Video Inspo - Foster The People | Fun. |

I quite like the scene changes in this music video from concert to real life almost vlog-like footage. It gives the video a 'making-of' feel to it which i find natural and interesting. I also like the movement of the camera panning to a still shot of the band which i found the directors used a few times.

 

We've said we wanted slow motion in the video for a while now and although we liked the way it was done in Beyonce's 1+1 video, i think the effect of the slow motions used in contrast to the normal speed in longer blocks of footage gives the video a different perspective to it.



In this video, again the use of a 'vlog-like' video is used which changes from concert footage, vlog and more scenic/photographic footage. This might be something to pitch to the group considering how well it works in Foster the People and Fun.'s videos.

Vlog | So Far

• what we've done so far
• chorus shots and various other shots completed
• what we plan to do over christmas break

Vlog | Editing Grovelands

• What we have edited so far from the grovelands footage.
• kaleidoscope
• video effects

Vlog | Grovelands Filming

Filming #2 - Grovelands

On Friday we all set out to do some more filming this time, in Grovelands park which was all quite picturesque at 9 in the morning. 

Having only discussed possible shots we could get from here we decided to try different kinds of angles and shot types given the interesting location we were in. We did manage to get a great amount of footage which will hopefully fit in our music video. 

In comparison to our AS film opening we have been able to achieve much more stable shots as well as be able to experiment with different kinds of shots. We played around with the different angles of the camera and also managed to sneak in some canted angle shots in our filming! 

Lip-Syncing - 'Falling'

The fast paced shots of us lip-syncing 'falling' and the 4-way split screen. 

Music Video History

Mv history from petefrasers

I think what stood out to me most from this was that music videos have to be visually memorable. 
It puts into perspective what shots we need to get and what content we will need. Also, for a visually memorable music video i think we need to keep it interesting but not too complicated. 

So far we're happy with our concept and ideas we've got flowing for what we can film and with this idea in mind, hopefully we can create a visually memorable music video.

David Morley - Audience Theory

After researching David Morley's audience theory it is clear that the details of the content of our media text is important in portraying a message to the audience. The message that we as encoders want to convey is a laid-back atmosphere where the audience will hopefully pick up on the ease of the music video through the flow of shots, transitions and most of all content. 

Opening - Sunrise Time Lapse

The opening 43 seconds to the music video. 

Task: Make Your Own Album Cover

A task from Pete's blog which will ultimately help us in creating our individual digipaks. Couldnt locate my screenshots on the mac so here are quality iphone evidence photos.

Random wikipedia page for band name: Pennsylvania Senate District 7
Thought this was very unlikely to be a band name but i went with it!

Random quotes page for album title: Unexpected in common hours
Also unlikely but it seems all so indie.

random flickr page for album art: a flower of sorts?

The Final Product

I used pic monkey, an online photo editor and played around with the album art changing various things such as the sharpness, saturation and exposure. I also chose to keep the band name in upper case to distinguish the difference between the band name and album title since they could potentially be either. Also, i thought the orange would stand out well over the muted tones of the album art. 

Video Inspirations

In this music video i find the continuous panning shots rather soothing, it makes a change from constant still shots and makes the music video flow much easier. 



The graphics in this video are interesting as it adds another element to the music video as a whole. The cartoon graphic overlaying the faces could be an interesting edit in our music video but to find out how to do this is the trick. Must take to google.



Considering our 90's theme i decided to take a look at an iconic 90's music video. Cant Touch this is no doubt a big hit from the 90's and looking purely at this video, it seems that the canted angle shot was very much popular.
We might have to consider this in our video.

Filling in the Gaps

So it has just occurred to us that there will be quite a few 'empty' parts in the song where it is just the instrumentals. Although this does not pose as a great problem to us, we do need to start thinking about how we will fill these gaps. 

Thankfully, our filming session last week has given us 'extra' footage as well as 'back-up' footage which we could use to fill in the gaps. Of course we need to see how these shots work in the final music video but as we said in the vlog, we have not ruled out any of this footage, we're rather content with everything we have from that filming day and hope to be able to use more than just 11 seconds out of 74 minutes of footage. 

Fingers crossed more ideas start coming our way on top of what we already have planned. 

Vlog | Sunrise Filming

• Alexandra Palace Filming
• How much we have of our final music video (11 seconds, not 8)
• Footage we can use
• Cutaway, overlay, opacity, editing experiments
• So far, so good!

Location : Grovelands Park

We're currently looking for more locations and shots to film. I thought of Grovelands park which would reflect the ethereal atmosphere presented in the original Haim video and also our laid-back rather carefree concept. 
Although the weather might be working against us this winter, it might be nice if we get the opportunity on a rare sunny day to do some filming here as it is a picturesque scene and we might be able to get clear and hopefully crisp shots. 
It is worth considering this as a location to film but of course we need to think about other factors such as the weather problems, how it will work with the entire video, what we could ideally film here, how it will work in the narrative and so on...

Will have to pitch this to the group and see how we feel!

Editing

We're back to school tomorrow and our first lesson back to media is on wednesday. Looking forward to actually being able to see the footage we got full screen and be able to upload and editing everything. I'm glad we've started now and we've got a feel for how the rest of this year will pan out, we need to stay organised and on target. We still need to storyboard the rest of the music video but at the moment we're focusing on the filming we've done and what we've got on the storyboard so far. We also know shot types and visuals for things such as the chorus, and the 'falling' lyrics to the song. So we still have yet to fill the gaps and think about what exact shots we want at what specific time. Hopefully everything goes well from here on and we stay on track as we have been!

Vlog | Filming Sunrise

We decided to vlog whilst the camera caught the action of the sunrise and here it is! 

Generally talking about what we're doing, what shots we've got and what we're planning to get.

Filming - Sunrise / Silhouette

So we finally got to Alrxandra Palace in the end after post poning this due to the storm. We were all nervouse we wouldn't catch the sunrise as t was already bright outside but after 20 minutes or so of cloud footage, me and sinead spotted a slither of the sun creeping up from the amazing view at Alexandra palace! 

The view was amazing and hopefully the time lapse works out as we also tried a panning time lapse shot. We're looking forward to seeing our footage and finally getting back into editing! 

I then decided to try our silhouette shots we always said we wanted and try worked brilliantly! These are just a few stills from the many attempts we had at this.

Silhouette filming behind the scenes with some lyrical aid.

Run up to Filming Day

In the run up to our filming day we are keeping a close eye on the weather because of course we dont want the weather to let us down on our sunrise shot. Monday was looking trusty..

and then of course a storm had to hit on the exact day we wanted to film. So being the street smart bunch we are, we held off for a couple days.



And it all worked out in the end because wednesdays weather was PERFECT! A little cold but we got all the shots we wanted!

Costume Research and Planning

In preparation for filming, out costumes had to be put together and organised ready to step into the 90s. I didn't think scrunchies and denim everywhere would quite cut it so I googled '90s fashion' to help me really capture the style of the decade. 

Here are the search results:

I came up with two outfits which really reminded me of the 90s and were both inspired from images from the google search. 

I decided to go with the dress option as the jeans didn't really scream 'music video attire' to me. 

Hopefully people can see the 90s feel of our music video after the editing of the footage is done too!

Split Screen / Practise Lip Sync

We finally decided to do some practise filming and lip syncing ahead of our planned filming day. It definitely proved to be tricky but we got there in the end! 

Also, editing a 4-way split screen to match up 4 different people to sing at the same time is NOT easy. We definitely have a challenge on our hands so hopefully our filming goes well and we're able to start editing some final footage of the music video! 

Final Cut Express

Sinead and I decided to try and familiarise ourselves with the workings of Final Cut to see just how hard it was. Needless to say, we probably won't be using this programme for the editing the entire music video! 

Although we wanted to try something out of our comfort zone and new, we think iMovie is probably the best to use for the majority of the editing of our music video as we know how it all works and exactly what we can get from it. 

We do plan to use some parts from final cut as it may give a better effect to our video. 

Video Inspirations

Beyonce - 1+1

With our intentions to include slow motion in our videos this is how rachel and I imagined the effect in our video. From a slow mo straight to a fast forward and back to a slow mo, we think this could a great effect and give the video more authenticity.

Lana Del Rey - Summertime Sadness

Again, this Lana Del Rey music video captures a 90's feel to the video.

The Saturdays - Disco Love

Although this video was aimed to be set in the 70's, the use of rollerskates in the video creates a fun atmosphere which we also wanted to recreate in our video also using rollerskates.

We thought about using a tracking foot shot for the rollerskates which then progresses to a tracking up shot revealing the four characters in the music video. 

Lana Del Rey - Video Games

Rachel mentioned this video in lesson and we seem to like the home video feel to this. It represents the 90's and the growing development of technologies. We wanted to give our music video a 90's atmosphere which we could show through adding a 90's video effect.

Final Cut Pro X

The daunting time of being introduced to a new software is fast approaching and as scary as it is, I'm rather excited to experiment with something other than iMovie. I think this year we will use Final Cut to edit the video as it gives something new and fresh and we can also edit to perfection as well as incorporating new effects into the video. 

The only problem i found with iMovie last year was the video editing where we were able to edit the brightness, contrast and saturation. Editing the brightness on a clip worked but I don't think it quite kept the same quality, so it will be interesting to see how Final Cut differs from iMovie which I'm sure it does very much. 

The kaleidoscope effect is also already installed on Final Cut which could make this much easier than creating the effect ourselves. Depending on how it looks we will see which makes the final cut - homemade kaleidoscope or final cut effect. 

Schedule

Monday 28th Oct - Start Filming

Throughout Half-term (28th-4th Nov) - Filming

For the coming half-term we plan to start and (hopefully) finish filming the bulk and perhaps all of the footage needed for our music video. we discussed approximately how long we think it would take to film and we came up with around 3 days - provided the weather is on our side. 

Knowing London, the rain is bound to make an appearance at one point and we have therefore made a decision to include the rain in our music video as we think it could recreate the ethereal atmosphere which comes across in the Haim music video for 'Falling.' The rain might also have a slow motion feature too as we discussed perhaps filming the ripple that raindrops produce. 

Hopefully filming will take no more than a week in total as we can start to use our time to edit to perfection using Final Cut Pro.

HAIM - Falling Video

The video by Haim creates an ethereal rather mellow tone and atmosphere, something we wish to achieve as well as bringing in the fun and enjoyable element to it as well. 

Vlog | Filming Ideas

• Thoughts on storyboarding and how we will do it.
• Filming schedule
• Thoughts on weather (and back-ups)
• Shot ideas

Video Inspiration

Video inspiration. Although our video ideas do not have many similarities to this, the video is still inspiring as it captures the essence of the simplicity of a video and just how effective it can be. The simple shots and immaculate quality shows us that perhaps again, we are all trying to hard to think outside of the box. At present, we're sticking to our video idea - trying to keep it as simple as possible. 

Video Idea

So I came across this video idea where these artists stuck a flare somewhere by the wheel of a bike and rode uphill during nighttime. I particularly like the flare at this time of day as it accentuates the light and this also shows some silhouettes too which we're keen on as a group. 

A wide still shot of the bike riding across with the flare lit and the sunset in the background would create a calming atmosphere, which could be effective nearing the end of the music video.

Video Inspiration

Kaleidoscope video inspiration. Although the song is very upbeat the kaleidoscope effect gives it  very mellow and fun feeling - something we hope to achieve in our video.

Crystal Fighters - LA Calling

 

HAIM

HAIM is an American rock band from Los Angeles, California. The band consists of sisters Este (born March 14, 1986), Danielle (born February 16, 1989) and Alana Haim (born December 15, 1991), along with drummer Dash Hutton. 

HAIM's sound has been described as "nu-folk-meets-nineties-R&B." HAIM has been compared to 70s soft-rock legends Fleetwood Mac; however, they insist that their influences are a bit more up-to-date, revealing they are big fans of 90s girl groups TLC and Destiny's Child, and of Kendrick Lamar, Jessie Ware and Azealia Banks. Consequently, their music sounds a bit like folk-rock with a few R&B/hip-hop stylings thrown in for good measure. 

"What's really funny about this 'overnight success' is that we've been playing together for over 15 years,"

3 days ago The Guardian

Danielle Haim

Falling Lyrics

"Falling"

I hurl into the moment like I'm standing at the edge (I know)
That no one's gonna turn me 'round
Just one more step, I could let go
Oh and in the middle,
I hear the voices and they're calling for me now (I know)
And nothing's gonna wake me now
Cause I'm a slave to the sound

And they're calling,
Don't stop, no, I'll never give up
And I'll never look back, just hold your head up
And if it gets rough, it's time to get rough
They keep saying
Don't stop, no one's ever enough
I'll never look back, never give up
And if it gets rough, it's time to get rough
But now I'm falling, falling, falling
Falling, falling, falling,
Falling, falling, falling, falling, oh

Now we're going down,
And I can feel the eyes are watching us so closely oh
I'm trying not to make a sound
Cause I'll be found out somehow

So keep calling,
Don't stop, no, I'll never give up
And I'll never look back, just hold your head up
And if it gets rough, it's time to get rough
They keep saying
Don't stop, no one's ever enough
I'll never look back, never give up
And if it gets rough, it's time to get rough
But now I'm falling

Into the fire feeling higher than the truth
(I'm falling)
I can feel the heat but I'm not burning
(But now I'm falling)
Feeling desire, feeling tired, hungry too
(I'm falling)
Feels like I'm falling, yeah
I can hear them calling
(I'm falling)

Into the fire feeling higher than the truth
(I'm falling)
I can feel the heat but I'm not burning
(But now I'm falling)
Feeling desire, feeling tired, hungry too
(I'm falling)
Feels like I'm falling, yeah
I can hear them calling
(Now I'm falling)

Falling, falling, falling
Falling, falling, falling,
Falling, Falling, falling, oh
Oh and now I'm falling

Falling, falling, falling
Falling, falling, falling,
Falling, falling, falling, oh

Falling, falling, falling, falling
Fall yeah
And now I'm falling
Falling, falling, falling, falling
Fall yeah
And now I'm falling

Into the fire feeling higher than the truth
(But now I'm falling)
I can feel the heat but I'm not burning
(I'm falling)
Feeling desire, feeling tired, hungry too
(But now I'm falling)
Feels like I'm falling, yeah
I can hear them calling for me
(I'm falling)

Into the fire feeling higher than the truth
(Now I'm falling)
I can feel the heat but I'm not burning
(I'm falling)
Feeling desire, feeling tired, hungry too
(Now I'm falling)
It feels like I'm falling, yeah
I can hear them calling for me

Never look back, never give up
Never look back, never give up
Never look back, never give up
I'll never give up
I'll never give up
[6x]

Polydor E-mail

Here is the copy of the email we sent to Polydor Records:

Dear Polydor Records

My name is Lucy West and I’m writing to you on behalf of my A-level Media Studies group of Enfield County School, in North London.

Our coursework project this year is to produce and record a music video with a song of our choice. Having research numerous tracks, we feel as a group ‘HAIM - Falling’ would be the best song to produce our music video around. As fans of the band we feel both enthusiastic and excited at the prospect of potentially using this song.

The use of the song as well as the production of the music video is solely for educational purposes and we have no intention of selling this music video for a profit. Furthermore as a group we are fully aware of copyright infringements and the consequences that can occur, hence our desire to contact you requesting permission of use for this song.

Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any queries or concerns regarding our request.

Thank you,

Lucy West on behalf of Anna Nguyen, Rachel Hunter and Sinead McGovern of Enfield County

We sent this e-mail to obviously ask permission to use the song as there might be problems with copyright. It also informs the record company that we want to use the song for our A2 media course and not for any copyright reasons. 

Email

Here is the email to notify the record company that we will be using this song for our media production.  

Mood Board

Just a mood board in the form of a prezi presenting our thoughts and ideas. 
Location ideas: Brick Lane - famous for being artsy and creative.
Alexandra Palace - Able to get sunrise/set shots perhaps silhouette shots as well.
London Bridge - I particularly liked this location as you can see most of london in the background and the lights from speeding cars would create a great background for stop motions photographs.

Dawn and Dusk represent the one day which we still like the idea of. The #yolo has a few meanings. One being a support to the 'one day' having fun and realising that You Only Live Once, a message we might send through our music video. It also signifies the youth of the characters and society's modern day take on life.

The costume is just an idea, the clothing is representative of perhaps the rock indie genre. However i think floral prints and flowy costumes could also fit in our music video ideas. 

Music Video

Interesting video on music videos and how things have changed. Teaches us to be incredibly creative with a zero budget!

For this video we need our eyes to be extra peeled for great locations to film our 'having-fun-not-a-care-in-the-world' kind of video.
From Pete's blog.

Also love the credits at the end..

The Videographers Guide Ep. 1 - The Music Video from Hypebeast on Vimeo.

Slight Change

So of course as history repeats itself, we have changed our song. Sinead wasn't too keen on the song, I wasn't too keen on parts of the video concept - the present day dull jobs part in particular and i think we all agreed on the song being too repetitive. 

As a group we quickly decided that we wanted something more upbeat with a variety of beats which we could easily create shots to fit into.

After watching Katy Perry - Roar which is very much Katy Perry-esque, our video concept seemed rather bland in comparison. 

As a class we also looked at OneRepublic - Counting Stars, which again, made me think our video concept was a little too thought out.

So after a few suggestions we've decided on the band Haim, for our new song and the song we've particularly liked is Falling.

This song gives us more freedom to experiment with the different beats and speed of the beats. The female voice also gives us an advantage as we are now thinking of including lip syncing. Although we were against this idea from the start we think that with this song, in collaboration with the shots and narrative, hopefully won't look bad.

Video Idea - Kaleidoscope

At this point we're still thinking of some ideas for our video just to add to our outline. An idea i had was to include a kaleidoscope video within/at the beginning/at the end/wherever in our music video. I think using the right colours or images could create the upbeat and interesting atmosphere we wanted to achieve in our music video. 

This is just a 2 hr video of kaleidoscope designs i found on youtube, you get the drift after the first 30 seconds or so..

To include this in our music video we could take a clip from this youtube video (but i suspect that is copyright) so i decided to find out how to create the kaleidoscope effect on imovie..

Not sure if that the easiest or fastest way to achieve this but, it possible to do on Final Cut Pro too.

This won't definitely make it to the final cut of our music video but it's an idea! 

Video Ideas - Stop Motion

I recently came across this stop motion film which I was particularly captivated by. I like the feel of the moving images and the setting it creates. I think it would work well with creating silhouettes during sunrise or sunset which the group liked. 

It would be interesting to see how this would work in our music video. As the entire video might not work in stop motion considering the narrative I thought about switching from stop motion to video and to have the two continue from each other. Might be a little ambitious but will have to see what the rest of the group think about it!

Vlog | Concept

Apologies for the loud banging sounds, didn't realise the chairs scraping from upstairs would be so loud on camera. 

Link to blog post i was referring to in the beginning. Here

• Storyboard
• Jobs in concept
• Narrative
• Video footage (festival)
• split screen 

Blog Task - 3 Options

These are the three possible songs we had in mind for our music video.

Corrine Bailey Ray - Put Your Records On

For:

• Feel-good song, a genre we all agreed that we wanted to stick to.
• Well-known. Instantly recognisable within the first few seconds.
• Female singer, the only female sung song of our options. This would allow us to easily lip-sync if we decided to include it.

Against:

• Dated. Released in 2006 so it is no longer current and perhaps creating a modern video to this would not be viewed positively as the song and video might contrast each other too much.
• Summer feel to the song would restrict us in the video. Viewers would most likely expect sunshine in the scenes which would be hard for us to capture during the winter.
• Considering the lyrics and feel to the song, it would be hard to stray from the original video. 

Foals - My Number



For:

• Again, instantly recognisable from the beginning. Also attracts from the beginning - some songs build up to a climax.
• Conforms to the type of song we wanted - feel-good, upbeat.
• Not a mainstream band, not everyone may have seen the original video which would easily give us an audience without preconceived ideas of the video or something to compare to.

Against:

• Male voice, although we ruled out lip-syncing, if we had decided to include this later on in the video it would not work.
• Perhaps not having a climax to the song might also be considered a negative. It might hinder our narrative in moving forward. 
• Repetition. The song does not give an evident flow in moving on from the beginning. Although 'One Day' is repetitive this emphasises the One Day.

Wankelmut Remix - One Day/Reckoning Song



For:

• Plenty of beats to work with in terms of change of camera shots. 
• Goes straight into the song so again, easily recognisable. Also allows us to start the narrative straight away. 
• Genre of the song still allows us to create an upbeat music video. Also as the song is not very well known this also allows us to present the music video with little if any comparisons to the original video. 

A) Reasons why you’ve selected this song and discarded other ideas

As a group we decided from the beginning that we were not big fans of lip syncing. We felt that this video had the right atmosphere and beat to it to allow us to keep the video to just a narrative. Also, from our class pitch it is clear that the majority preferred this song. Considering video ideas to both My Number and One Day were very similar it was clear that we probably should go for what the majority seemed to like more. As a group we liked both songs so it was all a matter of decision making.

We discarded the other songs as we felt One Day worked better for us as a group to create a more original video unlike Put Your Records On and to produce a more interesting music video.

B) Initial concept ideas for your video: locations / themes / shot types / ‘angle: feminism/political message’ / performance or concept video / lighting / links to lyrics etc…

Initial Locations : Park / Wide roads / party scenes / Residential / School / 

Themes: We've always wanted to go for the 'happy' 'summer' 'feel-good' theme just to do something much more different to our film opening last year.

Shot Types(look back to 'Concept' post): Conference scene - panning/zoom in to show the entire setting of the female character who has a job very different to those in the meeting. 

Dominos Girl - Tracking to follow her out of house.

Cold-Calling - Wide shot perhaps. To indicate the loneliness on the whole street.

Cleaner - Series of panning shots and tracking to set the scene and inform viewers. 

Angle: The message is that everyone has that 'one day,' that 'one time' in their lives where they didn't want the day to end. With these four character we wanted to create the narrative of teens/tweens who reflect back on what their live used to be. We contrasted this with the alternating scenes of the Present(tweens) and the past(teens). 

Lyrics: There is the obvious link to the lyrics 'one day.' Also, the lyrics 'think of all the stories that we could have told' tells the audience that the character are reflecting and it was perhaps another lifetime and now just a memory.