The final video can be found on Vimeo, the link is shown below;
https://vimeo.com/63849731
Friday, 12 April 2013
Conclusion
The planning of the music video was very successful, by planning out the music video we were able to shoot all of the shots efficiently with relative ease, the storyboard was probably the most important part of the planning process as we were able to identify the narrative shot by shot. The shooting schedule helped me to ensure that all of the shots were filmed and also helped with timing the shoot. The lyric breakdown helped me and the band (including Cara) to sync up the beats/voices to the song. By making a lighting plan we were able to imagine how the lights would look before being on set, this saved time in setting-up.
Even though setting up in the warehouse took slightly longer than what we expected, the shoot in general went really well, the hardest shot we had to film was the shot of the camera tracking away from the projection on the wall and moving to Cara singing the song with the band, this shot involved a lot of timing because we had to time Cara on the projection to ensure she was synced when she was singing in the warehouse.The rest of the filming went without hitch, the only problem with the warehouse scene was sorting the projection out and the fact that we finished a couple of hours later than we thought we would.
We didn't encounter many problems while shooting the narrative, the only problem we did have was having to stop and wait for various dog walkers and people getting into the shots accidentally, this wasn't a major problem it just set us back a bit time wise but I had allowed time for this and we actually finished that shoot ahead of schedule.
Overall I am very pleased with the final outcome of the music video, I feel as if we did a good job at editing it to the beat and I feel that the pace of the video helps to keep the audience interested in it. We worked really well as a team which I feel shows in the finished product.
I feel as if I have learnt a lot from this assignment and have gained more experience about organization, syncing, color correcting and directing. The only real problem we had was with the different camera styles but I feel as if I helped to overcome the issues that arose from this complication.
Even though setting up in the warehouse took slightly longer than what we expected, the shoot in general went really well, the hardest shot we had to film was the shot of the camera tracking away from the projection on the wall and moving to Cara singing the song with the band, this shot involved a lot of timing because we had to time Cara on the projection to ensure she was synced when she was singing in the warehouse.The rest of the filming went without hitch, the only problem with the warehouse scene was sorting the projection out and the fact that we finished a couple of hours later than we thought we would.
We didn't encounter many problems while shooting the narrative, the only problem we did have was having to stop and wait for various dog walkers and people getting into the shots accidentally, this wasn't a major problem it just set us back a bit time wise but I had allowed time for this and we actually finished that shoot ahead of schedule.
Overall I am very pleased with the final outcome of the music video, I feel as if we did a good job at editing it to the beat and I feel that the pace of the video helps to keep the audience interested in it. We worked really well as a team which I feel shows in the finished product.
I feel as if I have learnt a lot from this assignment and have gained more experience about organization, syncing, color correcting and directing. The only real problem we had was with the different camera styles but I feel as if I helped to overcome the issues that arose from this complication.
My Role
I took up the part of the director and also a producer for the film, this means that I had to organize all of the shoots and insure that all of the shots were filmed and timed correctly.
In the production process of the film I contributed a lot to the story board by telling Luke what shots I wanted and giving my opinions on the shots that would take place, I also worked with Ryan on the timings of the shots and worked on pointing out what lines of the songs went with each shot, this helped us to plan out the music video more efficiently and helped with editing the music video.
I ensured that all of the required equipment was booked for the right time and that all the equipment was ready to go for each shoot. As Ryan was setting up the cameras I ensured that all of the other equipment such as the Jib and the tripods were all ready to go as well as letting the actors know what we were filming next and what they needed to do.
I created a Shooting schedule that would help me to plan out what time of the day each shot will be filmed, the shooting schedule ensured that all of the shots were filmed on time this helped us to make the shoot more efficient and get more filmed in a shorter amount of time, this also ensured that no shot was missed and everything we planned to film was included.
Ryan created a document that showed the timings of all of the lines highlighting at what time they started, what time they ended and the duration of each line, this was very helpful to me as I used it a lot to find the part of the song that Cara needed to sing. Playing the song from my laptop she could sync herself to the timings of the song, ensuring that syncing her voice to the song in post would be a lot easier.
While on set in the warehouse I was the one that was telling everyone what shot we were filming next, what they had to be doing and what part of the song it was. I was responsible for ensuring that all of the shots were filmed and synced correctly so that in post we could easily choose the shot we wanted and sync it up to the film. I came up with a lot of shots during the actual filming of the warehouse scene such as, a shot of Cara starting from her feet and rising up the length of her body, this shot was really effective a looked really good. Another shot I came up involved Cara moving from the mic stand to the lead guitarist and dancing back to back then moving over to the Bass player and start to sing at him, this shot also worked really well as it looks very natural and fun.
In editing I gave a lot of opinion towards how I would like it to look, obviously the music video had already been planned out which meant the editing would be easier and go faster, we all looked over it many times and gave our opinions on whether or not a certain shot worked or if we thought that a shot needed to be replaced etc.
I helped a lot with the color grading of the music video, this turned out to be a lot harder than we thought it would be myself and Luke worked on color grading the music video, we discovered that there were differences in the styles in which we filmed, meaning that a lot of the shots looked very different when it came to color. This made the color grading a lot more time consuming.
As well as color grading I also contributed to the making the small videos and the credits at the end of the video, these small videos were added as we thought that they would make the music video a bit more light-hearted and was a fun way to end the music video.
In the production process of the film I contributed a lot to the story board by telling Luke what shots I wanted and giving my opinions on the shots that would take place, I also worked with Ryan on the timings of the shots and worked on pointing out what lines of the songs went with each shot, this helped us to plan out the music video more efficiently and helped with editing the music video.
I ensured that all of the required equipment was booked for the right time and that all the equipment was ready to go for each shoot. As Ryan was setting up the cameras I ensured that all of the other equipment such as the Jib and the tripods were all ready to go as well as letting the actors know what we were filming next and what they needed to do.
I created a Shooting schedule that would help me to plan out what time of the day each shot will be filmed, the shooting schedule ensured that all of the shots were filmed on time this helped us to make the shoot more efficient and get more filmed in a shorter amount of time, this also ensured that no shot was missed and everything we planned to film was included.
Ryan created a document that showed the timings of all of the lines highlighting at what time they started, what time they ended and the duration of each line, this was very helpful to me as I used it a lot to find the part of the song that Cara needed to sing. Playing the song from my laptop she could sync herself to the timings of the song, ensuring that syncing her voice to the song in post would be a lot easier.
While on set in the warehouse I was the one that was telling everyone what shot we were filming next, what they had to be doing and what part of the song it was. I was responsible for ensuring that all of the shots were filmed and synced correctly so that in post we could easily choose the shot we wanted and sync it up to the film. I came up with a lot of shots during the actual filming of the warehouse scene such as, a shot of Cara starting from her feet and rising up the length of her body, this shot was really effective a looked really good. Another shot I came up involved Cara moving from the mic stand to the lead guitarist and dancing back to back then moving over to the Bass player and start to sing at him, this shot also worked really well as it looks very natural and fun.
In editing I gave a lot of opinion towards how I would like it to look, obviously the music video had already been planned out which meant the editing would be easier and go faster, we all looked over it many times and gave our opinions on whether or not a certain shot worked or if we thought that a shot needed to be replaced etc.
I helped a lot with the color grading of the music video, this turned out to be a lot harder than we thought it would be myself and Luke worked on color grading the music video, we discovered that there were differences in the styles in which we filmed, meaning that a lot of the shots looked very different when it came to color. This made the color grading a lot more time consuming.
As well as color grading I also contributed to the making the small videos and the credits at the end of the video, these small videos were added as we thought that they would make the music video a bit more light-hearted and was a fun way to end the music video.
Thursday, 11 April 2013
Color Grading
Myself and Luke worked on the Color grading of the Video, this turned out to be more difficult than we intended as we discovered that some of the shots were filmed with different settings on the cameras, predominately we filmed using cine style with one camera, however this camera was placed on a steady-cam and once it was on we couldn't take it off due to the time it would take to set it back up. This in mind we set-up two other Canon 550D cameras on different pieces of equipment (a Jib and a Tripod) although in the rush of setting up, these two cameras were not set to cine style, one was set to standard and the other was set to faithful, these three different styles all look very different which made our job a big problem.
The first problem we encountered was between two shots (which can be seen below), one of these shots had direct light hitting Cara's face and the other was filmed with a different camera style without so much direct light.
As you can see from the above images the one on the left hand side is more washed out which can be seen if you look at Cara's jumper, after adjusting the color with color correcting effects we still couldn't match the colors of the two shots, the skin tones wouldn't match which was a big problem as the two shots followed each other.
To solve the problem I researched into skin tone adjustments and color correction in Adobe premier, I managed to find an Adobe tutorial which helps someone to use a secondary color corrector, this tool helped us to change the saturation and the color of an individual color in the shot. The tutorial is seen below.
http://tv.adobe.com/watch/adobe-evangelists-jason-levine/basic-secondary-color-correctiongrading-in-premiere-pro-cs55/
By using this tutorial we could use masks, and color pickers to select certain aspects of the shots and adjust them while leaving the aspects that don't need changing as they are. This helped us a lot and from the tutorial we could change the colors so the two shots matched a lot better to each other (shown below).
I worked a lot more on the color correction of the warehouse scenes, for these shots I made the blacks a lot harsher, and I increased the saturation on the shots, also the warehouse shots looked very cold, so I made the shots look warmer by giving them an orange tint. This made the color look a lot more powerful, which can be seen in the comparison of the glitter, the right hand image looks a lot more vibrant where as the left hand image looks very washed out. The two images on the bottom are very different, the left side image looks very blue and washed out, the image on the right has been adjusted so that the blacks are harsher and the color has been made warmer. The two images on the right hand side have a slight difference between them but the images are still very similarly matched.
The first problem we encountered was between two shots (which can be seen below), one of these shots had direct light hitting Cara's face and the other was filmed with a different camera style without so much direct light.
 |
| Comparison of two shots with different styles |
To solve the problem I researched into skin tone adjustments and color correction in Adobe premier, I managed to find an Adobe tutorial which helps someone to use a secondary color corrector, this tool helped us to change the saturation and the color of an individual color in the shot. The tutorial is seen below.
http://tv.adobe.com/watch/adobe-evangelists-jason-levine/basic-secondary-color-correctiongrading-in-premiere-pro-cs55/
By using this tutorial we could use masks, and color pickers to select certain aspects of the shots and adjust them while leaving the aspects that don't need changing as they are. This helped us a lot and from the tutorial we could change the colors so the two shots matched a lot better to each other (shown below).
 |
| Images after color correction |
 |
| Comparison of two different shots before and after color correction |
The Warehouse
The warehouse location took a lot more time to set-up than we had anticipated, we had a lot of equipment and we needed it to be set-up in a specific way, this was hindered by the lack of power supplies in the warehouse which meant a lot maneuvering wires around and re-positioning lights. We also had to position the band and all of there equipment until we were satisfied with it.
The lighting played a big part of the warehouse scene. Luke created a lighting plan to put the light set-up in a diagram form so that we could follow it when setting up the lights (below).
This set-up worked very well although it had to be adapted on-set as the two lights at the front of the set up were lighting the background too much and we wanted it to be as dark as possible, we decided to move these lights more to the side of the band, this way all of the lights were set up in a semi-circle formation. This set-up looked really good on the camera and when color graded the shot works really well (see below).
The original idea was to project two shots on to the band, the back wall and onto the band's equipment. Unfortunately the lights prevented us from doing this as they were too powerful for the light of the projector, this resulted in the light from the projection being diffused, this was a big problem as we really liked the idea of projecting the narrative into the warehouse scene, after playing around with different positions we found that there was a small section of the wall that we could project onto, we positioned the projector behind the band and aimed it so it would shine between two of the lights, this would give us a projection that can be seen, even though the projection isn't the best quality you can make out what is happening in the shot.
My idea of the glitter worked really well in the video as it reflected in the light and the overall impression was very effective, I was very satisfied at the outcome of the glitter shots as they didn't look too 'cheesy', instead they looked quite stylized.
Cara's idea of adding smoke to the scene worked really well as it added a little mist to the shots and gave a finishing touch to them.
We also filmed one of the final shots in the warehouse, this involved filming Cara and Nathan against a white background, this shot was filmed once all of the bands hot were completed, for this shot we needed to shine a lot of light on the white background.
Even though the warehouse went on for longer than we expected we all worked extremely hard and worked really well together, this is probably one of the most difficult set-ups we have ever attempted but we managed to pull it off.
The warehouse set with the team working
The lighting played a big part of the warehouse scene. Luke created a lighting plan to put the light set-up in a diagram form so that we could follow it when setting up the lights (below).
 |
| Lighting plan |
This set-up worked very well although it had to be adapted on-set as the two lights at the front of the set up were lighting the background too much and we wanted it to be as dark as possible, we decided to move these lights more to the side of the band, this way all of the lights were set up in a semi-circle formation. This set-up looked really good on the camera and when color graded the shot works really well (see below).
 |
| Example of lighting set-up |
The original idea was to project two shots on to the band, the back wall and onto the band's equipment. Unfortunately the lights prevented us from doing this as they were too powerful for the light of the projector, this resulted in the light from the projection being diffused, this was a big problem as we really liked the idea of projecting the narrative into the warehouse scene, after playing around with different positions we found that there was a small section of the wall that we could project onto, we positioned the projector behind the band and aimed it so it would shine between two of the lights, this would give us a projection that can be seen, even though the projection isn't the best quality you can make out what is happening in the shot.
My idea of the glitter worked really well in the video as it reflected in the light and the overall impression was very effective, I was very satisfied at the outcome of the glitter shots as they didn't look too 'cheesy', instead they looked quite stylized.
 |
| Example of Glitter shots |
Cara's idea of adding smoke to the scene worked really well as it added a little mist to the shots and gave a finishing touch to them.
We also filmed one of the final shots in the warehouse, this involved filming Cara and Nathan against a white background, this shot was filmed once all of the bands hot were completed, for this shot we needed to shine a lot of light on the white background.
 |
| Cara and Nathan arguing |
Even though the warehouse went on for longer than we expected we all worked extremely hard and worked really well together, this is probably one of the most difficult set-ups we have ever attempted but we managed to pull it off.
The warehouse set with the team working
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| Me directing Cara |
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| Me and Ryan discussing the shot |
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| Luke and me waiting for the smoke machine |
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| Me making sure Ryan doesn't trip as he walks backwards |
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| The team discussing a shot |
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| The team talking with Nathan about the shot |
The Projection Edit
Because we needed to have footage to project onto the band, we had to edit and export different parts of the footage that we had already filmed that day.
We had to edit the projection on the move so that we didn't waste time and keep people waiting, overall there were two shots that needed to be edited but we had to decide on which take was the best as we could only project one take on the band and we had to make sure that this was the right length and that Cara was singing in sync so that the sync would be right when we moved from a shot of the projection to a shot of the band.
We had to edit the projection on the move so that we didn't waste time and keep people waiting, overall there were two shots that needed to be edited but we had to decide on which take was the best as we could only project one take on the band and we had to make sure that this was the right length and that Cara was singing in sync so that the sync would be right when we moved from a shot of the projection to a shot of the band.
 |
| Examples of how the projections looked |
Lyric Breakdown
Ryan created a page that identifies the timings of each line of the song.
The breakdown includes what the line number is, this helped when using the storyboard as we had noted down what number line is playing during certain shots.
The breakdown also includes the time in the song that each line starts, ends, duration of each line and what the lyrics are on that line. I used this document a lot while filming the music video as it helped me tremendously to find the part of the song that we wanted to play so that Cara could sync to it, this stopped everyone waiting around for the music to play through.
The lyric breakdown was most useful during the warehouse scenes as myself and Luke were able to find the part of the song we needed very fast and we could concentrate on filming shots without worrying about what part of the song we needed to play.
The breakdown includes what the line number is, this helped when using the storyboard as we had noted down what number line is playing during certain shots.
The breakdown also includes the time in the song that each line starts, ends, duration of each line and what the lyrics are on that line. I used this document a lot while filming the music video as it helped me tremendously to find the part of the song that we wanted to play so that Cara could sync to it, this stopped everyone waiting around for the music to play through.
The lyric breakdown was most useful during the warehouse scenes as myself and Luke were able to find the part of the song we needed very fast and we could concentrate on filming shots without worrying about what part of the song we needed to play.
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| Lyric breakdown |
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