Ice Technique...

Ages ago we were all watching some different music videos on YouTube together and came across a very interesting technique that we could very easily recreate for our own music video. The start of the video we were watching (Traktor - Wretch 32) showed a water forming into 32 on a black surface and we thought it looked very effective so we decided to film heart shaped blocks of ice as they melted and then reverse and speed up the footage to make it look as though the hearts were forming out of nothing.

This Prezi shows the process of creating the heart shaped ice holders;

Ice & Paper Mache on Prezi

After this we made the ice hearts, set them up on Charlotte's roof on a sunny day and (with the aid of a hair dryer) filmed the ice hearts melting. However, when we tried to speed it up on iMovie it was still 7 minutes long at the fastest possible speed, so we dragged the footage across to Final Cut Express and we were then able to speed up the footage to the right speed. Here is a video of us editing the ice hearts melting!;

here is our final product!;

I think this will look really effective in our music video if we edit it correctly to the right part of the music.

A bit of Audience Feedback...

Whilst we were editing today there were a few other people in the media room that saw what we were doing with the stop motion of the Soundboard and everyone seemed to really like that particular part of our video! Nice to hear positive feedback and see how people who haven't been staring at the footage for hours react to it!



Soon we are going to get a group of people to watch our most recent draft and film their responses on the flip camera to put onto our blogs.

Editing/Drafts...

We've just been editing our music video on the new iMacs that we have in our Media Studies room and here is what we have done so far on iMovie! Once we are happy with what we have done on iMovie we will eventually move it all over to the iMac that has Final Cut Pro on it in order to make the final touches on the video.

Today I have spent quite a while trying to fit the stop motion parts that we had edited previously into the blank spaces we had in our music video and as a group we edited the stop motion of the Soundboard and Charlotte and Sarah continued to edit the build up of the song with the flashing black transitions towards the end of the song, just like in this existing music video by The Wombats for their song Let's Dance To Joy Division;

Here is a still shot from The Wombats' video and the similar one in our own video that we created;

(although it's hard to see on a print screen of the videos but the shots gradually get darker until it looks as though they are flashing black)

We thought this technique would be perfect for the build up of the song in our music video as it is a simple way to gradually build up the momentum and pace of the video after taking it right down for the bridge, etc.

Here is the latest draft of our music video with black screens where we need to fill in with new footage;

I am really pleased with what we have done so far but obviously there is still a bit more footage that we need to slot into the blank spaces in our music video, but so far I am really pleased with how it has all worked out.

I've found that as a group we have had more differences in creative opinion with this year's work than we ever did in our AS foundation portfolio work; but I think this just shows how developed our skills have become, as we are all striving to produce the best possible music video. Even though we sometimes disagree on some aspects of the editing, etc. it has been a good thing because we have had a chance to really think through every single thing we do in our production of the music video.

Filming!!

On Tuesday 11th January we finally began filming some of the different shots for our music video at my house. We began by filming some simple shots of Charlotte (our main character in the video) putting on her make-up whilst looking directly at the camera as if it were a mirror. We wanted her make up to be quite bold with dark smoky eye make-up and red lips. This was because we wanted to hint at the fact that she wants to seduce the vocalist so we also put her in a bodycon dress which emphasises her femininity.

After this we wanted to film the shots of Charlotte laying down on the floor in a pile of magazine/newspaper cuttings with random hand drawn images laid beneath her. We wanted lots of random strange images on the floor around her to suggest the idea that she is a strange obsessive fan that draws photos of those she is obsessed with.
This shot composition was inspired by Paramore's video for their song 'Only Exception' shown below;



The filming ran very smoothly and we were very happy with the outcome as we also managed to come up with new shot ideas as we went along and improvised.

For example, these two examples of stop motion that we have edited already of the bass guitar with lip marks all over it and the drawings and photos of men piled up on top of each other.
The bass guitar is going to be a significant factor in our music video as we came up with the idea of the obsessive fan stealing the lead singers guitar because of the line in the song 'She stole my karma, oh no'. So we want to film a shot of her stealing the guitar after the vocalist has put it down and then the kisses suggest her obsession with him. Here is the editing we have done so far;

Stop Motion with Guitar;

Stop Motion with Paper;