Half term filming plan

Over half term we have a few things that we need to get done.

Firstly we need to film in a few more locations to give our video some more variety. We are going to start with filming at the train station. These shots have been around since the first shot list was created and we really want them to appear in our video. After that are going to shoot some shots in town. With these 3 locations shot I think we can edit together a very effective video.

Rough Cut

Filming and editing

On Monday's lesson after many filming setbacks we started filming our project. We filmed the shots in a park, in the shots Sam is playing on the play equipment and is up a tree. In today's lesson we uploaded the shots onto final cut, the shots turned out well and we are very happy with them. On Mondays lesson we are going to go to the train station to film more footage, we will film in the station and on a train. After this we will have filmed most of the project.

Problems with Thursdays filming

Today the plan did not go too well. We didn't get a chance to do the train station shots because we could not get hold of an acoustic guitar in the morning. We are still going to try and get hold of one so we can film as much as possible after school today.

Thursdays plan of action

On Thursday we are going to attempt to film the train station shots. We are going to get the 9:35 train to Waterbeach. The return ticket that we will buy will get us access to the station and a train. We will film the first 9 shots on the train and on the platform which is a thrid of our shots and without using up any camera bookings because it will be filmed during the lesson.

Asking for permision

We needed to contact a few places to let us film there. We started with the Cambridge train station. This is the email we sent:

Hello

We are students at long road sixth form college studying A2 media. We are currently filming a music video which is the main piece of coursework for this term. We were wondering if we would be able to film a couple of shots on the platform and possibly on any trains that wouldn't be in use for about 30 minutes. We are filming on Thursday the 9th of October. We would really appreciate it if you could get back to us as soon as possible so we can adjust our shot list accordingly.

Thanks in advance Sam, Jenny, Robbie and Emma.

We also sent a similar email to Toys'R'Us. We should hear back from them before Thursday but if not we will need to change our shot list to make sure we have something to fill the gaps.

Change of idea

We decided that it would be best to remove the shots of people dressed up in costumes because we don't really know what costumes we want or where to get them from. We still want to keep the comedic aspect but without the costumes. Here is our new shot list:

1. tracking shot through busy streets and into underground
2. long shot of train coming in
3. mid shot, guy standing on underground platform playing guitar
4. long shot, man on train with guitar
5. close up of guitar being played
6. mid shot, man next to someone on the train
7. mid shot, guy next to him joins in with music
8. mid shot from behind, guy getting off train
9. tracking from behind, camera follows guy out of station
10. man busking with guitar, someone throws a button into hat.
11. long shot, going into someone’s house
12. mid shot, walks in on people having dinner
13. close up, walks through door too swimming pool
14. long shot, reversal pool shot
15. close up, reversal pool shot
16. mid shot, walks out of house
17. long shot, shopping store
18. mid shot, guy changing into different outfits
19. mid shot, sitting on busy bridge
20. close up, sitting on busy bridge
21. long shot, walks off screen from busy area to park ----
22. man playing guitar whilst of the round about
23. man has stopped playing guitar and throws up
24. mid shot of him playing guitar still with a bit of sick round his mouth.
23. mid shot, wipes sick and walks from park into toy shop ----
24. stop motion (multi-shot) in toy store
25. mid shot, someone opens cubicle door, guy playing guitar
26. long shot, man playing in car park
27. man rides on back of moped with Robbie.

Re-edited test footage

We decided that we needed to re-do our test footage as the shots in our old one didn't go as planned. The first shot you see is the shot of someone walking from on scene to another. This will be used in our main video to get the guitarist from one scene to another. We realised that this shot only works if the person is the same distance from the camera in both halves. This is something we will need to work on before we shoot it. The second bit in our test footage is the long shot thats been sped up. It worked pretty well although quite shaky. The last shot was the reverse shot and that worked really well and will defiantly be used in the main video.

Equipment/Props list

- costumes
- camera
- acoustic guitar
- tripod
- cd player/ipod speakers
- toy car

Costumes

These are photos of Ben Harper which i've pulled off google. Typically he wears very casual clothes and this is the same feel we will be aiming for. Acoustic music is known for generally being very laid back and we want this to show through the costume.

Why do we want a comical video?

I think originally we found the song a little sedate, we thought not including a comical aspect to the video would leave it very bland and would would not engage the audience. By adding some blatent fun to the video we hoped it would create a more upbeat feeling.

Since having further thoughts on the video i think that we would still like to encorporate a fun aspect to contrast with the performance part of our piece but that we wont include it to the level we first anticipated because of the realisation that what we already have is very engaging due to the interesting ways we are piecing the footage together.

Blog Feedback

Positive Feedback: We have all the necessary posts like the locations, test footage etc. Also People liked the large amount of artist research we have done.

We asked the question 'Is the concept good? Is it practical?' and these are the responses we got: Test footage looks good, they can see where our video is going, like the editing, the theme of the video fits with the genre of the song, good special effects.

Target Areas: Someone said that they didn't understand why we wanted to do a slightly comic video so we probably need to do a paragraph about why we want to do that.

To Do: We want to re-edit our test footage so its clear about the kind of shoots we want to take from it.