Finished Video

Official Website

Official Website
Official Website

Album Cover

Album Cover
Album Cover

Friday, December 16, 2011

Message to the Moderator

Thankyou for taking the time to look at our group blog. Here is the majority of the work that our group did together over the last few months. Above you can see our website, music video and album cover. To the right are links to our individual blogs and also our lables that are on all of our posts.

We hope you enjoy viewing our group blog as much as we have making it!

Eva, Eoin and Robbie

This blog is now closed

Though it pains each member of the group this is our final post we will ever make.

This blog is now officially closed.

Evaluation Q4

This question will be answered on our individual blog.

Evaluation Q3



Our individual response to this feedback will be on our individual blogs.

Evaluation Q2

This question will be answered on our individual blogs.

Evaluation Q1



We will give additional information on our individual blogs.

Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Album Cover: Before and After Edits


This is the before and after of our album cover photos. It took a while to get the exact look that we were after as the main photo of Eoin was edited before the other two and then once we put them togeter, we had to do another colour grade to make it all even. Before this final edit, the photos of Robbie and George on the right were different, with long shots side by side but we decided that this didn't work and went with the size decreasing close ups/mid shots. This felt more natural to our album design and looked much better.

Monday, December 12, 2011

Some Shots from Promo Shoot

There was a rather long process to getting our final promo shot photos that we used on our site and album. We had to arrange a photoshoot with all band members, so had to book both George and the studio space. Eva took the photos and as none of us had any previous experience with photography particularly, we took as many as we could in as many positions as possible. We learnt that static shots with not much going on didn't work as well as photos where the model was doing something such as putting their hands in a prayer position like Robbie here:
Lighting was an interesting learning curve for us. We worked with three-point lighting to achieve the optimum quality of photos that we could during the photoshoot. We utilised the idea of silhouettes and took some great photos of the band's silhouettes individually. In editing we put three silhouettes together and made the final main picture that features across all our platforms:
 

As the days went by, we realised that detailed editing of every photo was not possible, so photoshop was only used to rid the pictures of obvious blemishes and a quick colour correct. We were then able to produce a large quantity of successful, finished pictures in a lot less time.

Some other examples of our edited photos:











Sunday, December 11, 2011

Directors Commentary Planning

Intro: Hi, we are Group 3; I am Eoin Brogan (candidate number 3110), i'm Eva Calland Waller (candidate number ...) and i'm Robbie Lardi (number 3400), and this is a commentary on our music video in order to answer question 1 of the evaluation, which is: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

To do this we are going to look at various sections of our video, interspliced with other real media products.

To begin, here is ... who is going to talk about the uses of conventions within our video.

USES


INTERCUTTING OF NARRATIVE AND PERFORMANCE


This convention is found throughout all genre's and types of music video. There are many which only consist of either performance or narrative; but the convention to intercut a story with performance is very commonly used. Furthermore, the screen time of each of these is more or less even; with the balance between them consistent throughout the song. We conformed to this convention as we wanted to tell an engaging story, while also successfully building a brand image for our new band.

show any section which flips between performance and narrative


LEAD SINGER AND BRAND IMAGE

Freeze at 0:30, freeze at 2 other shots of Eoin singing


The first convention we used in our media video is a simple yet effective one; the use of close ups on the lead singer of the band. Eoin has the most close up shots in the performance sections of the video, which is important to establish a clear frontman of the band. Usually, this is the singer; and we have followed this convention as the lyrics are a crucial component of the song, and require an apt platform. See here some other close ups of Eoin singing, which recur throughout the song.

Show other singing close ups.


Also, we developed an image for our band through the costume choices, the set up of the performance space (discuss the logo, spray paint symbols); this appeals to our audience by ... bla bla bla

Lack of beauty style shots; much more focus on the instruments being played; sticks to conventions of most music outside pop genre.


FOCUS OF SONG IN VIDEO


Show bass line running up. 


Another convention we used is to illustrate the focus of the song within the video; for example, when the bass line becomes the focus in the song; we used a close up of the bassist playing so as to complement the track. It seems obvious, but to match the emphasis' of the song with the visuals is very important to the flow of the video.


Show drum fill.

You can see another example of this with our drum fill.

VARIED PERFORMANCE SET UP

It is a common convention of music videos to vary the set up within the performance aspect of the video. This keeps the performance dynamic; and we believed that as the narrative should progress, the performance should too.

We can see an example of this convention working well in this video here:

INSERT VIDEO REFERENCE CLIP, and why it works well;


 then clips of our UV section in comparison to normal section.


SECTIONS OF SONG DEFINING SECTIONS OF VIDEO


It is common for the editing and pacing of the video to match that of the song; for example, the song begins slowly and so does our editing; it can appear jarring to contradict this common convention, so we decided it was best to conform to it. When the chorus drops; the narrative progresses somewhere new-

show examples here e.g. me moving about street instead of static / the eyes on drop 2 / the UV and fighting on drop 3


BARTHES CODES IN OUR VIDEO


The theorist Barthes drew up some codes of conventions in media texts, some of which we can apply to our video.

We can see his enigma code being used here in our video..

insert enigma section (smoking and eva is there / turning around but not seeing her face, only seeing my reaction etc.) 


... and this has been helpful because


DEVELOPING CONVENTIONS


USING UV LIGHTING


Rather than intersplicing UV in different sections of the video; we decided to hold off on the reveal of the UV light until the end of the song to provide some performance progression and visual development. We wanted our video to surprise at every turn; and so we believed that revealing the UV light set up too early would lessen it's impact greatly.

show UV lighting set up again

CHASE SCENE CONCLUDES WITH SWITCH OF POWER


Normally in a chase scene in a real media text, it ends with an event which complements the dynamic and relationship which was the cause of the chase in the first place (e.g. the chaser catches the victim or the victim escapes) without developing or changing the relationship between the characters at all.

We expanded on this by resolving the situation with a reversal of power between the two; developing the convention previously stated.

show ending here with kiss


Instead of Eva simply catching and killing Robbie, or Robbie escaping from her; they kiss, and she vanishes. Robbie's character has taken the status and power away from her, regaining control and thereby resolving the situation in a manner different to most media products.


CHALLENGING CONVENTIONS


GENDER REPRESENTATION
It is a very common representation in music video's to have the seat of power dominated by male roles. We decided very early on that this classic representation didn't work for our video. We have the power held by a female character, which we feel adds to the surreal element of the video. We also had quite an unconventional twist in the control of power as is clearly demonstrated here

Show punch


you can see how for the first time in the video it's Robbie who follows Eva and then takes control by grabbing her face and kissing her.

Friday, December 9, 2011

Screening the Video

As a year group, we decided to hold a premiere for all our music videos in the Seward Studio. We invited all our friends to come, through an event on Facebook, and by creating a short montage style trailer.
The Facebook event to our screening


Tuesday, December 6, 2011

Evaluation Planning

Question 1 - How does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?


For this question we are planning a directors commentary of our video. It will show our video, with our voices talking over it. We will each take a separate section of the commentary to script (use, develop or challenge), and then will record our voices.

After that we make a new edit of our video; fastforwarding and freezing on certain clips and stills whilst we speak. We also intergrate clips of other videos which inspired or helped us / or to show conventions we may have developed or challenged.


Question 2 - How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?


We will answer this question individually with pictures, stills and other stuff.

Question 3 - What have you learned from your audience feedback?

For this question, we are planning to record (individually) four or five people in a one on one interview discussing the products and how they could be improved.

We will edit these interviews together, and end with footage of us discussing the feedback and how we would improve on it if we were to re do this project.


Question 4 - How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?


For this question, we will answer it in a more tradition manner; using text to explain how the new technologies aided our project. We will back this up with lots of still images, screencaps of software we used (APPro, Colour, After Effects)

Lighting Before and After



This is a short video detailing problems with our original lighting, and how we managed to correct these issues for the final piece.

Monday, December 5, 2011

Problems with Wix

After a week of editing the website, we came back to it today to find that our master page had been deleted, thereby losing all the content within the separated pages.

It will take too long to call up Wix to see if we can resolve this issue and we do not know why, how or when it got deleted and finding this out would be difficult.

Therefore we have decided to simply rebuild it; as designing it initially takes the most time it shouldn't bee too time consuming to simply replicate what we already have made.

UPDATE ON POST 06/12/11: Eoin had begun to make a mobile website so some data was saved and reused. However we had to rewrite the competition, tour dates, and every news and update post- this took very, very long! We have managed to completely redo our website and even managed to improve it slightly with added hindsight on what was wrong before. For example, we were able to format the site so we had room at the bottom to include institutional information, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and RSS feed buttons; we had not done this correctly the first time.

We learnt to save our progress much more frequent and to log off whenever we left our computer unattended; the computers are used by many people and could have been how we inadvertently lost our work in the first place.

We our very happy this major problem hasn't become too much of a disruption to our project as a whole.

Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Group Meeting on Website

Today we had a group meeting based purely around the website. We came up with several good ideas and now have a strong sense of direction in terms of colour scheme and feel of the website.

Our first idea was to include a competition page on our website. We decided that a competition is an interactive and personal way for the audience to get involved with the band. The competition idea has been dubbed "Secret Gig" and will ficticiously take place some time in february. The competition requires the user to type in their name, age, email and quater. If they are lucky enough they will be emailed with the secret location of a wristband allowing entry to the underground show. We thought that this is an interesting way of getting our audience to spread the word about our band.


We also wanted to have a large range of posts on the website orientated mainly around the live gigs. This is because we decided that THE STORM is all about the music. Taking inspiration from Pendulum's website, we have decided to place as many references to these gigs as possible.

Finally we decided on one other special event: A STORM/INFLUX combined gig. This was a colaberated idea with group 1 which promotes both bands. Each site will link up to the others and we will make a special promotional poster for the event!

Saturday, November 19, 2011

Peer feedback on first Edit

Here is some of the feedback we recieved from our peers on our first edit of the video:

Thursday, November 17, 2011

Teacher feedback on first edit



This is our first finished edit (without colour grading).

We wanted feedback on our video so asked several teachers and friends. Here are some of their responses:

- More UV light at the ending



- Faster editing (opening and ending)

- More focus on lead singer; stronger singing shots



- Stairs section didn't work from 0:58



These improvement points where not plentiful; and we generally recieved much praise for the slickness and solid concept of our video; as well as the energetic performance.

Now we need to colour grade, and generally tighten the editing with quicker cuts and more shots used.

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

16th Wednesday UV Performance shoot


We had our final shoot today! Our very last shoot couldn’t have gone better. We have learnt from our filming experience what kind of shots to get and how best to organise this.
What we did well:                  We had planned well in advance what kind of symbols to place on ourselves and got them on ourselves quickly. We also managed to film a lot quicker than previous shoots purely thanks to gained experience.
What went badly:                   Not much went wrong. We were right down to the line on time but still managed to get everything we wanted.
What we’ll do next time:        If we were to film this again we wouldn’t do much more different other than to give ourselves more time.

Thursday, November 10, 2011

10th Thursday Fight Scene shoot


Today was one of the most fun shoot days we’ve experienced. With Robbie and Eva really getting into the fight and a variety of fun build up shots (as well as the kiss scene) we are very happy to call this our final shoot day for narrative.
What we did well:                  We had planned every detail of the fight in detail and this meant the shoot day went by quickly and effectively, with time left over to experiment with some shots.
What went badly:                   Tripod was in many shots, but mostly our experimental shots. We also managed to scare a young mother with Eva’s eyes which was unfortunate.
What we’ll do next time:        If we were to film again I would put a lot more focus on the kiss to make sure we can get an effective ending when it comes to editing.

Wednesday, November 9, 2011

9th Wednesday Edmonton narrative


Today we left school to film around Edmonton. We improvised a variety of sections for the part of the narrative where Robbie is being followed.
What we did well:                  We got a variety of very good shots and managed to quickly choreograph loads of set ups.
What went badly:                   We were again rained out of what could have been a longer shoot day. A few of our ideas didn’t work but that was to be expected.
What we’ll do next time:        Next time we would plan in greater detail all of our set ups on location. We found it very helpful to set things up on scene.

Face paint ideas









Sunday, November 6, 2011

6th Sunday Performance


Today’s shooting was just a continuation of yesterday. We now need no more standard performance shoots after today and only need to worry about finishing narrative and our UV shoot.
What we did well:                  We brushed past the technical problems yesterday and managed to get everything we needed quickly and effectively
What went badly:                   We often didn’t think about placement of props or cameramen and sometimes managed to get them in shot. However we have more than enough useful footage.
What we’ll do next time:        If we were to have another shoot, we would just be repeating ourselves. We have really got the hang of these shoots now and already have most of our footage.

Saturday, November 5, 2011

5th Saturday Performance


Today we put into action everything we had been told to do last week. The performance was a lot more vibrant than last weeks attempt and, thanks to our set up being sorted much quicker, we were able to get a whole lot of different shot types. We especially made sure to get close ups of the drums which we felt we were missing. However, part way through our shoot two of the studio lights we were using blew. We had to spend time sorting out lighting with limited sources.
What we did well:                  We did brilliantly to get started so quickly and managed to get a huge variety of effective and beautiful shots. We will definitely use a lot of the footage we got today.
What went badly:                   Unforeseen events involving the studio lights set our shooting back and left us with both a tricky lighting set up and bad moods.
What we’ll do next time:        We will do exactly what we did over again, but this time, be prepared for all eventualities. We will also get some more of the shots we didn’t have time to get, for example a close up of the bassist’s fingers.

Set Design

We spent a lot of time dressing our set and are very happy with the way it works with our video. We first spent a lot of time cleaning out Robbie's basement, followed by spray painting and pinning up various black sheets.


We are very proud of how this has turned out. It was a gerat idea to use this symbol as a form of branding of our band. We are very excited to see how the UV paint turns out.

Wednesday, November 2, 2011

2nd Wednesday first performance shoots

Today we had our first shoot for performance. We were slow to get started, with lighting set ups and final set dressing to take care of, however when we got going we had a lot of fun. It was a very promising first attempt.
What we did well:                  The performance went well and we had a good chance to figure out lighting and quickly saw that the band members we chose were good together.
What went badly:                   Unfortunately, since it was our first shoot we didn’t quite get off the ground as quickly as we could have. After getting feedback on our footage, miss blackborow mentioned our lack of enthusiasm in our playing and the over exposed faces due to harsh lighting in certain shots.
What we’ll do next time:        Next time we can sort out the lighting quicker and make sure we don’t over expose the shots. We will also make sure to perform with a higher level of enthusiasm right from the word go (a lot of coffee will be needed)

Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Performance Shoot Schedule

Here is the schedule we have made for our performance shoot with a list of shots and times:

Shooting Schedule for 26th

Monday, October 31, 2011

Why we don't need a capture list

In previous projects, we have shot any footage on to tape.

This is the first project where we have shot all our footage digitally; and as such when importing it automatically separates the footage in separated clips of each shot or take.

Therefore no capture list or time log is needed; we can just get straight on and edit!

Contacting Warner Music

We sent an email to Pendulum's record lable "Warner Music" in order to request use of their song. Although we don't expect a reply anytime in the near future, we understand that this is an important process to adhear to in this project.

Sunday, October 30, 2011

30th Sunday Chase scene


We spent a very long time in the alleyway, getting every possible angle of a short running scene.
What we did well:                  We managed to get many effective shots that we will definitely use in the end product, including handheld shots of the running and close ups of the small fight. One shot even required Eoin to climb on a roof to film what we plan to be a cctv shot.
What went badly:                   Was difficult to keep up the pace when everyone was tired from running up and down the same bit of walkway. It started raining and our time was limited. This helped us however, as it gave us a sense of pressure and stresses of a real shoot.
What we’ll do next time:        We should have had a back up alleyway since we almost could use the one we planned to due to painters. We managed to film around them but next time more preparation will be needed. Our next shoot is our first performance one. We are very excited!

Saturday, October 29, 2011

29th Saturday Walthamstow

Filmed Robbie’s first walking shots of him turning Eva around. We got the all important shot of Eva’s eyes and also found the location we are using on our next shoot.

What we did well:                  We managed to get a good range of effective shots and worked to a good schedule. We also spent extra time planning and had a wholly productive day.
What went badly:                   Had difficulty turning Eva during the first reveal, due to framing, spacing and the same problem we foresaw yesterday with the contacts hurting her eyes
What we’ll do next time:        Though we got a lot done we only have it sorted for a short section of the video and need a lot more content on our next shoot.

Thursday, October 27, 2011

27th Thursday location scouting


Today we met up and did a lot of planning for future shots. We decided to do the performance shots when we get back to school. We did set dressing and location scouted using Google street view. We also tested with make up and used the white contact lenses which look great.
What we did well:                  Managed to get a lot of planning and set dressing done.
What went badly:                   Contact lenses were difficult to manage and hurt Eva’s eyes. We noticed that our set was quite small and took a lot of time to organise it well.
What we’ll do next time:        We will visit our locations we decided on today and we now know to only put in the lenses when necessary.

Preliminary Location Scouting via Google Maps

 Aubrey Road, Walthamstow

 Burford Gardens, Enfield

 Coleridge Road, Walthamstow

 Eastholm, Barnet

 Oakwood Road, Barnet

 Burford Gardens, Enfield

 Vinegar Alley, Walthamstow

 Woodgrange Gardens, Enfield

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

26th Wednesday Broomfield


Filmed opening narrative. Smoking in park on bench shots and Eva’s first reveal.
What we did well:                  For a first shoot we got into the swing of things very quickly. We got some beautiful shots of Robbie on the bench, particularly where he leans back. Definitely using them in the final edit.
What went badly:                   We got a lot of people in the background of shots but worked around it. Trying to make Robbie cry through blowing in his eyes didn’t work very well. We might not use the crying shots in the final edit.
What we’ll do next time:        More planning on location. Perhaps a day dedicated to location scouting purely?

Storyboarding for performance sections

We decided as a group that storyboarding for the performance sections of our video was unnecessary- we believe that we should perform the song hundreds of times and simply capture every possible angle we need- so instead we have compiled a large list of every angle we need to shoot.

The list is as follows:

(No effects)
2 Master Shots x 2
LA Master shots of band
HA Master shot
CU Singer face (all lyrics)
CU Bassist face
CU Drummer Face
LS Drummer (whole body)
CU Snare drum
CU Bass drum
CU Bass pedal
CU High Hat Pedal
CU High Hat
CU Crash
CU Ride
OTS Drummer (left and right)
CU Bassist's Hands
CU Bass neck guitar
CU Guitar neck
CU Guitar hands
(with smoke)
Master shot
Full body drum shot
CU Bass pedal
CU High Hat Pedal
Random freehand smoke movements
(with strobe)
Master shot with smoke x 2 (different strobe speeds)
Whole body shots of each band member (different strobe speeds)
drummers hands
random freehand movements
(UV BODY PAINT)
Master shot x2 (with and without smoke and strobe)
LA Master shots of band
HA Master shot
CU Singer face (all lyrics)
CU Bassist face
CU Drummer Face
LS Drummer (whole body)
Shots of background symbols
random freehand movements

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Examples of Storyboard


Here is the storyboard for our first section of the video. We are planning to film this tomorrow in Broomfield Park.

See here the schedule for the day of shooting with shot numbers and times:


Shooting Schedule for 26th