Changes to Music Video

After making a rough cut of a music video, we have encountered a few major issues to do with filming and continuity within our music video. Our main character Alice, decided to dye her hair darker which seriously effects the continutity of our entire music video. We thought of a few different ideas of how to come across this problem, such as re-doing the whole music video with Lauren as the main actress, changing the story line to show Alice dying her hair and changing the whole video altogether.

We decided against these ideas as if we conveyed Alice dying her hair it could work however we still need to reshoot some begining scenes and so the continuity would not work. Ultimatley, we decided to change the story line however still using Alice as our main character. Our new story line is less complicated and does not involve as many scenes as it did at first because we do not have enough time to reshoot everything.

Our new storyline still contains an ellipses of time and Alice self harming, however we have reduced the amount of different dilemmas that happen to Alice, and have linked all of her depression to her confusion to do with her sexuality and the fact that she is in love with her best friend who rejects her. We thought that this story line would be more understandable for the audience and they would understand what was happening throughout the whole video.

New Story Line:

Scene 1 - Black and White
Close up shots of Alice in the bath, looking upset and with make up smeared all of her face

Scene 2 -
Alice in school in an empty classroom, close up of her text messaging Lauren to meet her.
Alice then gets up and walks out of the classroom

Cut Away -
Black and white shot of the bath running

Scene 3 -
Reshoot of the lane scene as Alice is walking to meet Lauren

Cut Away -
Black and white Alice rubbing her make up off  in the mirror

Scene 4 -
Alice sitting on a bench (outside school) holding her phone, Lauren arrives and sits next to Alice.
Alice puts her hand on Laurens leg, and close up of her mouth saying 'I love you'.
Lauren looks at Alice in disgust, gets up and walks away leaving Alice on the bench, with her head in her hands crying.

Scene 5 -
Alice in her house, angry in her room throwing things around the room. Maybe ripping up photos of her and Lauren.
Goes into bathroom and starts to run a bath. (Same shot as cut away but in colour)

Scene 6 -
Getting in the bath, same face close up shots from begining scene. Close up of Alices face, hands etc
Final shot of Alice's hand hanging over the side of the bath with blood dripping off of it.

Changes to the Music Video

Due to the feedback we recieved from our teacher about using Ashleigh as Alice's mother, we have decided to change the scene to Alice and her friend arguing, we will be changing the setting of the scene to make this clear. Ashleigh will still be in the music video however she will be Alice's friend, as this is more believable. We will continue filming this scene, and hopefully it will work out better and recieve better feedback.

I personally think that Ashleigh will work better as Alice's friend and we can also link this relationship back to when they are sitting next to eachother in the classroom scene as Ashleigh is embarrassed of Alice's behaviour and rolls her eyes at Alice.

Filming Schedule

We were discussing with our media teachers which rooms were free and when we would be able to film. We will be filming the school scene next in which Alice engages in an argument with her teacher and leaves the room, and we are using our own media teacher. Below presents an email from our media teacher to another teacher asking about free rooms so we are able to plan when we can next film.

From: Mrs K McKenna
Sent: 26 November 2012 15:03
To: Melanie Ginn
Subject: free rooms Thursday 29th period 4

Hi Mell,

 

Would you mind letting me know what rooms are free on Thursday period 4?

 

Thanks

Katie J

Update on planning and filming

After looking back at our own work and having feedback from our teacher, we are aware that the scene in which Alice and her mum have an argument is quite unclear. We want our music video to have continuity and run clearly with no confusion, and so we have decided to re shoot the scene, however as this scene follows on from Alice leaving school we will convey Ashleigh (Alice's mum/older sister) to be putting the phone down or receiving a message from the school as Alice enters so that the audience are aware of why she is so angry at her daughter. 

If this is unsuccessful we have been discussing whether or not to change this particular scene to one with Alice arguing with a boyfriend or group of friends. However, we are still undecided on this and will make a proper decision after we have tried our first idea, as we would like to stick to our original ideas.

The image above portrays how I have been communicating with my teacher through Blogger. Also in lessons me and my group have been receiving feedback on our filming and planning. So far, it has been quite successful however we are constantly trying to improve our work. 

Comparing our planning to our work

Looking back at the hand drawn designs I have used to convey the scenes in our music video, I will be comparing them to our actual filming to portray whether or not we have kept to our plans. I will be focussing on different camera angles in particular scenes which we wanted to incorporate at the start of the planning process.

 

 

 

I will be presenting the shots we filmed to our planning in each scene; this shot portrays Alice's point of view and the camera will show the image of her phone recieving a text message.

 

 

 

 

 

The next scene we looked at was the memory scene, in which Alice will be portrayed in black and white and the camera will convey her at a happier time.

 

 

 

 

This image conveys the view between two of Alice's friends, showing her in a happier mood:

 

 

 

 

We then looked at the scene in which Alice returns home from school and has an argument with her mother.

 

 

 

 

This image conveys the over the shoulder shot of Alice shouting at her mother, which is the same as our planning.

 

 

 

We also looked at the wide shot of Ashleigh laying across the sofa:

 

 

 

I will continue to compare our planning to our actual scenes which we have filmed as we go along, however so far I feel that our planning fits together well with our current work and that we are on target to acheive the music video which we have planned.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Developed Planning of Story Board

We have revisited our story board and made the drawings and our ideas clearer whilst doing so. it is still quite vague and does not incorporate every single shot, although it is quite accurate to do with when things will be happening. We want to cut and edit our video to the beat of the music to ultimately get us the best outcome for our work, this will take some practice however I am sure that we can do it properly. 

Here is a story board of more detailed drawings of the timeline:

I have used more detailed drawings and drawn each specific scene with the camera angles we would need to use in order to film it successfully. I have drawn a circle connected to an arrow to present the place in which the camera will be and the angle it will be facing, I have also annotated next to each arrow what the camera will be showing the audience. These hand drawn designs are basic however they will help my group have a better understanding of the shots we are going to use and how we should put them all together.

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.

 

 

Story Board

The best way to present our idea to the rest of our class was to produce a story board of events which would take place in our video. This would also aid us in the making of our video as each section and scene would be in the correct order for when we begin filming. 

Here is a copy of our first roughly created story board:

We decided that our first plan should just be vague so we could get a rough outline of what would actually be happening in the video. We decided to add an element of the past in with the present to make our video more intriguing. At the moment we are planning to film our the 'memories' of when the main character was happier with friends etc and we would like to convey this in black and white. This would highlight to the audience the transition of time and make them aware of the story line.

This is our second, more planned, story board. We have started to add different aspects to the drawings to make them more clear and talk more clearly about camera angles and shots. This will help us when it comes to filming as we will already know which camera angles we want in our work and will save time in editing.

During our discussion about our music video we decided to make a few hand drawn spider diagrams to convey our ideas in a different way. We looked at the purpose of our product and what we would want to focus on, our target audience and what our target audience would want to see.