ROUGH CUT VIDEO

ROUGH CUT VIDEO FEEDBACK

Now that we have completed our rough cut I feel that there are both positives and negatives to the outcome. I now feel that we have managed to make the narrative clear of a man controlling and producing the music video. But this wasn’t like this to begin with, as we just cut all of our footage together to the song, and then added the green screen shots. But watching this it, we were given the advice to change the structure of the video around, as the narrative of Felix building the music video wasn’t as clear as it could be.
So we decided to start from scratch, by beginning a new timeline, starting with the green screen, and then he would slowly add the different elements in (as if the creation of the video is taking place), putting together the performance room, UV paint room, laser room and dry ice dancing shots – but we were still able to take our favorite shots from the original timeline, and add them to the new. We were following the rule of cutting to the beat, therefore the shots that were cut were extremely fast and short, and we all decided that this was slightly too fast, as you couldn’t focus on the elements. So we elongated the favorite shots, and this added more variety in shot length. I was glad that we made this decision of starting again, and changing the shot length, as now you can focus on the shots, whilst having a clear narrative to drive the video.
Possibly the biggest task now is to complete the design of the green screen rooms, and we are still yet to complete this. Our lessons from now on will be entirely based on the completion of this. We want to add sound waves, and projection to give a technical element to the video. But none of this can be done until we have finalized for definite our rough cut, as the green screen room included the past and previous shots. But I feel once this has been created and edited into the video, our video will have more fluidity and clarity for the narrative. X

SHOOT PICTURES

PRE SHOOT PICTURES

The view form the set onto the behind camera area

Mid-way through painting the set

The finished product of our painted UV brick wall

SHOOT DAY 9/11/10

Tuesday 9th November

On the morning of the shoot, everything was ready to go as we had finished the set the night before. Cat and I took the dancers to get ready and went through the basic choreography of the dance sequence, whilst George and Tom got the band ready and were practicing in the space, with instruments to the music. We were all very happy with the band choices band, as luckily each individual that we chose, had experience with the instrument that they were playing - many actually learnt the song on the bass and drums :) this made the process much easier, as it looked realistic. Both the dancers and the band members were very mature and easy to work with, and I'm glad to say that we didn't come across any problems.

First, we shot the band performance room. This set was plain white walls, with the instruments. The contrasting colours of the white surroundings, with the black walls made the room very simple but effective. We managed to get through this shot in around an hour and half, with a wide variety of shots.

Then Cat and I began painting the dancers in the UV paint, we wanted to do a mix of patterns (with a tribal feel), under the UV light this looked incredible, much better than initially thought. We shot the dancers individually, in two's and as a group. The dancing consisted of the set dance sequence, and then the rest were freestyle movements. Some dancers had the ability to do tricks such as jumps and backbends, which looked very effective. I wanted to take part in the shootig process of this room, but i also had to direct the dancers. So i managed to do a bit of both. Once again, this room worked well, and we had not major problems.

After lunch, we began with the laser room. In order to re-create the laser look the entire set were shining laser pens which were rebounded against mirrors. We shot this with the lead singer (felix), and then again with one dancer (Yulia). The effect that this gave was a club/party, with the silohuettes of a body. This was the one room that I was slightly concerned about, but it worked very well.

Next was the green screen room, that was one big green wall on a platform. For this we just used Felix and asked him to improvise moving objects/pictures round on an electronic board. This was fairly simple and worked well. Cat was on camera and we did a variety of wide, mid and close up shots, so that we would have lots to choose from in the editing process.

The last, and final room was the dry-ice room. Earlier on we had from problems with the delivery of the dry ice, as it was initially supposed to be shot earlier, but it wasn't too much of a problem. Once again we shot the band in this room, and then the dancers. To be honest this was my least favourite room, as it wasn't as exciting as the others, but it still looked good. We had some waiting around in between the band shots, and the dancing shots, as we had to wait for the dry ice machine to heat up.

The parts of the day that I would like to have gone back on is just overall checks on the technical aspects, as we had some delays and complications with lighting and deliveries of dry ice etc... therefore this moved out intended schedule around. But luckily we managed to work around this, and when the delivery and malfunctions were fixed, we were able to do this last on the day. I personally would have also liked to extended the choreographed dance sequence for a bit longer, as the group sections worked well together.But everything else such as costumes, body paint and routines were already set and done, therefore we could continue at a steady pace and work to our intended timings.

Overall, I was very happy with how the shoot went. As a group we worked collectivly and well together, I felt that we were all well organized, and prepared. We each contributed our own ideas and own skills. We finished in good time, and are now ready for the editing process to begin! :)

PRE SHOOT DAY - 8/11/10

Monday 8th - PM

The day before, we re-checked all the dancers costumes, and came to the conclusion, that the dancers would need tights on as well, for dancing reasons, but also for personal comfort. Apart from that we were very happy with the costume decisions made, as the sequins on the hot pants would look very effective under the lights. As we were painting the dancers bodies in UV paint, we had to do a health and safety check that the dancers wouldn't have any skin reactions to the paint, so we did this test to make sure - everything was fine.

We all then began to start painting the brick walls in the UV set paint, that would be a key feature in the UV room. We painted the lyrics, handprints and general paint splats, in multi-colour paint. The paint took a while to dry so whilst this happened, we began to paint in the studio flats white, and then set up the room. Unfortunately Cat and I had to leave early, so George and Tom continued finishing the room that evening, so that on Tuesday morning, everything would be done and ready to begin shooting :)

LOCATION SHOTS - CORNHILL

We had a look around a possible loction of cornhill house for our corridor and other room shots for our party scenes. The corridors where all wide which would be really heLpful in trying to create the big party feel. The size of the corridor also lets the crew work while still keeping the size of the corridor there, especially for the tracking shots that we would like.

Here are the pictures:

FINAL COSTUMES

Over the half-term I gathered the final outfits for the dancers. We will however have to make some adjustments such as adding gems, glitter and sequins to the bra to make it stand out more, and make them visually more exciting.

We are also having sheer black tights worn underneath - for dancing reasons.