Staying Late

Today, my timetable meant that I had around 4 and a half hours in school where I was able to edit and as there was a school production that evening too I was able to stay till 10 o'clock in the evening to maximise my time in the edit suite. After spending all the time in the edit suite, including breaks I edited the whole first drop, along with the build up and transition into the next verse. I feel my time was used incredibly productive since I experimented with lots of new tools that I had never used before and came across this one tool which I'd never seen before but I had hoped to find. The spherise tool let me do this blowing up screen effect, similar to what I had seen in the club scene in the film 'Limitless' and I had brought this effect to the attention of my group early on in the project.

I showed this clip to Chris, our media technician and he thought it looked superb. He asked how I managed to do it and more particularly he was interested in how I gave the shot a vivid cyan overlay. Again I found this through experimenting with the effects and I actually achieved this by mistake. In the colour correction section, I used the RGB curves tool because I wanted to increase the amount of red, but when I dropped the reds and came across this colour I felt this actually looked a lot better.

Mrs Blackborow's first viewing of our music video

We showed her the video when the rough edit and a decent proportion of the fine edit is complete so we were able to get thorough feedback. She told us to make three amendments:

1) She understood that the narrative shows the teacher going through a progression of confidence, however the stages of her character development needed to be in the correct order, when at the moment it is not. So we need to amend for this, which will only require moving a few shots around.

2) The transition where the teacher starts accepting the chaos and joining in needs to be more obvious. For this I need to arrange the slo-mo jump shots to allow more time to see the teacher letting down her hair.

3) The pace of the build up to the first drop is too fast. To change this I need to remove much of the strobe and slow down the shots showing the students getting up.

Other than this she feels the video is of high quality editing, and although there is still time and room for improvement, the presentation of the narrative was clear and enjoyable to watch in combination with the performance.

Designating Roles

During the post-production stage we knew we needed to be efficient in managing our time so we designated the three task between us. Adam concentrated mainly on the album cover, Michael on the website and I on the video. Conveniently, we were able to position ourselves in the roles which we all preferred to do. This will allow us to produce the best possible quality products we can because we will have no problem in focusing on our individual task and producing the correct amount of work to the deadlines we set ourselves.

Second Performance Shoot

Today we had the second performance shoot which is also our final shoot all together!

This time round we were much more prepared, having planned out the shots we missed out from the first shoot and we were much more efficient in setting up the lights and also getting into character since we had the confidence from the last time.

We had to make sure this time that we corrected an issue with the camera which resulted in grainy footage from the last shoot, but that wasn't a problem.

I'm happy to say the shoot was a success and I can't wait to watch the footage back when we capture.

Inspiration for my music video

The track we have selected is the Skrillex remix of Nero's 'Promises'. It is dubstep and since I am a fan of the dubstep genre I feel that I will be able to produce a high standard end product since I understand the conventions of music videos of the genre, like excessive slo-mo, fast paced action in the narrative, either the artist has a hidden identity or doesn't show themself at all and usually videos have a very urban and rough feel to them. Here are a few music videos which inspire me:

Modestep - Feel Good

Modestep - Sunlight

Example - Kickstarts (Bar9 remix)

DJ Fresh - Louder (ft. Sian Evans)

Skrillex - First of the year (Equinox)

After watching the film 'Limitless' I was stunned to see the creativity and individuality of the cinematography. There was one scene in particular which can relate to a music video. The main character is in a club and the visuals have been edited to give an effect where the screen pops out like a bass speaker. This is hopefully an effect I will be able to achieve in my music video.

Promo Shoot

Today, we conducted a promo shoot for our artist, Influx, in order to promote our artist image and create images for the fanbase on our website and album cover.

We varied the depth, lighting and mood of the shot to entice the audience into divulging further into our campaign.

At first, we used the same costumes we wore when shooting the performance for the music video (Charley: sophisticated black dress with a dropped shoulder strap, DJs: Black suits, shirts and shoes, along with our iconic masks and headphones.)

We then changed the costume for added interest and variety.

Finally, we had another costume change so that the DJs were wearing casual clothing, with particular emphasis on wearing a hooded jumper, since this type of clothing is commonly associated with the clothing that is worn by the target audience. With this added grunge look, we can look to reach further into our target audience because it allows the audience to relate to the band, and this interactivity that is contemporary and very popular with the audience.

Here are a few of the shots taken that dat which have been edited for the website.

Weetabix Chocolate Spoonsize Advert 2011

I love this advert so much and when I first saw it in the adverts during the XFactor my mouth dropped in amazement. As soon as I could I went straight to YouTube and watched it again. I feel compelled to blog about this since I understand that this effect of replayability being a must-do is crucial and of vital importance in our own music video.

This is a commercial advertisement presented as a dubstep/house music video, which is relevant to my media project. There are clear examples of cutting to the beat and showing that the action and choreography of the girl, dancing teddy bears and movement of objects in the room is to the beat as well. My favourite part of the video is the drop where the camera pans, zooms out and in with the stationary objects and furniture of the room all moving in time with this slo-mo change in pace of the track. Visually, it looks incredible and its this experimenting with the camera which I can withdraw from the most in this advert and use it to my advantage in my music video.