Filming- 2nd location

We finally shot at the second location (House Party). It went really well and took us 4 hours to get everything we wanted!

We shot bits with our lead girl, Ellie, for the first time which worked out really well. We had a list of shots we needed to get whilst there:

• Shots of George and Ellie in separate mirrors
• George walking down a corridor/stairs
• Ellie walking in with extras
• Boys (Band members and extras) standing together, while George see's Ellie
• Band performing at party (ones with crowd and close ups, where audience isn't seen)
• Shots of the audience watching the performance
• Shots of audience, with Ellie in foreground, singing along

We obviously had extras in this location who excluding the band and lead girl included : Margot Broadbent- Yale, Hannah Laking, Hannah Fitch, Daisy Henwood and Nick Bushell

Obviously this wasn't many but we packed them in close together so it didn't seem like a small amount. Also as Nick was the only boy extra we included him in most shots where extras where needed.

For this shoot we wanted to make some 'Behind the scenes' footage. We were using the HD camera so we also took a normal camera. Hannah Fitch, also takes Media Studies, and to get the behind the scenes shots, we asked if while we filmed bits with certain people and others weren't needed, if she would shoot some of this for us. We wanted some behind the scenes shots that we could put in our evaluation and shots that we can use to make a video to go on the bands website. She knows how to use the camera and got some great footage of the band pretending to be The Summer Set and talking about how the music video is coming along on set (video for the website) and some shots of us directing and recording (for our evaluation). We were very grateful of her doing this for us.

With more people and more footage (from both the HD camera and the normal 'behind the scenes' camera came alot of outtakes! So if we have time we would like to make a bloopers reel :)

Everyone was really good and having uploaded it and started editing it, it looks really good too! We REALLY appreciated every ones hard work!

Website for the Band

I have started designing and working on the bands website!
We have decided that we wanted to design a website and also a Digi-pack as part of our advertising of he band.
To start the website I used Wix.comn which I find really easy to work around and simple.
What we want to advertise on our website is a number of different products:
- The Song. So you can listen to it without the video.
- A Bonus track. Which myself and sarah have found of the song! It is an acoustic version of Punch-Drunk Love which is interesting.
- AGallery. Numerous pictures of the band at different venues an areas. These will give the idea that they have been at a number of Photoshoots.
- The music video. Once it is finished and compelted.
- Tour Dates. To make it look more realistic.
- Contact page. This is so hat 'fan' can contact the band and directors.

Currently I am working on the design of the page. Looking at most of the templates there is a lot of 'DJ' templates which our band is not. I have found a simple templae which expresses an Indie band, which is our aim. I am working on changing some of the background and colours to make it more unique.

This is a picture of the front page. The white blank spot is where I am going to put a picture of the band, as I believe this wll advertise well.

Props

For this 'Party' scene we will need more props than just the instruments and amp like last time.

For this scene we were warned that we could get told off by examiners and possibly lose marks for showing any alcohol bottles and therefore portraying teenage drinking. So after doing some brainstorming, we came about with an idea that wouldn't involve using bottles of alcohol.

In American movies with teenagers they are often seen drinking from red plastic cups at party's. It is only an assumption, that over the years audiences have built up, that it is alcohol that is being drunk. Therefore we felt this idea of using red plastic cups with a punch bowl fits Goodwin's 6 of 'Visual and lyrics' (Lyrics being: 'Punch-drunk love') without actually showing any alcohol bottles. The punch in the cups wont be alcohol, the audience will just assume it is as red plastic cups have built up this assumption.

Weirdly enough, it was quite difficult finding red plastic cups within shops that looked the part (i.e- not toddlers ones!). So a friend passed on this link to me:

www.amazon.co.uk/gp/offer-listing/B003KUQTV6/ref=dp_olp_new?ie=UTF8&qid=1294351540&sr=8-3&con

They were even called 'Red American Party Cups', which highlighted the fact that they are so widely known for being used at party's, which was a plus. I ordered them and they arrived today and they look perfect.

So, this means another couple of props will be needed.

• A punch bowl
• A juice (preferably Red) to put in the punch bowl

Other props include Mirrors (which will be in Margot's house) - 2 different ones (One for George and one for our lead girl Ellie) where we will briefly see them getting ready. To make it look more realistic (like its actually Ellie's Bedroom) we will print out some real life photos of her with friends (friends which will later be at the party) and place them around her mirror.

Other than the obvious microphone, drum kit, guitar, bass and amp this is all the props needed for this party scene.

Sunday 16th - Filming!

It has been a very stressful couple days with trying to organise this weekends filming. We are desperate to film as our time is rapidly running out and we are worried about meeting deadlines. Then we found that Will Woods, again, may not be able to do either Saturday or Sunday as planned due to clubs and activities outside school. This caused us major problems with him not often free after school and with upcoming exams for some of our 'band' members and extras next week.

However, Margot (a friend, whose house we are filming in) kindly said that she doesn't mind us coming on Sunday and filming later than we had originally planned so that Will can make it back (from what he is doing), to film for us!!

So, today I took the HD camera and dolly home ready for Sunday. I also have taken a normal camera and tripod with me so that we can film some backstage stuff while its all happening, that hopefully we can use on our website or in our evaluation. Also, we might get time to take some pictures of the band for the Digi pack and website.

I have emailed everyone, again via Facebook to let everyone know its definitely happening!

Final Cut Experience

From my own personal point of view I found Final Cut difficult to begin with. As I had missed the first lesson of loading up the video clips i was able to get help with using Final Cut. Sarah has been helping me and teaching me how to use it.

I find it more difficult to use than iMovie because you have one window for iMovie. Whereas in Final Cut you have a number of different windows to work on drafts and final video clips. This helps with the editing as it can be split into two different areas. This also gives us a chance to preview our work before we finally use and edit it.

I have learnt how to cut tracks and cut clips by using the razor icon. Louis has also helped me and Sarah by showing us how to zoom in and out of the shots. This was a great help because there was a clip that we couldn't see very well without having to zoom in, so Louis kindly helped us.

I am enjoying working with Final Cut becaus I feel that there is so much we can do with it. I need to do my research and start learning how to do more with FInal Cut so we can make our editing and final music video more interesting.

Editing

We are now back at school after the Christmas holidays and we have uploaded our footage that we shot on Friday 17th! I had to originally upload our footage to my apple mac at home as I knew the HD camera didn't have massive amounts of memory and I didn't want the next group that were using the camera over the holidays to not have enough room or film over our footage!

So I uploaded it into my iMovie and then made the clips into quick time and then burnt them to a blank DVD.

This of course meant that when I uploaded it to the schools mac that all the clips had joined together, which is what I had expected. So I moved the footage into Final Cut (where we would be editing) and went through all the footage and split it into the original clips.

Danni was back the lesson after and for the first time watched our footage back. We have now started editing what we have (we are leaving blank spaces where we plan our other footage (that we have yet to film) still to go). Editing takes a very long time and I didn't realise how difficult it can be to match up the music to, for example, the exact strumming of the guitar. However we have now had a of couple lessons doing it and we are slowly getting used to Final Cut. But I wanted to watch an introduction into Final Cut to see if there is anything we can do to make the process quicker. This video I think really helps and also helps us solve an issue that we found once looking at the clips in depth. We found that in one shot some of our bags are in the background!! So after watching this video, it seems that there is a way where we can crop clips which helps massively for this very issue!

Organising our next filming date

Unfortunately we couldn't do our second lot of shooting (the party scenes) over the Christmas holidays like we wanted to.

So we, with difficulties, are planning on when to shoot this. We hoped to have it done WAY before the dates we have had to settle for but due to lack of different band members on certain days, location and January exams we will be shooting quite late, which is a bit of a worry. But it just means we will have to spend more time after school and at lunch times editing to meet the deadline.

We are using Facebook emails to inform everyone about when we plan to film and what is required of our actors/actresses. We are using this as everyone (minus one) who we need in these scenes are regular uses of Facebook and can reply to us easily.