EDITING SO FAR

Last week, we uploaded all our footage onto an iMac and onto its programme iMovie Hd to start this editing business. We proceeded to edit out all bleeps and bloops and were able to roughly finish the continuity process of each scenario we have done so far, all they need now is any effects they may require.



Upon watching the footage of Julia, we realised it is not as good as we thought it was: the lighting appears to be dark (in the footage shot from the camera that was mainly stationary, she is just seen as a dark figure and her face is not visible) so we will try to brighten up the visuals through the editing programme. There's a strong chance it will look unnatural like that though, but we could try adding lenses flares and spotlights which would be more in the style of a music video. If we are unsuccessful we will have to re-film this sequence.

Another potential problem which raises eyebrows is that the cigarette scenario simply does not fit with the flow of the other two scenarios. The phone mugging and bike stealing scenes are somewhat fast and furious, whereas the cigarette scene is kind of slow and spaced out. Also that scene looks quite strange; it looks rather dodgy the way my character just walks on and sits down to watch the kid playing football (why would he do that?) and when the kid is forced to get down (to pick up the cigarette) it can be easily misinterpreted. We'll see if we can speed anything up. However, the scene does contain an interesting shot from the football's POV as it is kicked around. Also, we have added effects to the cigarrete to make it look alight.



There is still a fair bit of filming to do: the rapping scene with the policeman, the scenario involving the pregnant woman, the characters meeting up at the beginning and taking off their masks at the end, us leaving our 'homes' (so far only done this with one) and the post-modern reference to Taxi Driver. I was supposed to film the mirror scene during half-term with my friend Joe; because we have still not done the pregnant woman scene and he remains the character we have not filmed yet, this by default makes him the person in the post-modern reference scene. However he was really late and by the time he arrived at my house it was about 6pm and too dark outside to fit with the narrative's continuity, which annoyed me a bit as he also went away the days after as we are in the half-term holiday.

So far, the length of footage of the three scenarios on the iMacs add up to 3:07 minutes. The song is 4:30ish minutes long so we don't have much time left which is inconvenient as there is loads more to add, including Julia's footage. We have thought about overlaying Julia onto the narrative scenes, that way we can save us some running time as well as still include her 'singing' and it would look kind of stylish anyway. We will see how our running time problem goes as we add more footage. Pablo out!

CIGARETTE-JABBING SCENE

On Tuesday morning we filmed the scene in which one of the characters jabs a kid in the eye with a cigarette with me as the offender. We used a friend as the younger boy who is kicking a football against the wall where I come to sit down whilst smoking. Unfortunately, we then ran out of battery; this is strange because I had the camera charging all night so I can only assume the socket I used was faulty. Anyway, we were thankfully able to swap it with one of the school's batteries (which was full) so we carried on filming. I am then hit by the ball which knocks the cigarette out of my hand. The boy comes over for the ball and I order him to pick up the cigarette with which I then 'jab his eye' with.



For the jabbing, we filmed a couple of shots/angles of me holding the unlighted cigarette an inch away from his eye - for these the cigarette will appear to be alight and his eye burned after editing effects. We then filmed another couple of shots of me actually jabbing him in the nose but from behind and the side so that it looks like its in the eye. We will edit the angles together later on to make it look as realistic as possible.

AIDEN STEALS A BIKE

Hola mi gente!!

So on Friday we filmed Aiden's scenario: him stealing a bike off Ali. Thankfully, this time we found a nice young lad willing to lend us his bike. We filmed by the school: in the road behind it, and the road opposite the local newsagent. We got some shots of Aiden walking and kicking a dustbin. We then filmed him seeing Ali on a bike, jumping in his way, throwing him off, kicking him, and then taking the bike as his own. All this with different shots/angles including a POV shot from Ali riding up on the bike.



To our mild surprise, a real policeman came along towards the end of filming to tell us someone had reported us because they found Aiden intimidating and asked us if the mask was really necessary. We said it was and he walked off, it seems he did not mind at all once he realized we were filming for an A2 project. Anyway this incident can be taken as positive feedback that the use of masks is successful in giving an intimidating look.

FILMING THE SINGING PART

So on Thursday at the end of the day we stayed in 6th form to film our friend Julia singing/miming the verses sung by Beverley Knight in the song. We did this in the photography room, where we cleared the tables and had Julia stand in front of and on some white canvas type of thing so that everything around her was plain white. This way we can add effects to the background during editing with Ali's programmes.

We placed one camera on a tripod directly in front of her which we never moved, then we used another for close-ups and different angles. We only had about 30 minutes because we were ushered out of the building by the receptionists (they were leaving themselves). I don't actually think this was long enough as it took a while for Julia to get confident and move around. We actually sang along with her and danced behind the cameras to encourage her. We were very grateful for her co-operation. I think we did good enough though, we have loads of footage of each verse so we should have a good selection of what to keep in during editing.

DAY 3 OF PRODUCTION

Today we were finally able to film some actual people. Albeit not much. We filmed a couple of shots of our actor Francis (as one of the criminals) leaving a house (his in the video, a random one in real life which we were able to use). We then looked to film the bike-stealing scene but we asked about eight people or so from our 6th form and they all said that they could not be bothered to take out their bikes. How dare they those uncooperative pigs.



So we did the scene which was originally the criminal jabbing a cigarette into the eye of a kid who runs into him playing football. We got a ball, but couldn't find our actor so we went around looking for short boys in our 6th form with kiddy faces (mostly year 12's) to ask if they wanted to play the part but most refused either because they were camera shy (gah!) or busy with work or just unpleasant human beings.

Our actor Pete turned up but he was wearing a suit (as it was national suit day for some reason and loads of people were wearing suits) so we decided to change the scenario that instead of him being a kid, he's some kind of businessman who gets his phone mugged. We filmed him walking and talking on his phone and Francis attacking him and taking the phone off him. I think the whole thing with the suit worked nicely as it gives a nice commentary on the innocent successful man being attacked by the inferior criminal who is in turn doing nothing good for his life.

SHOOTING SCHEDULE

Okay here is our shooting schedule. It's the third we've done I think, as the other two included dates for filming which never ocurred for reasons I stated earlier.

FIRST DAY OF FILMING. AYYY

So on Monday we did our first bit of filming! It was hardly anything but it was a start. As the masks had not yet arrived, we decided we might as well go see what we could film without them. We considered filming the bike scene showing our actor as the criminal from behind only (then during editing we'd mix the scene up with close-ups of Aiden once the masks had arrived) but when we finally got someone to bring out their bike, we realised we didn't have any tapes on us for the camera.

We solved this problem by going to Asda to buy some (they only let us buy a packet of 5 so we had to spend a tenner gah!) but then we had no bike. So we decided to go film the establishing shots we'd use for the start of the city. We went to this hill where the was a view of some houses and the river; while it wasn't a city skyline like we had imagined, I think it is good enough. When passing the church by our 6th form, we decided to film a couple of shots of it as we could insert them at some point during the video to contrast with the guidelines that the four criminals are living by and perhaps symbolise their 'cleansing of wrong-doings'.

OUR FILMING PROBLEMS SO FAR: IN A NUTSHELL!

Okay so if things had gone as originally planned, we'd have filmed about more than half of the narrative section of our music video, as well as the singing and rapping parts in the drama studio.

However, our singer Julia was away the whole of last week on a biology trip and our rappers kept on bailing out. We ordered four masks off Amazon at the start of last week assuming they would arrive on the thursday or friday (hey everytime I order something off Amazon it comes three or four days after) but unfortunately they didn't arrive until yesterday (gah!) so our plans of filming narrative sections with the criminals at the end of last week failed.

Also, we have found out we cannot now use the drama studio as it's unusable during the school move (gah) and the studio's out-of-bounds will go on til November, at which point it would be too late. Thankfully, it seems we can use a photography room. I hope we can use lighting in there to a similar effect to what we would have done with the lighting in the drama studio.

OUR COVER WILL BE A LITTLE SOMETHING LIKE THIS

Here is a sort of draft/preview that Ali designed on his editing programmes of Photoshop and Cinema 4D. As you can see, it closely resembles the drawing we did on paper. Well done, Ali!

THREE MAGAZINE ADVERTS ANALYSES

Alone With Everybody: Richard Ashcroft

The photograph shows the artist by a microphone, giving the impression that he is about to sing. It is not clear whether he is at a live performance, or in a recording session. The image fits well with the title ‘Alone With Everybody’ as he is seen very much alone, but his performing is a form of communication to the world so thus he is alone but performing for everybody. The black and white gives the image a mature look, which reflects the possible loneliness feeling he may be conveying through the title. This same image is used for the album cover, but on the cover only his face his seen and not the microphone.


The Very Best of Betty Wright: Betty Wright



This image gives out quite a relaxed vibe. It includes an image of the actual album for detail, as well as a few sentences of information on the album and some kind of tagline (SHE GOT SOUL!). The background colour is green, and there is an image of Betty Wright singing. The advert is very spaced out and quite empty, giving out the impression the album is quite chilled-out.


Era Vulgaris: Queens of the Stone Age

This advert features an animated image of two light bulbs. One may get the impression from this colourful and child-friendly cover that the album contains joyful/humorous songs, or one may think deeper and predict the album’s songs are actually dark/unhappy and that the cover is done for a contrast with the actual songs. This can be backed-up by the title Era Vulgaris; Latin for ‘common era’, this title was chosen by the artists because to them it sounded like Vulgar Era, which reportedly “sounds like something they’d want to be a part of”. The actual songs are indeed dark, hard, and electronic.

ALBUM ART IDEAS

Here is our idea for our album's front and back cover, as drawn by Ali.



The drawing on the right would the be the front cover. The album's title No More is a nod to the album's 'single' (our music video) as well as a fitting title for the actual album which would have a general over-all concept on social messages. The artist's name Roni Size would also be on there. The cover shows four silhouettes stood on a hill against a landscape of clouds and sun and birds. This image represents that these four figures (actually inspired by the four gang members in our video) want no more of society's crime and injustices and so have moved to this paradise land. The back cover's image will be faded into from the front's image into one of a knife together with flowers, which conveys a mixed representation of violence and peace. The fictional track list would be listed on one side of the image.

Our current ideas for images on the inside of the case are influenced by the video either an image of: one of the guys looking into the mirror, one of them smoking (perhaps only showing the cigarette and the smoke), policeman in the spotlight (perhaps showing him from behind), and an image of one of the masks we will use. Below is an early draft drawing we did when making ideas, but the image on the right is the one I have mentioned of the guy looking into the mirror.



Whilst Ali drew the front and back cover, me and Aiden came up with 5 fictional track names each for the track list:

1. Tell Me
2. What Is It
3. Thunder
4. Rocket Storm
5. Fire
6. No More
7. Dove
8. Pimp Town
9. Corruption
10. Last Dance
11. Final Stand

Names for the tracks came to me under influence of the whole society-theme, like Dove (a symbol of peace), Corruption (a society injustice), and Final Stand (like a final stand against society's inequalities, as well as being the final song).

PLANS FOR FILMING

Okay so our plan to film the rap verse tomorrow afternoon in the drama studio has been ruined by Grease rehearsals. Our friend lives in a large block of flats which has many floors and he has access to the top so tomorrow we will go up there and film the city skyline shots.

I am going to order four white masks off amazon today so hopefully they will arrive on thursday or friday. So on friday we will aim to film each guy exiting their 'house' and also the scene in which one of them steals a bike. Maybe we can do the scene of the cigarette jabbing as we could do it in the courtyard by our 6th form; if we don't show the church then it could look like a park.

Unfortunately Julia who will play as the singer is on a school trip for the week so we can't film her part until next week.

STORYBOARDS

Below are the storyboards for our video.






We have drawn the 'crime scenarios' in the wrong order as we just drew them straight on when we came up with one, but we have decided to show the bike-stealing scene first, then the cigarette jabbing, and lastly the attack on the pregnant woman. This is because in this order each scenario is more offending than the last. Oh and we decided that the guy who jabs the kid in the eye with his cigarette will be drug-dealing at the time so that there is another offence added.

Also we drew one shot of the singer but she will be shown throughout the video in a number of shots. The first shot of the video will be of the city skyline, as an establishing shot.

FIRST QUESTIONNAIRE. WITH ANSWERS!

Here is that questionnaire with the most common answers we were given. After an unsuccesful attempt with our classmates, we went through the 6th form hunting for people who have knowledge and are keen on the drum and bass music genre, and found ten people we gave them to.

1.
Do you like drum and bass music?
- Yes
- No


2.
What type of music video do you like and why?
- Concept
- Narrative
- Performance

All answers as to why went along the lines of 'because it's interesting to see a story behind it'.

3.
What emotions do you feel when listening to drum and bass?
Most people answered that they feel full of hype and want to dance.

4.
What artists of the genre do you listen to? Name some
The most common answers were Pendulum, Massive Attack, and drum and bass remixes of other known songs.

5.
Do you find these album covers typical for the drum and bass genre?
About 90% chose the last three covers.
Understandable, as the first cover is unusually simple.

6.
What do you like to see in a drum and bass music video?
All people answered that they liked to see fast editing and people dancing.
Well that's not really going to be going on in ours. Sorry folks!

7.
What makes you buy a drum and bass album?
- The poster
- The album cover
- the artist
- the main song's/single's music video
93% chose because of the artist, the rest because of the music video.
Although necessary, this question was a bit stupid too as someone blatantly isn't going to buy an album just because of its poster.

8.
What do you think an anti-violence music video should include?
Guns, drugs, violence.
A bit grim!

9.
Would you like to be in a drum and bass music video?
- Yes
- No

How dare they, the ungrateful children

10.
Where do you listen to drum and bass music?
In clubs.
Kind of obvious