Production progress

31st October

Today, we set out to finish up our first cut of our music video production. Ashley just finished up some of the editing on some rough shots and put the final shots in sepia.

We will now present the first cut to our teacher and another student to gain some feeback on what's good and what needs improving. As this is a rough first cut, not everything that is planned for our final production will be included in this cut as we ran out of time.

Production progress

29th October

On this day I decided to begin doing the visual effects for our music video. It has taken this long to start them as I had a problem converting our video footage to

a .wmv file as that was the only way I could edit it. I think adding visual effects to our video will give the whole thing a more surreal feel which is what we are going for as the character is actually not awake through this video.

The program I used to add visual effects was Adobe After Effects.

The first effect I did was to blur the strangers face out. We decided on this as it will definitely show there is something wrong with the world the

character is in and this effect is too surreal to ever see in real life. I did this by motion tracking James's face so I could apply a blur to it. I made James not show any emotion while filming this so it was easier to track. Once it was tracked I added a lens blur to his face to blur out his features. I think I shall use the final look and I am quite happy with how it turned out

The second effect I did on this day was the multiple planes in the sky. When the character is sitting on a bench he looks up as he hears a loud noise and is going to see several planes all crossing each other, something that would never happen in real life.

This took a lot of trial an error. I first tried using some footage i recorded an an airport but this did not turn out how I had hoped due to the colour of the sky, I then decided to try just using an image of a cloud filled sky and add in some places I had cropped in Photos

hop. Once I had added the planes into After Effects I then animated them to move slowly and in a straight line just as a plane would move. This turned out pretty well but the planes look slightly unreal due to the lighting. However, I think this will all turn out looking good as it's going to be put in sepia anyway, so for now i'm going to leave it as it is and test it when I meet with the rest of the group.

Production progress

27th October

This week is half term but as the first cut of the productions deadline was close, we all decided to meet up and go into school to finish it off. Ashley did most of the editing while James helped guide him. During this time to speed things along, I searched the internet for sound effects we can put into the music video. This will give the story and video another level of realism. It took a while but i was successful in finding some sound effects to use for the heart rate monitor we shall include in the video. This music is free and is allowed to be used without having to gain rights for it.

After about an hour and a half we finished our first cut of our music video. This cut does not include the sound effects or visual effects that we shall add in later on but is good enough for a first cut.

Views on production

My views on the production so far

Positives

- Unique story to the music video

- Interesting shots

- Hertford Meads is a unusual location

- The sepia effect

Negatives

- Could include more locations

- Suggestions that the world he is in is not reality could be stronger

- The images in the picture frames of the main characters house are unclear

- The zoom out shot from the main characters bed is slightly unstable

Production progress

17th October

Today I was back from holiday and had a look over eveything the other two did while I was away. I was pleased with the progress they had made over the few days I was away.

Once I had scene what had been done and what needed to be done, we went out and filmed the last shots needed from around the school which were the keys being handed over by a stranger and the few scenes that had already been filmed once and lost.

Here are some images of us filming and editing the last few shots required

Production progress

14th October

I was still away on this date, so Ashley and James went back to the Hertford Meads to film the scenes they couldn't film the first time due to the cameras battery. Once the shots had been successfully filmed they both went back to school and began some editing. It was here where Ashley discovered the sepia look for the video.

Below are the images on location of Ashley and James filming and editing

Production progress

12th October

On this date and another, Ashley and James had to do the filming by their-selves as I had been given a surprise holiday and had only been told last minute. They went out to do their filing at the Hertford Meads but encountered a problem. The camera they were using died on them so they were unsuccessful filing there.

After discovering this, they went back to Ashley's house to film the shots of him getting up and the other few shots needed. This was because they could charge the camera here while filming.

Below are some pictures of them preparing to film before the camera died and actually filming around the characters house.

Production progress

10th October

On this day, we went to view our recently filmed school footage and planned on editing it to see what it would look like with sepia colour correction. When we looked in the folders we had previously uploaded it to, they weren't there. We spent nearly a whole hour searching for our uploaded footage but all attempts to find it were unsuccessful. This was a major problem as we did spend a long time getting our long empty corridor shot. We spent the rest of this lesson talking about where we would film next and the visual effects that were going to be added in after.

1st filming of production

6th October

On this date, we got a video camera and went around our school getting the first few shots required in our production. This went well and we got all the shots for the school scene needed, apart from the basket ball scene as the gym was at the time in use.

The only problem we encountered was filming the shot of Ashley walking down a completely empty corridor. Although this was during lesson time, every time we went to film him a teacher or student would pass the camera as this was a very long and frequently used corridor. Filming this 15second (estimated) shot took around half an hour and many attempts. We eventually got the shot and were happy with its outcome.

Props

Main props used

Keys

This is for the scene where the main character drops his keys and a mysterious man with a blurred face hands them over

Basket ball

This will be for the scene where the main character looks into the school gym and sees a basket ball rolling with nobody around

Pictures and picture frames

This is for the subtle images in the background of the characters house where images suggesting an accident can be seen

Location photos

Monday the 26th september
On this day, me and James ventured out into our town and decided on what locations would best suit our storyboard. Some locations such as the town and the buryfields had already been discussed. However, for the long path way both on the road and in the open were talked about but had to be found while out. I was really pleased with the locations we found, especially the long "dusty road" and the wall next to it that read "lost your way". This graffiti wall was a complete suprise but fits extremely well with our theme.

Animatic

Filming of animatic

Once me and Ashley had finished our groups story board and were happy with how it looks, we planned to film an animatic. For this, we needed a clear, well lighted and quiet room to film it. We decided in using the new at gallery our school has as no one comes in during lesson time and it has a massive glass roof that provides really good lighting. The images below are of us filming our animatic.

26th September - Story boarding

On this date, we carried out two tasks for our pre production stage. Me and Ashley took the task of story boarding our main idea and the type of shots we are thinking about using in our finished production. Our finished story board consisted of 31 drawings and gave us a good plan to follow when filming. James took the task of creating a production schedule so that we know what date the production needs finishing. This was necessary so that we could allocate certain dates for ceratin tasks such as filming, editing etc.