Filming and Editing-David Hutchings

Week 1:

Thursday 16th November
Location: Cemetery
Shots Taken: Depth of field, pan-shot and hand on tombstone.
Weather: It was sunny but still had a lot of wind blowing.

This was a script that I made on Word to get an idea of what scene syncs up with the lyrics.

Week 2:

Date: Saturday 25th November
Shots Taken: Mirror shots with greenscreen. Medium shot with lighting under face. Shot of water blowing with the wind.
Weather: Frequent rain. Bright. This didn't effect filming as we were inside.

We started off with a mirror. The plan was for one of us to be filmed with the greenscreen up and the other with it off.

We used a green cloth to act as the greenscreen. It was too large so we had to compare it to the size of the mirror and mark where to cut it.

A picture of James cutting the green cloth along the marks made on the cloth.

We attempted to fit the cloth before realising it was too large and got back to cutting it.

Eventually we got it short enough and stuck it onto the mirror with double-sided tape.

To get both the mirror and medium shot done we needed some artificial lighting which James is holding in the image to do the medium shot.

30/11/17: Opening lip-sync.

For this shot, I decided to film while sitting down on the stairs to match with the lyrics. The biggest difficulty that I had with filming this scene was making sure the lighting looked good. In the end, I held a light under my face and made sure the camera didn't show it.

The text that is in bold, italics and underling means that it has been shot.

Week 3:

4/12/17: Greenscreen shots. Close-up of eye.
9/12/17: Cemetery, re-shot depth of field, pan shot with lip-sync. James' house, re-shot the mirror scene and filmed shot in the cupboard. Town, shots of crowds and river.
The poor weather did affect some continuity but we re-shot the scenes were it would have been affected.
10/12/17: Close up of putting a video into a video player.

While Filming at James' we "Built" our own tripod for James' phone using a tripod (For a broken camera) and some hair bobbles.

Weather report for Saturday. This proved to be highly inaccurate as there was a lot of rain and snow.

When we had finished this we began the editing process. For this we used Sony Vegas, James was the one who handled most of the editing. However, I started off with a simple video just to see what scene should go where which was used to help in the actual editing process.




One of the more important moments was trying to create a video static effect over the stop-motion scene which required him to take an image off the internet of a generic static effect, from a VHS tape, and cut out a piece of it in Photoshop, I then used a combination of green screen and animation too make it pan in front of the stills in the background.

The major problem with the video was that the audio from the internal speakers' recorder sounded terrible. This meant James would have to use and MP3 converter so it would work.

Focus Group-James Donovan

We shown some content involving our music group to a small group of people. We shown our inspiration for our music video, research on our chosen song and a storyboard of our music video.


Here is a summary of the feedback we received from what we shown:

One thing someone said about our Storyboard was that we had a good idea of some of the shots we wanted to create and that we had a strong thought about what we wanted to create going into this project. They also said that once we knew how to edit these shots, the way we wanted them, we could create a visually appealing and inspired music video easily. However one said that the storyboard could use improvement as there was not enough of it.

We were told that our research into the song, The Man Who Sold The World, and its lyrics were decent. We took heavy inspiration from the abstract from the abstract style of David Bowie and payed attention to the lyrics of the video since some of our shots follow what the lyrics say. For example on the lyric "You're face to face with the man who sold the world" we had a two shot of our actors staring at each other, face to face.

Involving the inspiration for our music video we were told that the videos we chose were good examples for the abstract style of our video.

From our inspiration from Kanye West we were told that the use of animation and editing was an interesting choice for our video.

From our inspiration from David Bowie we were told that the dream like and abstract narrative style would be a good way to draw in our audience.

Audience Profile-James Donovan

Genre:
While it is difficult to give it a specific genre, with our music video, we decided that our target audience would be fans of art rock and dark themed music videos. They would be teenagers to young adults since the actors are young adults. But more mature adults could be into our video because we use an older song, by David Bowie.
Since our video branches out into different sub-genres this allows our video to spread to a wider audience, meaning our music group would boost in popularity.

Gender:
The song we used is from David Bowie, who was known for being suitable for both genders so our music video won't be targeted to a specific gender. However one could say that as both of us of male and that the song is from a man, that they would be more likely to be the audience.

Methods:
We will target our audience with dark, surreal imagery which can be enjoyed/appreciated by people who are into a wider range of music genres. We have created a Facebook page which can be used to advertise our music group and whatever merchandise we create such as posters or T-shirts.
Our video could also be linked to a narrative which would attract people who are into visual storytelling and people who enjoy theorising and finding deeper meanings in movies or other videos.

Extra:
Based upon the questionnaire, it appears what the audience enjoys most in a music video is clever editing which is something that we took into account.

Actor Contract and Prop List-James Donovan and David Hutchings

Actors

• David Hutchings
• James Donovan

Contract:
As the creators of the music video, we have decided to appear in our music video ourselves.

Prop List

• Clothes

          Provider: Ourselves

• Phones to film

         Provider: Ourselves

• Mirror

         Provider: James

Treatment-James Donovan

David Bowie (David Robert Jones) 

Born: 8 January 1947
Death: 10 January 2016 (aged 69)
Cause: Liver Cancer
First Album: David Bowie (1967)
Last Album: Black Star (2016) released the day after his death

Where the idea came from: We chose Bowie's song, The Man Who Sold The World, because we found this to be a mutual favorite from his songs, we chose Bowie out of several because his music is well known and has a surreal theme that is open to interpretation and can be implemented differently in different music videos. This makes it easy for us to explore different themes and techniques in our music video.

Band Logo-David Hutchings

After we had the name for our band, the next task was to create a logo for it.

When making the logo, we thought that using the Roman eagle as a part of it would work well. 

For the name 'Nero Redivivus', I had the idea to have it in gold while also having a mirror copy above it. Originally, we had the logo on a red background.

We did the same image again to see whether or not it looked better with the name above or below the eagle. We decided it looked better above.

After this we decided to abandon the red background and make it white. This helped to make the eagle and title (especially the gold) stand out more.

The final thing that we noticed was the SPQR (Senātus Populusque Rōmānus/The Roman Senate and People) on the eagle and we decided to get rid of it since it didn't have anything to do with our music video.

Band Name-David Hutchings

For the task of creating a music video we had to create a name for the band and the album. We decided on 'Doppelgänger' as the name for the album. The band was a more difficult task, as I wanted it to mean something so I compiled several names based on my love of History and mythology.

These are the names;
1. Divine Comedy: Reference to the long narrative poem by Dante Alighieri who travels through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise or Heaven.
2. Ozymandias: Reference to the Greek name for Pharaoh Ramesses II and the poem by Percy B Shelley.
3. Cannae: Reference to a major battle of the Second Punic War that took place on 2 August 216 BC in Apulia, in southeast Italy. The army of Carthage, under Hannibal, surrounded and decisively defeated a larger army of the Roman Republic.
4. Gaugamela: Reference to the decisive battle of Alexander the Great's invasion of the Persian Achaemenid Empire in 331 BC.
5. Camlann: Reference to the battle in Arthurian mythology where King Arthur and Mordred died.
6. Nero Redivivus: Reference to the belief that the Roman Emperor Nero would return after his death in 68 AD.


We decided that Ozymandias and Nero Redivivus were the best so we I went around the class getting their thoughts on the two. Nero Redivivus won 4 votes to 2.

Questionnaire Results-David Hutchings

These are the results of the questionnaire that we made regarding music videos and what people like about them.

Plan of Action-David Hutchings

The Planning stage has to be completed by the 26th November.
Filming will be handled by both of us as sometimes only one will be in the frame. We will need to get a third person for the shots we are in together. We will probably be filming this on our mobile phones.
Editing is something we plan to do with different software such as IMovie, Sony Vegas and Movie Maker.

This entire music video must be finished before we break up for Christmas.