Today we filmed the revised fight, walking to the prom, and the prom scene itself.

I worked on my evaluation and album artwork all morning, then went in for period four, where me and Amy refilmed the fight. I managed to get my friend Becca involved in stageing the fight, to make it as realistic and dramatic as possible; her being a drama and E15 student. She also worked the camera (in the way that I told her), after giving her a tutorial in using it. Sophie was in a lesson at the time and so couldn't make it, she said we should do it without her though as we're running out of time.

We experimented with a variety of ideas, and filmed them all so that we could watch back a vast selection, and select parts from that. This, we figured was the best way to approach it, as at least some of it should be convincing!

This evening I filmed the "in the taxi" scene, without Amy or Sophie, but; with their approval.
To make this as good as it could be, I firstly considered the costume I'd wear. I knew it had to be a prom/party/evening dress to make our narrative cohesive; so I looked through what I had. I thought I should be wearing a bright one to stand out as the central focus when it comes to the final scene as the prom/party. A blue ASOS dress I have was suitable. Although I'd be seated in the car, I wore tights just incase my legs were visible, but shoes really didn't matter.

Next, my hair. Our narrative transforms me from being a composed and tidy character, into a messy, almost dirty one. So - I knew my hair had to match this. My hair was relitively straight from school, so I curled parts of it and backcombed others, to give me a ragged, run-down look. It should be decoded as my characters feels that everything is getting out of her control, and she's suffering as a result. She's changing as a person.


Then the make-up. This quite simply had to be a mess. I thought it would be good by this point for me to be/have been crying in the narrative, so I tried to match this. I applied heavy make-up, badly, as before. I made sure that it exactly matched how it had been when I put make-up on in the music video previously, so that it was also cohesive. I then added more eyeliner and mascara to smudge down my face. This looked a bit hard, and block-like, so I poured water down my face! I also took a bottle of water with me in the car to dab around my eyes if needed, as my "acting skills" aren't quite good enough to get me to stage real tears!


Camera angles. I got someone to film me firstly from the front passenger seat at a slight high angle, then from the passenger seat next to me in the back, finally followed by me holding the camera dirctly infront of my face for a full-on close up. This wide range gave us plenty of variety considering we only needed this part for a line/possibly two lines.

This was filmed whilst the car was in regular motion, otherwise it would be very confusing for the audience to comprehend that this is my character actually transferring locations.


Finally, my facial expressions. During this part of the music video my mood begins to change, as my anger transforms more into a drunken sadness. I made sure that I gave the impression that I was and had been crying, and conveyed the transfer from anger and agression so sadness and self-pity; perhaps with some regret too.

Overall, I think that even though this is a very small percentage of our overall video, the detail and attention I gave to it didn't allow for any glitches. It all ran smoothly. The lighting isn't great, but this can be fixed via Final Cut in school.

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.

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! 

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!

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.

 

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.

Filming Session 3
Yesterday we managed to achieve an awful lot more than we thought was possible.

During period one, me and Amy had a free period whilst Sophie and Rhys had a lesson. We used the time to:

• collect the camera and tripod and check that it was all good to go
• get Amy's bag of clothes for filming from her car in a nearby road
• get Amy changed into her first costume as she'd travelled to school in uniform
• do her heavy makeup (to suit her character)
• share my plans of what we could fit into the time and contextual factors and should therefore do that day
• make sure that we were fully prepared for the start of period two to make full use of our time
• film a section on the bench that didn't need anyone but us involved in

At the start of period two, we were supposed to meet Sophie and Rhys in the common room. Rhys showed up first so we explained the rough outline of the storyline and locations we'd be using today. Then he went off to get changed into his first costume. He'd brought jeans, converses and an american-style t-shirt which was suitable for his part. He phoned me after almost ten minutes saying that there were younger students in the changing rooms so he couldn't get changed, so I said to just get changed in the boys toilets as we didn't have time to wait. By this time Sophie still wasn't in or around the common room, and after asking around, nobody had seen her in school at all. Rhys came out in his costume, and with Kelsie who also had the same frees and wanted to take part in our media piece. We said yes as we could use an extra anyway, and she would fit in the car. Amy said that Sophie wasn't answering her mobile, but perhaps she'd forgotten we were filming and would be in our media class, so we went up there. She was there, so we got her and explained what we wanted to film and where, and said that we'd film random things as extra footage along the way. Sophie then took the camera and filmed me and Rhys walking down the stairs together in case we could use that for something. From watching the footage after, it was obvious that this part had been spontaneous, as the lighting was terrible.

As we were leaving the school grounds to walk to a local side road where Amy's car was parked, Amy and Sophie took turns in filming random footage of me and Rhys with the intention of converying a 'harmoneous' relationship. We talked through possible editing techniques and effects we could use to enhance our work - jump cuts to add to the post-modern feel, and increasing the saturation to provoke a warm, summer/love code.

As we got to the car Amy and Rhys got in whilst me and Sophie found a suitable lampost for me to walk into, which allowed Amy's car able to also be visible in the shot.

We soon realised the difficulty in what we were about to do. As we were outside without any prepared means of playing the track, I had to try to get the timing of the line purely from memory. Also, as it was a backstreet with cars parked on both sides of the road, it was narrow for Amy to get through so she couldn't go much faster than 5mph, we said that's okay as we could speed things up in the editing phase. We filmed me miming words walking towards the camera with the lampost in the foreground coming from one direction, closely followed by Amy and Rhys driving past, however it wasn't ideal. Amy and Sophie said that we could approach it from a different angle, so as Amy reversed back up the road, I switched to the other side of the lampost and we re-filmed that line. Although it went okay, I wasn't convinced it would work - it wasn't know I'd pictured it anyway. The others said it would be fine though, so we continued. Sophie filmed a bit through the passenger window with Rhys having been told to "look uncomfortable" by me, in the foreground and Amy looking pleased with herself behind him; driving. Sophie then filmed from Amy's window and then from infront - through the windscreen, for a wide variety of shots we could choose the best from. I pointed out that we'd have to speed up the shots as Amy couldn't drive very fast at all so as to not hit Sophie with the car - so it's important that Rhys and Amy don't make any sudden movements otherwise our editing would be obvious, and although we're constructing a post-modern music video, we'd rather this part was smooth so that we could feature a fast mixture of varied camera angles and effects. Finally, Sophie recorded me walking into the lampost. First of all i naturally put my hands out infront of me as i did it which of course didn't look realistic, so we figured that although it would be painful (and was!), I should actually walk into the lampost. After doing this a few times it wasn't looking right, because I was looking in the wrong direction. We then did it a few more times with me looking in the right direction.

Next, Amy drove us to Ray Park, about 5 minutes from our school. To get to the part itself we had to walk down a long path, so along here we filmed random shots of the greenery and eachother to have as back-up material. One clip in particular I thought was good, was recorded as I was walking along talking to Rhys. I suddenly had the idea to film him talking to me and messing around, as we do normally, but with the idea that Taylor would be filming Guy - I thought that we could put the red border around the image with REC in the top right corner, to add some postmodernism as well as realism, to remind the audience that it is of course a text, a music video, but to make them buy into the storyline more. It's important to be different and engaging from the start.

When we got to the park there were a few children in it, so to avoid complications we stayed outside of the park and filmed in the opposite direction, clips of me and Rhys playing "it", etc.

After a short while, all but one child left, so as the park was large we could easily record in one corner of the park without affecting anybody else at all. We managed to record on some outside gym equipment, baby swings and a seasaw. We saw a roundabout and swings that would be ideal to use, but two more children and their guardians arrived, so we felt it would be necessary to ask their permission to film in the park, highlighting the fact that their children wouldn't  be in our recordings at all. The first parent was 100% fine with it, however the second one didn't speak English, and kept saying "no". Although she explained she didn't know what I was saying, I couldn't get the message through to her so we had to accept "no" as her answer, and left the park.

When we got back to school we filmed a spontaneous piece on an abandoned armchair, left outdoors at our school, surrounded by rubbish and a giant mound of dirt. This we thought would make interesting mise-en-scene and suit the main character's state of mind - a mess basically. We recorded me sat on the chair, jumping on the chair in anger and then grabbing Amy and going to shove her face in the giant pile of dirt (but stopping just in time). We realised that it would be hard to make this look convincing, so we both tried to exaggerate our facial expressions to make them as obvious as possible. I think we pulled this off.

After uploading the new recordings in class however, our teacher disagrees with what we think, and stated that she decoded Amy's facial expressions as happy and laughing. I know Amy and can read her facial expressions and body language, and know that that's how she reacts when she's scared which is why we'd seen no problem with it, our teacher however doesn't know Amy that well which is why she took the negotiated reading. Other viewers of our music video may also take our teacher's view when watching it, so we'll have to carefully consider this when tweaking it - whether we just cut part of it to avoid confusion, or refilm it, or even to scrap it altogether. To do this I've suggested asking around in our class to see what everybody thinks, but we'd have to be subtle in order to not influence their answers by mistake.

Today we did manage to film for our music video right up until lunch. Overall everything went to plan, and we even recorded a few extra scenes to possibly feature if we get stuck on parts. It's always better to have too much footage than too little. I will write in more detail about today, tomorrow.

(02/02/11)
More Filming
Today we have organised two more filming sessions. Sophie unfortunately has a psychology exam over our double lesson on Wednesday, so me and Amy are taking the entire morning to continue filming in her bedroom, and hopefully outdoors in the field as it's becoming sunnier.

(07/02/11)
Overall, today was productive.

(08/02/11)
Filming Session 2
On Wednesday morning, the weather was unfortunetly far too cold to film outside, especially as the clips were supposed to take place during the summer. My costume for that involves purely a thin white dress - so it was a no-go. Instead, we continued recording in Amy's bedroom, and managed to complete filming footage for the lines:

She looks at me like I'm a trend and she's so over it
I think her ever present frown is a little troubling
Sophisticiation isn't what you wear or who you know
Or pushing people down to get you where you wanna go
But no amount of vintage dresses gives you dignity
She's not a saint and she's not what you think she's an actress, woah
She's better know for the things that she does on the matress, woah
Ha ha
 
That Wednesday afternoon, Amy had a free period so she went to the media department and transfered our morning's recordings to our designated imac work station, so that the footage was ready to convert and import early the next morning and we could focus more on editing rather than all waiting for the data to transfer - wasting time.The next morning, me and Sophie converted and imported the videos to Final Cut Express. This ended up taking the majority of the lesson as the files had combined with our old files so we tried seperating them again, and converted and imported some, before realising we'd missed some vital footage. Then, we decided to start from fresh and convert and import all the files so that none were missing. This was more thorough but time consuming. By the time this was done, we only had time to view the videos and begin cutting and editing a few lines, and not to the standard we're aiming for.Just these eight lines took approximately four hours to produce. We had to reconstruct the mise-en-scene to look identical to how it had been at our previous session; details from which dresses go where, to my hair being curled in the same way, etc. This took long enough; then figuring out how to transfer our ideas to reality wasn't all smooth. We had planned for the line: Sophistication isn't what you wear or who you know, to take place infront of the mirror, with a sequence of jump cuts to create the impression that the outfits are changing in sync with the music - a post-modern idea in the hopes that it's preferred reading would be that the main character is trying on different outfits; adhering to the stereotypes and ideology of gender - females are forever trying on clothes - materialistic society.




Thursday 10th however, it turns out, is being used for A2 drama rehearsals and performances so it's unavailable to us being media studies students; meaning that we'll be set back another week.In order to keep things going and continue making progress, we have agreed once more to continue filming at Amy's house on Wednesday 11th to hopefully finish off our need for that location. If the weather is warmer, hopefully brighter, and more promising, we will take advantage of it by changing our plans to film the diary footage over some open fields situated near by to mine and Amy's houses. Our next filming session had been booked for later that day after school, Thursday 3rd February, however as Sophie at the last minute could not make this session, and there was a chance that we may not be able to access the lighting needed for an ideal construction of our "live performance" footage we decided to postpone it until the following Thursday.

Filming Session 1
Yesterday we filmed for the first time. Unfortunately Sophie couldn't make it, but she said that me and Amy should make a start on things without her. We reserved the entire day for filming, as we were unsure of the time frame it would take.

The first part we filmed was at my house, for the lines:
I'm just another thing for you to roll your eyes at honey,
You might have him but haven't you heard
...
Do you still feel like you know what you're doing
We decided on this part first as this was the only part Amy needed to be in costume for, so we wanted to get it out the way. This was our first time using the equipment properly - the new camera and a different tripod to our preliminary video. It took me a while to get used to the equipment, i accidently recorded the floor for a while, however once I got the hang of it the rest worked well. We closely followed my story board for this as it had been carefully choreographed for the teddy to be hit on "roll", and for Amy to be on the phone at "haven't you heard". We found it difficult to start on time and for Amy to walk and perform each action insync. We hadn't planned how her phone was going to ring at the right moment, so at the last minute I grabbed my sister and asked her to call Amy. We changed my sister's name in Amy's phonebook to "Guy" - Rhys' character's name. We knew it would be a small detail and would probably go unnoticed, but we needed it to be professional, accurate and to build a sense of realism in this scene.

Filming Amy walking down the stairs didn't work as I'd planned, however it ended up better. I'd hoped to track her walking down the stairs by using zoom on the camera, however, the camera went extremely blurry. Instead, I decided to follow her myself, downstairs and stopped as she approached the door. This resulted in bumpy, jolted camera work, which can in fact be good and look intentional in music videos - luckily!