Reflection

Reflection on what went well (Re-Shots)

Overall, everything went well. We filmed once in each location and that was it. I think this was down to each of us knowing our role and what needed to be done. I also think the Animatic had a big role to play in this as our storyboard reflected a lot of ideas we wanted to use.



Costume Choices
These were very straight forward. We where robbers so naturally we wore all black. Thankfully we had black clothing so that was very easy. The masks where crucial but we never forgot them so we didn't waste any time in that aspect. Overall, we went simple and the result was we didn't waste any time.

Locations
This was a bit more tricky. We where more ambitious with our locations than the costumes and our narrative required us to find a safe and a place to play our instruments. We decided that Leytonstone School would be a good idea as they have two large corresponding rooms, one for drama and one for music. That was a stroke of luck completely and we managed to film everything once.
The safe was more tricky, they had a safe but we ended up unable to use it due to timing, so we had to find a way around that.
Stephen found a way to use the nursery and we filmed in there, using the painting as a base, and J Sammi's locker as the safe itself.

Changes
In terms of changes, everything has stayed pretty much on plan

Skills Development 1 & 2

Brief Overview

I approached planning this production in a way that I didn't for my AS course.
That was mainly due to the fact that for my AS production I was making a thriller and
In a group of four. I also wasn't in the thriller so less pressure on my part.

However

For this production, we had to work as a strong, working unit as we were no longer
a group, but a band. I was in this music video and had the role as drummer so a tad more
pressure as I can't play drums but I had to look like I could (didn't really work alas).
As for the blogs, I think I've enjoyed my A2 blogging more than AS. I can't really remember
what my AS blog looked like but I feel if websites and blog's had an atmosphere, Group 10's blog
would be a fun, chilled yet hard working vibe.
I've blogged a lot more, and because I've been watching more films, I've been able to see how
our synergy and diamond conventions have passed through Hollywood and that's given my posts
some outside influence as well as sticking to the check-list.


Part 2

Brief overview of new editing skills:
Well, I did quite a lot of the editing last year for my AS thriller, so I was much more hands
on and making decisions about where we should cut and adding effects where I think could be relevant.
This year however, I did a lot less editing but the parts I did do, I enjoyed quite a lot.
I had to kind of re learn cutting the base tracks because I don't think I was 100% awake when
I was taught about it in lesson so I was rather lost. Maria told me the basics and showed
me how all the clips worked and from then I did a bit. My main role in the editing was working with the final shots, and the colouring. That was all new and I'm really happy the way that turned out.

<--
This is an example of the colours I'm talking about
<--

Planning for Evaluation Question 4

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

For this question I will reflect on the feedback we got for our music video as well as my ancillary products. I will get this feedback from the trip to the cinema where our music video will be screened, from asking people in my class and maybe people online that see our video. I will reflect on what they liked and what they thought could be improved and if their reactions to it have affected the way I look at it.

I think the best use of technology would be for me to make a short 'documentary' style video about the trip to the cinema and include the reactions from people in the cinema during the screening, as well as interviews with people outside after the screening and people in my group on how they feel now.

I did a similar thing last year at AS for an evaluation question which I thought went well at the time and isn't very good now looking back on it. But it's a similar sort of idea that I will try to replicate and improve on this year. (Below is the one I made last year.)

Planning for Evaluation Question 3

How did you use media technologies in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages?

For this question I will mention all the different types of technology I used at each of the various stages as well as how I used them. I think maybe I will do a Prezi for this question as that way I can incorporate many other media types into it, such as videos, screen shots, voice overs etc. A Prezi seems to me to be the best way to encapsulate all the different types of technologies used in the most interesting way.

I can't list all of the technologies here as here are too many but I will in the final evaluation. Some of the ones I will mention are:

• Video Cameras - To film the video
• Memory Cards - To save the video and transfer the clips from the camera to the Mac
• Blogger - To illustrate and describe the process in every stage
• Final Cut Pro - To edit together the video.

You get the general idea. I'll try to make it a little more interesting than that.

Notes & Ideas for Evaluation Question 1

Planning for Evaluation Question 1

Skills Development

Through editing this music video on Final Cut Pro I have learnt a lot about editing, Final Cut Pro and most importantly, myself.

I had used FCP (stands for Final Cut Pro) (I chose those letters because they're the initials of Final Cut Pro), before for editing my thriller film last year at AS and also for my AS film studies film so I was familiar with the software. What I was not familiar with was editing for music videos as it requires a whole different approach to editing. While I had learnt the basics of base track editing last summer for our remakes of popular music videos (see mine here), I only knew a little bit and it took a while for us to get going and for our music video to begin taking shape.

Our initial assembling of the base tracks and beginning to place markers where the beat in the song was.

A colour corrector filter.

One of the main new things I learnt about editing was adding filters to footage. I wish I had known about his last year as it can really make a difference to the look and feel of the film and we put it to good use in this music video. We used loads. We used various colour correctors to make our footage black and white and the right shades we wanted. We also used filters to fix our footage, for example one of our shots of the diamond heist had a visible sheet in the background that said 'nursery key workers' on it and didn't feel very diamond heist-ish. So to fix this we duplicated the shot, and place one above the other. We then applied the Gaussian blur filter to the bottom clip and applied an 8 point garbage matte to the top clip which enabled us to select only the sheet to be blurred and left the rest of the shot untouched. We also used different composite modes like 'overlay' for one of our key effects of having the diamond cards play over the heist and band footage.

To summarise Final Cut Pro has been very useful and I've learnt a lot more about it from editing the music video.

Finalising the Finishing Process

Planning for Question 4

Lessons learnt from Audience Feedback..

People reactions to video in cinema (laughing? shocked? quiet? clapping?)

Analysing comments from class feedback, talk about potential changes or improvements if we could go back

really focus on what we LEARNED (e.g not to put a black and white filter on some shots and not others as it may look weird, or not to do the buzzing out at the end)

Do I look at my work in a different light after they've said this?

Ask audience about ancillary work, ask them what looks nice and what doesn't look good, as how they would change it if they could, what they'd like to see in it. Ask them about synergy and if they can easily link it all to the music video. <-- Important. Screen record the digipak and voice over to highlight what they'd change (then maybe change it on-screen and talk about how it looks now)

Record audience responses after cinema, edit it all into one video with questions. 

Planning for Question 3

How I used media technologies in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages...

Used blogger to keep a timeline of all our work and what we've been doing. High quality camera's with SD cards, lights, fig rig.

Flickr was used, animatics and goanimate... photoshop was also used (diamond logo). I used ribbet.com to make the collages.

Twitter and instagram were used to tell teachers where we were, even though they didn't ever answer us, instagram was to show them what we were using and as proof we were there, again, they never answered.

Youtube was used a heck of a lot to get the necessary videos to compare ours with and analyse. We also used google to look up costumes and other things. I used IGN and the arctic monkeys sites to get feedback from others.

Photoshop again for the digipak

Final Cut Pro to edit the video - used filters (e.g. CCTV, black and white, colour tint (colour picker), slow motion, speeding shots up) Also, we put 4 different shots onto one frame, and overlapped two others.

ANIMATIC - again, to show the how we wanted the shots and what angles and what order and the timings (then to change it later on in editing)

Final Thoughts

I was told before our deadline lesson that the music video had been finished! This is great news, and means we finished before we expected. I am very pleased to hear this, the work we've put into the video was great and we have tried very hard to make it the best that we could.

I'm looking forward to the next stages of media.

FINISHED

FINISHED! by wavinglady on GoAnimate

Previous Plans #2

These screenshots from our Pitch explain the plans we had for the video.As I said before in the previous post I talked about the costume change. We didn't get the Balaclava's we wanted to use so switched them out, we also didn't use 2 separate costumes. The costumes we had were very similar to the same, we just added a jumper or overcoat within the narrative to our performance outfit, I think this was actually good because it links us as the main performers and really focuses on us as a band, which is very fitting for the Indie Rock genre. The black and white theme was also changed slightly, only Steven was wearing white and me and Ellie were in all black.

In retrospect to Goodwin's theory we kept the balance of narrative and performance because we felt that it was very effective and stayed within the conventions of the genre.

We didn't base the video around diamonds as much as we had planned, but that is okay as I think the more band perspective shots adds more effect, we didn't use an mirrors in the video either, im not sure how it would have looked if we did.

Final 3 Hour Lesson - Photos

Daily dose of polaroid's (hoorah)

End of Tuesday Lesson

In this lesson, we achieved our plan of making the video black and white. I think it has improved the video and made it look more stylish and old-timey.
We changed around a few shots that didn't work or weren't in sync, this has made it easier for us to now just go in and tweak parts that cut too early or too late, just finalising. It's a shame we didn't finish it today and will have to carry on next lesson, but if that's what it takes to make it look the best it can be then that's what we'll have to do.

Reflection on Shots

Now that we're nearing editing and have played about with all the shots we had I have come to some conclusions about things such as costume, location and props.

Firstly, I think that the diamonds are very good, we could have benefited from a few more to make it seem more worthy, but i'm scared that might have overpowered the video.

The costumes that we used were very similar in both performance and narrative shots. I think the outfits are very nice and dark, focusing on the people and the narrative, however, in some shots I think they could be too dark with the filter and sort of blends in with the background.

The location was our main issue. We used a school and that becomes quite visible in the shots, even after we darkened them to make it more studio looking, this really retracts from the story, the narrative is particularly disappointing in tis sense, we used a nursery office and are able to see some kids stuff in backgrounds and very friendly things, when we wanted it to be like a safe in a dark area and quite serious. The filters we used to darken things did help a lot in this area, however, I think we could have benefitted from a more professional location.

Improvements Before Final Deadline

After today's lesson we have changed some stuff around and had a teacher carefully analyse the video.

Before the deadline we wish to change some of the syncing issues we have. There's a shot of me playing bass whilst theres no music (as mentioned before) we still haven't changed this and need to asap. We also have a few other shots of drums and singing out of sync, this is very frustrating!

We have less than 2 hours lesson time left before we must hand this in, so the pressure is really on.

Evaluation Question 1 Plan

Looking back at my blog posts about Vernallis and Goodwin I am going to discuss a few things comparing their theories to our video.

I will use video clips and GIFs to highlight certain videos that I want to talk about.
I will also use screenshots and GIFs of our own video to highlight how they are similar or different.

Videos influenced by - Hoobastank; The Reason. Liked the mise en scene of stealing stuff and CCTV which was implemented a lot in our own video.
Video about the editing (to the beat)

Kept the conventions, to make it professional, realistic and to make it flow better, more enjoyable and understandable for audience. [Detailed]

ANCILLARY:

Images of others digipaks to compare, my old one too, what i like about them, analysis, and how they have effected my music video one, what parts i have used and what parts I have created myself.
Lots of annotations and highlighting areas. Also, blog about the process of making it.

That Syncing Feeling

Today in our lesson, we have been facing one recurring problem. We've pulled a Titanic and are having syncing issues for the first time. In a wide variety of areas we have seen both the singing all three instruments, primarily the drums, going out of sync.

We have fixed this in a variety of ways, first of all, the obvious was just to recut it so that Ellie hit the snare at the right time, but this wasn't always possible. On one occasion Ellie hit the snare too early; silly Ellie. This could have been a problem but we, being the intellectuals we are, sped up the footage so that the second hit of the snare was in time with the snare in the song itself.

We have gone through the entirety of the music video and ensured that there are no syncing issues, which proved to be very time consuming, but will be very important come the 10th December, when our music video is played for literally dozens of people.

Happy 61st Posts

Me and my good friend and fellow blogger Maria have hit 61 posts on this blog.
We have both used a variety of posts and have hopefully improved since our last AS year.
To hit the number means we are on course and we both hope we can get to 100 very, very soon.


Maria:
"I'm thankful for everyones support in this time, this is an important time for me and my family an I look forward to many more posts"

Ellie:
"Wow wow wow, I didn't start this journey expecting it to be easy, but to be posting this after hitting 61 posts, I can only thank the people who have gotten me here; i love you all"

My Thoughts on the Rough Cut

After officially finishing our rough cut of the music video, I have a few opinions of it, largely positive but not completely positive.

I think more or less all of the shots we have used are perfect and are used in exactly the right spots, and I think it is one of the highlights, showing a lot of promise for the finished product. I am also a big fan of the special effects that we have put in place, they are very good for getting across the style of the music video, as well as including the diamonds and the playing cards, and I really like the impact it makes on the music video as a whole. We have used quite a lot of slow motion in areas, which is both for a stylistic aid and also for helping get things in time where necessary.

On the other hand, the speed of cuts and shots in the beginning of the music video up until the first chorus is very off and I dislike it. I think it moves far too slowly and does not keep the viewers attention. There is a particular shot of Ellie which is very dark and contains her doing nothing which could cause problems in the cinema, as it is so dark and empty that it could turn viewers off right at the very beginning, so we are going to have to change that, which could prove to be very difficult. This is because we have to keep it exciting while keeping in time, and because this section of the song is very slow, it means that there's a clash between the two ideas - slow but exciting.

Finally, I love the way we close our video, capitalising on the idea of using a CCTV effect in the video, we went a step beyond, adding static to the shot, jumping from a shot of us finishing the song to a final shot of an empty room, with the band and the diamonds gone, leaving only the instruments. This works very well and I am pleased with the way in which it has turned out!

All in all our rough cut is very promising and I am very hopeful of the final cut, because I believe that once we have sorted out all of these problems, we will have a very strong music video that is very close to what we originally set out to do. Cushty!

Previous Plans

In previous posts I have discussed the plan for the video and what we're going to do, this predictably isn't accurate and we've changed stuff.

I mentioned many times about lots of diamonds (as have the others in my group) around the set and sparkling, whilst we have a strong focus on the diamonds, there are only 3 and they don't particularly fill the screen as I had imagined.

In parallel to that, we also included things we had not planned, we focused a lot on cards in the video and royal family masks which we hadn't planned. We wanted robber-style clothing and disguises which we couldn't get, however, I do think the masks add a nice vibe to the video.

Tuesday Plan

In this lesson we are planning to perfect our rough cut, we are going to change filters and add effects, also changing some shots that seem out of place.

We will try to change a few shots into black and white in order to see the effect and see if it makes the video look more professional. We would like to finish the video today, however, realistically we think we'll still be tweaking on Thursday.

The Final Deadline - The Final Week - The Final Countdown

Here we are at the races Group 10 coming round the far side, far side, Group 10 Group 10 on the inside track going for the win followed closely by Group 9 Group 9 falling behind and GROUP 10 CROSSES THE LINE AND WIN THE GRAND NATIONAL.

Coming into the last week is going to be a very nerve wracking time, with us having to have a very good idea that  the video we have is the music video we are sure we want to use. This is because we have used a lot of effects and therefore we have to be very precise, ensuring  that the editing effects we have used are both the correct ones as well as being at the correct time, which means painstakingly going through every second and making sure it's just right and up to the standard we expect.

Some Target Audience Feedback

Some target audience feedback on our rough cut from an old pal and former McNolan

Always Working [We Can't Stop]

-thanks to Maria

Skills Development #2

Since the last encounter with Final Cut Pro I have definitely learnt a few more skills.

For one, I have found out about adding easy colour filters and tints, which is very nice.

I have also been able to witness how to merge two videos together to play at the same time whilst seeing them both, this is a very nice technique and I hope to use it in the future too. (this is shown in the last section of our rough cut)

here's an example with images, going from one to two:

Before Final Deadline

With the final deadline just a week away and our rough cut only just finished, I've decided to look at what we could improve on it.

The beginning, as said by teachers and target audience, needs the most work. We started with it and got to grips with Final Cut therefore it's the worst bit, seeming as we got better at editing as we worked through the video. This is also backed up by the filters and integration of fading a separate video onto another.

Some shots are also cut too quickly or too late. This can be easily fixed so that's fine. The parts where we have singing or instruments playing when there isn't any music to match it though will be more difficult as we'll need to find other shots to fill those spaces.

My Own Response to the Roughcut

While we already have feedback from our teachers and on Tuesday will be getting some feedback from people in our target audience, I thought I would just post on what I thought about it and what I think needs fixing. Here was our rough cut:










While overall I am happy with it and think it has turned out pretty much how we planned and wanted it to, there are a number of things that we need to work on. For starters, the beginning. The beginning of the song is slow and we found it a little harder to edit for the slow paced part of the song. Also only one member of the band is performing at this point so while in the rough cut we have cuts to like Ellie moving her hair or just sitting there looking bored, I think we will need to change these in the final edit to something that looks more appropriate and professional. Another problem with the beginning is that as the pace picks up we attempted to have our editing quicken as well but for whatever reason it looks wrong. I think because the cuts aren't in time with the beat of the song, so this is another part we will look to fixing. Our teacher also mentioned this as something that needs to be fixed as well as the shot of the diamond which she said either needs to be shorter or longer because it looks out of place, which I agree with.

Another feature from the rough cut myself and my group want to change is the colour effects we have used. One of the first things we did (which was a mistake looking back on it) was to edit the colours of our base tracks. We don't like the colours now and are probably going to make the whole thing, or at least part of it, black and white, as we had originally planned. So we will be taking off the effects we already put on and either re-editing the colours or making it black and white.

One final point is I think we maybe repeat shots a little much and personally I'd like to use a little more slow motion. I think all these changes will be doable with the time we have left so I'd say we are on track to finish our music video the way we want to.

Editing

Using Final Cut Pro again, we have started to edit our video.
I have carried many skills over from last year and my own personal experience with editing programs in order to effectively edit.

In a lesson we got taught about base tracks and how to easily edit them using markers in order to cut with the beat of the song, you can see the use of these in the image below.
In these we can see the different workspaces to use, the preview, the videos and the timeline are key in order to work properly.

Working with a lot more footage at once this year is much easier as we can find errors in some and replace them with other shots so it's very convenient and makes the video look better.

<-- main Final Cut layout

Right here you can see where all the clips were stored, we dragged out the ones we needed into our timeline to edit.

This is the screen where we placed a filter onto our video. We changed the tinting of the image so it looked less bland and the people stood out more.

<-- after the filter

<-- The timeline

Here we also added a CCTV filter onto the video, this helps with out diamond heist theme.

The Rough Cut - WE DID IT!

A Further Update on Editing

Every Thursday me and Ellie have a usually annoying and inconvenient 3 hour gap between our lessons which usually leaves us bored with nothing to do. However, it's been pretty useful recently as we've been able to use that time for editing, which is what we did today. We finished the rough cut and found some new filters and effects such as 'overlay' as well as a way to end the video. This is great news all round but don't you wanna see a badly filmed mobile phone video update direct from this very day? Well then.



"laters motivators"

Editing Rendering Word Cloud

While editing and waiting for the video to render, my mind was racing with potential key words and I just had to write them down.

The Real Finished Rough Cut

This is our real finished rough cut. Think of the one already uploaded as a rough rough cut. 

Rough Cut Deadline - Photos

Rough Cut Feedback

We've recieved feedback on our rough cut now from both teachers. We didn't film them but here was our basic feedback:

• It's good so far
• The beginning needs work
• Dan was not keen on the shots of Ella and Ellie at the beginning and suggested a possible additional base track of Steven as a solution
• Rebecca said that the shot of the diamonds on the cushion at the beginning either needs to be longer or much shorter and generally said the pace at the beginning was a bit slow.
• Also some of the instruments aren't in time with the instruments in the song.
• Aside from that they said everything looked good so far.

I think for the finished version we will have to look at that feedback and address those comments, I would agree that the beginning needs the most work. Obviously our rough cut wasn't of the whole video but the rest of it is coming along. We have another verse, another chorus and then the end of the song so hopefully the full thing will be laid out by the end of Thursday and then we can spend next week adding finishing touches such as effects and generally tidying it up. I think we are on track though.

Rough Cut

Using Final Cut Pro

So far, using Final Cut Pro so far has been an absolute blast, with Maria absolutely dominating it, showing no mercy. We have been not only using the software for cutting, snapping and all that jazz, but also using it as a means of adjusting the contrast of the video and also, making the colours more vibrant and adding a lot of colour and life to the video. This has benefitted us greatly as it has made the video much more exciting and fascinating, which makes it a thrill, a joy and an absolute privilege for us to be in the presence of.

But in all seriousness, the editing process is very long and actually entertaining, with a lot of things we didn't expect coming our way, such as a variety of edits,  this includes the return of a favourite of the McNolanz, reversed shots that play backwards. many cut, such doge. Although, for the most part we have done exactly what we set out to do, which is very good because it means we have been able to retain our original vision, which is very exciting! What team?! JEWELCATS!!

Editing Day 2

MEDIA, a set on Flickr.

Today we are editing again, the rough cut is due in about an hour and a half, scary.
We aren't even half way through so it'll be a tight squeeze. Time is against us, but i'm sure we'll pull through.

These images show us working with Final Cut Pro in order to edit our video.

Outtakes from Filming

I wanted to post about editing but I don't have any of the pictures on my computer but I realised I did have the bloopers from our second day of filming so I thought I might as well post it. Here are some outtakes and bloopers from filming. Who knew that huge novelty masks of the royal family would make everything seem so much funnier

Reflection on Progress Again

Seeing as it's been a while since my last reflection on progress, I figured it was time to do an updated one. Also I got caught up in filming and forgot about the blogging checklist so I'm just making sure I've done all the items on it.

As you can see in my last one, my targets were:

So young.

I think I have addressed each one and my blogging has improved overall as a result. For example, my first target was to use more ICT formats than just GIFs and embedding Youtube clips of existing music videos. I have addressed this by incorporating many more formats such as:

• Creating and editing my own video diaries and uploading them on Vimeo (here),
• Myself and my groups life changing discovery of GoAnimate (here), 
• Online Photo Sharers (here), 
• A different online slideshow sharer to SlideShare called AuthorStream which allows you to retain all your original media in the slideshow (here)
• Etc.

I have also addressed my second target of doing more posts that aren't on the blogging checklist such as my posts on the colours of music videos, or the narrative in our music video for example. Most of them actually, I found the production side easier to blog more freely about.

The third target isn't relevant yet as the blogging deadline isn't for a while  so only time will tell, but generally I think I've got the hang of blogging a bit more now than I did then.

My next two targets are:

1. To blog more regularly, not all in one day. I often get an idea for a blog and then put it off until I either forget or end up doing a lot on one night which can be tiring. So I think I need to do it in moderation but more frequently.
2. To blog more about the editing process. I usually get so focused on the editing I forget to take any pictures or screen shots and then can't really blog about it.

I don't know what updated mark I would give myself, I would hope it would be an improvement on what I got on the last reflection.

Diamond Heist in Media - Films

I was halfway through watching a film 'The Snatch' when I saw some things that looked really similar our Music Video.
The film, starring Jason Statham, Brad Pitt and Benicio Del Toro is quite a boys film, lots of gangsters and stealing and punching.
I've made some GIF's to show you how similar they are:

Like these guys who dressed in disguise as hasidic jews, we too went in disguise but as robbers with royal family masks. We also didn't use violence.








Like us, we had diamonds and we shot the diamond specifically as well. 
In our music video we used 3 diamonds which looked a lot better as they where all different sizes, which also made it look like we stole more (and made it more realistic)






Like us, we also played card games on a card table. We also shot individual shots of us, and we emphasised the cards; but for us we emphasised the diamond cards.


The shots are also very dark to suggest the crime in it all, like us.

TheJewelersVEVO

The Jewelers have officially partnered with VEVO, the multi billion dollar corporation that puts the fun back into funeral! This means we have a base to get our music out on the internet, with a lot of backing from a lifeless corporation and their cold hard cash.

We are able to reach a far wider audience, with people young and old flocking to our channel to listen to our music at any time in any place, making for a very profitabl- I mean musically joyous time for everybody!

We hope to upload content to the page soon, but for now we're just gonna have to get subscribers and settle for nothing!

Update on Progress

I used Slideshare to show you how I think I've progressed over the weeks since I made my last reflective
progress post.
In this slideshare I talk about:

• My Last Post - In this slide I talk about my last post and what I mentioned
• My 3 Improvements - In this slide I talk about my last 3 points 
• My Improvements - In this slide I talk about how I have specifically improved in each point and why
• My 3 New Targets - In this slide I made 3 new targets and made them circle more around the work I'm doing now

Editing [In Pictures]

Update on Social Media

As you can see, (above) We have gained 9 followers since we made the twitter account, and that is a real triumph for the entire group. We have made sure to upload pictures via twitter & Instagram so we keep our fans updated.
(Right) you can see us conversing with the media studies twitter having a grand old time and making sure we keep the media department as updated and 'in the know' with our filming dates.