Digipak Conventions

Thinking back to the Digipak:

Visual images and photography are key to the production, included on each face of the digipak and on the CD disc also
A coherence in style including colour and font
Front cover image is memorable and eye catching and includes the name of artist and album
List of tracks on the back cover
Details about the artists record label, copyright, websites and production information is included normally on the inside sleeve or on the back cover

'Writing Video...'

So we finally were able to begin editing properly, starting at the beginning of the track, onwards and upwards. The beginning intro was pieced together in the same style as the animatic, using cross dissolves between shots to match the slow pace of the acoustic music. We reversed the shot of the nose bleed and cut it into parts, between which we added visually exciting cuts of static or slow movement, to start to build tension toward the opening lyric. A shot such as below was one of the cut between, the colour has been enhanced so that the already amazing blue of the sky intense and vivid. The people walking beside him we decided to have walking forwards as well as backward, to create more atmosphere.

One of our strongest overlays - we changed the brightness and contrast of both of the shots so that the colouring matched, before there was a grainy effect that was created around the middle of the shot, so to eliminate that we changed the colouring.

Forth day shooting, back at my yard

In the courtyard
This was a short session as we allowed a few hours in a night to shoot the beginning of the video. We had planned to interpret the opening lyric in a certain way - shooting our protagonist with the illusion of him laying down with a nose bleed which we would reverse up his nose - 'As the blood dries in my veins, and my heart feels no more pain'
We will have to over crank this piece of film for it to be able to run across many shots we will be cutting between during the stretch of the acoustic introduction. In our risk assessment here we have stated the risk of putting food colouring up our actors nose, we decided the best way to do this was to plug his nose with cotton wool previous, then drip the blood into the plug. Pressing on his nostril and throwing his head forward the blood slowly dripped down his nose. Subtly and slow which is the image we were looking for.
The brick work again creates the urban atmosphere, and the opening close up captures his vacant and lifeless emotion, his hooded costume instantly portraying the urban mode of address, thus this is a powerful opening image.

Mopping up the excess!

Here are four images which show the progression of the dripping blood and its clever effect. The shot framing and positioning is exactly the same to maintain continuity.

We had some time following this so i mentioned it might be an idea to go down outside Greenhithe station as i know that walking down the hill at peak time are many business people. A shot we has previously thought would have been filmed in a busy London street with crammed framing turned into the shot below. It is more simple but we are happy with the colouring and the way our protagonist seems to stand out amongst the people.

The shot drawn by the animatic compared the shot after filming. Static and alone our males fierce glare make him appear unsociable and ostracized - people walking past oblivious.

Risk assesments

Risks involved in our planned filming:

Smashing glass / What potential hazard will be encountered? glass leaving shards around us which could be damaging around where we are working, glass getting into the lens of the camera, if the smashed glass is too close to the human shards may get into their skin.

How will these hazards be prevented? This will not be carried out, if it is we will shoot from a far range, we will lay down sheets around the area near where the glass will be shattered and throw from a far distance.

Bleeding nose / What potential hazard will be encountered? Dripping the blood into the actors nose in the wrong way will cause blockage or discomfort so we will have to be careful.

How will these hazards be prevented? We have decided to use food colouring instead of fake blood as this would be damaging to inhale or swallow where as food colouring will not be.

Traffic shots / filming near the road What potential hazard will be encountered? Falling into the road, dropping our equipment into the road is dangerous wherever but especially on a hazardous road in London.

How will these hazards be prevented? We will be cautious at when we use the road, standing where the cars can not go and during non peak times will lower the hazard. Also being careful that the camera is securely fixed to the tripod so it will not fall off

Cracking mirrors What potential hazard will be encountered? Again when mirror smashes the pieces left are extremely sharp and dangerous, these could be hazardous to any one of the group and mainly the actor.

How will these hazards be prevented? This will not be carried out.

Filming Deer in Richmond Park What potential hazard will be encountered? Animals are extremely unpredictable and getting too close we could be in danger of anything

How will these hazards be prevented? Staying well back! Using a zoom.

Third Day shooting

Location: A Kebab shop, Dartford.

So we asked the owner if he wouldn't mind us shooting some footage in his shop, to his he oblidged untill we relentlessly opened and closed the door, to this he, well moved us along..

We chose a kebab shop as it is a relatable place, many males would be able to relate to and have memories in a kebab shop, most likely after a night out! However it seemed perfect to relate to our urban mise en scene and the lighting was bright and crisp through the lens of the camera. We used the kebab shop to host flash backs of the couple, yet it will eventually be the protagonist alone. This scene will give weight to our narrative so it was important to film thinking about continuity editing. Most of the shots were therefore long shots, to establish the flashback the camera had to be positioned exactly the same with both actors in place and then will on his own. The tripod obviously helped here.

Drawing from the animatic

The scene with all the aggression!

A point of view shot from the other males POV was used to capture his defensive and aggressive behavior, as will invades the camera the audience would feel disturbed and uncomfortable. The long shot captures the action involving all three actors against a urban simple setting. This night was so cold I cried on the way home in the car because my limbs wouldn't warm up, thus I also could not work the camera any more.

With the footage we gathered over two days we started to play with ideas, piecing together certain components and putting them to music, however without shooting the beginning its extremely hard to begin to editing, and is more than likely to be changed at a later date

MTV / Strickland Banks

VIDEO KILLED THE RADIO STAR

'Pictures came and broke your heart, put the blame on VTR'
MTV (formerly an initialism for Music Television) is an American cable television network based in New York City that launched on August 1, 1981. The original purpose of the channel was to play music videos guided by on-air hosts known as VJs. Today, MTV still plays a limited selection of music videos, but the channel primarily broadcasts a variety of popular culture and reality TV shows targeted at adolescents and young adults.

MTV IN OUR GENRE

By the early 1990s, MTV was playing a combination of pop-friendly hard rock acts, chart-topping metal and hard rock acts . MTV progressively increased its airing of hip hop acts, such as LL Cool J, Naughty By Nature, Onyx and Sir-Mix-A-Lot, and by 1993, the channel added West Coast rappers previously associated with gangsta rap, with a less pop-friendly sound, such as Tupac Shakur, Ice Cube, Warren G, Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg.

You can see that British hip hop was never involved in the beginnings of hip hop, a very American orientated genre. Therefore i think it is important that our product would be globally recognisable and appealing, Plan B has obviously seen how hard being a controversial British hip hop artist is to break out, his first album was gritty harsh, intimate rap music but now he has created a soul persona.

Plan B recently stated in an interview with Gigwise that he has not turned his back on hip-hop music."I'm aware that there are fans out there that might feel alienated by this but I feel like I cater for them," he said - link to source

Plan B has become Strickland Banks, an out and out soul singer complete with full band and sixties stylings. - link to source

"the first few tracks rushed quickly out the gate. It was immediately clear that this was no half-baked attempt to recreate a soulful sound. This was the full-fat version with hurtling drums and dextrous basslines charging forward whilst Ben got quickly into his groove- his smooth, falsetto belying his rather stocky, brutish appearance"

Second day filming

In my garage - Using lighting from head lights and red tinted bulbs

The second day shooting was a success in parts, we got some clear close up and the lighting turned out brilliantly, we got a little distracted, but never the less achieved some good footage. We attempted to shoot breaking glass but due to the distance away from the camera, as we were fearful of the lens, it looked pretty shoddy. The intensity of red was due to a red light bulb and break lights, we loved this effect but in parts to was too much. At the time of day with the head light lighting, it threw perfect shadows onto Will's face and elements of the setting which was the exact effect we were trying to capture. Although this did produce a problem with the placing of the tripod, as it sometimes obscured the shot. The lighting enforces the idea of regret and isolation, the Mise en scene suggests how ostracized he has become and the direness of his situation. We have employed such dramatic lighting to fit to conventions of music videos, yet been creative and innovative with how we have created this. We set up this chair Mise en scene from scratch, digging out this old arm chair i had, and throwing old clothes over the back, along with a pillow which creates a desolate, yet 'homely' setting. The clutter was left to enhance the idea that he has moved away, boxes possessions again creating this lonely persona which surrounds our protagonist.

Screen shots from the footage

Screen shots with use of the red lighting, long shots to establish setting and a shot from a slightly higher angle using a step ladder. Many distance shots will be used to jump between the range of close ups in our editing. Ironically the red lighting, normally connoting intensity and passion, has captured him alone.

Utilizing the chair as the protagonists place he retires to, differing positions convey a passing of time but when edited it will be condensed, we can play with these positioning with fast cuts and high pace movement.

Knowing the importance of close ups in music videos to express emotion, and establish the artist we made sure we included some in his isolated location. Close ups are used to portray the cold emotion and vacancy within the males mind, the smoke an emotional barrier between the audience and himself.

I absolutely love this, there is something sinister about the shadow his hand has transferred onto his face, almost as if the shadow is not his own.

A full beam headlights was used for these shots, and they flickered according to the music which will be edited correctly, the light means he is more exposed and throws a deep shadow onto the chair behind him, the only company he has thus emphasises his aloofness.

Having a play with final cut

Whilst waiting for our second days shooting we decided to have a little play with the footage from day one in final cut. Importing our footage using a memory card reader was simple and then importing to final cut was instant. Sampling the softwares effects, video filters and transitions available that we always had in mind such as colour change and dissolves was helpful as we felt more comfortable with Final Cut afterward.

We also were excited to try out overlays, the screen grab below displays how this powerful and dramatic overlay was created.

The line across the top layer of film was the 'toggle' which had to be fiddled on each piece of film to find the right ratio of opacity, as you can see the location image is half overlaid over the tunnel filming, this means the lower level of film will be 100% opacity, and the other 50%.

... and the image produced from doing so, the image had previously been edited in final cut as the the image shows how the brightness had been changed to -5 and the contrast heightened to 33, we tried out many combination but we decided that was was most aesthetically pleasing.
Here we played with overlaying positioning, overlaying the movement condenses the time implied from the many positions. This effect is really nice yet the lighting of the shot is not brilliant and he fades in to the background in parts, nether the less the white gates adds to the urban location and enforces how alone he is again. We had this effect in mind when shot which is why all the positions were filmed from exactly the same spot to maintain coherence.

The many positioning could be utilised for fast cuts, the shot framing will be the same but his positioning could change to the face pace beat. This would be effective as it would suggest he has been there for a long while, and we have condensed time, moving from a long shot to a close up to a medium close up will also be effective, increasing depth to the shot. Again we changed the colouring of the footage, the brightness and contrast had to be heightened as the original footage was dark due to the lack of aesthetic lighting - the brightness 22 and contrast 23 and shown in the screen shot above.

Full final cut screen grabs showing experimentation with overlay and colour enhancement

We attempted to overlay a long shot of Leake st. with trees in Richmond Park. This overlay did not work however as the shot became too cluttered, displaying how you have to choose wisely and be specific to the shot you do overlay, thinking about composition and colouring. We again, ( yes again ) became picking with the colour correction to both shots, and editing them can blend an overlay together. On this image as shown in the screen shot the brightness had been decreased to - 8 and contrast heightened to 41.

The colour correction is extremely important as it can enhance the quality of the video and create a more professional look, thus i hope this attention to detail will pay off. I can tell even now we are going to be extremely colour picky people!