A Note About The Shot Sequence List

I can only apologise but my scanner/ printer has stopped working so I am unable to complete the task of putting up the shot sequences today that I have in fact finished. However, they will definitely be up tomorrow because I am having a new one delivered then so I shall put them up straight away.

Schedule List

Schedule List

Risk Assessment

Jess' House
Risk: Tripping over equipment
People at risk: 1 band member and 1 crew member
Precautions to take: Hide any loose wires on set- if that is not possible indicate clearly that they are there, keep set organised

Risk: Falling equipment or props
People at risk: 1 band member and 1 crew member
Precautions to take: Ensure all equipment and props are secure, stay away from equipment and props when they are not in use

Auburn Place
(Same as above)

Car Park
Risk: Moving vehicles
People at risk: 4 bands members and 4 crew members
Precautions to take: Make sure there is someone designated on set to watch for car entering and leaving the car park

Risk: Sitting in substances such as petrol or oil
People at risk: 4 bands members and 4 crew members
Precautions to take: Check the area has no spills of substances on the floor before the band members sit down

Barn
Risk: Falling off bike
People at risk: Band member Steve
Precautions to take: He must take care when on the bike and not go too fast, it must only be used when filming

Forest
Risk: Running into trees because of darkness
People at risk: 4 bands members
Precautions to take: Ensure that the set is well lit and band get familiar with their surroundings

Caravan
(Same as Jess' House)

Harry's Garden
Risk: Falling down the hill
People at risk: Band member Steve
Precautions to take: Brief him before shot 50 and tell him he must not run down the hill to fast and band members mustn't push too hard

Risk: Crashing lawn mower/ falling out
People at risk: 4 band members
Precautions to take: Only have the band in the lawm mower when filming and only persons with a driving license are able to use it

Risk: Injury on the trampoline
People at risk: 4 band members
Precautions to take: Band members are not allowed to jump too high and must not mess around when the crew are not filming

Boat
Risk: Falling out of boat
People at risk: 4 band members
Precautions to take: Brief the band to tell them they must take care when in the boat and no sudden movements which could cause them to slip

Pool
Risk: Electrocution
People at risk: 4 bands members and 4 crew members
Precautions to take: Keep all wires away from water, don't allow any one to touch the wires

Risk: Injuries when in the pool
People at risk: 4 band members
Precautions to take: Check the pool has the correct depth before jumping in, brief the band before they enter the pool- explain exactly what they have to do and they must not mess around as they could injure themselves

Risk: Slipping over
People at risk: 4 bands members and 4 crew members
Precautions to take: Everyone must walk with care and there must be no running

Representation- Who/ What?

The people who are set to be in our music video are 3 males and 1 females, all with the 'indie' styling and trying to boast a uniqueness about themselves. There is a lead singer Steve who we want to appear very charismatic, the drummer Will who will stick to his flannel shirts, Lewis on guitar who we hope to become infamous for his hats and there's Georgia also on guitar who will be a dominant female of the group yet still managing to fit in with the guys and not dressing to attract attention. By using members of both sex they can represent both genders of many of the young British population. The genre of indie is becoming very popular amongst the vast population of teens and 20 year olds in the UK, so by using a stereotypical band of the genre, our audience will be able to relate to what they are wearing, singing and what they're getting up to in the video. You will see the band getting up to all sorts of fun activities. We hope this will give the overall representation of a band that are full of high spirits, are a spontaneous group and are always having fun and laughing with each other.

Where

We have 4 main locations for our music video and then about 5 sub locations, we chose to have 4 main ones and keep going back to them so the viewer has somewhat as an anchor to the music video and because it is going to contain disjuncture and be experimental in terms of props we all agreed that there should be something the viewer can come back too. All of these locations are seen in the 'indie' style music video especially a barn which we see allot in low key productions. The caravan and the pool we thought would be something different to set us apart from other A2 groups as we felt they possibly didn't have access to locations like this (but we did make sure that we fitted scenes in them and that they weren't just for show). Our 4th location has the most disjuncture out of all the locations; first of all its a boat on land in a Gardena which you can imagine is a strange and uncommon site to behold. further more we are using the boat as a 'Hawaiian part scene' which is a bit of a juxtaposition in October in England. The sub locations are all 'fun' locations that are more common such as a car park and trampoline but nevertheless we have managed to keep them in line with the feel of the music video.

Briefly hitting on the props, we have used these solely to add the disjuncture feeling;  nowhere in the lyrics does it mention and Monkey, Tiger, Banana or Doctor yet we have them in our music video. But thats not all of the interesting props but you'll have to wait for the final peice to see them in full!

Representation - How?

As we have created an indie/alternative band, it is common for there to be approximately 4 or 5 band members, because of this we have chosen to have 4. We are representing the 4 members of the band as a group by the way in which we have one lead singer, Steve, two guitarists, Lewis and Georgia, and a drummer, Will; each person has a specific role in the band.
Due to the members consisting of 3 males and 1 female, we have chosen to not make the female, Georgia, stand out too much as otherwise the attention would be taken away from the idea of a band of 4. The ways we have shown that Georgia will not stand out during the video are that, firstly she will be wearing black shorts and black tights to blend with the dark trousers/jeans that the males will be wearing. She also joins in with all the activities in the music video, showing that the band all get along well and she feels like she fits in. The only time during the video where Georgia is the odd one out is when Steve, Lewis and Will are skateboarding etc, this is purely because these activities are not among Georgias talents.
Our representation of the band is shown through all of our posts, relating to photo shoots, band profiles, storyboard and other band-related posts.

Representation - Why?

Our music video has nine different locations and explores disjuncture with hints of performance and illustration. We have chosen to do this as it is the most suitable for our genre and the most conventional of the indie/alternative genre we are aiming for. During discussions of band members, we picked four of the most suitable (of many) that we thought could work well together, with good time management skills but finally, and most importantly, looked the part. The combinations of fashions of these four people are appropriate for our genre and really capture the "kitchen sink indie" that Little Comets are widely known for. We have looked and chosen carefully these nine locations as we believe it is quality in music videos, not quantity and this will allow us to use more technical kit, such as better lighting etc. as we will have to transport it less. We have also considered how many cameras to use and we are using at least 2 a majority of the time, as this will give us more angles and better shots overall if everything is being filmed from two angles.

The Animatic

This is the animatic for our video One Night In October for The Skeleton boys, we used the storyboard and then created the frames in Adobe Premiere Pro.

Final Storyboard Drawings

As a group we all worked together on multiple occasions to gather ideas for our storyboard; we would make lists of different props we had in mind as well to plan some shots around. We have varied the locations well throughout our storyboard so that the main few are used equally (apart from the barn as a lot of performance is filmed there). We ended up with approximately 122 shots at our last count, some of which are repeated due to lyric repetition and some just purely because of the set-up of the shots.
Myself and Meg worked on the drawings (as we are the more artistic two  of the group), but Joe and Harry also came up with some excellent ideas such as the sleeping bag race, the coffin, and the stop motion sections involving instruments.
Below are scanned images of the entire storyboard to show a visual idea of the detail and amount of drawings that we worked on. 

Props

Props are a key convention of music videos; props can be anything from costumes to instruments to toys. 

Although this music video is not of our genre, it is a particularly outstanding video in terms of props, the whole location is a fantasy world so therefore a lot of props were needed to make it look realistic and as if the actors and performers were actually there.

Another example I have found of a music video that features disjuncture as well as multiple props is a Foals video, to the song 'Olympic Airways'; this song is more suited to our genre also...

To add to this I have Tubechopped a short clip from the video of which shows the exact idea of 'random objects'.

In our music video there are are number of props we are hoping to incorporate, we have drawn them all up in our storyboard and included rough sketches of the ideas of props but on the day these could vary slightly due to accessibility. We have looked at the idea of using random objects (in a previous post focusing on The Maccabees - First Love video), so this is where our inspiration for the objects has come from. 

I have formed a list of out final decision of which props we will use:

Tiger, banana, monkey and doctor full costumes;

Hawaiian skirts, feather boas, flowers, masks;

Sit-down lawnmower, skateboards;

Drums, guitars, microphone (+ stand), tambourine, drum sticks, picks;

Colander, balloons;

Tent, bunkbeds;

Research on Andrew Goodwin

Andrew goodwin theorist

View more presentations from Harry Tibbles.

Examples of other texts- Benny Hill style

 We recently included a shot in our storyboard that involved Steve in a monkey costume chasing Georgia in a banana costume and I immediately pictured what I wanted it to look like. I could picture the classic Benny Hill theme that was used for his sketches when he would be seen chasing women around.



The video I found above of one of his famous sketches doesn't use the same infamous tune, but that doesn't particularly matter because the music in the shot will obviously be our chosen song, Little Comets- One Night In October. The short sketch shows him attempting different ways to impress women and essentially chasing them. The technique I had pictured in my mind when making the section of the chase in our video is the chase would be sped up and they'd be running back and forwards, on and off screen and in all sorts of directions.

I also think these Benny Hill sketches are full of energy and fun, which I know I keep mentioning a lot, but I really want that idea of the band being full of young spirit and slightly mischievous and incorporated this idea could boost that idea!

Music videos where this sketch, or inspiration from this sketch has taken place in can be found in various music videos. This clip I have chosen has been taken from Blur's video for Country House. Here it sticks to the same idea of a male chasing females, with them running in all sorts of directions and the shots are sped up.

Trying To Picture The Mise En Scene

In this pool we decided when story boarding that we'd like to have the band in here on inflatables. To get the mise en scene right, we'd obviously remove the cover, clear things away from around the side to give us more space to get long shots or use multiple cameras and put four inflatables. The lighting in here also seems to be quite dim so we'll have to sort that out with flood lights perhaps to get it more brighter in there.



The caravan will be used for two ideas, and that is a basic performance and 'messing around'. To get the correct mise en scene in here we will obviously need to tidy it up a bit and boost the lighting inside. An idea I  have just had is we could fill it up with balloons (but obviously only on the floor so the band can fit in) but I wont make any decisions myself and instead I shall discuss the idea with the group so we can decide together.



The barn is where the majority of the bands performance will take place. In here, we will have a microphone and stand, drums, and either two guitars or one guitar and bass. They will be performing in the biggest room. We currently haven't thought about including anything else in the shot to create a strong mise en scene.



I understand it will be quite hard to picture anything happening here but we do have an idea and would like to film a lot of shots here. Our idea is to film here when it's dark, clear up the area so there will only be the boat in the shot and put up coloured fairy lights around the trees. However, this wont be enough to light up the whole shot so once again we will have to use flood lights.

Researching Camera Angles For A Performance

We are currently roughly half way through our storyboard and we already have a lot of performance shots included so I thought it would be a good idea to research some performance shots so we could stay as conventional to our genre as possible. A video I am familiar with, suitable for my research and in fact what I believe to be a cracking video is the Arctic Monkeys- A View From The Afternoon. Even though the only instrument that is played during the performance, I think we could use the ideas for other instruments and even the lead singer with his microphone. The video is simple about a male playing drums throughout the day and into the night. He comes across distractions and people trying to stop him playing but he never gives up. The majority of the shots are of him playing and they use many different angles which makes the video so brilliant.




The first shot I have chosen focus' more on the person playing the instrument than the actual instrument. It starts off as a long shot and then the camera zooms to a mid shot and carries on zooming in until it's a close up. The close up shows the pain and energy he has to put in to playing the drums but also the dedication. I like how it starts off as a long shot and then zooms in because it introduces the viewer to him starting to play.



This clip shows different angles used, such as from the side, behind and high angles. It could be quite a boring video because it's just the same thing going on throughout, but by using different angles it makes it more interesting and shows different aspects of the performance.



I like this clip I have chosen because it used various different angles and shots but the majority of them are of the instrument being played. I think we could use shots like these because it could really help to emphasise that they are an instrument playing band. Shots from this clip I think we could use for the drums in the performance are:

Ideas For Inanimate Objects In Our Video

As we have decided that our music video will come under the category of disjuncture, we think this can be done best with fun, inanimate objects that have absolutely nothing to do with the song or lyrics.

Here are some ideas that we have thought about or already included in our story board:

Inanimate Objects on Prezi

Edited Photos From Photo Shoot #2

These are the four best photos from my selection and i have edited them.

We decided to change the location from the original photos to reflect the metallic theme we saw in the original Little Comets photos and what we heard in their song. Although this has no great iron bars or anything the grey concrete has the same effect of emphasising the city and shooting at dusk i felt gave them a more meaningful aspect too them that the other photos lacked. Unlike the other photos i have edited to be less bright but at the same time i increased the contrast so that the colours would 'pop' more. 

On this photo i went over the orange paint lines with a grey so that the main colour is coming form the dress that the band are wearing, i also like the way the lighting highlights their heads giving them a slightly angelic feel about them. 

Although i like the way this photo turned out i 

 think it shows the band in the best way possible, what we did was put the band in hight order which meant Georgia was at the front (being the smallest) which emphasises her as the only girl and look like the lead singer and then makes steve nearer the and less like the lead and more like the guitarists. The other problem is that lewis is wearing a hat which makes him look taller. 

Again i like the way the photo has turned out with the under lighting and the cloudy sky its just for a press photo to advertise the band i feel they are too far away and you an see what their faces look like. 

Like the first photo this is my favourite, it is basically the same photo that i tired from a different angle, i think this would work more as an album cover than as a deef to promote the band as you can only see half of Georgia, Steve and Wills face and none of Lewis'. 

Difficulty of Story Boarding

We are currently half way through our story board and so far it hasn't been as easy as I first expected! Firstly, we needed to write our ideas first before we could even think about starting to draw it, and once we had some ideas, we then had to decide on what type of shots we would use and how long they'd last. I was given the task of drawing the shots and I'm still currently doing this, I'm only on the 55th shot and there's roughly another 300 shots to go. However, I'm going to finish my next set of shots which should get me up to roughly 70 to 80 and then I shall hand it over to Jess. By doing this I have also realised how awful at drawing I am so I hope my team don't have high expectations!

Storyboarding So Far

This is just a quick post to show you what we have been doing in terms of storyboarding our music video, here we have all the ideas that then will be turned into the storyboard. all though this looks complicated Meg and Jess who have been the ones writing all the information down and will draw the storyboard have assured me they know what they are doing. 

Storyboarding So Far

Just a quick update, for the past week we have been storyboarding our video for the Little Comets - One Night In October. We already know that to make it successful we need to average about 1 shot every 2 seconds and although we are only half way through we have already averaging at 1.4 shots every second.

Change Of Direction

This is just a note to the examiner, all the way through we have talked about our video being all about disjuncture with a tiny bit of band performance but when it came to create our storyboard we realised to have a music video comprised of mostly disjuncture was a bit too difficult so we have decided to keep the disjuncture but increase the amount of band performances. The upside to this is that we will keep more within the conventions because we can have more close ups of the band and of them playing which would mean the public can relate more to the band if they were to have anymore videos.

Weekly Round Up #2

This is just a quick look behind the scenes of how are blog is coming together. The main focus this week was to get a good photo for our deef and to start our storyboarding. below is a conversation we had about meeting up for the photo shoot.

(i have blocked out 2 comments here as they contained sensitive information) 

This is a link to Jess has done showing us getting on with our story board and a link to a post i made about how our story board is coming along. 

Jess' Post - http://megjessharryandjoesa2mediablog.blogspot.com/2011/09/research-and-planning-images.html

My Post - 

Another change we had this week was the look and feel of the blog, i made a background to the blog so we wouldn't have the plain grey so i created the two skeletons to go at the side and i have just print screened the conversation about them 

and Joe kept us all entertained with a picture!

Examples of other texts - Existing band photos

These images are examples of other existing band photo shoots, we have looked at some other photos before taking our own to gather inspiration and technique. The camera's used appear to be very high quality, we tried our best to use the best cameras we had, these consisted of two Canon 1000D SLR's and one SONY NEX-C3.