Actor issues

Luke, our male actor has changed his look after filming, shaving off his beard and changing his glasses and getting a haircut. This creates many issues for me and Caity as now we are in the dilemma of if we can reshoot anything or take new photo's Luke will look completly diffrent to how he looks in the video

Research: Active Audience

This idea (particularly associated with mass-media usage) that the audiences are not just passive containers for forced meanings but rather individual audience members who are aggressively (although often unconsciously) involved—both cognitively and emotionally—in making sense of texts.

This active involvement has several consistent proportions: perception, comprehension, understanding, evaluation, and response. Advocates of active audience theory claim that scholars cannot assume that the meaning of a text is fixed in advance of its reception because meaning is the product of a negotiation between the audience and the text in the context of reception. They argue that people use the media for their own purposes.

This newer model sees the audience not as couch potatoes, but as individuals who are active and interact with the communication process and use media texts for their own purposes. We behave differently because we are different people from different backgrounds with many different attitudes, values, experiences and ideas.

Dave from blueprint coming in to teach us more advanced skills with Final Cut

On the 29th of this month we have one of the editors from the blue print film foundation called Dave coming in to come lead a workshop on editing with us, these are the questions I have to ask. I would like to ask those questions and learn to make better use of Ken Burns among other tools like transitions.

• Can we make Luke fade out of shot ?
• What do you make of our transitions ?
• What do you make of the shot length of our montage shots?
• What colours would look best emphasised on our video?
• What do you think would improve it ? 

Planning: The hyperdermic needle theory

The hypodermic needle theory is entirely metaphoric- its first suggestion being that the different messages from the media are injected into the audience consuming them- it is powerful, and the audience cannot resist its effects.

The most alarming suggestion is that the media acts like a drug upon its consumers- hence the effect of the hypodermic needle. The audience is described as being drugged and addicted to the media which explains the fascination with celebrities personal life's for example.


Our music video 
This theory is relevant to our video as our message is about obsession and through our video we show that not being able to get someone out of your head is normal and happens to everyone. This theory tells us that people  would be powerless to our message and have to notice it.

Research: David Croteau and William Hoynes

David Croteau and William Hoynes suggested that the process of consuming media texts had a direct effect or influence upon its audience- however, this effect is often considered to be negative.

They also suggested that audiences are often powerless or passive to the effects that media texts have upon them. The power within the text often lies within its underlying message- it can often go unnoticed but effects many a person.

I believe this theory to be true with the underlying message of  media texts having the most effect, but I feel that it can be considered posotive if the producers are responsible and know what the message of their product is.

Group Planning Post: Music Company Logo

We started out with our initial logo drawings of  "Smash Records", below you will see how me and Caity have changed it over time.

This is the first draft of the logo design for our own music institution, 'Smash! Records'. We have used a graphic image of a fist with lightening bolts which we found online, it was on a clip art website and Caity contacted the artist to ask their permission to use it. We created a new image on Adobe, made it square and then added the photo. Having it in one corner rather than the whole image, I feel is really effective and it looks like it really works well for the genre of music that we are making a video for. Next, I am going                                                                                     to choose a colour scheme that would work with                                                                                     the genre and also our music video.

This is the second version of the logo we have made. To choose the colours, I opened a photo from the photo-shoot we did for our digipak and used the colour picker tool on different items of clothing in the photo. The nails in this are painted green as common indie convention is for men and women to have their nails painted.

This is draft three of our institutions logo. This is where I have added text (the name of the institution). I feel like the font is really nice but I do not like the left alignment or the positioning of it as it makes the white space look very prominent and the logo just looks bare.

 This is the final draft of our logo for our Music Institution, the feedback from social media was very positive and people said that 'the colours and style represent your genre really well' and that 'this is a really powerful logo and it is so effective in promoting music in a professional presentation.'

Planning: Budget and above the line costs

 Above the line costs is used for matters related to the film's production budget, when we first started the project me and  Caity set a budget of £25 and were going to stick to it at all costs. For me and Caity filming our music video this was mainly

• food
• petrol
• props

The only prop we had to buy for our video was a cup that was shamed to show Katie's anger at Luke in the video. This cup cost 1 pound as we bought it from a discount store know as "Bargain Madness".

To save cost's when we were filming on the first day we decided that we were going to walk to location mainly as we were filming in a local setting and everything was close together, this I credit for being the main reason we came in on budget. On day two of filming we were given a lift around by my nanna as we had some shots that were further away. We didn't have to pay for petrol thanks to her generosity this was another huge posotive helping us stick to the budget we had set.

The thing that cost us the most money was the food to feed our actors Luke and Katie. we spent roughly 20 pounds on pizza and food so we could thank them for helping us out with this project by making sure they were well fed.

COSTS
Food: £20
Props: £1

Total cost: £21

Rough cut 3

This is the latest version of our project, all the audio has been deleted off the clips and everything is sunk up to be in time with the music. We have also started to play round with fancier edits  , making some clips over cranked and montaging some shots. Me and Caity are both over the moon with how its turned out. we also made a shot longer and added vignettes to the shots over the argument shot that serve as flashbacks. This makes it more clear what they are instead of them just being there.

Planning: digipack draft 1

This is the first draft of our album cover, we have layed out our initial text and ideas for a colours we can use. The photo we are using for our cover features alot of colours and things going on such as leaves falling on the ground which makes choosing the colour of our text tricky as certain colours blend into it and make the text unreadable.

Rough cut 2

This is the second edit of our music video, in this edit we made use of all these spare shots we had and started to play around with transitions to give it the feel of being a professionally edited music video. There are no longer any filler shots which is a positive meaning we are using our clips effectively. We are both happy with what our project looks like now and feel like it is heading in a better direction.

Planning: Reshoot failure

We have tried to contact our actors a few times to schedule reshoots but they have been unable to confirm any times or dates that they are able to come and reshoot the things that we wanted so today me and caity have sat and looked over all of our extra shots and have managed to edit the ones we weren't entirely sure about to make them into shots that ended up being really effective so we no longer need to reshoot.

Planning: Reshoot Details

We have planned the re shoots that we need to do, whether it be extra shots we have planned as filler shots or re shooting cuts that we are not entirely happy with. The shots we have planned for our second shoot are...

• Re shooting the first scene in the bedroom and changing it to an over the shoulder shot.
• Shots of the sun setting over the Humber bridge.
• Shots of clouds.
• Katie walking away.
• Possibly a shot of some money.
• Extra performance shots.

Planning: Self Assessing Shots and Camera Movement

Today we looked over the first rough cut of our music video, we compared all the shots that we had to the list of conventional music video shots. We found that we had four of Goodwin's conventional singing into camera shots and they are spread out through different points in our video, however on our re shoot we are going to shoot some more singing into camera shots in case we want to add in some more to adhere to convention. We have quite a few shots that cut on the beat of the song, but we are working on editing so as many shots as possible cut on the beat. The shots that we have that are included on the conventional shot list are

• Close ups, 
• extreme close ups, 
• natural framing, 
• continuity editing, 
• panning, 
• left of frame shot,
•  right of frame shot. 

We need to add a tracking shot, a match cut and maybe even another extreme close up.

Group post planning - Story boards

Rough cut 1

Today we finished the first rough cut of our video, We are still missing some shot's and have used a shot of them walking as filler. This will be replaced with a better shot!

Research album cover 1: Fleetwood Mac "Rumours" & Panic at the disco "Pretty odd"

The pose in the album cover is very artistic and nostalgic. The song we are doing for our music video "Dreams" is originally off this album so if we recreated this pose it would create a nice bit of intertextuality and pay homage to the original artists Fleet Wood mac as well as creating nostalgia for our older TA. We could also recreate this sense of nostalgia by using fonts that look more vintage and picking colours that suit the idea of vintage.

How this influenced my creativity and planning 

• It made me aware how subtle things are often the most hard hitting with this album cover being a practical example.
• It has given me examples of posing I could try and how we can construct certain representations.

How this has influenced my creativity and planning
This has influenced my creativity and planning as it has shown me a practical example of how effective colour can be on an album cover and all the different use's for it such as using colour to attract someones attention to a certain part of an album cover.

Research: TA Age

The music video, me and Caity are producing for our coursework is a song called "Dreams" which was originally written and performed by fleet wood mac. But to reach a larger TA me and Caity have chosen the Bastille and Gabrielle Aplin cover and re release so we can also appeal to the younger TA and the older TA at both times, to ensure this we will have to appeal to both in our digipack and ancillaries.

Final cut pro

Recently we started on editing our music video, this process is entirely new to me and does pose a technical challenge but I feel I can grow to deal with it and use this software well.

We use final cut pro x to edit our video into a finished product, we can use it to help sync up our performers , add effects to our clips and organise it into a recognisable story.

Selection of images

When we were filming we decided to use to take some photo's for ancillary products, here are the ones we want to use and why:

 This photo is good as the trees make for a natural frame making it seem more visually appealing, this photo also makes use of the rule of thirds which helps make it seem more balanced to the human eye. It breaks some convention by not having them in a close up but our genre is indie which is famed for challenging and pushing conventions. This photo would make a good photo for our advert for the digipack or be good on the back pane.

 This right of frame shot is appealing to the eye as it creates an active audience and makes you think " What are they walking away from?" " What are they thinking?'. It is visually appealing due to the trees in the back ground that creates a frame and used in conjunction with the first photo makes it seem like they have walked through the camera and are just walking down a path. This would be a good photo for one of the panes on the digipack.

 This low angled shot creates the representation of the artists being powerful and important a good image to launch a new artist from as it draw's the audiences eye and captures their attention. The sun flare also makes the photo stand out from other shots and look interesting. This would make a great front cover.

Rejection of images

While we were shooting our music video, we decided that we would use our time to not only film our music video but to also take the images needed for our ancillary products e.g. digipack. Here are the photo's that didn't make it and why.

When we took the photo, we made the mistake of using the zoom on our camera which dosen't do the environment we took our photo's in justice as well as making the photo seem more tighter and cropped something that is not that visually appealing. We had planned on using a shot like this for our back pane.







When we took this photo it seemed like a good idea but on reflection it really is not as it does not have any impact, the weather also makes the photo unusable as the weather was blowing hair everywhere which makes the artist look bad something we don't want to do. We took this and tired to figure out a spot we could use later but had no success figuring where this would work.

Set design issue

In the bedroom scene of our music video we had planned to put pink bin bag's on the window to try and manipulate the light into being a diffrent colour, in theroy this would work and did! but only to the human eye on film it just made everything darker

Adding in an extra shot

We decided that in the heat of a moment we needed to film an additional shot we had not planned, this shot was a clip of katie smashing a mug this was a good shot because it showed how katie felt which was mad and when you watch the clip it comunicates it well.

Planning: Photo montage

Me and Caity decided that we want to make use of a photo montage in our music video for "Dreams". This would be used to show how the relationship was before it wet bad, we are going to try and take these photos in our photo shoot