Production:skills development production planning

Today i am going to talk about how i planned the production of my music video differently to the production planning of my short film opening. i am going to talk about the storyboard, props,location and production schedule and how it differs from the film.

The story board

When planning the story board for the thriller i was open to come up with any ideas that i wanted as the thriller opening was one that i was going to produce myself. this meant that i had not much guidelines and was able to be very innovative when creating. however planning the story board for the for the music video was very different. Since the music video The city was an already existing song made by a famous artist Ed Sheeran we was allowed some freedom but was compressed as the video was meant to be related to the lyrics so we had to think very carefully about how i video was going to visually portray the message of the lyrics. 

Location/Settings

When deciding the setting for the thriller i was very layed back as my thriller was about tying up a murderer so obvious ideas came to head such as a basement and since this was just a short movie opening 2 locations were very much suitable enough for the clip. when deciding the location for the music video i had to be very thoughtful about this.This is because the song had a very distinctive message about which was the artist feeling lost in his own home country which is London  so we had to have locations portraying this such as showing off the landmarks. also many music videos have several locations and base so we decided to follow this meaning choosing more locations.

Props

When choosing props for the thriller i chose normal casual clothing as that is what i wanted the actors to look like. this made it easy to decide what i wanted to wear. For the music video the approach was quite different. Because we had a specific genre which was indie pop we had to stick with that type of dress sense. we also saw how the original artist Ed Seeran dressed and copied his items of clothing.

Production Schedule 

the production schedule for the music video was better planned the for the thriller. with the thriller the production schedule was planned for 2 days for just 3 hour slots because it was quite short and most was based in the school basement. whereas the music video had to have 2 whole days of filming and an extra day for extra footage or re shoots. we planned where and when we were going to shoot to detail making sure everyone can make it on the day on time as when planed people messed up at the last minute.

PRODUCTION - Progress Review Blog

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Skills Development - Editing

Because I decided to create a stylised editing for my AS production, and I have done most of the editing myself, I already had many editing skills developed when we started the A2 production. However, developing new editing skills was inevitable since the music video has different purposes and conventions from a thriller opening. In addition, the editing process was a way of practising my already developed editing skills and getting faster at the editing process, including learning to use shortcuts.

The most important editing skill that I had learned with the production of the music video was the base track editing, which comes along with lip-syncing and using markers. In the AS editing process, I had no idea markers existed, and it made no difference. In my A2 production it was crucial to know how to use the markers to help the editing.

Marking the first word

Aligning the markers

Using markers to mark the very first word being sang in both the base track and the original song so that I could match the markers together was an easy way of creating an accurate lip syncing. The markers were also important for the base track editing. We could use markers to mark the beat of the song and cut all the base tracks where the markers were. Then we could choose which base track we would use and where, an easy way of changing between base tracks and adding extra footage on the top of it. It saves a lot of time and it makes the music video flow with the beat of the song effectively.

Another technique that I learned is the use of slow motion with accurate lip syncing. Ideally the technique would require some training and preparation like speeding up the song at a certain percentage (e.g 159%) and then the artist sings the song (or the part of the song) at the same pace. When changing the speed in FinalCut Pro, you have to slow down the same percentage you speeded up (e.g 59%) and this way the scene would be in slow motion whereas the lip-syncing would be correct. This technique is most commonly found in music videos and it is conventional of certain genres or certain types of songs. In our music video it worked nicely because it was a slow song and we used it in the change of key for the most dramatic part of the song.

A complicated technique that I learned with this project was how to blur (or add any effect) the background using the Eight-point Garbage Matte filter.

We had to make the points move together with Nimar everytime he moved by using the markers, so that he would stay in focus and the background blurred. Each time Nimar moved out of the points we would have to create markers and move the points around him again.
This tool might be useful for many occasions. For my music video it helped to distract the changes in the background from the mid shot to the median close up, as they were walking shots filmed separately and they might not match perfectly together. In addition, we used it in the shots in the chorus, which gives more focus to the artist singing and it helps to attend the purposes of the music video which is promoting a new artist.

These techniques were the most important that I learned during this project. The other techniques that I learned were very basic and many we were just trying out and we did not use in our music video.

Basic editing skills that I have learned:

Switching the shot by using the filter 'Flop' - this technique was useful to avoid confusion in our music video, as we had several different tracking shots of Nimar walking around the city and sometimes they were not going to the same direction. With this editing skill we could make sure that throughout the whole music video, Nimar would be walking in the same direction (to the left).

How to reverse the shot - we used this to create some nice effect to our footage of traffic, making it look more interesting as well as it goes along with the beat well. In other occasions, it can be used to imply flashbacks or adding emphasis to an action.

How to make the shot look brighter through colour corrector instead of changing the levels - a much easier tool to manipulate the brightness of the image. We have used it in our night shots because they looked quite dark even though there was some lighting, the lighting wasn't enough to show a clear image of the artist. Making the dark shots look brighter also helps to keep the artist's face clear and neat to the audience, which is better for promotion of a new artist.

How to crop a shot - it doesn't give a very effective result as it takes away the quality of the video and we did not use it because of that.

How to freeze frame - we have not used this technique either because it did not work very well, it seemed just like a still picture.
How to make a widescreen effect by adding a black border at the top and at the bottom of the video - we have also decided not to use this technique because it gives too much of a film sense and our genre is very simplistic and it didn't go very well with the song.

I believe I have developed and practised all the skills that I needed to create a successful music video which suits the genre and promotes the artist. 

Rough Cut-Analysis

The order of the slides is:

-Rough Cut Analysis

-I do believe...

-To create...

-The rough cut also helps...

I am sorry but I tried to organize the slides in the right order but it did not work.

Editing

For the editing we followed the instructions of our teachers, trying to get a good result. First we put all the base tracks on the timeline, then we marked the parts of the song where we would cut and at last we add effects and transitions. The effects and transitions were minimum because is not a convention of our genre to have a heavy editing, so we stick with the colour corrector and the eight-point garbage matte.

Marking and cutting

Arranging the footage.

 

Skills Development-Editing

Skills Development-Editing on Prezi

Skills Development-Production

During the production of this new music video for the song "The City", I have develop skills in the camera field. As I was the cameraman I had lots of opportunities to develop my skills specially in the use of the steadicam "Glidecam Pro 2000" because our shots are mainly in movement and to get the footage we decided to do mostly in handheld.

I also learnt that sometimes is important to re-shoot and also to keep looking at the footage because its good to know what you exactly need and if you have miss something that you have previously planned. Something that I have learnt during this process is that you need a list of specific shoots to use as a guide and then a back up plan in case the environment change in the selected location by environment I mean wind, street lights or a near construction.

Overall the experience of filming this music video was very good I had a very good team that were very committed and I think we did a very good job.