Ideas's for shot movements

From our shots we have found them to be too static, so I have come up with a few additional movements shots.

Use handicam shots of the band, with lots of quick cuts. As seen in the Arctic Monkeys video's of "Brianstorm" and "Fluorescent Adolescent". This will then show our video to conform to the bands image.

For the alley shot, where the band stand on a corner, have the camera facing them and as the lead singer runs off the camera turns to follow him down the alley but doesn't move, just watches him run off. Maybe then switch to a camera in the middle of the path watching him running towards him and then as he paces over the top, tilts to watch him run off again.

In the video "Flathead" (The Fratellis), there is an interesting movement, where the camera zooms in on the singers face and then zooms out very quickly. There is also a zoom, which tilts as it zooms in, which I found could be useful and different to many other videos.

In a number of videos in this genre there seem to be the camera pulling away from the singers face, and then seeing them starting to sing.

On the other hand, looking at similar videos such as "Helicopter" by Bloc Party which is of the same genre as Arctic Monkeys there is very little movement, but they dynamic nature of the video is provided by the very fast paced cutting. However this video also contains some handicam shots.

Another idea which could add a spark to the video, is to use split screen. For example, have a shot of the singers girlfriend looking at her watch, then picking up the phone and calling the lead singer. With the split screen show the singer and the girlfriend's reaction shots.

Update on Editing

For our editing we've used our animatic as a foundation for our video. We've been placing our shots in an overlying layer so we can tell where our shots should go. There have been a few problems, such as clips splitting and moving around, but we have corrected all these.
Whilst editing, we noticed the severe lack of movement and angles in our shots. This has led us to arrange another filming session this weekend. We should be able to keep the continutity throughout the shots, as the time of day will be the same and the lighting will not change as we used a hall with curtains to block out sunlight. As well as this, we have asked all band members to wear the same clothes and to bring the same instruments.
As well as this the shots are very grainy, which could be due to the lack of light. We discussed using full lighting and then in the editing software turning down the contrast. Not only will this hopefully take out the grain, but will also remove un-needed shadows.
Overall we are pleased with what we have done. We have a lot of close up shots of the lead singer, and shots of the guitarists all in sync with the music, we have identified room for improvment and because we have shot early we have time to shoot more shots.

Music Video- The Audience Problem.

On both of our shoots we have had a problem with trying to film an audience. On the first occasion only a small number of people turned up and on our second filming session the recording soon turned into a party. Thus we have decided to, instead of having audience shots, pick one of two different options:

1. Alternate Introduction- Instead of having a POV shot of the lead singer walking through the hall cut the sequence as the lead singer opens the door. The next shots will be of people all standing in the hall waiting for the band to play. This will hopefully add the authenticity of a real band playing without including audience shots throughout the performance. Yet this may seem a little odd as the main point of a live performance is to include audience reactions to the music.

2. Small Audience- The audience will be only four or five people who will fade in and out of the shots. They will be dancing alone. This will reinforce the bands alternative genre and highlight that Indie music is about the individual. Yet this editing technique could detract from the realist style of the music video.

Planning review #4

Well done for meeting the animatic deadline. You are also using the blog to reflect on production - well done.

You need to come to a decision about your audience shots - lets review the footage of performance and decide whether "fans" in bedrooms dancing to music might be an alternative... it could be used to "reflect target audience" - useful marketing technique.

Animatic Analysis - What we learnt (Chris and Jake)

We produced our animatic using our storyboard. We used a video camera to take a 5 second clip of each shot that we used on our storyboard. For those shots that were repeated on the storyboard, we captured again so that it was in order. Using Adobe Premiere Elements 3, we captured the video into the program and then started placing the shot in order. We then removed the diagetic sound and replaced it with the track for the video. We then split the video clip of the whole video into each individual shot. We then shortened the shots into the right length and then matched it up to the beats of the track.

What we learnt from the track was that we had too little camera movement in our music video. This was because upon watching the animatic it seemed to be a little bland. In other words it did not easily fit the Indie genre- the animatic seemed to be too slow. We also learnt that we planned enough shots to fill out music video but, without our audience shots, we will need to find some other way of including audience shots.

2nd recording analysis

Our second recording was a complete failure. We did not manage to get any of the shots that we wanted as it was impossible to get a large enough audience. Moreover when we gathered over twenty people to the hall many of them became uninterested in our attempt to record and cared more for having a party. As a result getting audience shots for our music video has failed upon first attempt and, as a result, Chris and I will have to consider either making changes to our plan or finding new ways to record an audience for our music video.

Animatic

Update- 14th January

With a deadline of this Friday (the 18th of January) for our anamatic Chris and I will aim to finish editing the storyboard for the ananatic by Wednesday so that we can add shots from our first recording session to the anamatic. This will help us to spot the gaps in our filming so far.

Our next recording session will be on Friday the 18th of January.

Recap on our filming session

On Saturday (5th of January, 2007), we started to film for our production. We started of at about 1.30PM in Seal Church Hall. The setting was chosen because it had a stage, was local and was reasonably small, but big enough to fit people in.
We started by setting up all the guitars, drum kits and lighting and then we briefed the band on what shots we would like and handed out the shot lists. We also set up the camera's and made sure that they were ready to film.

We started off by filming the band playing on their own with no audience. This is so that we could get the majority of the performance shots completed in fairly quick amount of time. We decided to film the whole song throught about 10 times. We had long shots where we could see the whole band playing, medium close up's of each band member playing and then also experimented with different angles and finishing with close up of the lead singer, Jake, with an emphasis on him singing the song so we could lip sync it.

After we had done all the band performances we had planned to do audience shots, however, due to lack of timing we couldn't get the desired number of members to be in an audience and although we filmed some sections with the few we had, we are going to need to plan another filming session with more awareness so we can get more people to come.

Overall we are quite happy with our performance shots. We may try to add a few more shots, to see if we can add anything extra to what we already have. As we have shot early it gives us plenty of time to re-do parts and also to edit to make the final piece look good.

Our Pitch

Our pitch was delivered on 4th December, 2007. Here is a copy of our presentation:

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