Scheduling a second test shoot

In order for us to discover new things about our video, and to further develop the idea to a professional level we must have another test shoot, this time using better equipment, our real cast list, and a set designed that is more similar to our final product. It will be difficult to get sets similar to what we picture as we want really grimy, dirty environments, and also a lot of drum set ups. There are only two drum kits available in the school which means we will only be able to re-create two of the 5 drum set ups - this is not ideal as we want to see what all the drummers look like together, with all the drums in odd positions, we will not be able to experiment with the setups now. We could potentially use steel bins as stand in drums as that is the back up plan for if we can't get hold of the drums for the real thing, but obviously it would be better if they were drums. I have sent emails to everyone in our cast, updating the times, location and cast list as our idea developed and availability of the studio was confirmed. One of our drummers definitely can't make it, so we will hopefully have four drummers to play with on wednesday. Our singer, male dancer, primary drummer, and most male extras have also agreed to come - I will be talking to every member of the cast in person before the shoot to confirm that they can all make it. 

In this shoot we are looking to improve upon some of the things we didn't like in our previous test shoot, and will focus on making the things we did like even better. Instead of using an iphone we will be using either a Canon 7D mk 2 or hopefully a Canon 5D mk 3, so the quality of the footage will be much better than our first test shoot. We will also have the opportunity to shoot with lenses that have adjustable focal ranges, which for members of my group that are less experienced with cameras is good as this will give them the chance to use a camera on a tripod and get practice getting the shots we want in the real thing. 

Test Shoot

Test Shoot 1

We have now made a test shoot for our music video, though it is extremely rough I feel it has been a productive process and has been beneficial to the development of our idea. 

We filmed the test shoot in the space of 40 minutes on an iphone with whomever we could find, this was after all a rough test shoot - to see if our current rough timeline would fill the 3 minute cut of the track effectively. During this shoot we stumbled across some great casting choices, and some ideas as to the stylistic elements of our shoot, we discovered what worked and what didn't - what we should keep, what we should cut, and what we should use next time. 


Aggressive dance

Firstly, I shot Ollie Tennant, our male dancer, in the studio. There was a 10 minute slot free and there was already a basic set ready to be shot in, which coincidently was quite a dirty, dark set - halfway to what we want for our actual music video. I used a red-head studio lamp and clipped a cold temperature jel to the lamp's barn door folds. This created a harsh lighting effect, not harsh/contrasty enough though. I used the cold temperature jel as the natural kelvin temperature of the lamp was too warm, and would make colour grading the footage too difficult as the quality of the iphone footage is far too low to do anything drastic. 

Here are some points that we liked about this performance strand:

• Ollie is a good actor for our music video and the role we want him to play. There aren't many students at our collage that go for it as much as he does in the aggressive dancing department, his performance in this rough test shoot is more impressive considering the fact that we couldn't play the track out loud whilst filming him as there weren't any speakers available to us in the studio. Ollie fits the image of the track and the overarching rebellious outlook of our young intended target audience.

• The colour grade on the footage looked good, the green, grainy style look very grimy and grungy and wasn't too far off what we are looking for in our final product. 

• The use of the studio light was great, making the lighting harsh, also Ollie dancing in front of the light, creating a flashing effect added to the energy and aggression of the sequence visually.

• The handheld camera movement worked very well, pulsating alongside the heavy underlying bass hits of the track. the handheld movement also allowed the cutting of this element easy, and looked good. Ollie ducking out of frame a lot meant I could for example cut from him being far from the camera to him popping up extremely close to the camera - making the video more dynamic and again amplifying the action-aggression vibes of the performance element.

Things we didn't like:

• Ollie's dancing may have been rowdy but it needs to be choreographed for the actual shoot, not too heavily choreographed though so that we can maintain the aggressive chaotic vibe.

• Ollie's clothing wasn't entirely correct, not far off but I think it needs to be more grungy, maybe a leather jacket and some 80's military boots. We did like the all black look though. 

• The location needs to be a lot more grimy, a lot more industrial and a lot dirtier for us to achieve the look we want in our final product. A location that's going to be eye catching and again amplify the grime.

Things we would like to add in our next test shoot:

• We think it would look much better, and more atmospheric if there was more people in this sequence, dancing aggressively alongside Ollie, but keeping the focus on Ollie as he clearly has a knack for this style of performance. Perhaps they would be surrounding him - we would cut from close ups and mid shots of individuals of the group to wides of the whole group together. We are thinking around 4-10 others in this element next time.

Drummer 

The next section of the video we filmed was the drumming performance element, the

backbone of our idea as it stands. Tom, our primary choice wasn't available so we used Gustavo, another talented drummer in the school. We used the help of two of my friends to hold the drums in abstract positions for the short shoot, the drums weren't positioned how we want for the actual shoot as we didn't have the resources. We used one of the recording studios where a drum kit was accessible and filmed one shot that I could use to cut in and out of in the edit. The whole shot was handheld and extremely shaky, this worked and didn't work at times. Sometimes it was good and chaotic, at other times it would have been nice to focus on the drums and the connection of the sticks on the drums.

Things we liked: 

• Gustavo turned out to be a very good drummer for our video, keeping rhythm with the track that again wasn't playing out loud during the filming - he picked up the tune after one listen to the track, which made editing the footage in time to the music much easier. 

• The drum setup, though scruffy looks good, and appeared to have been not too much of a challenge for our drummer to incorporate all drums in the performance. 

•  Again the colour grade on the footage looked nice, but was obviously very rough - but we were able to get an idea of what we want for next time.

• We know that if we could only get one drummer on the day that we could make the sequence look interesting enough with just that one.

Things we didn't like:

•  In this shoot we don't see the face of the drummer, his expression, his mood etc. ideally we would want to see his anger and rage to make the video more empowering, and to give the audience a chance to develop a relationship with him. I think that the mood of the video would be enhanced if we got to see more of him. If we were to show his face the drummer would have to look the part, he couldn't be neutral.

• I think that the decision to have all of the shots for the drumming sequence handheld was wrong, we should have some stable, tripod shots at times. This was mainly because we didn't have the resources, as it was shot on an iphone. The next test shoot will be shot on a canon 7D with access to a tripod and an adjustable lens and depth of field.

• There wasn't enough drums available for us to create something similar to what we want for our real music video, so next time we will try and get both drum kits in the school involved and make the setup something closer to what we will use in the final product.

Things we would like to add in the final test shoot:

•  In the next shoot we are aiming to use 3-5 of the drummers in the school at the same time as to test visually the change in the performance element, where we go from seeing one drummer, to multiple drummers. This is a fairly important event in the video as it brings something new and exciting for the audience to see - and is a strand of our USP in the video - interesting drum setups.

• We want to create a more interesting set than a recording studio for the next test shoot, obviously nowhere near as detailed as what we want for our 

• We will experiment next time with both handheld and stable camerawork and see what they look like when cut together to the track to gain an understanding of how good the contrast will look side by side.

Guitar

After consulting one of the music tech teachers at our collage we discovered that the prominent electronic wining/groaning sound in the track was a distorted guitar. So as there was a guitar in the room where we filmed the drumming sequence we quickly got Gustavo, the drummer we used, to play a simple cord and make it look like he was playing the same chord that can be heard in the track. He bends the string and slides his fingers up the neck of the guitar - which visually fits the sound of the distorted guitar in the track. There isn't too much else to say about this part of the performance element, other than this should be a very small section in the music video, and shouldn't be heavily concentrated on.

Lip Sync

In the testing for the lip sync we changed the actress we are going to use for the real thing. As Lucy wasn't available on the test shoot, we used Cassie. It then became clear that Cassie was better for the part than Lucy as she ha naturally got a lot more stage presence and confidence in front of the camera. Cassie is also a singer in real life and there for knows how to look natural when lip syncing. 

This section of the test shoot was filmed very quickly as we didn't have much time, this is why I simply repeated the sequence over and over in the edit. 

Things we liked:

• Cassie was very confident in front of the camera, we have confirmed with her that she is available to be the singer in our final product.

• There was a large vertical support pole where we were filming, Cassie moved behind this in the shoot and the result looked good visually. We think that we will have our singer walking through either the drummers or amongst a group of rowdy lads.

• The colour grade again worked well, making the footage look dark and stylised

Things we didn't like

• There wasn't enough going on, the lip sync should evolve and develop throughout the video to make it more interesting to watch.

• The costume wasn't interesting enough. We need her costume to be more outrageous and eye catching, perhaps grungy, punky, dystopian style - I feel this would suit the look of the rest of the video and would add to the array of interesting features in the video.

Things we would like to add in the final test shoot:

• In the final test shoot we will film our singer alongside the drummers so we can see if that looks good or if we need to change the scenario yet again.

The Colour Grade

Before colour grade

After colour grade

 The colour grade has been a key stage in the making of our test shoot, which in my opinion wasn't too horrendous. Without the colour grade the footage would have been flat and boring, colourless. This is because we had little if any access to proper lighting or interesting sets. The colour grade gave the footage a grainy, high contrast quality, and the colour green dominating the shadows, mid-tones and highlights added a certain identity to the video. 

Here's how I colour graded the footage: 

First of all I cut the whole track together, before I colour graded anything so that I could get an idea of if the final order of the sequence was correct before I wasted any time colour grading clips that would never need to be used. Once i'd cut everything together and was happy with the result I went onto the effects panel to choose my preferred colour grading tool for fast, basic grading - RGB curves. This tool affects three three colour channels: Red, Green, and Blue. Specifically the tool adjusts the balance/intensity of the three colours in the highlights, shadows and mid-tones, essentially adding a colour hue to the clip. You can also adjust the intensity/exposure of the clip through the master adjustment section. I made the shadows a little darker and the highlights slightly brighter - in other words increasing the contrast. With the Green curves section I increased the saturation of greens in the lighter section of the shadows, bordering on the mid-tones. This also increased the saturation in the highlights slightly de to the position of the point I created on the line. Once I was satisfied with this colour alteration on the clips of Ollie dancing I simply copied the RGB curves section of this clip and pasted it onto all the other clips of Ollie dancing as I was pushed for time and didn't want to waste too much time on a sloppy test shoot. I followed the same process with the other elements of the shoot and am happy with the final result. We will be looking to create a similar effect in our real shoot - but obviously much more meticulously as to make the video look as good as it can.

In conclusion, it was a successful test shoot, and there are many things that we liked and will aim to build upon, and also many things which need to be changed. This test shoot has been crucial to the development of our idea.

Casting

We made a list of the cast we wanted and sent it to Phil, our media teacher so that he could look at which other music videos our cast had been asked to do, and which ones could prioritise ours over other music videos.

He responded with our final cast list. We were extremely lucky to get Tom Saville as our primary drummer as he had been asked to be in over 10 other videos, but it was important that we had him as his drumming talents are needed in our video due to the concept being so drum orientated.

Photo of Tom - why we chose him as our primary drummer



Photo of Cassie - why we chose Cassie as our singer



Photo of Ollie - why we chose Ollie as our primary dancer 


Photos of secondary drummers - why we have chosen these drummers


Photos of rowdy lads - why we chose them over other people 

Change of perspective

As I described in the previous post, our idea is extremely gory. Though an interesting concept I feel we will find the video difficult to execute effectively, seeing as we are limited to a cast of 16-19 year olds at our collage. There are some older looking students but none of them have the acting capability that is needed to make the video visceral and believable. They would have to act having their arm ripped off - which would be difficult. Also it would be extremely difficult for us to make the blood look real, and look good when painted on the walls, we would need to have a blank white set which in my opinion is quite boring. We were having doubts about our idea as a group so we went and talked to Luke and Matt to try and gan another perspective on the idea, to try and talk through the good and bad elements of the video so that we could build a stronger idea.

We decided that we liked the following points: 

• The song itself, it is different and empowering.

• The stylistic decision to give the footage a grainy quality and a greeny colour hue.

• The aggressive dancing 

After discussing these elements of the music video we talked about the narrative, which I explained in the previous post. Through group discussion we realised that there was no reason for the gas masks in the video, no relevance. So we started thinking about scenarios where a gas mask could be relevant so that we could use it as a stylistic costume choice. We thought of one narrative which revolves around a gas mask - a scenario where there are a group of people in a room and only one gas mask, they could all be fighting over a gas mask, that's where the blood and gore could come in.

• Change of idea
• Talk with luke
• how we could make the narrative more interesting 
• one gas mask, people fighting over it
• making the performance element more dynamic 
• thinking about making the drums more interesting, drum setups everywhere
• 
  

Idea development

Today has been an important milestone in the production of my group's music video. At first the news that our top location choice seemed like a disaster, as the whole premise of the context to the video was altered as we wanted to set the video in a dystopian age - an abandoned and heavily eroded building in an urban area would have been perfect for it. However we were struggling to come up with interesting ideas and a plot that fitted in well with the environment. After discovering the news we had to think about a new context for the idea, and quickly too in order keep up the pace and to not put ourselves in a difficult position as we are so close to the shoot. 

We listed all the elements from the previous idea that we liked and wanted to keep so that we didn't have to start all over again and attempted to build a believable idea from there. We attained information that we could potentially rent out the floor of a multi-story car park at night as our location - this location intrigued us and got us talking about how we could revolve the narrative around the car-park. We came up with the following narrative concept:

• The video begins with man panting, out of breath and panicked, it must be evident that he is being chased and that he is danger. He is in the carpark, looking for places to run/hide.

• Then we see a group of gas-masked men running up the stairs of the car park, they must be represented as evil and clearly pursuing the man we have just seen.

• The group of men enter the same floor of the car park as the man

• The man attempts to run, but he has been spotted

• The group of gas masked men corner him, pin him down and start attacking him. 

• A POV shot from the perspective of the man looking at a fist flying towards his face is used, the motion of the fist is then used to cut to the next location, again a POV shot as the fist moves away from the camera.

• We see that they are now in an all white room, with furniture caped in dust covers.

• The gas masked men beat up the man once again, this time in a much more aggressive and vicious way. 

• They start to really make the man bleed (the video needs to be brutal) 

• They then wrench the arm of the man of - this is the money shot. Blood splatters on the wall, and over the men.

• The men then proceed to collect the blood of the man in a dirty metal bucket, before diving their hands in and aggressively painting the white walls with blood.

• They paint the emblem of the band/album, which will be a menacing image of some kind - probably linking into the gas mask theme. 

• The conclusion of the video is the men forcing a gas mask upon the protagonist, the arm is then reconnected to the body and he becomes one of the gas masked men.

We then decided that for the performance element we would have someone covered in sweat and blood, wearing a gas mask, dancing aggressively in strobe lighting - edited in a way that is going to be disorientating for the viewer. We would also have a drummer, with a single drum, really aggressively playing the drums - he is also wearing a gas mask...and the drums will most likely have some blood on them to make it visually more interesting...and disturbing.

Essentially, there's going to be a lot of blood. It's going to be overly gory and perhaps quite difficult to watch as we want something that may not necessarily be pleasant for the audience to watch, but that will stick in their minds and have an effect on them. To be notorious and to get noticed. 

Costume

Post-Apocalyptic.

We would want the protagonist to look similar to this, but with maybe a half gas mask/respirator rather than the full mask.

This is the kind of thing we're thinking of for the villains in the music video, but without the guns...

More work on the narrative/developing a timeline

Today My group, Phil and I talked extensively about making the narrative to our music video believable and engaging. The narrative to our music video is going to be the key focus as in the music videos of a similar genre it is the most prominent of the different elements shown.

As we want the narrative to be set in a dystopian/post apocalyptic time we had to think of a situation that would be realistic in order to build our narrative effectively, and believably around it. We couldn't just start the video with the protagonist in the location, without a purpose as the viewer wouldn't buy into it.

As the time the video will be set in will be post apocalyptic in order to accommodate the stylistic choice of having gas masks as part of the costume for the  "bad guys". We wanted the protagonist to be chased into the location at first - but after group discussion we decided it would be best if it were the protagonist that enters the location voluntarily, looking for food or medicine, as you expect in post-apocalyptic times.

Developing a solid narrative

As my group and I are struggling to come up with a full, detailed timeline we dedicated this meeting to coming up with ideas. Simy and I looked again at one of the music videos we looked at for genre conventions: Sometimes I feel so deserted by "the chemical brothers". Specifically we looked at every key event in the music video, we saw five key events. After making a list of what the events were of that video we started thinking about what five key stages/events there would be in our video.

Our rough first draft is:

• Boy is being chased through streets/woods (depending on location of derelict building)

• Boy enters building

• Gas masked men intorduced

• New, prominent character introduced - sacrificial ceremon

• boy discovers that the gas masked people are him

After Simy and I had made this first foundation timeline draft we conferred with victor and Phoebe who had been brainstorming little events, stylistic elements, camera shots, and props that we could use throughout, they came up with some really good stuff so we had a discussion about where we could link these ideas into the narrative/performance element.

Some good ideas that we really liked:

Murder like scene - lots of dust covers everywhere

boy walks between dust covered furniture and gas masked figures underneath dust covers

Gas masked figure painting with blood on canvas like a spiritual kind of ceremony