Cutting to the beat

I chose to cut a section from the film 'Avengers- the final battle' to the song 'Human' by Rag N Bone Man





What I have learnt from this task-

• This task reminded me how to use final cut pro, and tools such as 'blade' and 'trim'
• This task also helped me learn how to cut to the beat of a song

What I found hard-
I found it hard cutting the clip to the beat exactly as the beats are short so the timeline had to be stretched in order for it to done done properly

The skills I have learnt from this task has helped me develop my creativity skills as it made more familiar with the tools and options I have to edit my video e.g. by using the blade tool I can create jump cuts

Risk assesment

I have created a risk assessment stating all the potential risks that could occur during filming and how to avoid them, this will be really helpful when creating my music video and I will print off a copy so we know how to prevent any risks from occurring on the day

Ancillary task ideas

Using 'notes' on my computer, I typed down any ideas that came to mind

Inspiration- album advert

What was this task:
I searched online for album adverts and put together a collection of the adverts I liked the most

What I have learnt
From this task I have taken inspiration from preexisting album adverts, and this has helped me decide what what type of things I would like to include in mine

Things I liked-
- The change of colour/ darkening at the bottom- this is common in all of these adverts and it is clear where the information is as well as using coloured text to bring the whole poster together
- The use of a different font for the artist name- makes it stand out
- similar colour palette- it's not overwhelming to look at
- dates, reviews and hit songs

more relavent isolation practice

I needed to make sure that this idea will actually work before we develop it further

the first video is just the writing in colour, we then re edited the same video so that both the pen and writing were in colour- we did this to see if we could make it so more than one object of the same colour would pick up with the colour selection tool

we tried this with the the red pen, and during editing we realised that it was too close to skin colour and colour of table. In order to avoid this and ensure that we could use the tool correctly (before we filmed it all) we made the background white and tested the multiple colour pens to find out what ones would work the best against skin colour and stand out and which ones are similar.

I found this task really helpful because testing the colour has meant that we now know the best ones to use, I personally think that the red is the boldest colour against a black and white background, it just means that we can't use colours such as orange and pink as it may pick them up due to their similarity. I also found out that you can't use shade of a similar colour to either the skin or another colour.

When considering choosing a colour i was also aware of what each colours meant  after conducting some research on it, this is a photo I found online that summarises what each colour can be associated with

Colour isolation

What was this task?
The task is an experiment to test if it was possible to colour isolate on final cut pro

Problems encountered and how to solve them
As the coloured trousers have the same colour as the paint, the isolation tool had picked up the colours and colour was exposed in more places than than wanted. This problem is easy to solve as it just means that in our music video the actress should wear plain coloured clothing such as: black or white to avoid colour confusion.

This is the video we watched to learn the process of colour isolation on 'Final Cut Pro X' 

Location and costume

Costume-

The idea is that the costume isn't distracting and will stand out once we have post processed  our footage onto final cut pro. Taking this into consideration, we have decided to dress our actress in plain tight clothing, consisting of a black vest top, leggings and socks.

Location-
We are only using one location as we don't want to distract from our idea, we have chosen to film the entire music video against a white wall.

About the actress in our video

casting

This is how we casted our actress, this wasn't an wasn't an easy process as there weren't many people who were willing to give up their time to film or they were quite camera shy, therefore very unwilling

Chosen artist research: Alessia Cara mood board

I have created a mood board of products, pictures and competitors of Alessia Cara, this was interesting as it meant I could gather iconography of the type of person she is, this includes her style and see how this relates to her music. In all her photos she is wearing casual relaxed clothing e.g. T-shirts, jeans and converse, this casual look keeps her looking as if she is just 'one of us' and there is a link between her music and the way she dresses as both portray a message in her morals and who she is a person

Looking at her competitors was useful as it meant that i could look at her competition and see how they compare to Alessia. One of the ways she majors differently from the other artists is that she doesn't look all glamorous and this may be appealing to her audience, and we should carry this casualness across to the music video as it would help our audience relate to the artist and her music together

Swede

This is the swede we created for Rachel platten's 'fight song'

What the song is about
The song is not about love, its about getting over a rough patch, this resembles our chosen song a lot therefore we thought it would be very appropriate to use

What went wrong:
In the time we were given, we didn't complete the swede, we don't know whether this was because we was a person down or we underestimated the number of locations and shots we would need:

To improve:
Finish the shot by shot/ storyboards before moving onto making the video, otherwise, it is all incomplete and harder to work with as you have to refer to the music video more than paperwork which would have been all written out and in front of us (foolproof)

Storyboards from swede

We didn't get round to finishing the story boards the the swede, this affected us majorly as our swede is incomplete

From not completing this task, I have learnt-

• It makes it harder to complete the music video as we have to refer to the music video itself, not our work and this takes longer as you have to constantly check the minor details e.g. the correct angle, time and effect
• The importance of completing storyboards, so when it comes to the planning of the production of my music video, I will have to complete them before filming so I know what my shot should look like

sweede shot by shot

As our swedes shot by shot is incomplete, so was our swede

What I have learnt:

• before we film our actual music video, our shot-by-shot list will have to be completed, as if our shot by shot was completed, we would have finished our music video.
• The importance of a shot-by-shot
• How to make a shot-by-shot (what it includes and what information is needed)

Permissions

Before we could film, we had to ensure that we had permission from the record label (to use her music), the owner of the location (asking if it was ok to use her property) and the actress herself (to see if she would be ok to have paint used on her skin)

These are the email exchanges:

In this email, I have emailed the record label that Alessia Cara belongs to (Def Jam) asking them if it would be ok to use our chosen song for our coursework, the email explains how we will recreate the music video and upload it onto youtube.

As we are using one female over the age of 16, we don't need parental consent for their child to be filmed, also, as we are using one of the directors houses rather than a public area, we don't need permission to use our filming space.

We have contacted Laura Jackson asking for her permission:

 To which she replied informing us that we would be able to use her house to film

We then contacted Hannah (our actress) asking for consent to use paint on her body, ensuring her that it is skin safe and washable, here's the record of our emails

animatic of story board

Once I had created the storyboards, i wanted to get more of an idea of what the music video might look like (very roughly) I did this by taking individual photos from each frame of the story board and putting them together in shot order and not keeping each shot on the screen for very long, this is my final result

Storyboards

These are the storyboards for the music video we are going to create, I made these following the guidelines from my 'storyboarding for dummies' task and this was my result:

Storyboarding for dummies!

I created an animation on 'powtoon' explaining how to create a storyboards and what does in each box

How was this useful
This was useful as it helped me when creating story boards of my own as I knew what i needed to have and how to create one, knowing what to title each box and what goes in each one

shot-by-shot

What is a shot-by shot?

A shot by shot is a list of shot numbers with the time of each shot, written details about it and the lyrics that will go behind it

Why did I create one?
After having an incomplete shot-by-shot, it would be easier in the production of my music video as it is set out clearly what the shot is need to film looks like (it has a clear description) and to what lyrics/ part of the song we should film to

Alessia Cara- Competitor Wordle

What was the task
To create a competitor wordle for Alessia Cara's (our chosen artist) competitors

What was the use of this task
This task helped me to understand and identify the competitors of our chosen artist, having this, we can then watch music videos from rival artists and listen to their music to understand how we can ensure our music video will stand out from the rest

Amendedments made to the treatment (using our feedback)

Having listened to target audience, I have amended my treatment so that it would suit my target audience better

The main thing that was changed was we became certain that the target audience believed that blue is the best colour to have out of red, green and blue to use as colour isolation this is due to the meaning and the universality of the colour

When researching myself, the meaning of the colour blue, I agree with the target audience that blue is the best colour- I especially think that dark blue is the way to go as this article says it 'represents knowledge, power, integrity and seriousness.

Other conformations the feedback assured us:

• It was ok to film in one location and keep it interesting (as long as we used interesting angles, effects and camera movements)
• It was ok to use one person 
• The idea was effective and the target audience understood our message

treatment

This is the treatment I have created having listened to our target audience feedback on our 3 potential treatment ideas

What is a treatment?
A treatment is a guideline used by the creators of the music video to understand what the music video should look like and is used to express an idea in detail.

Why is this useful to me?
Creating this treatment was really useful to me as it helped me collect my ideas together write them down so that I got a better understanding of what my music video might look like and shape it together

I will now receive feedback on this treatment to see whether our target audience are happy with the treatment for the music video we will create/ if they would like to see any changes

target audience research

What was this task

This task was to state my target audience and understand more about them and how/ what I can do so that I can appeal to them

What I learnt from this task

• The type of audience my work is aimed at
• How I can appeal to them- through the use of social media and articles in current teen magazines
• What types of audiences are most likely to watch my music video
• What social grade they would fall into and how I can use this to ensure that my product is affordable for this type of audience
• Theories I need to consider when creating my work- Uses and Gratifications 

Record company research

What was this task?
This task was to research into Alessia Caras record label

Why was this task useful?
This task was useful as it meant that I could understand the demands of her record label and take this into consideration when making the music video, it also showed me other artists who were a part of this label which taught me what type of music and artists they sign on

Feedback on treatment ideas

This is our primary target auidence feedback on our 3 initial treatment ideas


From this feedback I can confirm that:

• treatment 3 was the most liked treatment- therefore will be the one we will extend on
• The only way a single character would work is if there was the inclusion of interesting effects such as colour isolation
• Treatment 2 would be hard to gain consent from loads of people
• Treatment 2 could get boring as it can get repetitive 
• Treatment 2- might not get the reactions you want to get
• Some colour is needed- doesn't have to all be in colour
• Conceptual with a message is good as its nice to have a meaning behind it all
• Idea needs structure
• Needs varied angles and shots but dont over do it 
• Treatment 3- most creative

Using this research, I will develop on treatment number 3 and include some of the ideas that have been mentioned by my target audience