Editing In Our New Band Footage

We have now made a start on adding in some of our band footage from our shoot this week and to do this, we decided that the best way to go about it was to save a new version of the rough cut and start directly replacing the new clips where the old footage was. From here we can see how much band footage we have in and we can add in and take out as we wish. Doing it this way also makes it easier to match up the footage so that it is in sync with the song but more importantly allows us to retain the structure of the video. Had we gutted the rough cut and started again, we may have lost something, whether it is the order of the clips, certain shots or even whole scenes entirely.

Equipment Used On Performance Re-shoot

Now that we have had feedback and re-shot our band footage, we have sat down to discuss how well we used the equipment available to us.

The first time we filmed our band footage, we booked out things like the dolly, heavy tripod and shoulder mount as well as the big studio lights however, we didn't use them to the best of our ability, resulting in average quality footage and shots. 

On this band shoot we booked out the following equipment:

• Dolly

We were really looking forward to getting some really good moving shots using the dolly like we managed to do in our last band shoot. However, due to the floor at our filming location, we weren't able to use it because it was too bumpy. We tried to clear the floor of rubble but the floor was very uneven and it was just impossible to create a smooth shot using the dolly.

• Heavy Tripod

The heavy tripod came in really useful for us on this shoot because the day we chose to film ended up being extremely windy and so having the heavy tripod made filming in the wind so much easier. We were able to use all of the different spirit levels to ensure that all of our shots were straight and it was generally so much easier to film with especially for pans, tilts and any other camera movement we wanted to include.

• Shoulder Mount

The shoulder mount also came in very useful, particularly for getting shots of our main singer as he is over 6ft tall and getting a tripod to his height is very difficult. Using the shoulder mount made this much easier and it also allowed us to create much cleaner shots and still include smooth camera movement even without the dolly.

• Crane

We took the crane with us to our shoot because we thought we could get some really interesting establishing shots by using it. However, due to it being so windy we decided against using it and just used the shoulder mount and heavy tripod to create some of these shots instead. We didn't feel it was 100% safe to use the crane in those circumstances but we are confident that we managed to create good quality shots nonetheless.

Filming For Our Final Cut - Day 1: Band Video

At our shoot today we also took a short video clip of the location and our setup to help communicate a better idea of the space we decided to use in a way pictures can't really show.

Filming For Our Final Cut - Day 1

After submitting our rough-cut, we immediately began to plan our filming locations for the final cut. After just a few days since we were given feedback on the rough cut, we had organised our equipment (camera, equipment, instruments etc) and transport to get everything to where it needed to be for shooting.

So after finally transporting everything, we set up our set, consisting of the drum kit, the guitars and the microphone stand. It was at this point that we realised that we only had enough people for a 3 person band rather than a 4 person band as some people were unable to film at the last minute and so Alex was in fact promoted to being the singer and the guitarist which although didn't cause us a problem, meant that our band had decreased in size since the rough cut.

Due to our casting changes at the last moment, our band had also changed from an all male band to a 1/3 male band. This ultimately did not make a difference as Alex remained the singer, although, if he were to have changed role, it could have been a female given a male voice which would have looked strange.
We have thought about how we are subverting stereotypes by doing this and we are going to be going into more detail on this on the blog to explain why we actually thought this was a really good way to have our band.

In the end, we have filmed for around 2 hours today, including setting up and packing away. In this time, we have filmed a great deal of our video and it should be interesting to see just how well this footage has turned out.

Here are some photos taken whilst we were filming.

Strangling Scene Change

In the end of our video, it is imperative that the main character has to strangle the girlfriend/drug, which is going to symbolise how he will have finally beaten his drug addiction. In our rough cut, this seemed to get quite a confused response from people who weren't too sure as to what actually happened to the woman, whether she had been killed or just vanished into thin air. This most certainly wasn't our intention.

To change this, we have been researching music videos which have had a strangling scene in it and we found that the video video for the song, 'Spacebound' by Eminem to be extremely useful as there is an effect in it which we would like to achieve in our video. As Eminem's character appears to kill a woman with his bare hands, the editing used shows the woman being strangled, however, by crosscutting between two shots, one with the woman and one without. This shows both the perspective of him and reality which works really well with the video's narrative. If we could do something similar to that, we could really make this scene not just emotive, but shocking and impressive.

This is what our rough-cut strangling scene looked like. As you might imagine, getting Orrin to strangle his girlfriend proved to be quite difficult as we wanted it to look realistic without him actually causing her any harm. Fortunately, they achieved this with Laura pretty much unscathed.

We also want our strangling scene to be much more brutal and terrifying which this Eminem video carried out effectively because currently, the clips in the rough cut seem rather staged. With a bit more practice I think we can get the right levels of anger and fear in our actors to make this scene really realistic and uncomfortable to the viewer. This is the scene in our video that gives away what the whole narrative has been about really clearly so this has to be exactly how we want it otherwise it may not be as obvious as we need it to be without there being any confusion for the viewer whatsoever.
Therefore we will be sure to film Orrin strangling Laura, but also film him strangling nobody. When we come to edit we will experiment with which clips we use to see whether the clips of him strangling no one are imperative or if the story makes sense without it.

Subverting Band Stereotypes

After shooting our rough cut, we have made the decision to change a few of our band members. Some of our band members performances weren't entirely convincing and we think it may be easier to shoot the performance of the band if it is made up of three people, rather than four. This is due to the main singer Alex being really tall, therefore the other band members could not stand behind him, restricting where we could position the band. We also wanted to use a female in our band to help communicate the idea of female power throughout the whole video, in narrative and performance.

As a result of these ideas, we have recruited Kara and Annabelle to be in our band as the drummer and bassist. This may or may not work to our advantage but we would like to give it a try to see how good the footage turns out. We are making this decision knowing that we have time to change our mind if we decide that we don't like the heavy female lead concept. Not many bands of this genre are mixed sex. Therefore we are trying to subvert this stereo type. However, one band that does include both male and female members that is also fairly successful is Paramore. Therefore we may watch some band footage of them to see how they work as a band.

A lot of theorists that we have studied throughout the process of this video have suggested that females are often portrayed as being passive and voyeuristic, however we want to contradict this theory throughout the whole video, including in the narrative which we know is already very clear. We think that including this subversion of stereotypes and theories will work to our advantage based on the idea that we are trying to create.

New Bedroom Location

In our rough cut, we filmed all the bedroom scenes in Orrin's (our main actor's) own bedroom. However one thing we have picked up on is how it doesn't create the effect we want. Obviously our character's room should reflect his situation which he is in.  This is that he is a frequent drug abuser who doesn't have his life together. Orrin's room did not create this effect therefore we need to seek out a new location for the final video. We want our video to look as professional as possible and Orrin's room didn't create this effect.

We need it to look less homely and comfortable and more grungy and run down. Playing with effects in Premier Pro will be something else to experiment with in order to create the effect we want. Our character isn't likely to have a lot of money due to his drug problem therefore the place he lives in needs to reflect that.

For some inspiration we have looked at past music videos including bedroom scenes to see what type of location they use.

Here are some stills from Eminem and Rhianna's 'Love the way you Lie'

In this video the room is very dark in colours, the furniture and decorations look very cheap and old creating a run down and dingy look. There is also no harsh light, the room is quite darkly coloured but lit by artificial lights and a crack in the curtain. We need to try and style our room to replicate this one.

New Location For Our Band Performance

It was quite clear to us that we needed to reshoot all of our band footage in a new location. It became apparent that we must film in an edgy location which most likely needed to be outdoors or a run down warehouse. After much discussion we came to the conclusion to film at what remains of Fenwick Colliery in Earsdon. We were informed that part of it had been knocked down after having been abandoned for some time but that one building still stands.

We've chosen this place for a few different reasons. Firstly, because we feel like it suits the mood of the video, with the graffiti now sprayed on the walls, making an excellent backdrop for our band. Secondly, it's supposedly abandoned and so should in theory be available for filming whenever we want. Thirdly, because it's at Earsdon, equipment can be transported fairly easily by car as the place is right next to a road. This will help should we need to film there more than once. This is far more preferable to taking a drum kit into Newcastle on the metro and should take far less time.

We are going to go there next week during half term and film most (if not all) of our performance there. However, this is somewhat of a gamble for us as we're not sure how accessible this place will be and we are short of other ideas for filming locations so it may be that we need to think of somewhere else quickly if filming here isn't possible. Hopefully, it will all go to plan.

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Fenwick+Colliery/@55.049892,-1.5133116,17z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x487e6df82398484b:0x1a129beea5d48c41!8m2!3d55.0505046!4d-1.5130609

Rough Cut Class Feedback

We have received some feedback for our rough-cut in paper form as demonstrated in the last blog post, however we also decided to record the discussion between our peers after watching the video twice through. There were some more in depth and more interesting things said on this recording that weren't communicated as well through the questionnaire sheets filled in during the viewing which we think is quite helpful. We anticipated this and so to show just how much feedback we received, we have uploaded this audio so you yourself can get a taste of what was said.

In this recording we have feedback from peers in our class as well as our 3 media teachers, so there is a huge range of feedback from people who really know what they are talking about and  who also happen to fit into our target audience which makes this even more valuable to us. We will hopefully use as much of this feedback as possible in order to make our final cut the best that it can possibly be. Implementing this advice shouldn't be too difficult as everyone who contributed raised a number of extremely important points, leaving us with a number of new ideas as a result. This can surely only benefit our project greatly.

The main points we took away from this are -

1. Change the band location, possibly to somewhere outdoors which matches the theme of the video

2. Make sure the band members look like they are actually playing the instruments, it needs to be a convincing performance

3. Use the tripod more on pans and tilts to create smoother lines

4. Use shorter shot lengths in the chorus to match the pace of the song

5. Reshoot the argument scene as it isn't aggressive enough

6. Lighting needs work

7. Focus on the central metaphor and her violence whereas he is more passive

8. Everything needs to be reshot due to lighting and graininess, maybe use the fixed lens to increase image quality 

9. Direct Orrin more

10. More close ups of the band

Rough Cut Feedback

Today was the presentation of the classes music videos. This meant we would receive feedback from our teachers and class members, we produced sheets for everyone to fill in as they watched our video in order to gain feedback in the areas we wanted it as well as getting a range of peoples opinions.

We have scanned in all of the sheets filled in by our peers and our teachers so that we can have it here on our blog permanently to analyse and refer back to when we are filming our final cut.

As you can see from these images we have a huge amount of feedback and it is all incredibly helpful and we will look at it all in lots of detail to ensure that we make our video the best that it can be.

The main thing we are really happy with as a result of this feedback is that everyone seemed to understand the narrative that we were going for which was a huge relief for us because it is quite a hard narrative to communicate. Therefore we know that our actors and choice of shots were able to represent the things we wanted to well enough for everyone to understand.

One thing that we were aware of already before our feedback was that our performance footage wasn't as good as it could have been. We knew that this needed to be re-filmed but this feedback confirmed that for us. We also got some more specific points about it relating to band members, costume and the mise-en-scene which we have found really helpful as it has shown us things we haven't really picked up on ourselves.

Overall, we are really happy with the feedback we have received and it has highlighted some key issues for us which will really help us work out what we need to focus more on to achieve the desired effect. We will be referring to this blog post throughout the project to ensure we meet the feedback and improvements we have received here as best as we can.

Urban Rapture - The Kids Aren't Alright - Rough Cut

This is our rough cut of our music video for the song, 'The Kids Aren't Alright'.

Our Own Rough Cut Critique

Before we handed in our rough cut we decided to sit down as a group and write down all of the things we thought that we needed to work on in terms of the narrative and performance to see if this was replicated in the feedback we get from our peers and teachers after the rough cut is handed in. 

Here are some of the things we wrote down:

We know that all of our performance footage needs to be re-shot so there aren't really many specific things we wanted to take note on just the footage in general needs improving in all aspects.

In terms of the narrative, we have found quite a few aspects we need to improve in order to make the narrative as clear and as affective as possible, whilst also only making up 50% of the video. Our rough cut was very narrative heavy due to the issues we had with our performance shoot. 

We also just generally want to make some of the narrative scenes cleaner and more professional as well as really making the story understandable by improving the acting. A lot of the changes we have wrote down to make about the narrative, are to do with the pace of editing. whilst filming some of our scenes we didn't film from enough angles in order to make quick cuts. This then resulted in some pretty slow paced editing which becomes quite borrowing and doesn't match the song.

Editing Process

So far, we have done quite a lot of editing with our footage and in order to make our group as efficient as possible. To do this, we have worked in two alternating groups of two. One pair to actually do the editing and the other to conduct research, find filming locations and come up with even more ideas for the gaps in our editing which need filling with new ideas in the form of footage.

The video is really starting to take shape at this point. We still have some small bits to film before the rough cut deadline but we have enough time to get that done confidently. We aren't sure at the moment whether our editing might be a bit too slow for the pace of the song and the structure of the narrative, however, we are working on improving that whilst we are gaining more footage from each shoot, so these are issues which will most likely be resolved in time.

These pictures were taken in a media lesson when we were editing our band footage into the narrative footage we already had. This took quite a bit of time because we had to make sure that the guitar, bass, drum and singing were all in sync with the music.

Filming: Day 4 - Band in Drama Studio

This morning, our group assembled at 7am to set up our set for the performance aspect of our video. This setting up included setting up a drum kit, guitar and bass and a  microphone stand. We then had to organise our lighting to make sure that it was at it's optimum for filming and was the right colour for what we wanted to do.  We also had to get all the camera equipment ready to start.

We then proceeded to record enough footage for our rough cut after having to finish filming 15 minutes after starting due to our set being used by other people and so we had less time than we intended, especially with how long we spent setting up and packing away.

The footage itself isn't as ideal as we would have liked, given that we were experimenting with the lighting just this morning, before we started filming and so we only got it adjusted to the way which we wanted literally moments before we had to stop filming.

Here are some images from when we filmed the performance. 

Filming: Day 3 - Bedroom Videos

As well as the photographs we took whilst on our bedroom shoot, we also took a couple of videos to show the process of directing our actors and how we were deciding to position each shot. 

This may be interesting to watch later on once we have done our rough cut and had our feedback to see what we were possibly doing wrong. Watching this footage later may help us improve what we already have to create something even better.

This was taken as our main character was leaving the house. As you can hear in the video, Annabelle keeps asking Orrin to stop so she can start filming from a different angle. We wanted to do this because we wanted to show different features of each scene and using different angles was the best way to do this. It took more time but we think it is really going to work and help us create faster paced editing whilst still looking continuous.

This clip was taken as we were trying to create the shot where Orrin is pictured on the bed alone and the camera pans round to the mirror and all of a sudden Laura is with him too. This took quite a few attempts but we really wanted to get it right as this is a crucial moment in hinting what our storyline is.

Filming: Day 3 - Bedroom

Today, we filmed the bedroom scenes. This took several hours and multiple retakes of shots, not just to improve what we were filming but to also allow us to film shots multiple times from different angles, allowing greater flexibility in telling the narrative as the different shots show different things, e.g. close-up = emotion or establishing shot = to show a setting, so it was imperative that we recorded what we thought would add to and improve our video.

As a group, we had all agreed that the footage which we had filmed previously, was taken from too far a distance to convey the emotions and expressions of the characters and so we used this day of filming to help counteract the shots taken further away and in some cases, to replace some of that footage.

In the final cut, we would like to try to be a bit more brave in terms of what we shoot. By that, I mean filming shots closer up and being more daring in terms of the shots and angles which we want to film. This would improve our video and make it seem more like what you would expect from a music video rather than maybe some of our rough-cut shots.

Here are a selection of images taken from within the set of where we were filming:

These two pictures were taken as we were getting some close up shots of our main character looking unstable and unwell. We wanted to include some really close up shots on this shoot because it is something we didn't really think about before when we have filmed previously and so we thought these scenes would be the perfect time to create these shots.

This picture was taken as we were shooting the section where our main character leaves the house. This is going to appear very early on in the video as it sets the story about where he is going etc. so it needs to be really good. We got a lot of different shots for this section so we can use faster paced editing showing some parts close up and some parts further away to show different things.

This was taken when we also had "the drug" with us. This was us trying to create a really interesting shot where our main character is shown lying on a bed and as the camera pans round to the mirror, the mirror reveals that she is lying next to him. We spent a lot of time on this shot because we wanted it to reveal a lot about the storyline, starting to really hint to people what is going on.

This shoot went really well, we got lots of footage and we are looking forward to editing it all in with the footage we already have and watching the video really start to come together.

Dealing With Illegal Substances

We couldn't make our cast take actual drugs or drink real Vodka when we needed them to be sober and for filming and so we decided that instead. In terms of drugs - In our video, in place of illegal drugs, Orrin can be seen flushing ibuprofen wrapped in a receipt, this alludes to it being the real thing and so works well as a prop. In terms of alcohol, rather than forcing Orrin to drink a 35cl of Tesco's cheapest Vodka, we in fact found an empty bottle and filled it with water which he then drank from, giving the appearance of Vodka with it being a clear liquid without making him drunk in any shape or form. For the smoking scenes, instead of making Orrin and Laura smoke a joint containing illegal substances, we instead used a rolled-up piece of paper which we then lit up, at no point did he actual inhale or smoke any illegal substances.

Here is the proof that this is what we did.

Filming Day 2 - Newcastle

We went to Newcastle at night again to film with both of our narrative actors unlike the last time we filmed as we only had our main character available due to Laura not being able to make it. This had meant that we had previously only been able to shoot scenes with Orrin in which in turn meant that we could only film so much of the video and so by having Laura on this shoot, we were able to address this. Here are some pictures during the shoot to show how we overcame obstacles involving lighting etc during filming.

As you can see, in the image above, James is adjusting the camera in order to make sure that the shots are what we planned and that the angles and focus were what we were intending to capture, giving us our desired effects. If we hadn't have ensured this, the would have been quite a strong chance that our footage might have been totally unusable which thankfully, it hasn't been for our rough cut.

The picture above here shows just how much dedication our group have put into our music video as Jamie, seen top right, is quite clearly hanging from a drainpipe in an effort to improve the scene's lighting whilst it is being filmed. He hung on to the railings with one arm and an LED light in the other for around 10 minutes. But thanks to him, the scene was shot with better lighting than it would have otherwise had been. Had he not done the, our footage could have turned out totally dark and unusable for this rough-cut.

These images were taken in back alleyway which we had chosen from our blog post on filming locations in Newcastle. This although a very good setting, meant that getting our lighting right was essential, not just to get it light enough but to make sure that there weren't too many shadows or highlights etc as this would have made the scenes appear to fake and scripted.

This scene was recorded on the high level bridge, again chosen from our Newcastle locations post. We are really happy with the shots we got at this location as we filmed over the bridge showing the river and all of the other bridges in the dark which made a really nice shot with our two main characters in it which has from our research been found to be quite a common theme in music videos of this genre.

In short, I think that so far we have done really well with our shoots in Newcastle and the video is really starting to come together. The more we can get filmed earlier on will also help us as it means that we will have more time to edit this all and make this footage look the best that is can, whether that means doing something with after effects or just taking our time to make sure that our editing gets the best out of our footage.