Music Video
Skills Audit
Demo Work
Demo Work
Demo Work
Contents
Demo Work
Contents
> Theoretical exploration of the purpose
and application of research
> Secondary research into
music video genres, codes, conventions,
techniques, and theories
> Primary research with the
client to inform ideas development
> Focus group presentation of ideas for
feedback and review via questionnaire
survey
Moving Demo
Mind Map
(Unit 02 LO3 3.1)
Mind Map for final idea
Friday 5th November
We did even more research today. I further developed my pitch which was to be based around a narrative. To do this, I watched the music video for Dierks Bentley- Free and easy. Then I made a mind map to help detail my ideas. From this I then established my basic synopsis for the pitch. To then back this up I made a mood board to go in line with my idea. These will help in our presentation towards the band. Although we will try to aim them more towards the mixture pitch as we believe that is our best idea.
Mood Board
(Unit 02 LO3 3.1)
Mood Board for final idea
Friday 5th November
We did even more research today. I further developed my pitch which was to be based around a narrative. To do this, I watched the music video for Dierks Bentley- Free and easy. Then I made a mind map to help detail my ideas. From this I then established my basic synopsis for the pitch. To then back this up I made a mood board to go in line with my idea. These will help in our presentation towards the band. Although we will try to aim them more towards the mixture pitch as we believe that is our best idea.
Wednesday 17th November
We’ve officially lost the band today. We sent them back a message saying we would still like to work with them. In the message we gave them a calendar of what we needed to do and when we needed to do it. In response they let us know that this wouldn’t work for them, so unfortunately we will not be working with them anymore.
Once we knew this we could adjust our idea. Luckily the main premise of having a simple person become changed by the music can still stay the same. But instead of having the band we’ll have to possibly have actors to pretend to be a band. We have also sent out an email to the drama technician to look into how we would book the Sundial Theatre. The theatre would be a perfect place to host the performance sections as it would allow us to have a stage for the “band” and lots of seats for the audience. Additionally, shooting that on campus would allow us access to more equipment such as the Jib and ride on dolly. This would be really useful as it would allow us to have a lot more freedom and creativity with our shots.
Due to the Band deciding to leave the project, we were left to use our Student Pitch results as indicators to which idea we would use. This led us to using the Sweet Child O' Mine pitch, when going forward with the project.
Proposal
Tuesday 23rd November
I’ve written up my proposal today and additionally planned out each step of pre-production for when I’m going to do them. The proposal is useful to get done first as it will act as a basis for the rest of my pre-production work.
Shooting Script
Friday 26th November
Once I got home I started and finished my shooting script. This is a good thing to get done now as it’ll aid me when writing my production schedule and most importantly helps me to keep a detailed track of each individual shot.
Friday 26th November
I will also use my shooting script when showing my part of the music video to my teammates in order to better convey my ideas thus far.
Storyboards
Friday 26th November
Today I tried to do as much pre-production work as possible. I've managed to complete all my storyboards with each drawing and the notes that go along with each of them. This is super useful as it will allow me to work on my production schedule and shooting script over the weekend. I also started working on uploading all my storyboards to my WIX website. Finally, I made a short animatic with the storyboards I have with the original music playing over. I did this in order to see if my shots would work as it is quite hard to visually tell if they work, especially since I had a minute of instrumental.
Animatic
Production Schedule
Wednesday 1st December
We went back to doing Pre-production work in class today. I’ve now finished all my pre-production after completing my production schedule in class today. It’s also now all uploaded onto my WIX page as well. It’s good to get my pre-production work completed slightly earlier as it means I can focus on the other aspects for production.
Tuesday 7th December
Due to changing locations and dates, I have also had to update my production schedule. This was not too complicated to do as I just had to change the date, time and location as the shots all stayed the same.
Location Assessment
Monday 29th November
Finally, I completed my location assessment for pre-production on our Music Video. This location assessment is important as the Sundial Theatre is needed for the main chunk of our music video. Additionally, we still haven't got a 100% confirmation for using it so it may turn out that I need to do an alternative location assessment. This only leaves me with my production schedule left before I’ve completed all my pre-production work.
Risk Assessment
Wednesday 24th November
So, instead we continued to work on our music video project. One of my teammates wasn't in college again which was very annoying. So, I started looking at work I could get done. I started with my risk assessment and have now completed that ahead of schedule which is very useful.
Tuesday 7th December
The Sundial fell through which is really frustrating. In better news, I have booked out the studio for tomorrow between 9 and 12 in order for me to shoot my audience shots. I decided the studio was the best place to do it as it gives me access to lighting equipment as well as it being a small room, I can make the audience look bigger. I will have to complete a location and risk assessment for the studio this evening in order to be ready to shoot there. This location and risk assessment is super important as I need to get the filming done tomorrow.
Wednesday 8th December
Today was my first day of shooting. I had booked the studio out from 9-12am and I planned to get my audience and some of my BTS shots done during this time. When I arrived at college, first I gathered my equipment. I had booked out a legria camera, two tripods and the large slider. I chose the legria camera as it has autofocus and as I was planning on using the slider, I thought autofocus would be very useful. When I got into the studio itself it took a little time for me to set up. Ash (the technician) helped me set up the slider as it's very awkward to do by yourself. Our first problem occurred when we realised one of the tripods, we were using was the broken one. The leg of the tripod did not lock into place properly which meant it would slide down, causing the tripod to lower. Luckily, we noticed this before filming started so we were able to go and retrieve two different tripods which we knew for a fact would work. Once we had set up the slider on the new tripod, I was ready to go.
Now that I had all my filming equipment ready, I needed to set up my lighting. I decided to only use two light stands as I wanted the feeling of a concert and I felt having too much lighting would make it feel fake. I borrowed one of my teammates to help set up the lighting and that ran smoothly. But then we hit a little problem. The Legria camera doesn't have as much control over its own ISO and aperture as a regular DSLR camera, so at first the lights we were using made the room look way to bright. Through some adjusting of the lights as well as delving into the camera's functions, we were able to adjust the camera so that it would take in less light. This finally gave me the look that I wanted to achieve.
The last thing I had to do before filming was find my audience. Me and my other teammate headed down to the cafeteria and were able to find four people who fitted the aesthetic of the crowd. We were then able to borrow five more people from our own crowd. Now that we had our crowd, I was ready to film. When bringing them into the studio I had them all write their names on a piece of paper, so we knew who was in there in case of any COVID related incident. One of the people we borrowed from the cafeteria actually fit our aesthetic so well that we've asked if he'd be interested in being one of the band members. We've exchanged Instagram's, and he said to contact him when we would want to do it.
So, finally by about ten o'clock I was ready to film.
For my audience shots I took a total of four shots in the end. Although this seems less than I had planned, I did this on purpose. Each of my individual audience shots are only a couple of seconds long, so instead of filming each one individually, I shot four different shots that are each roughly a minute long. Three of the shots are using the slider from different angles as well as incorporating zoom. And the last shot is handheld. This way I have about 4 minutes of audience shots that I can go through to pick out the best bits. I've reviewed the shots and they all look relatively good. At most they'll need minor colour adjustments just to get the lighting absolutely perfect. Once, I had finished the audience shots, we let our actors head out. But this wasn't all the shots I had planned.
I've planned to incorporate behind the scenes shots into my final piece, so to gain some of these shots, I had one of my teammates follow me handheld while I packed away all the equipment. This resulted in another roughly 5 minutes of footage for my behind the scenes. Just like the audience shots, I can go through this footage and pick out the best parts.
Finally, by about 10:45 my shooting had been completed. I was quite surprised at how efficiently I actually completed the work, and I'm feeling confident about the shots.
When I came home, I started on logging the shots as well as going through them to find the best bits. This is very important as finding the best bits now will mean my post production can run more smoothly.
Friday 10th December
I started looking at practicing some effects that I want to use in my eventual final piece. I started by experimenting with a VHS look on one of my audience shots. I followed an instructional video, and I was quite pleased with the results. When it comes to the final piece, the shots would be colour corrected beforehand, so the final outcome would look even better.
After the VHS effect, I looked at my multishots that I want in my final piece. I started by getting two shots and minimising their scale and positioning them on either side of the screen. I then had to follow an instructional video on how to curve the edges. The instructions work fine and when rendered and exported the curved edges turn out fine. But annoyingly while in premiere if you play the video, the curved edges become chunky which makes editing slightly harder. Once I'd curved the edges, I downloaded an old film stock reel and placed it onto the background of the video, which really helped to bring the effect to life more. I felt one last thing was needed though. So, on YouTube, I found a film reel video. I masked the video to fit around the curved shots and changed the overlay to make it look like the original shots were on film. This made it look so much better and really elevated the effect. Just as the VHS effect the final shots would be colour corrected and graded beforehand, so the final effect will look even better.
Monday 13th December
I then moved onto practicing my green screen plan. Yesterday, I had taken several shots of me in front of my green screen, pretending to play the instruments. Today I then chroma keyed the green out and edited the videos onto a stage. Obviously, it doesn’t look perfect, but that’s fine as this is only a test for the final piece. This is useful as it has confirmed to me that my plan will work, which is really good to know.
Friday 17th December
Once the lesson was completed, I set up for filming. Luckily, the drums and guitar was still in the studio from yesterday, so all I had to do was go and collect my microphone as well as the camera and tripod.
With all my equipment and actors I then began shooting, starting with one of my guitarists as they had to leave earlier than the rest. I shot all the wide shots first and then the mid-wide second. Since the camera was still in the mid-wide position, I then shot my singer and other guitarists mid-wide shots. I then put the camera back to wide and shot their wide shots. I finished with all the drummer shots as the drums took the most time to set up.
I shot each shot multiple times which should mean I have at least one good shot for each section. The shots I took today were all for my whole band shots. I have videoed each person separately on the green screen and I will then edit them together in post.
Finally, I created a very quick band green screen test when I got home. The green screen worked well, although more of the floor stayed that I would have liked. However, this is possible to get around. On the singer in my test I created a mask around the bottom of the shot. This allowed me to cut off the floor around their feet. All in all, this test helps to prove to me that my idea will properly work.
Monday 20th December
As soon as the lesson finished I went down and collected all my instruments. At this point, I was slightly worried as my actors weren’t there. So I contacted them and waited for a response. While I was waiting, I set up the slider on the two tripods, with the camera, and then the drum set. Finally, while I was still waiting I set up the lighting around the drum kit. At this point I only just got a response from my actors.
Turns out they had forgotten about it. This was extremely frustrating. Only one of them could actually come now and by the time they arrived it was an hour later than I had started. This meant I had wasted a huge amount of time by waiting. Additionally, the fact that only one of the actors could come was also very frustrating.
However, this was my last chance to get all my shots so I had to work with what I had. Luckily, the one actor that came was the one playing the singer which meant all the singing shots could still be done normally. But, I had planned to do some long shots, especially for the guitar, which would not be possible if I had to use the same actor as the singer. So instead I had to adjust the long shots and adapt them so that the actors face couldn’t be seen. I made more of my shots close up to extreme close up to replace the long shots.
Luckily, I’m still confident with the shots that I took. I was able to get all the shots I needed which is really good to know and some of the shots I felt looked very good. I’m confident that using all the shots I’ve obtained, I can make something really good for the finished product.
Logging
Wednesday 8th December
When I came home, I started on logging the shots as well as going through them to find the best bits. This is very important as finding the best bits now will mean my post production can run more smoothly.
Friday 17th December
When I got home I reviewed my work and started my logging. It’s good to get all this logging done as early as possible as it will reduce the time I have to waste doing it later when we’re editing.
Monday 20th December
I had completed my logging over the weekend, so I did not have to worry about that. I started with cutting down my audience shots to the time codes I had specified. This'll save me time later when it comes to my proper edit as I will already have these cut down to the usable segments.
Finally, when I returned home, after finishing shooting, I started all my logging for my shoot today. This means that I can start my rough cut and proper editing over the coming holiday.
Tuesday 21st December
Today, I finished all my logging from yesterdays shoot. This finally means that all my logging has been completed. This is great news as it will allow me to move onto proper post-production and editing. I plan to have a rough cut and possibly some effects applied by the end of the winter break.
Separate timecode page
Tuesday 28th December
Today, I started on my rough cut for music video. I’ve inputted all the clips that don’t require any initial editing. This is all my shots except for the band and multishots. Finally, having it compiled together is really useful, it’s helping to show to myself that what I did is going to work.
Friday 31st December
Today I edited and inputted all my green screen shots into my rough cut. At the moment they don’t look very good, but they’re also extremely rough so I don’t mind that too much. After this, I need to input my multishots. This will allow my rough cut to be fully complete. Once that is complete I can start improving the look of the whole cut,
Wednesday 5th January
Today was the first day back from holidays. I started off by continuing with my rough cut. I had a little issue, as I had started editing at home, so locating all the files to keep editing took a little while. I had shared all the files I’d used across google drive, but some of them didn’t download off of google drive correctly. Luckily, I could go back and individually download them, so this didn’t hinder me too much.
I then continued and added all my multishots to my rough cut. I found a VHS backdrop off of YouTube, then using my past VHS test, I could easily make my clips with rounded edges and place them correctly. Finally I added a VHS overlay to give them that recording look. Overall, I’m very happy with how they turned out and I’ve now finished my rough cut, so I can continue and further the look of the cut as a whole.
Thursday 6th January
Finally, I went into photoshop and adjusted the stage image I am using for the green screen element in my music video. This provides me with the final stage, where the band is faced away from us.
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Friday 7th January
I spent my whole lesson time today editing my music video. A lot of my work today focused on my green screen band shots. The first thing I needed to do was mask my drummer. I hadn't realised till after I had shot that the floor of the room would not green screen out. So, to fix this, I placed a mask around the bottom of the drum to separate the floor. Then using the crop tool, I could crop out the floor, with the drum being left untouched. Obviously, this wasn't perfect as in between some of the drums, the floor is still a little bit visible. However, with the other band members in front of the drummer, this isn't too much of a problem.
Continuing with the band shots, I made a base colour grade so that the band members fit in more with the background. I adjusted the basic corrections such as exposure and contrast, but a lot of the effect is due to the tones being changed to more of a yellowy orange colour. Thanks to my self-portrait work I have a decent amount of practice with this. I'm decently happy with the colour grade so far, I may change it more further on but I'm not entirely sure at the moment
The last band edit I did was add an opacity grade between two shots, where it goes from a wide to a mid-shot. By adding this opacity change it just makes the transition between the two shots a lot smoother. I think it looks good and I'm happy with the effect. However, I'm not sure whether it fits in with the rest of the video. It feels a bit out of place. I'm going to try to get some lecturer feedback and see what their opinion on it is.
The last edit I made was adding some slow zooms and moving to some of my stationary guitar shots. This wasn't too much of a large change, but it was simple to do, and I feel it really helps to keep up the energy throughout the whole video.
Monday 10th January
The first thing that happened today was that Danny came around and watched my music video edit so far. Overall, he thought it was pretty good, but he gave me some tips for what to add. So that is what I did during the rest of the lesson.
The first thing I did was find a new background for my band shots. The original background was more of a picture than a video which made the shots look kind of weird. Now, I’ve got a new background which includes moving lights and makes the shots feel much more alive. Due to the background changing, this meant I also had to alter the colour grade on the green screen individual shots. This wasn’t too hard but it took a decent amount of time as I had to remove all the original colour grade, and then add in the new one. I also removed the fade near the end band shots as I no longer liked the look of it and I felt it didn’t blend in with the rest of the video.
Going hand in hand with the band shots, I undid all my chroma key work and replaced it with Ultra Key. This was something I didn’t even know existed before today. But using Ultra key helped the shots look a lot smoother, in my opinion the green screen looked a lot less obvious and the outline of the people looked so much smoother.
Two other things Danny recommended were to add a light strobe effect to my audience shots and make my behind the scenes shots black and white to help them to stand out. To make the audience shots, I simply applied colour mattes over the audience shots, made them all overlays and added opacity fades between different the different colours. I feel this worked pretty well and I was happy with the end results. To make the behind the scenes shots, I desaturated the shots all the way, then adjusted all the key colour editing, in order to make the different shades of black and white stand out. Currently, I’m not entirely sure if I like the black and white shots, but I’m going to keep them for now and see what my group thinks.
Finally, I just adjusted some simple composition in certain shots, especially including the band shots to remove some empty space. The major composition I improved was slightly adjusting the multishots so that the two shots were more central in frame.
Near the end of the lesson, my whole group went around and watched each others pieces. I think both of my teammates pieces are looking pretty good at the moment. I’m hoping when we put it all together it will look good.
Tuesday 11th January
It was only a half an hour lesson today, so I took the time to finish off my edit for music video. I only needed to change a few simple things. I turned up the exposure and contrast on a couple of the close up instrument shots to just improve the lighting ever so slightly.
After that, me and my group went around and watched all of each others again. My teammates both seemed to like mine, but recommended adding a little bit of grain to the black and white shots. At first I was a little hesitant, however, I added 20% noise using the Noise effect, and I’m glad I listened to their advice as I think it certainly does look better.
Finally, I exported the final cut and sent it to my teammate who’s computer we will use to slot all our cuts together. We didn’t have enough time to do that today, but that will be the first thing we do tomorrow.
Originally, we had planned to include a VHS overlay over all of mine and the other teammates performance section. However, by the time we'd both edited, we all agreed that with the amount of effects we already had, adding another VHS overlay onto it would just be too much. We felt that including it would just make he piece look too crowded and so we've decided to leave it out of the final export. It's a shame as this was a very early on idea, however I definitely think its for the best.
