Editing Update

EDITING UPDATE:

Editing has been successful so far with a first draft completed recently. Below is a video of us showing the other media group the first draft to see their thoughts on it, primarily to see if our story came through strong enough. 

Just to recap, the storyline of the music video is that there is a female who is remembering memories with her partner, these memories being both good and bad, and initially, when she sings along we want the audience to think her sadness and conflicted emotions are due to a break up, potentially encouraging the audience to dislike the male, but then at the end we reveal he's died, which brings a whole new meaning to her loneliness and makes the viewers reflect on their previous ideas.

This meeting was positive as it revealed that, despite the message coming through, for it to be more potent and easier to understand, a shot in which the male presents his partner with the ring would be useful. As a result of this we plan to film this shot and add it to the video. 

They also were unsure on the relevance of the beach, and so we've also decided to add a shot of the couple at the beach, which was filmed as a practice shot whilst location searching. By adding this shot, it will establish the beach's relevance as of significance in their relationship, hopefully adding further clarity to the videos story. 

In terms of successes and issues so far with the editing, there have been a few shots and transitions that have changed from the storyboard. Certain shots, due to technical difficulties, or just not being as effective as we'd initially pictured them, have been replaced. For example, our opening shot which was meant to show Connies feet in the sea was hard to film successfully, and so we've replaced this with a sunrise shot which was initially filmed to form part of the behind the scenes film; however, in general we have stuck to the storyboard. 

For the car shots, we decided not to speed them up as it seemed obvious they were altered (due to it highlighting the shakiness of the shots) and so we have left these as they are, but they still look effective. We have also added a two shot sequence which shows a shot outside the car and the a shot inside the car (when the car is moving much faster) to give the perception of the car moving fast. 

Behind the Scenes and Outtakes

These two videos give a taster of the filming process for Drive. We took a large amount of experimental shots not in the storyboard whilst on location (which you can see in these two videos) and some of these may feature in the final cut if some of our initial planned shots don't look as effective; for example, our opening shot filming Connie's feet in the water was challenging and may have to be replaced. However, many of the shots we took will not feature and these two videos give an insight into the set up of our filming and how the filming process occurs. 

Vlog 5

Digipak Research

The video above shows me undertaking some research on digipak's to help give me a better understanding on their conventions and generate some ideas for my groups digipak. The video isn't scripted and is my initial views on the digipak as I'm viewing it for the first time.

Filming Update

We're currently almost finished with our filming for our music video. 

Filming has proved more challenging than initially thought; well not the filming as such, but more so the time management. Finding time when everyone is available for filming, with the correct weather conditions has proved difficult. This is primarily due to all our locations being off-site and so we couldn't just leave school for an hour or so and return, we have to commit to whole afternoons. Connie, Lucy and George also all have weekend jobs which removed these as potential filming days, leaving us with Wednesday afternoons and Tuesday afternoons every two weeks; with these days being weather dependent. 

In order to tackle these set backs we kept our filming schedule adaptable. For example, we'd keep an eye on the weather up to the last minute and try to maximize our time with good weather. If George wasn't available in the preferable weather conditions (due to other commitments) we'd shoot Connies individual scenes and below you can see some examples of how we used social media to communicate and arrange this, overcoming the issue. 

We also decided that for the beach scenes we'd film at Meadfoot, not Dawlish Warren purely due to time constraints, we thought Meadfoot would be more time effective.

As predicted, it has also been challenging filming shots which involve tracking with the camera, as we lack the equipment, and so this had to be done with handheld shots, which ran the risk of an unsteady shot. 

This was apparent when filming the car scenes. Shooting within the car has been fine, but for outside shots it was challenging to film the moving car whilst keeping a steady shot. To tackle this we made the decision to make the car travel slower (around 5mph) in order for me to successfully track with the car and maintain a steady shot. The plan is to then see how this footage looks when editing, and see if the car looks like it's going unrealistically slow, and if so, look into increasing the speed of shot so it looks like the car is travelling at a faster speed. 

We also had to deal with this when filming the lip syncing shots which involved me tracking backwards whilst Connie walked towards the camera, so that it'd show her movement, whilst having her position in the frame remain constant. 
Like with the car scenes, we made Connie walk slower than she perhaps normally would to allow me to track back slower (which in turn would make the camera steadier). I also utilized the camera stand, by placing the handle on my shoulder and holding the base with one hand it steadied the camera and so as a result our lip syncing shots have been fairly smooth.

Now all we have to film is Connie walking on a country track/field and also some more car shots and we will have finished filming.

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