Filming blog 1

       For this blog, I am going to talk about how I started filming. We filmed some of the music video on Saturday. Originally we weren't going to film on Saturday but in a spur of the moment we ended up filming. So on Saturday Zeke and I was hanging out and we decided we should get some of our music video filmed. So we called Peter and our friend Sydney to come to film at Young Circle. Originally, Zeke and I were going to bike there from Zekes, but we ended up taking a car to get there because of the equipment. We brought the tripod, camera, and guitar. We arrived at Young Circle at sundown and we sat and waited for Peter and Sydney to come. When they came we set everything up and we were ready to film. Then we realized something major. The camera wasn't charged.
    When we saw that the camera wasn't charged we got scared. We raced around the whole park scrambling for a charger port. We came out unlucky. When we realized we couldn't use the camera we put everything away and decided to use our phones. At first, we were going to use Peter's phone but we ended up using mine. The reason we used my phone because its an iPhone 8+ and it can record 4K video. Now we had everything sat up.
    For all of the filming done, we followed the storyboard. Zeke played the singer and our friend Sydney was Delilah. Peter and I filmed the music video. So for the first couple of shots, I directed where everyone needed to go and Peter filmed it. Halfway through shooting Peter had to leave so I took over. We did most of the things right with a few miss shots here and there but we got half of the project done. After we finished that Sydney and Zeke had to leave so we all went home.

Story board for music video

For our second blog, we are finishing our story board and writing about what we drew and did. The story board was no different then our last project. We planned out between us what we wanted our commercial to look like and what scenes we wanted to include. It took us a while to agree on how we wanted to film our scene but in the end we came through. The only difference is that because this video is considerably longer, so  is our story board. Instead of 6 slides, we made 12. We began by watching the original video to get some ideas. The whole video revolves around the idea of a distance relationship and the love they share. Our video complements this in the idea that when Delilah thinks hard enough about her true love, he will appear. That's exactly what goes on in our story board.
      For our first slide, it shows a man singing on his guitar sitting on a stool. The back ground is blank and he's alone with the lyrics of his song. The second slide brings us the park, or "New York." The dark sky, with the many lights lighting it up. Just like New York. This is when Delilah appears on our third slide. She's walking on the path as she thinks of of her true love some where far away. She passes a tree and the sound of her true loves voice fills the air. She turns towards the tree and see's nothing but a normal tree. It was in her head she assumes in this 6th slide. We get a medium close up of her confused expression on the 6th slide as well. It happens again in the 7th slide. His voice fills the air except this time it sounds closer. Almost real. She turns around again just to see nothing but air again in the 8th slide. She sits on a nearby bench and cries. She regrets leaving him and misses him with everything she has. She lifts her head and there he stands. He flew all the way to her and surprised her. The other times she thought she heard him may have been in her head but this time it was real. Their love brought each other together again. They hug and set down the path of lights holding hands while humming the song he made for her together.

Planning for media studies

 Coming into our next project, we have a lot of new variables to consider. These variables include location, health and safety, props, costumes, and finally our schedule. Being that our music video will have a dark kind of gloomy feel, we plan to have our variables work along with this tone. For the location, we know that we want it somewhere dark with a lot of little and pretty lights. This is as close we will get to a New York feel. A place where we know we can get this is Young Circle. Young Circle has a lot of different environment types and we plan to use all of them. From the park, to the little restaurants that surround the circle. We will be filming in a public place and people will surround us adding to the effect of a big city. With this said, some health and safety precautions must be in play while filming. For starters there will be a lot of people potentially with intentions to steal camera equipment or harm us. We will make sure our parents come and supervise while we our filming. A First aid kit will also be on site because we plan to perform a few small stunts by our actor/singer. This may include climbing a tree or sitting on a high wall. We obviously aren't gonna have our actor/singer playing the air guitar so we will be bringing a guitar. That's pretty much it for props. That brings us to costumes. We will be dressing our girl actor with regular modern clothing and our male singer/actor in modern clothing. The clothing will be the same as always. The song was made recently so the singers and actors should match the time period.
      Being that this is a time sensitive project, we have to follow very strict timelines on certain due dates throughout the two week period. We started on 11/14. Song choice, and genre convention. This was not a problem because we as a group easily picked a song. 11/20 is our planning blog. Well because i'm doing it right now and not having a problem with it, it will be turned in as planned. 11/25 will be the time to turn in our filming blog. I felt this was one of the easier blogs on our last project so turning this one in on time I think will be the easiest. We'll simply do our filming and right the processes. 12/6 is the final due date. This I know will be turned in on time because if not it will have an extreme impact on my grade. As a group, the need to finish this project and turn it in on time is a responsibility that we feel the need to fulfill. All the other turn in dates after are straight forward. You do what you have to do and turn it in on time. Should be no problem. If we do run into the possibility that we can't turn in a project on time we will pass the responsibility to one of our three group members. Either way, we will not accept a failing grade on one of our due dates and will exercise any way to make sure we do well.   

Intro/research to Music Video

    Since the commercial is now done we can now start our new project. This project we are starting now is a music video. But things are a little different. Zeke and I decided to split groups with Roscoe and Paige. Paige and Roscoe usually got into a lot of arguments with us on what we wanted to do so we decided that it was best for us to split up. Now we also have a new addition to our group. We wanted to add Peter to our group because he was alone and he is a hard-worker so we wanted to partner with him. For this project, we have to create a one minute & 15-second music video. We are going to it in the alternative rock genre. We are also going to film outside of school so this genre works well with what we're trying to do.

    The music video we are doing is The Plain White T's "Hey There Delilah". It is a good fit for this because we know a little about this song and this genre. Since this music video will be filmed outside of school we have a lot of creativity with this video. The song is about lovers who moved far away. We plan to make the music video similar to the real music video but not a carbon copy. We like the idea of the singer singing to his lover and the lover singing back in different frames. 

    Like I said before the song is apart of the genre alternative rock or "pop-rock". We've looked through many different pop-rock music videos and gathered information on some conventions. We've noticed a lot in the genre is that singers are singing to different people. With this most of the camera angles/ shots include but are not limited to, close-ups, tracking shots, establishing shots, eye level, and dutch shots. We also saw a lot of pan shots like flash pans, zooms, and tracking. The sound we found was pretty straight forward and a lot of singing. For editing, there were a lot of jump cuts and split screens. We also identified all the CLAMPS in this project.

1. Costumes- The costumes the used were usually suits, pants, and formal clothes.

2. Lighting- The lighting was very colorful or gloomy.

3. Actors- For actors, it was either the two people singing to each other or some background dancers.

4. Music- The music was the music the video was about.

5. Props- Depending on the settings props changed from guitars to beach balls or stools even. It was completely depended on the setting.

6 Setting- the rhythm of the song commonly decided the setting. The setting changed based on the speed or the meaning of the song.

Editing (again)

         Tuesday and today we got some work done on our editing. Since the other days, the desktops wouldn't load pinnacle studios so we got laptops. Since the computers weren't working that day we ended up saving all our files to a flash drive. So on Tuesday, we needed to start working to finish before the due date for today.
        So the first thing we did was get our laptops. I checked out our laptop from the cart and then we started working on the editing. The computer was pretty slow so we waited a while for it to turn on and load. Eventually, Paige was able to log on and we started our work. We plugged in the flash drive and opened up pinnacle studios. Even though it took a long time to load up, it worked. First, we imported all our files onto the editor and started arranging it on the timeline. Then we detached the audio and started recording our voiceovers. We added text to our commercial and class was almost over. Then we saved all our work to the flash drive, I put our computer back and we left class.
          Today we tried finishing editing but nothing would work. So today we had a substitute teacher and we had to finish our work. The laptop cart was there so we were able to work on our commercial. I checked out and got our computer and Paige signed into it. When we plugged in the flash drive everything was working smoothly. Until we opened up pinnacle studios. It was extremely slow and we could barely do anything. We realized that we wouldn't be able to finish our work on time so we went and got a new laptop.  This laptop was a little bit faster but we still weren't able to get much done. But since today was a PSD we only had 45-minute classes and we had to leave early. We logged out of both computers and returned them and left class.