Final Cut Evaluation

After watching through our rough cut there were some changes that we needed to make, one was that there were a lot of continuity errors which meant that it was maybe slightly awkward to watch. For example Isa gets out of the bed but then we saw her back in it again, also water is flooding into the bedroom onto the pictures in shots that came before we saw that there was a bath or before the bath is seen to have over flowed so this didn't make too much sense. Therefore we fixed this by moving shots around so showing a shot of the taps being on and the bath over flowing before we saw any water in the bedroom. We also found that the whole sequence happened very quickly meaning that maybe she gets into the bath way before she actually should as we were left with a lot of room at the end that we didn't know what to do with and also that we hadn't included really effective and cinematic shots in the bedroom that we could have put it. So we made the start more spaced out and made it so that she isn't seen going into the bath until later on in the video, this worked much better as it meant that after this shot we didn't have too much footage we could put in as she goes under water and this is how it finishes so once she was submerged we had to finish it quite quickly.

We also found that the lip syncing wasn't also on point which needed to ne changed it is just made the whole music video look a lot more unprofessional as it became obvious that these the two artists were not actually a band and that she was just singing and he was just playing over a track. This was easily changed by using the time proxy to help us get the shots in time with the track. 

The big change though was doing the special effect at the end of Isa dissolving into multi-coloured inks in the bath, the way we did it is on the shoot day we took a birds eye view shot of the girl fully under the water lying in the bath and then we took a birds eye view shot of the bath when it was empty as well, by using these two templates an effect called bubble dissolve was used to slowly move from one shot into the other. But the next step was the ink, on the shoot day we had made ink bombs which exploded in the bath producing this mixture of ink swells in the bath which could be used to know the colours that we wanted to use but for the ink to actually dissolve this girl,what happened was that we turned small parts of her into blocks and dissolved it and then went on the amplify the colours and make it more obvious as to what was happening to her.

 

Also what we did was use a process called colouring - which is done on an American programme called ‘Coloring’. What it does is change the amount of colours so that they match each other, therefore as we used a lot of white and sometimes the whites wouldn’t match up - maybe because of the time of day had changed or there was a slightly different light set up, etc. - this is when we can use this process so that the colour balance in the image looks correct. Colouring was also used to make it look quite de-saturated and dark in order to keep the style for one quite grungy and also emphasis the dark and troubled message that we are presenting in our music video, we thought de-saturating it would pull off this look after watching the music videos that Birdy had done which use a similar colour process.

Fineshine Ruff Cut

Audience Feedback

The audience which I showed our ruff cut to really loved it. They thought that the footage which we had got was very meaningful and worked very well with the choice of song. They could tell what the narrative was about which meant that the editing was done well due to the fact they could tell the storyline. There is a few weaknesses and they were down to timing in the rough cut. We took footage of some of the same shots when the floor was wet and dry and we got a bit muddled when editing this footage. The audience noticed that we need to change one of the shots from having dry floor to wet floor as the bedroom has flooded at this point. I agree that we need to go back and just keeping checking what shots have been flooded and which ones haven't.

What do you think of the footage?
I really like the footage and I think it works well with your song. It's interesting to watch and you don't get bored at all watching the video. The shot which I like the most is the Ariel shot of Isa in the bed.

Can you tell what the narrative is?
Yes, it's a very clear narrative, the only thing which I've noticed is that at one point when the bedroom has flooded, there is a shot where the bedroom goes back to being dry. This doesn't make much sense, so I think this may be a mistake.

Do you think the editing fits well with the song?
Yes, it all flows really well, there is a part where Isa pulls her hand together and the lyrics read 'and pull' which fits particularly well. The band footage works really well with the other parts and has been edited in to work well with the lip sync as it looks like the singer is really singing. There is only one part towards the end of the song where the  singer is slightly out of time but it just needs changing very slightly.

Is there anything you think we could improve on?
I think all you need to work on is making sure that the timing on everything works well and make sure that it flows slightly better than it does at the moment. I think the shot where the taps are running doesn't look quite right and maybe should be swapped for another shot. It's not a very interesting shot as well as not looking as clean as the others. Also towards the end its a bit mix and match. It needs to be flow more towards the end and needs something to happen with the last shot.

What's your overall view?
I really like it and I don't think there is much to do. If that was your final piece I would be surprised. The editing has been done really well and the footage is amazing. The storyline makes sense however i do think that there are some cuts in there that need to be changed and adapted in order to make it flow better.

Progress of Rough Cut Evaluation

After the shoot day we looked back at our footage and were very pleased with the results and certain shots that we got. We felt that the shots had a strong cinematographic element to them which would lead to producing a professional looking music video. The shots that we were particularly pleased with were the slow motion shots as well at the performance shots with the change of focus creating interesting depth of fields. The focus switches between the performance and the inks running down the perspex screen which was very effective. 

We started placing the narrative elements down first due to this being the main focal point on our video. We thought that we would put the performance clips in different areas once we had the basis of the narrative down first. After we had got the main bulk of the narrative down we adapted the shots to make sure they were cut to the beat, this would was to ensure that the video flowed well. If they were not cut to the beat it would just feel awkward and would be uncomfortable to watch. It became clear that we needed to be careful about the time length of the clips, making sure that they did not go on for too long or pass too quickly so that it did not get to boring to watch or the audience do not get time to see what the image was.

However, there has been a few problems in the editing process so far. We all felt that the slow motion shots worked really well and when we started to put the normal motion shots they did not work as well. So in in this case we had to slow down the speed of some of the footage to make it more pleasing to watch. This was a problem with the arial shot of Isa getting into the bath. We had to slow the speed down of this shot in order to make it look more effective. On the other hand, we did speed up the shot of the bath filling up so that we were not sitting around for ages waiting for it to overflow. We also ran into a problem where we were making it all happen to fast which meant we had allot of time at the end and she had already gone under the water. Once she is in the tub we cant really go back to the shots at the beginning  This made us realise that we needed to make more use of the footage of her in the bed room in oder to stop this from happening. We also need to make more use of the shots with Isa in the bath before she goes under the water.

We thought we would have a big problem with the bright lighting of the performance element and the dark room. The bed and bathroom scenes were shot in a more dark atmosphere while the artists were shot in a more artificial right with colours. Yet when we put them together it actually did not look bad at all and created a nice contrast and also added more footage to the piece as a whole.

 

We have now moved onto working on another cut of the video experimenting with other ways we could piece it all together and the best way for the sequence to reveal itself at the end. We also need to work with how we are going to make Isa dissolve into the bath at the end. We only have one shot of the explosion of the ink in the bath and two of isa sinking into the bath. This was because they were 'one time shot' things. We need to ensure that this looks realistic as possible and does not reuin the whole look of the video. 

Evaluation of Website (frist draft)

We started to create a website to promote and sell the artist image and the video. Before we could start our own website we made sure that we did enough research into other artists blogs that were similar to our band. This meant that we new the sort of look that we were going to go for when it came to us creating our own website.

 

We were introduced to the website editor WIX which allowed us to use templates adding our own images and text into to template and creating our own website. The first step we took was thinking about the website layout and the sort of look we were going for. We decided as a group that we wanted to have quite a clean and clinical look to the website with quite neutral colours. We went on from here.

After selecting the template and the designing the general layout we split the web into different sections this being; home, about the band, behind the scenes (consisting of photographs that I collected on the day of the shoot), Tour dates, News, New Music Videos and contact information. Having collected a vast amount of photos on the shoot day we were able to scatter these all over the website. However, when adding the images into the site it became apparent that we did not have enough pictures of the band. Having recognised this we are going to set up a photo-shoot with the band members so that we can place these onto our website.

 

For the first draft I just created in photoshop a merge of two photos which I do have for the mean time. However I will shoot this properly. Again we want this to be quite clean, basic and simple.

This is only our first draft but we are pleased with the results for far. Once we have gotten images of the band and the video up on the website it will be much more complete. We were also thinking about placing the time laps we created of our shoot day on the go-pro onto the website; this will show the construction of the shoot day and what went into it.

Music Promo - Evaluation of shoot day

After months of planning very carefully our music video it came time to shoot it. The weeks running up to the shoot day it was essential that we got all the props sorted; each member of the group taking different responsibilities and taking their share of the weight. The photos were a key part of our shoot so the group and I took hundreds of photos of the guy in which she was stalking and sent these of to get printed.

The day before the actual shoot we began to build the first set up so we could get going as quickly as we could on the day of the shoot. We decided to shoot the bathroom scenes first. We set up the basis of the bathroom set and the bedroom as there was water involved in both of these scenes. We place many sandbags in the shape of the room, piling them up. We then placed a membrane over the sand bags to keep the water in the area. We then placed weights on top of these to ensure that the membrane did not slip and allow the water to escape. We placed down black and white floor pattern to look like bathroom tiles. We wanted this set to look very simple as we did not want to sets to look at all homely or lived in really. We had to think very carefully when it came to putting in the lights. Because we were using water in our shoot and overflowing the back it was essential that we did not use and floor lighting. After some thinking we attracted lights to some fishing line and hung them from over the walls. This meant that they were floating just above floor level and not at risk of touching the water. We also used over head lighting. During the building of the of the set I was not to sure how it was going to look and was slightly worried about the lighting. However, when it was finished we were all very pleased with the set up and felt it was very simple get extremely effective and gave exactly the look in which we wanted - cold and un-homely.

One the day of the shoot we still had some setting up to do. We envisaged the video to mainly be filmed over head. This meant that we had to sent up the crane. We also needed to fill the bath. However, we needed to make the bath water warm for our main girl and there is no hot running water in the studio. This meant that we had to cart buckets of hot water from the kitchen to the studio to fill the bath with warm water. After there was enough hot water we attached the hose to the taps making the water run through them and waited for the bath to over flow... This was a very tense wait... We had scattered many photos round the floor of the set.

We assigned ourselves different roles, these being;
Kitty - Director

 

Olivia - Checking of all the shots and making sure we got all the shots we needed and wanted
Me - Photographer
Beth -
While we all had our individual roles we also all took turns with the camera work and being 'hands on'. In my role I was ensuring that while I was accounting the day of the shoot I was also trying to get some good shots that could potentially be used for our album art work and website. 

Our first set up was generally quite successful and we were all very happy with the shots that we achieved. We removed the water from the bath and took the bath out and removed the flooring. We then placed down some old office carpet for the bed room scene. We warped a single mattress with the membrane so that the water did not sink into the mattress as otherwise it would be extremely heavy after and the room would be hard to flood because the mattress would sink up a huge amount of the water. We then made up the mattress with sheets and made it look 'lived in'. Again with this set up we covered the floor with photographs and began to flood the studio. One problem we had here was that the water was going under the carpet. However we quickly resolved this. Liv made sure that we got all the shots that we wanted. We were very pleased with the shots which we got with this set up to and even got some really effective slow motion shots.




The third and final set up was for the performance element. This consisted of a white backdrop set up and a piece of Perspex plastic in which we were going to drip ink down. We mixed the ink with glycerine to make it thick so it would run like a gel substance down the plastic. We then collected a range of shots for the performance element. These consisting of close up shots of both individual members of the team taking a range of shots as well as both members together. In the performance element is played hugely with the focus. Moving between focusing on the ink running down the glass and the performance element. Creating a range of interesting depth of fields. I feel this was extremely effective and am pleased with out this came out.

All in all I feel that our set design and that way in which we shot the video communicated the concept really well. While it was ambiguous how it was going to go on the day and the members of the team were unsure how it was going to look it went as well as it possibly could have done. We collected a range of interesting shots and looking back on the footage am very pleased with what we have. The slow motion shots I feel as really effective. The crane was definitely used to our advantage and really gave the look in which we wanted to achieve. As a team we all worked really well together. While we all had our individual roles we all looked after each other and helped each other out.

After we had done got everything we needed with the bathroom and bedroom scenes and we had flooded the area we then had to get all the water out of the membrane. This took a very long time as we had not thought about how we were going to get the water out. As a result of this taking so much time it meant that we were in a very tight time strength. We did not get to shoot the ink imagery; however, this was not a huge problem as we are able to do that another time as we have everything we need and it will not take a huge amount of time.

As a result of me taking photographs throughout the day we now have a collection of photographs that we can imbedded into our website; widening the content of our website.

I think I can safely say on behalf of myself and all the group members that we are really pleased with the footage we collected on the day and are very exited to take the next steps towards our final product.

 

More Ink Experiments

We needed to test out the inks that we had brought to ensure that they worked in the same way and also to test and colours and see how they mixed. I got a fish tank and dripped the ink cartages into the water. Collecting a range of evidence; this being photographs as well as recordings.

I also placed the photographs into the water to see how they would react to the water. The photographs did not rein at all. To create an effect where the ink would run if you drip the ink onto the photograph while it is wet the ink sinks into the image, giving the effect that the ink in the photograph has run.

 
 

 

 
 

Looking at how the photographs react to water. When you put the ink onto of the wet photograph the ink leaks into the image and makes it look as to the ink from the photograph has run... this could be something we do in the video

Call Sheet and Shooting Schedual