial plan before actually heading out was to shoot the part of the video where our artist falls down in a POV (point of view) shot and smashes a glass bottle from his hand. However due to not having the correct props to do this scene we had to switch the schedule around and shoot another scene.

So instead of shooting that scene we took a shot of darren walking down towards the camera while singing. During the whole video, we have made a pattern of trying to associate some bits of the video with a specific word from the song and so this is what we planned to do in this shot. The song lyrics qoute "I'll never keep it bottled up" and that point a bottle is thrown into Darrens reach and then he throws it away again. Shooting this scene was difficult as I was the one to thrown the bottle to darren but it was extreemly challenging to throw the bottle in the easiest way possible for Darren to catch without taking his eye off the camera. We had to shoot this scene several times before we could get it right but eventually we did.

Shooting & editing go two seperate ways...

Now that we have all the clips and shots from the studio session uploaded the next thing we had to do was to begin editing. The studio session included a lot of shots  however and may take some time editing.  As a group we decided to use our time more effectively this time and agreed that it is counter productive for all of us to sit and edit one video. We therefore agreed that while Bradely woked on the editiing of the video, me and Darren would go off and get other shots that needing doing, done. So this is what we done today and we definelty made the most of our 2 hours media lesson. Me and darren shot mostly in the school premises. One of our task was to shoot a mirror shot. As a whole group we contemplated on this not too long ago and discussed how we would take the shot without being the camera or camre man being seen in the shot as the reflection of the mirror would show me. This was kind of a challenge for me and Darren today to see whether we could take theshot without any extras in the shot. We had seen it done before so we knew that we could work our way around it. This mirror shot is acually a very popular in many of Ed Sheerans videos and we felt that this was a similarity that we would pick from him and apply it to our Artist. This is a screen shot of some of Ed Sheerans mirror shots:

I tried experimenting a few times to try and achieve this shot. I first tried to take the shot from the side so it wasnt facing the mirror directly. this would mean that it would get the side of darrens face and still manage to capture the mirror into the shot. The problem was that by doing it this way it meant that we couldnt see the reflection in the mirror and instead we could only see Darren looking into a mirror. What i then did was that i was able to take the shot standing on a chair. This meant that i took it from a high angled shot as if the camera is looking down slighlty. Aswell as this i positioned my self at the door of the toilets which was slighlty to the right of the mirrror meaning that the reflection of the mirror couldnt capture me or the camera. The achievement of this shot along witht he efficient use of time made it a good day.

 

The clips have been uploaded!

Yesterday, we uploaded our shots from the studio session on to the mac and started assembling the shots in order and synicing the clips witht he words. Bradely stokes is the strongest on the mac and the best with editing so he does most of the editing work. Normally if there are not other scenes to shoot we input our ideas to bradely on what editing we feel would look good. On this day this is what we did. we all sat down and uploaded the shots and started looking back at our plans and stroy boards to see how we would fit these shots in.

As always the biggest problem for bradely was synicing the words with the lip movement. This is always a difficult challenge for us and so we all had to give our assistance in attempting to sync the words correctly. when lip syncing we realised that we had many gaps ion between the video and this caused some confusion. Bradely then decided to make a shot list in order to know which bits needed to go were.

The studio session...

On Wednesday me and the group along with our friend who had agreed to co-star in the music video walked down to the photo studio. We got in and started all getting our equipment set up. We had to bring a number of things with us on that day like a tripod, camera and a guitar. the guitar was vital for the type of genre that we were doing as when researching into many similar artist they were all of an acoustic/indie rock genre and they were all usually seen with a guitar in their videos. We felt that this was an important convention to portrait and this was why we felt the guitar was so vital in our music video.

When we got to the studio we realised that the tripods that we had brought was actually broken. we had to asked the studio if they had one that we could use but they didn't and so we had to just make the best of the situation and film without a tripod.

Another piece of equipment we had in the filming was two chairs, one black one and one white one. This was in our original plan and story board to have chairs in the studio. Fortunately we didn't have to bring this to the studio as my friends had told me that the studio has a black and a white cushioned chair that we could use and so this is was what we did.

Generally i felt the session in the studio went very well although there were some down parts. Realising that the tripod had broken and not having any other subsidiary was something that we regretted. We found it hard to continue as we needed the tripod for stability. this was a really valuable experience as we learnt to be prepared for every scene we shoot. i felt that the preparation for the studio wasn't as good as it could have been. A lot of the equipment was gathered just a couple of minutes before we left to go to the studio. Though we had already thought through were the equipment was going to be and were we would collect them from we should have gathered all the equipment the day before and stored it all in one place. This would have saved us a lot of time on the day and given us the time to check the equipment and make any replacements needed.  This was a valuable lesson learnt and has resulted in us hopefully planning and preparing our shots with a lot more care.

Booked & ready...

I've just come off the phone with a friend of mine who was talking just about doing a session in his dads photo booth  me and the team did talk this over about having a professional white background that would run as a theme through out the whole of the video. The team agreed with this and felt that it was a good idea so i had to just go ahead and book it. That's what I've just finished doing.  I did previously book the appointment for the 14th of November. Due to some miss-communication on my part there was a mix up as i had told my mate to book us in for a wrong time as we weren't all available. After just coming off the phone with him we have confirmed to have the studio booked for the 15th instead which is on Thursday. I had let the rest of the team know previously and they all told me the time that they would be available so we have confirmed to use the studio on Thursday 15th from 10 till 11.

We have also finally picked a girl who is going to feature in our video as the main characters girlfriend, we did leave this till quite late because of the other things we had to sort out like recording the first couple of shots and finalizing our main character. However we have finally got her and she has let us know that she will be available on Thursday 10 till 11. So we will let her know that it is officially booked and hopefully all goes to plan on Thursday.

We continued shooting today from were we left off yesterday. We had to do one last close up shot of Darren's lips and then we went off school premises to shoot some other scenes. When planning our storyboard for the video we discussed about Mise-en-Scene and the importance of it. We tried to thinking of a place with a really good backdrop that we could video in but we couldn't quite pick a location. So this afternoon, when we went off school promises we did so rather spontaneously, not really knowing where we were going to shoot. We planned to not go to far and only wonder around the surrounding areas of the school to see of there were any nice looking places that could be used to video. We did this and we were lucky to walk past a small waterfall with a mini bridge on top . We felt that this was quite a nice location and would be a nice place to take a shot of Darren just singing the words. These are pictures of the location:

At first we weren't too sure of where we were going to shoot it from as if he stood on the bridge we were worried that we wouldn't be able to capture enough of the waterfall. Bradley then had an idea of Darren actually standing in the middle of the waterfall in order to really show and be able to capture the backdrop. There were big rocks in the small waterfall that allowed Darren to do this and so he did. For this session i recorded all the shots and so tried to guide Darren on what rock to stand on in order to get the best shot.

We didn't have enough time to take anymore shots after this so we then made our way back to school. Generally i felt today went well although i do think we could have used our time much more productively. I felt that we wasted a large amount of time from occasionally going off task and also from our lack of preparation and our spontaneous approach to shooting. I think that if we had taken 3 minutes to sit down, discuss and decide what location near to the school we were going to shoot at we would have saved about 15 or 20 minutes. Planning is so important and is something that we need to get to grips with as a group.

The first shoot...

We decided that we needed to get going with our video so we began the fist shot of the story board as planned. For this shot we only needed drumsticks and a drum so it was quite simple and easy to do in school. this shot was the introduction to the video so it was quite important that it was done well. the song starts with three drum taps as an intro to the actual song. this is why we thought to show the drums and the drumsticks. We planned to do this from a point of view shot making it a much more interesting first shot. Brad did this shot by holding the camera directly above the drumsticks as Darren taped them. We also took the next couple of shots in the same location. they were all extreme close up shots so the background wasn't in the shots. this meant that it didn't matter were we recorded the first few shots. the other shots were a close up of his lips singing the song and a close up of his eyes which we plan to fade in with a picture of a sunset which we will take some time next week. We uploaded the shots on to the Mac and Brad was able to sync the three drumstick taps quite neatly to the drumstick taps in the song. As a group we thought the first bit of the video looked really good.

Today we completed our shot list :

Permission for music and all that jazz...

Before making our music video we all had to ask permission for the music we were going to use as it didnt lawfully belongto us. We therefore wrtie a letter to Ed Sheerans music label, Atlantic Records to ask for permsion to use the song. This is a print screen of the letter being drafted up:

The next main task to do was to pick our main character. we had done all of our planning, our research but we didn't have a main character. Darren had briefly mentioned that he wanted to be the main character earlier but it wasn't officially decided. So we finished our story board just before our half term break and so we needed to decide what people were going to feature in our video as we were due to begin filming the week we got back from the half term break. We had to make an official decision of who the main character would be and who would play the girlfriend in the video. Darren said that he still had no problem with being the main character. however i mentioned that i felt that i know someone who would probably be more suited to the style of the video, and the style of the music. The group agreed with me that if i could get him that we would use him as the main character. so through the half term break i contacted this friend of mine called Matt. Matt said that he'd be more than happy to do it but we'd have to give him the times that we were planning to shoot because he has college 3 days a week.

Hearing this got me thinking about the practicality of having him as the main character in our video. It would mean that we will have very little accessibility to him  and especially when we are quite tight for time we need all the time we can get. Due to this i thought he wouldn't be the best option as a main character when thinking practically. When we got back from our half term break i expressed this to the team and they agreed with me. We then started rushing through the school looking for someone that could be the main character in the video. We though that if they go to the same 6th form as us we would have more access to them rather than looking for someone outside the school.

We managed to find someone who said they would be willing to do it but i had a concern with that person being the main character. We managed to get a student in our school called Harrison who is quite musical and had ginger hair. my big concern with having him in the video was that our video would start to look to much like a mimic of Ed Sheerans. It just seemed that it would seem like to much of a copy rather than an original. As a group we had mixed feeling about this and so we asked the opinion of our Class peers and our subject teacher and they also thought that it would take away from the original aspect of our video. Due to this we all then agreed not to use Harrison as the main character in the video. So we still had no main character. After all the commission we ended up going back to square one. We balancing originality and practicality that the best option was to simply have our group member Darren as the main character and so we made that official.