3rd Editing - Memory Scene

We have decided to edit the scene of Alice in the common room with her friends as a memory, this film will be edited to be black and white to convey the difference in time. The clip will only be short as the main focus of the video is about Alice being unhappy, and this conveys her as the opposite.

 

Whilst making the video I had to 'trim' each shot and make them 'greyscale' as an effect. I did this by using the 'Add Effect Buttons' and placing the videos in the time line. The videos have an arrow on their thumbnail to show that they are being used, and once they have been edited this arrow turns yellow which reminds me that I have already edited them. Here are some print screens as I was editing the film.

 

After editing all of the shots, I managed to make a short clip just under 20 seconds long. We may be repeating this scene in the video, we are undecided yet, however my group are happy with this progress.

 

 

After watching back all of our filming shots of this scene, we have decided to add a few extra sections to try and make Alice seem the centre of attention and as happy as we can portray her to be. I have added different parts to the original film and left them in colour so that it is clear which bits I have added. I will then place them in black and white like the others and have a finished scene.

 

 

I have looked closely at the shots and decisively to choose which ones would work in our scene. These parts in particular have interested me as I have added them for certain reasons.

 

 

This image above is a printscreen from my editing of the Memory Scene, I chose to use this section of filming because Alice is laughing with the other girls in the shot and they are all looking at her, which presents her as the centre of attention and being liked. This is representable as throughout the rest of the video Alice will be alone.

 

I had to edit this shot very closely as Jessie Plant is in the corner of the shot making it difficult to use the whole section. We were taking photographs of Alice whilst filming to use as evidence, however getting a close up whilst doing this was difficult, yet the overall outcome is still good.

 

 

I was unsure about this shot as Alice is on the edge of the screen and she is not the central point of the camera, which she should be in this section, seen as the video centres around her and her emotions. I have decided to use it because despite her not being central, this shot presents Alice interacting with the other girls.

 

Here is the finished Memory Scene, all in black and white:

 

 

 

 

 

3rd Filming - Memory Scene and Alice Leaving School

After filming and editing the lane scene, we have decided to film two more scenes in our video. Firstly, we filmed Alice storming out of school after she had been shouted at by her teacher, we were unable to film the teacher scene at this moment due to complications with time however we have carried on to film a different scene in order to keep up with our work. Secondly, we decided to film the 'memory' section in our video which will be in black and white and will convey Alice and her friends on the common room having fun and enjoying herself at a better time.

 

These are the evidence photographs of our filming, these photographs convey my group filming Alice and her friends in the common room. We used different shots, such as tilt (from above) to get a birds eye view of the group talking, we panned around the whole group in a close up and placed the camera between two friends in order to get their view of Alice.

 

 

 

 

 We rearranged some photographs and posters in the common room to make it more tidy and acceptable to be in our video, these images are from current magazines and are situated around Kim Kardashian who is seen in the eyes of the majority of society as 'perfect'. This is ironic in our video as the song we are using is called 'less than perfect' and Alice during the video is deteriorating in her self confidence.

 

 

These are still shots of Alice and her friends in the scene.

 

 

 

Here are the videos we obtained during this section of filming:

 

 

 

 

 

 

We also filmed the section of Alice storming out of school, we decided that Alice should rip off her school badge from around her neck during this scene to convey her anger and bitterness towards the school and her situation. We filmed Alice walking out of a room at school leading her outside of school and walking angrily down a path.

 

Here are the first attempts at filming this scene:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We decided that each member of our group should get the chance to edit a different scene. This scene along with the in school scene are the ones which Lauren will be editing. I will blog these when it is complete. Overall, we are content with the filming we have done and hopefully we will not have to reshoot this scene as the footage we have so far is good.

 

 

 

 

Mise-en Scene

During the course of our video we will need a few props in order for our story to be realistic and make sense to an audience. Since we have chosen to focus our video around isolation of a young girl, and the influence of drug and alcohol abuse we will be using empty packet of pills and alcohol bottles to influence our video. We have been using 'Popplet' to plan which types of things we would need to bring with us to filming each scene, so far we have only shot one scene which did not need many props, however our other scenes are set in different environments and will need a variety of props.

The Bedroom Scene:
The starting scene of our video is the same as our ending scene, and so this will need the most cutting and editing. In this scene we are starting with a close up of empty alcohol bottles and pill packets scattered around Alice's bedroom floor, conveying her destruction. The camera will then pan around the room presenting Alice lying unconscious on the floor after an overdose. The scene will then fade to Alice being at school, starting the course of her 'bad day'. The props we will need in this scene are presented below:

The School Scene:

The school scene is the scene shown after the starter portrayal of Alice unconscious on the floor. It will begin with a shot of the whole class room and Alice being clearly alienated from the others, it will proceed to the teacher in a tilted view, almost like a worms a view shot, shouting at Alice from her point of view and this will then change to the teachers point of view so that the viewer can see Alice's expression. We will be switching the shots of Alice from different angles to convey how alone she is in the classroom. During this scene, we will be using our own media class in the video and out media teacher has agreed to acting in our video. We will need normal wooden desks, some books/folders, and pupils in the classroom.

The Home Scene:

After Alice walks out of school and storms down the lane, there will be a scene with Alice and her mum. Alice's mum is being played by a fellow media student, Ashleigh, who is seventeen although we will dress her to look older than her age. Considering that our video is centring the idea of abuse etc we decided to convey Alice's mum to be uncaring and also an alcoholic to show that this is an ongoing problem for Alice and not just a teenage tantrum. We have decided to have Ashleigh perched on a sofa, in a dressing gown and pyjamas surrounded by alcohol bottles and cigarettes. We feel that this will convey her attitude well, we may also be having a scene with Alice and Ashleigh having an argument. 

Letter from OCR

Considering our chosen music choice contains swearing throughout we wondered whether or not it would be acceptable to use the explicit version or not. We asked our teacher if this was useable or not and she decided to email the examiner in order to be sure, as we would not want our coursework video to decrease in grades because of our music choice.

 

Here is the letter that OCR sent in reply to our query:

After much discussion we have decided not to use the explicit version, the song is still the same the only words that have changed are in the chorus which change from "F***ing Perfect" to "Less Than Perfect" which will not change the course of our work, it has just cleared up a query and made us more clear and set on our music choice.

1st Editing - Lane Scene

We have decided to edit our music video on 'MoviePlus X3' and after we have all edited our chosen scenes we will add them all together in a final document.

 

 MoviePlus X3 allows me and my group to clearly cut and copy parts of our filming into our video and remove the parts which we feel are unnecessary. We 'import' all of our chosen shots into the document and proceed to 'drag' them down to the time line in order to create our video.

 

This print screen presents the time line in which our Lane Scene has been made, we were able to overlap the shots in order for the program to automatically fade each scene into one another which would give us great continuity in our work. There is a clear time indicator on the left hand side of the time line and this is helpful as it will allow us to be aware of the length of each scene and ultimately the length of our music video.

 

 

 

 

 

Learning to use this program was quite easy as the application has a clear layout and has coloured links conveying the use of all devices available to us. These links have been extremely useful as I was creating this scene, they enabled me to understand each aspect of the video and I am now aware of how to add text and captions into my work, which we may be using at a later stage.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

The transitioning of our video will be visible throughout our editing, it is clear from our story board that we would like to use different types of transitions such as fading out. I will be creating the Lane Scene and so will try and present this in my work with editing.






 

This is my first attempt of editing the lane scene, I have used shots from both our first and second sets of filming. The only problem I have is that the shots from the first set of filming are darker than the second, and the continuity is not as clear as we filmed them on different days. We may have to go back and re shoot some sections to make them better.
 

                                         

 

The main area of focus which has been highlighted by people who have watched this scene are about the different colours of each shot. As we were unable to film the whole scene in one day, we had two separate filming shoots and unfortunately the weather from both days were slightly different, concerning the dark shadows and light influences in our chosen environment. 

 

 

 

Throughout the first 31 seconds of our lane scene the camera shots show a bright outside daylight and the colours are reflected well. During the shot we have decided to cut from a front and back shot of our main character to convey her from both angles to the audience. However, considering our limitations of time we were unable to shoot this at the same time and so have filmed them on different days, meaning that the two shots are different colours.

The second shot at 32 seconds portrays Alice taking off her blazer from a view behind her, unfortunately this shot is much darker to the first and has a 'blue' overcoat of colour. This could be because of the quality of camera we have used, despite it being the same on both days, although I think the main reason that this has happened would be the change in weather on both days of shooting. The shot in itself has good continuity however, the colours are the only thing preventing it from looking as realistic as possible.

 

 

Research into Main Character

In our music video there will be 1 main character and 3 to 4 other characters who will appear at some point in the film. We have discussed in detail the clothing and appearance we would like our characters to portray in each scene, as the story line conveys the turmoil of a teenage girl she will look evidently 'worse' in each scene leading up to her overdose.

Here is a mind map showing the appearance we would want each character to have in each scene:

In the original music video written and produced by Pink, Max Martin and Shellback contains a main character around the same age as our chosen main character, Alice Hall. The girl tells the story of depression, self harm, isolation and ultimately recovery, played by Tina Majorino. Our music video will highlight the struggles of being a teenage girl, focussing primarily on depression and being isolated from friends and family. 

We felt that by using this song by Pink, we would be able to successfully compare our video to the original, although by changing the storyline and characters we would make our own version conveying these emotions in a different way. As Pink and her team had more experience in video making and technology they were able to create a time ellipsis of a woman's life, however, we will not be able to do this considering our limitations and time scale. And so, our video will contain one main character, Alice, following her through a journey of depression starting at school and ending on the floor of her bedroom unconscious surrounded by alcohol bottles and pills.

Tina Majorino has dark hair, pale skin and fits the stereo-type of an 'emo' quite well considering her clothing and attitude in the video. 

                                                      

This image presents Tina in the original video, she has dark eye make up and a sad expression. We have planned to give Alice this type of style, and asked her to portray a character similar to this, as we would like to highlight depression and hurt in our own video.

                                              

Our chosen main character, Alice, was a fellow media student and understands the importance of our coursework video. This conveys that we can trust her to maintain a steady character and be reliable enough to come to filming sessions. We chose Alice as our main character because we thought that she would fit the character well and portray the part well. 

Alice looks nothing like Pink's chosen character, however, I see this as a positive as it allows us to create our own story without having every aspect of our video the same as the original. At first we were rather sceptical of having a blonde main character as we though someone with darker hair would look more emotional and combined with darker clothes would present a more troubled person, however, being blonde, Alice fits our character really well. 

This is a photograph we took of Alice during our first set of filming. My group are content with our choice of main character and ensure that Alice will help us to produce a good music video.

Clothing:

We first started to plain our characters at the start of our course and had plenty of ideas to do with clothing, make-up and hair. We decided to make a 'Popplet' page in order to maintain all of our ideas in our work. We have used 'Popplet' to mind map our ideas to do with clothing and the items we would need in order to make our video consistent.

These print screens present the work we have done on Popplet, to do with where we would get the clothes from, why we want them and how it would change our video. This is the main mind map to convey our ideas with clothing.

We were also able to upload images on to Popplet in order to convey each of our ideas to the mind map and what we imagine the character should be wearing. This was very useful as it helped us to realise and agree on the style of which we should dress Alice. We have agreed that Alice should be wearing a black skirt, black blazer, tights, back shoes and a white school shirt. We decided that this was plain enough to not be complicated, but smart enough to look as if Alice was in sixth form. During filming the lane scene we asked Alice to take her blazer off in anger whilst walking down the lane. We decided this would be useful as the viewer would watch Alice angrily remove her blazer and throw it behind her, by doing this she is conveying her emotion to the audience.

Further to this, we also made comments on the images in the mind maps to tell each other whether we could contribute to bringing in clothing or props to help with the filming. This dressing gown will be used by Ashleigh, Alice's Mum, whilst we are filming one of the ending scenes. She will be lounging on a sofa or something like that as Alice walks through the door to see her. We have styled Ashleigh to look quite rough and uncaring, as this would add to the emotion of Alice's character of having arguments with friends, teachers and a non-supporting mother role.

 Before filming we informed Alice of the clothes that we would like her to wear certain clothes and in my opinion the clothes were perfectly suited to our ideas. This picture was taken during our first filming as Alice was angrily walking down the lane after she had walked out of school. We have filmed this scene twice now and the shots are getting better as we are getting used to using the camera and we are pleased with how Alice is portraying our main character.

We decided to roll up Alice's sleeves on her plain white school shirt as it conveys her 'bad' attitude towards school, and is not as business like as most sixth form clothes that students are expected to wear. Her bag is also quite small and more of a handbag than a school bag, this also portrays her attitude as she is not interested in school and is holding no folders or books. It is also clear here that Alice is wearing some jewellery such as rings, earrings and a bracellet. Her style is quite 'indie' and not academic.

This mid close up of Alice presents her school shirt and blazer, this shot is taken from when Alice is looking down at her phone as she has received an abusive text message. Her appearance is quite anti-school as she has quite heavy make-up on her eyes, jewellery and an unbuttoned collar. We are planning on putting Alice in these clothes throughout the whole video as she will be easily recognised by the viewer, however as the video continues Alice's clothing will get scruffier and she will remove her blazer presenting her deteriorating emotional character.

Make-Up:

                                                      

"After researching many of Pink's music videos, we noticed that her make up is usually quite minimalistic yet very dark. We have decided to give Alice dark eye shadow and mascara to portray her emotional mood. As the music video continues we will smudge parts of the make up to highlight the fact that Alice has been crying and is in emotional turmoil with her friends and family. Here are some examples of dark make up which we have researched and are planning to compare Alice to."

We have planned to give Alice dark eye make up to compare her to Pink's videos. It would also incorporate the idea of her depression and anger with the dark colours.

Avril Lavigne is an artist with blonde hair, a bit brighter than Alice's, however she mainly wears dark eye make up and so we can use her as a image to style Alice against. Her style is a typical 'moody teenager' and she portrays this is the majority of her songs and music videos.

 

So far, we have filmed and planned her appearance around this research resulting in her make up being dark like this image below. We are content with Alice's make up and will convey her deterioration throughout the music video by making her make-up more smudged and messy to show her emotions.

2nd Filming - Lane Scene

I was unable to attend our second shoot of filming, however prior to this we had decided to re-shoot the lane scene and better our shots. We have each taken charge of a particular scene in the film in order to give us all an equal work load. My chosen scene to edit was the lane scene and so I will be looking closer and being critical whilst editing of  these scenes in order to give a good overall outcome. The following videos and images are from the second shooting of filming and are the ones, combined with a few from our first shots, that I will be putting into the final video.

This seven second clip conveys the moment in our video in which Alice angrily throws off her blazer and storms down the lane after receiving an abusive text message. Overall, this is my favourite shot as the blazer lands on the fence which is what we intended and her expression throughout the clip is constant.

These are three more attempts at the blazer throwing section in the scene, however this is an example of how it can so easily go wrong. The blazer does not land on the fence, and for our video to have seemless continuity we need the front and back shot to be nearing perfect.  

These are the other shots which we may be using in the final edit of the lane scene in our music video.

 

 

These are the images from the DSLR camera which was taken along to filming to prove that they are our own original shots.

Experimenting with the lane was useful as it allowed my group to use the whole stretch of land in order for Alice to walk the whole way.

Alice wore the same exact clothes as she did in the first filming as this would give us continuity in our video, and the veiwer would not know that we actually filmed it on different days.

 These shots are of Lauren filming Alice as she stands still and walks towards her down the lane. My group tried to film Alice walking towards them as the person holding the camera would walk backwards, giving a different veiw of our main character. The videos were a bit shaky however we can easily manipulate this in editing and keep the video steady.

Planning

My group have joined a site called 'Popplet' which allows us to create and produce spider diagrams easily and all add our ideas at the same time from different computers. At first we found it confusing, but after a few minutes we made our own page and created many spider diagrams which helped us in making decisions to do with make up, hair and clothing research.

Here is the link to our page: http://popplet.com/app/index.php#/471298

 

Whilst using Popplet we planned many other aspects of our music video which we found extremely useful to the overall researching, as we were all able to contribute at the same time.

 

We decided on the location of the scenes, which are all reasonable as they are mostly inside and so will not cause us problems when filming due to weather conditions. Only one of our scenes are to be filmed outside, however we are planning on filming this first to avoid dilemmas.

 

 

Although we had already had an idea of who would be in our music video, by putting it on Popplet helped us to visualise the amount of people that we would need and give them a definite character in out video.

 

 

We also used images of our characters to give us a rough idea of what to expect when we film them. We are planning to have Alice as our main character, Mrs McKenna as her teacher, Ashleigh as her mum and a few girls from our school common room in a memory scene to present Alice at a happier stage.

 

 

Planning our equipment was useful because it aided us in focusing on the particular products we would need in order to get the best out of our product. We still have props to add to this mind map such as empty alcohol bottles, tablet packets etc.

 

We planned the angles we wanted to use whilst on Popplet, as it gave us all a chance to input our own ideas. We have breifly discussed angles however this allowed us to establish the particular angles we want in our music video, and where abouts they should be placed. We will be continuing to add to Popplet in order to plan our ideas.