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.

Shot Composition, Framing and the Rule of Thirds...

As media students it is essential for us to understand how to frame a shot correctly to ensure the composition is right. There are obviously many different ways of framing a shot and there are multiple factors that have to be taken into consideration. For example, the movement of the camera, the mise-en-scene, depth of field, the background and foreground etc.

Here is a video that explains the rule of thirds;

Being a photography student as well as a media studies student has been really helpful when it comes to framing shots for our films. Here is an example of someone's photographs with the rule of thirds framing over it;

Storyboard Video...

When we went on our trip to RichMix and had a presentation about the production of promotional music videos, we got told it was a good idea not only to draw out our storyboard on paper for when we begin filming, but to also take stills of each storyboard image and edit them to the song in order to get an idea of the pace and feel of the music video we will be producing.

Here are our original storyboard sheets;

And here is the video we edited of the different storyboard pictures to the music;

(The first shot will actually be a split screen with the different instruments appearing on screen as they come in on the song. In this way the first shot will not actually be as long as it looks on this storyboard video!)



After creating this preparation video of the storyboard images, we could see where we would need to slightly change and develop our ideas, as the pace is too slow or too fast in some parts of the song.
This task was extremely helpful for our project as we now know how we want to change our initial plans.

Shot Composition Practice...

Today we went to our school hall to see whether or not we would be able to get away with using that stage for our performance shots in the video or whether or not it looked to big, but we decided that if we did our video in black and white it might look more believable (whilst we could also emphasize the main character by selecting the red colour of her shoes against black and white) so we tried out the bands positioning on the stage by miming the different instruments, here's the video we made Sarah was lead vocals, I was guitar, Charlotte was bass and Aimie was on drums;