Yesterday, our teacher arranged for our class to showcase our music videos so far, to each other and some extra peers who happened to have a free period at the time. During period two we compressed and transferred our video so that our teacher could access it on her computer. Most of our class conversely, didn't manage to do this in time for period three, so our showcase began about half an hour late, causing it to run into our lunch hour. This didn't affect the quality of our discussions and evaluations though.
Although our teacher had been keeping an eye on the progression of our music video throughout the editing process, this was an opportunity for her to summarise her opinions and advice for us. Her comments, in her exact words, were:
- Love the baseball reaction
- Not sure about "fight"
- The syncing was mostly perfect
- Matches the style
- It's INTERESTING - you keep the variety going
- Seems that the style matches Taylor Swift
- Performance is really good and convincing
- Lighting on the dart board is perfect!
- The spinning looks like perfect space
- Did people get your narrative?
- Emma does evil/disgust well.. !
- Like the red lighting when singing into the camera
It was good listening to other people's reactions to parts of our video, that hadn't been watching the progression in composing it. This gave us an insight into how our targeted audience would perceive it, which we no longer have ourselves. Personally, I had been worried that outsiders wouldn't be able to follow the narrative, perhaps at all, due to the heavy number of locations featured throughout. The showcase fotunately, disproved this as everybody followed it "easily" and knew exactly what the narrative was.
The evaluation sheets involved completing a bipolar chart to begin:
Followed by the questions:
-What was especially GOOD about the music video?
- Would you watch this again? If yes, why? If no, why not? and,
- Did you notice any serious issues such as continuity errors, strange edits, did anything not make sense to you?
The bipolar results convey that generally our audience enjoyed each aspect of our music video, though perhaps we need to fine-tune our synchronising and camerawork a little.
Having read through the other questions on my own, the main aspects that people liked, involved:
- The lighting
- The performance itself
- The close-ups
- The mixture of performance and narrative
- The pace - "doesn't get boring"
- Funny at some points
- Believable miming and acting
- Strong narrative
- Story made sense
- Very much like a real music video
- The ending - lights out
- "Fantabulous" edits and effects!
- Seemed professional
- Variety in costume
Every person that took the time to evaluate said they'd like/love to watch our music video again. The recurring reason was that it's "entertaining"/"interesting".
There was some constructive criticism, which is arguably more helpful than anything else. Here are all of the issues from our pilot audience's perspectives:
- Some parts were out of sync
- "A form of revenge would be nice to see"
- "Didn't really get the fight"
- Amy laughs when I push her face in the dirt
- Brief black flashes
- Emma's face is a bit too comical at times!
- "wuh-ooh" - cut a bit shorter?
- Emma coming out of the car is odd
- Use more effects
A lot of this comes from our video still being incomplete. (Every other group's incomplete too, not just ours.) Some parts being out of sync, the black flashes and lacking a bit in effects is down to this.
HOWEVER,
The fight scene seems to have been highlighted as being too friendly and not fitting in with the video. A few people also stated that Amy laughs whilst I'm pushing her face into the dirt. I know Amy really well, so I know that when she's scared, she does look like she's laughing. Our audience of course don't know her, so it looks like we will have to refilm this part. Whether we scrap the original material completely or just add in another camera angle on the laughing part to cover it up - we'll have to see.
The "wuh-ooh" being too long with the suggestion of 'cutting it shorter' can't really be done as that would involve making actual changes to the audio track itself which wouldn't be right. We've taken this onboard though and might try to involve another camera angle to give the illusion of cutting down the length of this part.
"Emma coming out of the car is odd" we don't agree with. Every consumer is different, so although we don't agree with this opinion we have respected it and taken it into consideration, but seeing as only one person has said this, we're going to put the thought to one side.
"Emma's face is a bit too comical at times!". There is one part I could understand that my face looks comical, but it does still fit in with the overall video and genre. Also, multiple people complimented the fact that there are funny parts throughout the video, so we plan to keep it.
OVERALL,
I've found that showcasing our work has not only reassured me that our video is of good quality, it has also highlighted aspects that could potentially be issues that we had overlooked. Being able to watch and reflect off of other groups' videos also helped for me to compare and contrast and feel more comfortable with our video and where it fits in.
Thursday, 31 March 2011
Wednesday, 30 March 2011
During period two today I converted what Sophie and I recorded on Monday outside and imported it to Final Cut. I then cut up and edited the new material to our video and compressed and converted it. Part way through period three, our class took part in showcasing each group's work to; the rest of our class, our teacher, another teacher and other random students who gave up their time. I'll write in more detail tomorrow when I have all of the evaluations miss collected in!
Tuesday, 29 March 2011
Monday, 28 March 2011
In class today I confirmed tomorrows plans with Amy, Sophie and Kelsie and answered questions about details I'd thought about and worked out at home. Everything is good to go! We just need to collect the camera tomorrow, I need to sort out my costume tonight so that it's ready to put on and go through exactly which parts we need to film.
This lesson we also looked through our video so far and tried to add a bit. None of the footage so far had an ideal clip for the extended "woah" before the final chorus, so I suggested filming a close up/extreme close up there and then in the lesson so that we'd have that and nobody would know that it was spontaneous as my uniform wont show if done correctly.
I went to the technicians and asked for a camera, they then refered me back to my teacher who needed the camera for ten minutes so we started to set up our Myspace page. When she'd finished with the camera me and Sophie took it outside whilst Amy chose to continue with our Myspace page. I grabbed my iPod from my car so that anything I'd mime would be in time with the actual music, guessing the timing probably wouldn't be a very good idea and would be difficult/verging on impossible to get insync when editing. Sophie asked if we should go to find a spare classroom, which we could have done, but I figured that it would be time consuming. The weather was idealic and we were surrounded by greenary so I suggested that the mise-en-scene would be more interesting and suited to our genre where we were. So, we settled on some green bushes which could be decoded subconciously by our audience as jealousy. I then said that perhaps we should record the entire song incase any other lines haven't worked out for us so we did this. I had a bright blue, summery scarf on so i wrapped this around my school shirt's collar to make sure that it wasn't showing. I checked with Sophie that the shot was close enough for it to not notice and she reassured me. We then recorded the whole song, including the "woah" part three times to be safe.
Finally we went up to our classroom and transfered the videos to our 'editing station' whilst Amy showed us what she'd done to our Myspace page. She didn't know how to edit the profile as it has all changed since we used to use the site, but I managed to work it out quite quickly and showed her how to do it. We then watched through a tiny bit of the footage me and Sophie had produced. The colouring was very bright and summery, with well-suited mise-en-scene and animated facial expressions, however I'm worried that the filming wasn't zoomed in quite enough and some of my uniform shows. It does seem quite subtle though, so we can study this in more detail in Wednesday's first lesson.
Today we found out that instead of Friday as our showcase deadline, it would in fact be Wednesday period three, so we only have the one hour on Wednesday to edit! I plan to ask Amy to simply transfer whatever we record tomorrow onto our computer during her morning registration to save time, and I might try to work on editing throughout my period one free, depending on how the room is being used.
Once I got home today I got stuck into editing my album artwork straight away. I completed what I set our to do on Picnik and added a black "wall" in Paint - which goes with the diary/girly/animated theme I'm going for luckily. (Finished image: right)
This is of course not the completed album cover, I have to add the other half first, as well as the text and the diary/cartoon style scribbles. It will also have to be the correct size of an actual album cover, and I'm going to have to design the back cover and an optional spine too.
This lesson I also found out roughly from Sophie and more acurately from my teacher, that the album cover is not supposed to be for Taylor Swift, but in fact for our fictional singer's name, which we hadn't realised at all. This entire time we had been pretending that I was Taylor Swift. Luckily nothing has to be changed, other than my name in the album artwork and Myspace page. My actual name is Emma Langschied, which is quite long, complicated and in no way catchy, so we've decided to shorten it to Emma Lang. This is the new name we'll refer to the music artist as.
Sunday, 27 March 2011
I focused on my album artwork again today and decided to get the ball rolling.
Firstly, I put on heavy makeup and the white dress I'd bought previously for Taylor's iconic look, and found my camera. I found a large heart shaped velvet box and some large scissors with orange handles - the closest to red that we had which I'm sure I can alter the colour of when it comes to editing. I found a plain cream wall in my mum's room (closest to white, again; I can edit this), and sat in the position I'd planned in my rough drawing designed in Paint.
I couldn't take the pictures of myself as it's supposed to be a mid-shot, so I got my sister to help me. I explained to her in detail what I was after, and after roughly a hundred attempts, gradually adapting the body language and facial expressions, we found the ideal one. I then uploaded this to our home computer and began to edit it in a free online programme called Picnik, as I don't have Photoshop at home unfortunately so I had to make do. It's now getting late, so I'm going to continue editing tomorrow.
Firstly, I put on heavy makeup and the white dress I'd bought previously for Taylor's iconic look, and found my camera. I found a large heart shaped velvet box and some large scissors with orange handles - the closest to red that we had which I'm sure I can alter the colour of when it comes to editing. I found a plain cream wall in my mum's room (closest to white, again; I can edit this), and sat in the position I'd planned in my rough drawing designed in Paint.
I couldn't take the pictures of myself as it's supposed to be a mid-shot, so I got my sister to help me. I explained to her in detail what I was after, and after roughly a hundred attempts, gradually adapting the body language and facial expressions, we found the ideal one. I then uploaded this to our home computer and began to edit it in a free online programme called Picnik, as I don't have Photoshop at home unfortunately so I had to make do. It's now getting late, so I'm going to continue editing tomorrow.
Saturday, 26 March 2011
I went through what we need to film on Tuesday, making notes, so that I feel more organised and I know what we're doing. I know that Amy and Sophie like to turn up on the day and improvise, which I'm sure works but I like to plan to feel like I know what I'm doing and to make sure that we get everything done in time!
Thursday, 24 March 2011
Today we discussed when to film the prom and taxi scenes. I suggested Monday after school as Wednesday's double lessons we'd need to edit, but Amy works Mondays and Sophie has psychology revision, so I suggested Tuesday after school; we can all make this so it's been decided. All three of us have our media theory lesson last period on a Tuesday, so we're going to leave straight after this together, either I or Amy will drive Sophie to Kelsie's where her dad's taxi is available (I'd previously checked with her). I'm going to prepare my costume and plan my makeup Monday night so that we're all good to go on Tuesday, and it's not all a last minute rush like last time!
Tuesday, 22 March 2011
Update: I managed to talk to Amy, however I didn't see Sophie all day. I told her about next week's deadline and she said that it's okay as we'd planned to film next Wednesday anyway. I highlighted the fact that we'd need that time to edit the newest footage in time for Friday because I can't keep using frees for editing, she agreed and said we'll get together with Sophie in Thursday's lesson and discuss our next and final(hopefully) two filming sessions, maybe for during Monday's lesson.
Monday, 21 March 2011
Today neither Amy or Sophie were in our lesson, so I planned to play around with Photoshop to practice for my album cover. However, our teacher told us that next Friday our entire video needs to be completed (roughly), all the way through without gaps. So, I decided to go through our music video instead to see what needed doing, and although Amy had said that we have nothing left to do until we next film, there were plenty of lines I could still fill in, so I did. I didn't change anything we'd previously done, except the timing on one part because it was approximately one frame out of sync, I just added fresh new bits to it. This made quite a difference with few gaps left up until closer to the prom scenes that we haven't filmed yet. I did also add an effect to a new "live" performance piece I added - strobe lighting. It kept coming up as unrendered, but each time I rendered it, it would work so hopefully it shouldn't be a problem.
Due to acedemic review day on Wednesday, we said that we couldn't film until next Wednesday during our double free, all together. However, with the firm deadline being Friday, and us being physically unable to film everything in one day, we're going to have to film before this, and probably even use the double lesson on Wednesday for editing the new footage in time for Friday's deadline. This does probably mean that we won't all be able to record together, though I'll do everything I can to make sure that we're all present at the final few filming sessions. We also have to bare in mind that the closer we get to the deadline, the more booked up the cameras will be, and as we've been using the new cameras, there are only two to choose from. Assuming Amy and/or Sophie are in school tomorrow, I'll be able to talk to them both togther in our period five theory class to get them thinking about it, and to get the ball rolling once again.
Due to acedemic review day on Wednesday, we said that we couldn't film until next Wednesday during our double free, all together. However, with the firm deadline being Friday, and us being physically unable to film everything in one day, we're going to have to film before this, and probably even use the double lesson on Wednesday for editing the new footage in time for Friday's deadline. This does probably mean that we won't all be able to record together, though I'll do everything I can to make sure that we're all present at the final few filming sessions. We also have to bare in mind that the closer we get to the deadline, the more booked up the cameras will be, and as we've been using the new cameras, there are only two to choose from. Assuming Amy and/or Sophie are in school tomorrow, I'll be able to talk to them both togther in our period five theory class to get them thinking about it, and to get the ball rolling once again.
Thursday, 17 March 2011
This, I think, is my best draft so far. I've made the changes I said I would - enlarged Taylor and kept Amy small - and I made the wall black as opposed to the background which is now white - illiminating the rock/horror codes. It still seemed too dark to me, so I changed the red colouring to pink - making it able to be read as more girly, like a girl's diary. This suits Taylor Swift far better. It also seems quite minimal which is of course important having studied her iconic image.
This cover involves Taylor cutting up a heart with a twisted smile for a facial expression, implying that it's been designed after the song - after she's had her revenge and now she's moving on by getting rid of any evidence of her relationship with Guy, and is happy about moving on. The contrast in sizes between her and Amy conveys the sense that Taylor feels that she's been successful, she's won by conquering what she said out to do - get revenge. Although both characters will be photos, everything else is in the style of a girl's diary, which is unique and post-modern, expanding Taylor's diversity and hopefully the interest of her fans.
This cover involves Taylor cutting up a heart with a twisted smile for a facial expression, implying that it's been designed after the song - after she's had her revenge and now she's moving on by getting rid of any evidence of her relationship with Guy, and is happy about moving on. The contrast in sizes between her and Amy conveys the sense that Taylor feels that she's been successful, she's won by conquering what she said out to do - get revenge. Although both characters will be photos, everything else is in the style of a girl's diary, which is unique and post-modern, expanding Taylor's diversity and hopefully the interest of her fans.
I've thought of a way to transform my last album artwork idea into an image that's more "Taylor". If I make sure that I (ie Taylor) is much larger, becoming the main image on the cover, and I make Amy smaller on the other side of the wall. This focuses the audience's attention on the artist, the artist's name and the title of the album as opposed to an entire scene taking place. It could work as it's from Taylor's perspective so she'd like to see herself as the bigger person, and Amy as a minor obstacle in her way. The black is a bit heavy, so perhaps I could make the wall black instead and the main background white - most of Taylors backgrounds have been white/light pastel colours before.

I tried getting rid of the wooden floor background, ultimately to make it grass instead. However I only got as far as making the background white, plus as the picture is merely a printscreen of a moving image the quality is pretty poor too, so to cut out a lot of hard work for primarily bad results I'll have to really ask someone to take a photograph of me lying on some grass.
Next, I tried experimenting yet again. The style below will be replaced by photographed images if I decide on this for the album cover. The red scribbling is then supposed to have been Taylor's character scribbling over photographs in anger; comparing Amy to the devil for instance. Again, it's not really Taylor's style, but neither is this song! Perhaps it needs a new style to suit the new tone of song? I'll remain in the planning stage for now.
A newer, lighter idea I'v had is to feature just "Taylor"'s eyes, looking deviously down at her diary, which states the title of the song as well as her name, and a montage of images.
This involves the three main conventions - the artist, artist name and song title, as well as being unique and having the key colours for revenge - red and black.
It will be quite complicated to make, and will perhaps be too busy to be oneof her album covers; so I'll keep planning.
This involves the three main conventions - the artist, artist name and song title, as well as being unique and having the key colours for revenge - red and black.
It will be quite complicated to make, and will perhaps be too busy to be oneof her album covers; so I'll keep planning.

I came to the conclusion that although the song revolves around revenge, all three of these covers are too dark for Taylor's genre so I'd have to rethink the entire style and tone of the covers in order to make the end result appear to be realistic. Also, I didn't think that all of these covers suited having both the title and artist name on the cover, however Taylor's album artwork always strictly follows conventions so I'll have to.

Wednesday, 16 March 2011
Today we have a double lesson and had planned to film the taxi scene at Kelsie's, and some of the prom scenes if we had time left over and people available, however the weather is misty and grey - not at all appropriate for what we need, so we're postponing this filming session. We've discussed when we can do it, and decided that people are more likely to participate during their free periods rather than time outside of school, so during our double media lesson would be ideal. Next Wednesday unfortunately is Academic Review Day so we're off timetable and can't really organise filming as everybody's appointments are at different times, so, our next available slot will be the Wednesday after next which is the 30th of March. I'm thinking of creating a Facebook message because people our age check it regularly, to alert them of this new date and ask for them to get involved. If this isn't successful I'll bribe them with free pizza or something!
Tuesday, 15 March 2011
I missed today's media lesson as I had a hospital appointment, so I'll have to catch up with Amy and Sophie tomorrow. Also, I think I might call Amy later on tonight to ask if we could use Kelsie's taxi, and if we can see if we could film the taxi scene tomorrow and maybe the prom scenes too, to try to get everything filmed and sorted because we've come to a bit of a halt and its on my mind!
Monday, 14 March 2011
Today instead of editing, me and Amy went through each section of the video and print screened it, so that I could email the still images to myself and look through them properly, checking and analysing the mise-en-scene and colouring, to see if it all gives off the desired effect. Sophie worked on her blog during class, so I'm about to add to the group blog tonight to update it a bit.
Sunday, 13 March 2011
Having thought through my original idea a lot, I've come to the conclusion that it is too busy and postmodern for a Taylor Swift album cover, considering how plain and conventional her covers are. So, instead, I've composed a new idea.
It will primarily follow the conventions kept on her other album covers - the artist as the main feature, artist name at the top and title lower down, however I've decided to make it more interesting and ultimately different.
The artist will be lying down on grass (high angle shot from directly above), and certain props used in the video that represent revenge will be dotted around in the grass. It should be subtle yet effective. And the word "revenge" will be drawn across both pages of the diary in red ink, representing the obvious anger, passion, violence and danger. This will have to stand out as it is a part of the title, but in the image itself. The entire cover should all be bright - it's meant to be summer after all, as a juxtaposition, and the costume I will carefully consider and plan at a later date.
It will primarily follow the conventions kept on her other album covers - the artist as the main feature, artist name at the top and title lower down, however I've decided to make it more interesting and ultimately different.
The artist will be lying down on grass (high angle shot from directly above), and certain props used in the video that represent revenge will be dotted around in the grass. It should be subtle yet effective. And the word "revenge" will be drawn across both pages of the diary in red ink, representing the obvious anger, passion, violence and danger. This will have to stand out as it is a part of the title, but in the image itself. The entire cover should all be bright - it's meant to be summer after all, as a juxtaposition, and the costume I will carefully consider and plan at a later date.
Thursday, 10 March 2011
Again, me and Amy continued editing today. We managed to master colour correcting so we went through - mainly the parts in Amy's bedroom - and colour corrected that so that everything from each location matched. We're still going to go through and brighten the saturation of everything, but at the end or we'd probably be wasting our time if we did it now. We also began to look through crucial effects to link the fight scene - me pushing Amy into a pile of dirt - to me then waking up from my dream "She had to know the pain was beating on me like a drum", to make it obvious that the fight was in my dream and not real. After several effects and having trouble rendering, we still didn't find the ideal one, so we're going to come back to it.
Wednesday, 9 March 2011
Today me and Amy continued editing whilst Sophie added to the group blog. We're definitely getting there, over half of the song has footage cut and placed roughly correctly. It's definitely going to need a lot of tweaking to get parts dead in sync, and the colouring right, and we'd like to use obvious effects to make the audience conscious that they're watching a music video as opposed to any other text. But first, we need to continue to get everything roughly in place before we can make things work.
Saturday, 5 March 2011
Album Cover Planning
Having researched, examined and analysed various pieces of album artwork; including all those available by Taylor Swift, I decided to compile a few rough ideas to gain a better, more visual and realistic picture of what mine could look like.
I found from looking at Taylor Swift's album covers, that they are all very simple and extremely conventional. They have the artist, artist name and album/single name on the cover, and with a plain background.
I however, want to alter this, though in a way that could still be realsticly a Taylor Swift cover. I'd like to make it busier and more interesting to look at, with more of an insight into the pragmatics of the song and style of the video, but in order to do this I have to emphasise the traditional conventions.
I plan to have the artists name at the top, in Taylor Swift's writing:
And the single name: Better Than Revenge, to the bottom-right corner - following traditional Western culture.
"Revenge" I've planned to have in red, to make it stand out as it really is the key word and idea for fans to consider and understand when listening to this song and watching the video. I'm also considering having it overlap the image of the artist's face to emphasise that importance even more.
The main image of the artist itself will be a close-up of her face. She will have reasonably heavy make-up, the iconic curled hair and a straw hat as featured in the video. Her facial expression should be decoded as angry, resentful, hurt - all linking to revenge, and there should be some strong red colouring in this image - whether it's lipstick or possibly I might be able to work some more red in there somewhere. Maybe a part of her pupils, although this may be too postmodern for Taylor Swift, I'd have to experiment.
The background image should consist of bright green grass, and a pale yet bright blue sky to juxtapose the darker 'revenge' storyline. It will play with the ideology of there being a superficial modern society - that although everything is perfect on the outside, there is a lot more depth to things, and breaking the stereotype that females are weak. They can be strong yet still feminine.
To work more into the cover, I'm thinking of involving a picnic bench which was used for a small fraction of the music video. It's outdoors so it will still be able to convey summer, and has built relevence to the song. The plan is to have multiple images of the artist using different uses of body language to convey a sense of anger and plotting. I might try to blur these images slightly to create a sense of desperation and francticness - insecurity, again to build up an insight to the storyline, or maybe not, again; I'll have to experiment.
I found that designing even this extremely rough outline in Paint was difficult, as I hadn't fully pictured every detail in my head - where exactly the text would be placed for example, not to mention that personally I have no idea how to merge multiple images into one image, so I'll have to do more research to look into this to see if it's realistic. If it is, I'll probably have to have a few trials to perfect it - and if not, I'll have to adapt or entirely change my first idea.
Having researched, examined and analysed various pieces of album artwork; including all those available by Taylor Swift, I decided to compile a few rough ideas to gain a better, more visual and realistic picture of what mine could look like.
I found from looking at Taylor Swift's album covers, that they are all very simple and extremely conventional. They have the artist, artist name and album/single name on the cover, and with a plain background.
I however, want to alter this, though in a way that could still be realsticly a Taylor Swift cover. I'd like to make it busier and more interesting to look at, with more of an insight into the pragmatics of the song and style of the video, but in order to do this I have to emphasise the traditional conventions.
I plan to have the artists name at the top, in Taylor Swift's writing:
And the single name: Better Than Revenge, to the bottom-right corner - following traditional Western culture.
"Revenge" I've planned to have in red, to make it stand out as it really is the key word and idea for fans to consider and understand when listening to this song and watching the video. I'm also considering having it overlap the image of the artist's face to emphasise that importance even more.
The main image of the artist itself will be a close-up of her face. She will have reasonably heavy make-up, the iconic curled hair and a straw hat as featured in the video. Her facial expression should be decoded as angry, resentful, hurt - all linking to revenge, and there should be some strong red colouring in this image - whether it's lipstick or possibly I might be able to work some more red in there somewhere. Maybe a part of her pupils, although this may be too postmodern for Taylor Swift, I'd have to experiment.
The background image should consist of bright green grass, and a pale yet bright blue sky to juxtapose the darker 'revenge' storyline. It will play with the ideology of there being a superficial modern society - that although everything is perfect on the outside, there is a lot more depth to things, and breaking the stereotype that females are weak. They can be strong yet still feminine.
To work more into the cover, I'm thinking of involving a picnic bench which was used for a small fraction of the music video. It's outdoors so it will still be able to convey summer, and has built relevence to the song. The plan is to have multiple images of the artist using different uses of body language to convey a sense of anger and plotting. I might try to blur these images slightly to create a sense of desperation and francticness - insecurity, again to build up an insight to the storyline, or maybe not, again; I'll have to experiment.
I found that designing even this extremely rough outline in Paint was difficult, as I hadn't fully pictured every detail in my head - where exactly the text would be placed for example, not to mention that personally I have no idea how to merge multiple images into one image, so I'll have to do more research to look into this to see if it's realistic. If it is, I'll probably have to have a few trials to perfect it - and if not, I'll have to adapt or entirely change my first idea.
Thursday, 3 March 2011
I've watched back what we recorded yesterday on the mac, and I am truly amazed at how professional the "live" performance looks! Apart from some of the low angle shots it looks like a genuine stage performance. One part entirely down to Amy was her incredible idea of having the camera as a member of the audience at the front, up against the stage. She told me to sing into the camera as if i were singing a line to a fan, so I did and it looks so good! The way the red lighting and spotlight look behind my head is so different and looks amazing - well done Amy!
Wednesday, 2 March 2011
Filming Session 4
During period one today, me and Amy both had a free so I went to find her to discuss plans for the day's filming. I pointed out that the weather wasn't at all suitable for filming the fields scenes - which is what we had planned to do today - so I suggested a rethink. I logged onto a computer and onto my blog and printed off a few copies of the lists I made the other day, stating what we had left to film still. I crossed off fields and the prom, as the weather wasn't right for it, then thought through the rest. I then told Amy what I'd come up with. We thought of doing the "live" performance in the drama studio, as they have professional lighting, so we went to the drama department to find a drama teacher to ask for permission for a time slot - preferably today. We didn't find a teacher, so we went to student reception to ask whether the studio was free period 3 or 4. They said it was free during period 4, and that we should find a teacher at breaktime. With this knowledge, we went back to the study centre to continue planning. I thought of a short task we could fit in an hour (period 2), so that we could be back in time for break. We figured that filming the last few lines in Amy's room would fit - it would be tight but possible. We planned to drive back to school for break, ask permission to use the drama studio throughout period 4, then to drive back and film in Kelsie's dad's taxi, then to drive back for period 4. With the plan sorted, all we had to do was wait for Sophie, so we started to do that. After a while I thought that seeing as me and Amy both drive, maybe I should get a head start and drive home to get changed in time for when Amy and Sophie get to Amy's, so having explained to Amy I left to get changed, and asked Amy to call me as she left. I then got changed into the red/cream jacket and jeans I wore previously, and tried to match the look exactly so that the clips could be seamless. I then ran around trying to find a costume for the "live" performance as we hadn't planned what I'd be wearing because we weren't expecting to be doing it today! I also located the dress I'd wear in the taxi scenes - which i was aware had to match the prom scene.
Amy then called me to say that she was on her way back, and that she'd pick me up on the way to save time, so I agglomerated everything we needed that I had, ready to jump in the car to go to hers. She got to mine much quicker than expected, it turns out she wasn't at school when she'd phoned, they'd stopped off at a local Sainsbury's, so we left in a rush. As we got to hers, I began explaining my storyboard to Amy as everyone got settled, then I realised I'd left the camera at my house, so I literally ran home to get it and back again. As they were eating an early lunch I was thinking through every detail I could, to figure out how to make it run as smoothly as possible. I mentioned curling my hair a few times as Amy curled my hair last time and she does it differently to how I do it, but no one was really listening. I checked the time, and it was 10 minutes before the start of breaktime - and it takes around 15 minutes to drive to school, so we left then to ask for permission. I said that we don't all need to go, but Sophie wanted to go to media and blog instead of filming, Amy wanted me to go to drama with her and Kelsie didn't want to be left at Amy's alone, so we all went back to school - me fully costumed.
We made it to school mid-break, and went to the drama office. The teachers said that we could use the big drama studio with the proper lighting during period 4, and said that they'd show us how to use the lights, as none of us had ever done drama at our current school. We thanked them, then me, Amy and Kelsie set off back to Amy's. When we got back Amy curled my hair to match how it was before, then we filmed the opening line "now go stand in the corner", seeing as it had messed up before. We did the shot as me looking down into the camera - an extreme low angle shot! My hair was covering around a third of my face, and I looked as angry as possible, and slightly insane; to give the video a strong start. We recorded about 8 attempts - only one matched what we'd pictured, though I believe it will need the colour restoring - but we can see to that later.
Next, I got out my storyboard and explained it to save Amy reading it. As it had been planned out in such fine detail, it was so easy to record and took no time at all! The extreme close-ups where supposed to be in the same location as the other shots, but our teacher had said to us before that she adored the shots we composed previously in the other room, so we tried to do a bit more intimate camera work in there instead. It's hard to see how any of this went until we watch it back. If it needs re-doing, it's not the end of the world, it won't take long.
Period 4 - Drama studio"live" performance

We don't have much of a budget at all so we made full use of the school's facilities - including stage lighting and a black backdrop/curtain for the limted time of an hour. Whilst in the drama studio we recorded my miming to the entire track from five different angles, so that we could pick the best of each line we need, and fill in any unplanned gaps in our video. It took quite a while to figure out the lighting and get me stood in the most ideal places to make the best use of what we had, and to make the end result believable.
It was just me and Amy so we couldn't have Amy operating the lights at the same time as filming so we have to make use of the spotlight. We also kept the red lighting on as it's obviously code for anger, revenge and passion - all things that the song focuses on.
As Amy's form room is our media class, she used the 20 minutes to transfer the day's filming to our designated mac to save us time next lesson.
Once I'd arrived home from school, the weather was extremely sunny - though quite cold, so I called Amy. I asked if she wanted to film the field part today seeing as the weather had been grey and wet recently and we may not get another oppertunity. She said yes and that she'd hang onto the camera, and we arranged to meet at 3:30. I'm not sure if Amy told Sophie our plans or not, I think she did, but Sophie has said before that she cannot film after school as she lives quite far away and can't travel that far, and we'd filmed the rest without her too. I got changed into the white dress, the same necklace Amy had leant me for the "live" performance to introduce a bit of subtle cohesion, and re-did my makeup. At the last minute I remembered that we needed a diary, so I found a book and wrote typical diary notes down - being sure to reference parts from the song, so match the line "she thinks I'm psycho 'cause I like to rhyme her name with things". I also grabbed the straw hat from before to enhance the mise-en-scene.
Near-Future Plans
During period one today, me and Amy both had a free so I went to find her to discuss plans for the day's filming. I pointed out that the weather wasn't at all suitable for filming the fields scenes - which is what we had planned to do today - so I suggested a rethink. I logged onto a computer and onto my blog and printed off a few copies of the lists I made the other day, stating what we had left to film still. I crossed off fields and the prom, as the weather wasn't right for it, then thought through the rest. I then told Amy what I'd come up with. We thought of doing the "live" performance in the drama studio, as they have professional lighting, so we went to the drama department to find a drama teacher to ask for permission for a time slot - preferably today. We didn't find a teacher, so we went to student reception to ask whether the studio was free period 3 or 4. They said it was free during period 4, and that we should find a teacher at breaktime. With this knowledge, we went back to the study centre to continue planning. I thought of a short task we could fit in an hour (period 2), so that we could be back in time for break. We figured that filming the last few lines in Amy's room would fit - it would be tight but possible. We planned to drive back to school for break, ask permission to use the drama studio throughout period 4, then to drive back and film in Kelsie's dad's taxi, then to drive back for period 4. With the plan sorted, all we had to do was wait for Sophie, so we started to do that. After a while I thought that seeing as me and Amy both drive, maybe I should get a head start and drive home to get changed in time for when Amy and Sophie get to Amy's, so having explained to Amy I left to get changed, and asked Amy to call me as she left. I then got changed into the red/cream jacket and jeans I wore previously, and tried to match the look exactly so that the clips could be seamless. I then ran around trying to find a costume for the "live" performance as we hadn't planned what I'd be wearing because we weren't expecting to be doing it today! I also located the dress I'd wear in the taxi scenes - which i was aware had to match the prom scene.
Amy then called me to say that she was on her way back, and that she'd pick me up on the way to save time, so I agglomerated everything we needed that I had, ready to jump in the car to go to hers. She got to mine much quicker than expected, it turns out she wasn't at school when she'd phoned, they'd stopped off at a local Sainsbury's, so we left in a rush. As we got to hers, I began explaining my storyboard to Amy as everyone got settled, then I realised I'd left the camera at my house, so I literally ran home to get it and back again. As they were eating an early lunch I was thinking through every detail I could, to figure out how to make it run as smoothly as possible. I mentioned curling my hair a few times as Amy curled my hair last time and she does it differently to how I do it, but no one was really listening. I checked the time, and it was 10 minutes before the start of breaktime - and it takes around 15 minutes to drive to school, so we left then to ask for permission. I said that we don't all need to go, but Sophie wanted to go to media and blog instead of filming, Amy wanted me to go to drama with her and Kelsie didn't want to be left at Amy's alone, so we all went back to school - me fully costumed.

Period 4 - Drama studio"live" performance


We don't have much of a budget at all so we made full use of the school's facilities - including stage lighting and a black backdrop/curtain for the limted time of an hour. Whilst in the drama studio we recorded my miming to the entire track from five different angles, so that we could pick the best of each line we need, and fill in any unplanned gaps in our video. It took quite a while to figure out the lighting and get me stood in the most ideal places to make the best use of what we had, and to make the end result believable.
It was just me and Amy so we couldn't have Amy operating the lights at the same time as filming so we have to make use of the spotlight. We also kept the red lighting on as it's obviously code for anger, revenge and passion - all things that the song focuses on.
As Amy's form room is our media class, she used the 20 minutes to transfer the day's filming to our designated mac to save us time next lesson.
Once I'd arrived home from school, the weather was extremely sunny - though quite cold, so I called Amy. I asked if she wanted to film the field part today seeing as the weather had been grey and wet recently and we may not get another oppertunity. She said yes and that she'd hang onto the camera, and we arranged to meet at 3:30. I'm not sure if Amy told Sophie our plans or not, I think she did, but Sophie has said before that she cannot film after school as she lives quite far away and can't travel that far, and we'd filmed the rest without her too. I got changed into the white dress, the same necklace Amy had leant me for the "live" performance to introduce a bit of subtle cohesion, and re-did my makeup. At the last minute I remembered that we needed a diary, so I found a book and wrote typical diary notes down - being sure to reference parts from the song, so match the line "she thinks I'm psycho 'cause I like to rhyme her name with things". I also grabbed the straw hat from before to enhance the mise-en-scene.
At 3:30 on the dot, Amy knocked for me and I showed her the 'diary' as we walked over to our local fields. The ground was extremely muddy, and I was dressed in white! - but we had to make do with what we had. I pointed out that we could always re-film it if things don't look right. I had pictured this with me sitting cross-legged on the grass, daisy chains, sunny, bright saturation - all with a summer tone, however we had to try to recreate this as best we could. I ended up sitting and posing on a graffittied, modern blue bench in the middle of the muddy field. It was extremely cold, around 3 degrees, but hopefully this won't be decoded as it's definitely not the intended, preferred reading.
Near-Future Plans
- Tomorrow we plan to get to Kelsie's for 8am to spend period one's media lesson filming the taxi scene in Kelsie's dad's taxi. Kelsie also has a free here so that's no problem.
- Amy will then upload the footage from the fields yesterday, and the taxi videos during registration.
- After school we're considering recording the prom scenes to get it all done in one day, this wasn't made a solid plan though and as it will involve organising other people I doubt it will happen tomorrow.
Tuesday, 1 March 2011
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