Rough Cut Feedback

Now that we have completed our rough cut I feel that there are both positives and negatives to the outcome. I now feel that we have managed to make the narrative clear of a man controlling and producing the music video. But this wasn’t like this to begin with, as we just cut all of our footage together to the song, and then added the green screen shots. But watching this it, we were given the advice to change the structure of the video around, as the narrative of Felix building the music video wasn’t as clear as it could be.
So we decided to start from scratch, by beginning a new timeline, starting with the green screen, and then he would slowly add the different elements in (as if the creation of the video is taking place), putting together the performance room, UV paint room, laser room and dry ice dancing shots – but we were still able to take our favorite shots from the original timeline, and add them to the new. We were following the rule of cutting to the beat, therefore the shots that were cut were extremely fast and short, and we all decided that this was slightly too fast, as you couldn’t focus on the elements. So we elongated the favorite shots, and this added more variety in shot length. I was glad that we made this decision of starting again, and changing the shot length, as now you can focus on the shots, whilst having a clear narrative to drive the video.
Possibly the biggest task now is to complete the design of the green screen rooms, and we are still yet to complete this. Our lessons from now on will be entirely based on the completion of this. We want to add sound waves, and projection to give a technical element to the video. But none of this can be done until we have finalized for definite our rough cut, as the green screen room included the past and previous shots. But I feel once this has been created and edited into the video, our video will have more fluidity and clarity for the narrative. X

Rough Cut Evaluation

Now that we have completed our rough cut I see that there are both positives and negatives to the outcome. I feel that we have managed to make the narrative clear of a man controlling and producing the music video just by the way a new room is introduced after each major green screen room sections. But this wasn’t like this to begin with, as we just cut all of our footage together to the song, and then added the green screen shots, and without the green screen it didn' make sense. But watching this, we were given the advice to change the structure of the video around, as the narrative of the singer building the music video wasn’t as clear as it could be.

We decided to start from scratch, by beginning a new timeline, starting with the green screen, and then he would slowly add the different elements in (as if the creation of the video is taking place in front of the viewer), putting together the performance room, Laser room, UV room and dry ice dancing – but we were still able to take our favorite shots from the original timeline, and add them to the new. We were following the rule of cutting to the beat, therefore the shots that were cut were extremely fast and short, and we all decided that the song was slightly too fast, which meant couldn’t focus on the elements. So we elongated the favorite shots, and this added more variety in shot length creating a varied pace. I was glad that we made this decision of starting again, and changing the shot length, as now you can focus on the shots, whilst having a clear narrative to drive the video on.

Possibly the biggest task now is to complete the design of the green screen shots, and we are still yet to complete this. Our lessons from now on will be entirely based on the completion of this. We want to add wave forms for the sound creation, and projection to give a technical element to the video and to create the conecting factor. None of this can be done until we have finalized for definite our rough cut with Luke, as the green screen room included the past and previous shots. I feel once this has been created and edited into the video, our video will have more fluidity and clarity for the narrative.

Pre-Shoot Pictures

The UV wall after we had painted it a couple of days before the shoot.

Cat and George taping down the performance room floor.

The lighting tower after use of putting up specific lights for our shoot.

Pop Shoot Evaluation

The preparation of our pop video took a lot of time and organisation but it paid off as we saw on the day of shooting. We started the day with completing the set up of our first set which was the bright white performance room. After set up we ran the band through their roles and left them to get comfortable with the set and surroundings. During this time we set up the camera, lights and music and then ran the music through for a couple of reasons. One so that we could see what it looked like and whether the band worked in their placements and made adjustments to correct them so. The second reason was so the band themselves could have a practice and again get comfortable playing in their surroundings and in front of the camera. We ran this a couple of times to be sure and then started to record the scene. This room went really well starting with the wide shot and moving on to mid-shots, close ups and anything else we could think of. This room took us approximately 1hr 30mins.

After this was done we got straight on with moving the band out of the studio and taking down the performance room set. This was to be replaced by our UV room set which consisted of a back wall with our song lyrics written on it in UV set paint and then black side walls and floor. The band to be replaced with dancers patterned with UV body paint of 9 different colours and plenty of different designs. Again we left the dancers to acclimatise in their surrounds especially as their costume could make them feel out of place and embarrassed. We again set up the cameras and the lights while they did that and then Megan and Catherine ran through the dance moves and sequences with the dancers so they knew what they where doing. We let them have a couple of practice runs just like the band to get into the flow of things. Once this was done we started shooting the set and the results where amazing with the UV paint really glowing in many different colours creating a spectacle of colour and dance. This was it for the morning and so we all went to lunch and the dancers got cleaned up. This scene totalled to roughly 2hrs.

The group, Megan, Tom, Catherine and I, came back as well as the staff and we set up for the afternoon scenes which where the last three rooms, the dry ice room, the laser room and the green screen room (Minority Report Room). This was done by setting the green screen room to one side of the studio and placing the black walled and floored room for both the dry ice room and laser room. We ran into a problem at this point. We planned to do the dry ice room first but the dry ice hadn’t been delivered yet so we waited 20mins while we completed set up and prepped our actors but still no dry ice. At this point we changed our shooting order. We decided to shoot the laser room which meant moving the dry ice set which was the band and their equipment back out the studio and getting the dancers ready instead of the band which wasted a good 20 minuets. Once this was done we set up the camera and placed the dancers onto the set. We then worked out how the lasers where going to be shone, placed and by whom where they going to be operated. We just used members of the group and staff to operate the laser pens and placed them at the front of the set and a couple right at the back in the middle. We didn’t believe this was going to work very well but we where proven wrong as it looked incredible and created us the best looking lighting effect we could have asked for. This room only took us about 50mins but with all the change around it totalled 1hr 20mins.

From here we moved on to the opposite side of the room and shoot the green screen room which consisted of our actor standing in front a green wall and on a green floor. This was so that in after effects we can create the scene of him moving pictures around and placing them in places to create the final product. This was a different scene to shoot as there were no props and he was pretending that there where pictures and objects there but we place these items into place in after effects in the editing stage. This took us roughly about an hour or so.

We moved on to our final room. The dry ice had now been delivered and was ready to go so we set up the band, told them what was going on, set up the camera and lights and then filled the floor with the dry ice and recorded the scene. We where rushing at this stage as we where seriously running out of time but we got the band done and out then shot the dancers in the dry ice room and we had completed the day. This is the room I would have changed or at least spent more time on as I thought we needed more dry ice and the hanging lights which we didn’t manage to have as the wrong plugs where delivered. We packed all our things away and let the staff clean up the rest of their things. Overall the total shooting ours stacked up to roughly 7 hours 30 minutes. The footage recorded should hopefully be in great quality as it was shot in HD (High Definition) which means that the quality of things such as the UV room and the Lasers should come out sharp and we used the slow motion setting built into the camera to shoot the UV paint splash from the drum. Out of all of these rooms I believe the UV room and Laser room where the most successful as we had not tried doing yet so it was a first for everyone and we didn’t manage to get the paint or lasers in time for a camera test so the shoot day was the first time anyone had seen it in action.

During the day we followed the storyboard but not closely as we had realised in the storyboard editing stage that we where missing to many shots or we needed more of one room and less of another. So we followed the basic structure but got many more shots than we had planned which is fine because the more the better and the shots we took I believe would be of more benefit and would suit our song better than the ones we had originally planned to use. These shots could potentially make our video go from good to great.

Pre-SHoot Day Preperation

Monday 8th - PM

The day before, we re-checked all the dancers costumes, and came to the conclusion, that the dancers would need tights on as well, for dancing reasons, but also for personal comfort. Apart from that we were very happy with the costume decisions made, as the sequins on the hot pants would look very effective under the lights. As we were painting the dancers bodies in UV paint, we had to do a health and safety check that the dancers wouldn't have any skin reactions to the paint, so we did this test to make sure - everything was fine.

We all then began to start painting the brick walls in the UV set paint, that would be a key feature in the UV room. We painted the lyrics, handprints and general paint splats, in multi-colour paint. The paint took a while to dry so whilst this happened, we began to paint in the studio flats white, and then set up the room. Unfortunately Cat and I had to leave early, so George and Tom continued finishing the room that evening, so that on Tuesday morning, everything would be done and ready to begin shooting :)

The Change Of Green Room Idea

Our original idea was to have a the lead singer of the band as a mysterious man in a room with a large touch screen looking through pictures of the party and searching for a girl. This idea was then dropped the day before shooting and we as a group decided that the green screen room would still involve the lead singer with the large touch screen but instead of searching for a mysterious girl he is actually piecing together the music video within the video itself. This gives us more footage to play around with and becomes our introducing factor into each of the different rooms throughout the song. This way we can add a new room to the video at certain points in the video. This room also becomes the videos linking factor allowing us to make more sense in linking the comparison of each of the different rooms allowing a change from the bright band room straight into the dark dry ice room without it looking weird and senseless.

Location photos of Party House

We had a look around a possible loction of cornhill house for our corridor and other room shots for our party scenes. The corridors where all wide which would be really hepful in trying to create the big party feel. The size of the corridor also lets the crew work while still keeping the size of the corridor there.

Here are the pictures: