Filming the Music Video

Filming

Over the weekend, me and group finally took the time to film for our project. Our main I guess ‘leader’ Emily was able to find us a really convenient location to film in. We ended up going to a middle school after our classes were over, since her mom works there and we were able to go inside and pretty much do whatever we needed to do. We all got together after school and had our older group member pull up in her car, so that we could just skip everything and go straight to the location. After all, some of us had to be home by certain times and it was already nearly 3 PM, so it was about time to just get things done. With a few... minor scares in traffic we managed to make it completely unscathed. We accidentally went through some random hallway instead of the actual main entrance since some kid let us in through the doors. Now that I think about it... that definitely isn’t safe. But all that really matters is that we got in. We immediately made way to the cafeteria, since the auditorium is really just a tiny black stage placed in the cafeteria.

Dance classes were about to pick up soon so we had to film really hastily. Me and the other actress, Andrea, had to basically put on these dresses that Emily had brought for us and somehow take off our original clothes from under them. She showed us them earlier that morning, probably like 5 of them so we were able to choose our favorites. We didn’t want to change in the bathrooms because public bathrooms are kind of nasty so we just went with the old fashioned way. Right after, we got up on stage and had Emily go through the storyboard to tell us what to do. We filmed the second shot, the slow dance, on that stage. We opened up by walking through the curtains and striking a little pose, before coming together to dance. Now I will admit, I do dance a lot in my free time but slow dancing just isn’t my strongest suit. If I end up looking really awkward in my footage, we all know why. We also filmed us running down the stairs on the side of the stage, making sure to have Andrea in front of me holding my hand to lead me forward. 

Once we were finished with the indoors part, we left our things inside and went out into something like a ‘commons’ area? Basically just trees and benches where kids probably hang out during passing time. We did a few takes of some random running shots, honestly not sure why but I haven’t looked at the storyboard in a while. It’s probably in there somewhere.. us frolicking in fields or something. We also did a cute little scene of us hiding behind a tree and smiling at each other when we come around, just basic things to go with the soft song. We moved to our final spot, a little nook type area that had small wooden benches and a chalkboard. The final takes were done there, of me and Andrea from behind holding hands. Also the shot of the sun that will eventually be in the film, and so on. We faked conversation for a lot of it since we didn’t need real dialogue for what we were planning. Once everything was done, we packed up our stuff and got picked up by our rides and went home. Anything we didn’t finish was eventually fixed up by Emily at her own house.

Music Video Storyboarding

Storyboarding

So, this is what me and my group have come up with for the storyboard. We originally made it a bit different, but when Emily showed it to our teacher he said it was a bit short. We had to extend it by throwing in a few bits of cute clips or something just to meet the minimum/maximum or somewhere in between. The music video will begin with a shot of a music player, and a hand will come up, pretending to press play. The song will then begin playing at this moment, cutting to the first scene of the two actresses. A wide shot of a stage, closed off by curtains will be shown, then the two characters will come out together and do a pose with their arms out. They will begin to slow dance, maybe do a few spins or something like that so it isn't just awkward footwork and laughing. We'll probably do about two to three takes, so if necessary, there will be some jump cuts just to make it flow better by then. Once they're done, a close up of their hands will show, and then show them running away off the stage with the camera tilted, following them. This will segway into the next scene, another where they hide behind a tree together. Slowly inching closer, they have their heads come around the tree and they smile at each other when their eyes meet. Afterwards it will jump cut to the actresses running around in nature, spinning around or skipping. The video will then cut to them sitting on a bench in a little nook area. There will be a wide angle showing the entire location off just to show the aesthetic of the shot. They'll be holding hands, having some sort of conversation or smiling to each other before looking up to the sky. The video will cut to a shot of the sky as an eye-line match, before coming back to the actresses, now from behind. Still holding hands, they make sure they're visible for the camera as the camera slowly tilts up to the sky once more. The camera will zoom into the sun, getting a small little solar flare in the shot as it fades to black, finishing off the video. The entire thing will be in black and white.

Planning the Music Video

Planning the Music Video

So, I've already got the beginning of this video planned out. At least of course, for the day that we end up filming. We have to create our storyboards in just a second, but that'll be shown elsewhere. For now we just wanted to figure out where we're going, since we can't film this video on our school's campus this time. We have to be outside of school, basically anywhere else. It doesn't matter-- we could go to the beach, the park, Disney or something if we really felt like it. I got a general idea of what we're going to be doing, but I won't be in charge of much besides acting and editing since I know i'm not the most creative person. At least, out of everybody in my group, I know my ideas will probably lack in depth than compared to those of others. On the bright side, I have a lot of a technological skill, so my role will come in later on in the project. Once we get the storyboard done, i'll basically be set since that's like the entire video put on a piece of paper for me to form together. Well.. at least better than I did during the commercial project. I think everything will be at least somewhat cohesive this time.  I know for sure that we have a way to get to whatever destination we need to go to, since one of us has a car. As long as we end up going somewhere after school we can all just run over to the parking lot and jump in the car and go somewhere random. We might be able to use a stage at another school, which should work since it technically isn't at OUR campus, no? Emily's mom works at a middle school so we can probably take advantage of that.

Our full schedule is: 

1. Plan, make the storyboard. 11/18
2. We only have access to the setting for a day, because of the fact that we can only go since Emily's mom works there. We're going to film early to do it all in that time period. Emily will check out the camera and everything and we'll head straight over. 11/19
3. Complete/start on blogs so that we can be ahead and not swamped with work later on. 11/20
4. Figure out music and timing of sounds so that we can match it all together with the film. We don't want an audio mishaps this time. 11/21
5. Discuss minor details and flow just in case we want to add anything. Relax, it's the weekend. 11/22
6. Edit the film blogs on the off-chance that we made any last minute decisions. Be ready to finish up soon. 11/25
7. Finish our last filming blog. 12/2
8. D-Day, submit the video. 12/9
9. Submit CCR to my teacher's email. Writing this will probably take a while, so I might end up starting early. The first/second question can sometimes be answered before the completion of the project. 12/11

Intro to New Project

Music Video

The commercial project is finally over. After weeks of trials and tribulations, it's submitted and I can forget that ever happened. Well... not forget, but at the very least, pretend. I don't think I did the best I could've done, but it seems that that's in the past now. I'm officially moving on with my group onto my next project, a music video. After going through the whole process of making a commercial, I've definitely found a new level of appreciation for it. I had a very good storyboard, basically as detailed as I could possibly make it, but some things went wrong later on in filming. Although everything was planned out perfectly on my storyboard, me and my group kind of forgot to film a few things. Either that, or we didn't do enough takes, so we ended up with footage that I wasn't very proud of. I hope filming will go better this time, especially since I have the ability to film this outside of school instead of just being on the track. I'll probably go to the mall or somewhere romantic so that I can fit the vibe of the song I choose. Also, editing should go smoother this time around since I won't rely so heavily on it if I just get better footage. Rather than just trying to cut things together and force them to work, I should have footage that actually just works. 

The song me and my group have chosen is 'Fly Me To The Moon' by Frank Sinatra. It's romantic, jazzy, nice and slow. Basically everything somebody could want in a cheesy love song. It's almost like something that you could serenade someone with, since a lot of songs from that time era were like that. Frank Sinatra is a classic singer, one of the most famous of his time, so choosing him was easy to think of. We wanted something that could be romantic and soft for our video, since we want our video to have a love story. The song is about 2 minutes long, but we'll shorten it down for our video since it has a lot of instrumentals without lyrics. If we do have to keep any instrumentals in for the time limits though, we might make a small little choreography or something to keep it interesting. It'll be fun to use such an old song, especially because a lot more can be done with it that will be more special than just a regular modern music video. 

Jazz music videos and songs are normally about love, hidden love, anything to do with romance as said before. It's going to have a very soft vibe so that we can do everything we want with it.

1. For costumes, my group mate Emily we be finding outfits since she has family members that are costume designers and things like that. She has a lot of knowledge on history, so she knows what was 'in' fashion-wise during the time period of when our video is going to be set. 
2. Lighting is mostly going to be natural from our locations that we use, outside when our characters walk around. Or if we end up putting our characters in a restaurant in any scene, maybe somewhere that's more dimly lit. However, the video will all be in black and white to pay homage to the 50's and 60's black/white films.
3. Our actors are most likely going to be 2 women acting as lover. It's a bit of a comment on what life was like back in the 50's and 60's, since homophobia was really big. We'll have them interact romantically, going out on dates and all that.
4. Makeup won't play a very large part of the video, we may just have light makeup on our actresses inspired by famous looks. Red lipstick, eyeliner, light blush, overall a classic look. Honestly, we may not have it at all.
5. Our props are going to be part of the dance theme and whatever happens with the script, so it's a bit undecided at the moment. 
6. Scenery will be very beautiful and soft, in nature with wind blowing through the actors faces. Maybe trees, pretty flowers and things like that. Keep it simple. 

Actually Editing the Commercial

Actually Editing the Commercial

This time, we actually got to edit everything. The footage was put together well, but it isn't everything that I really wanted it to be. There were a million tiny problems that I had with it. For one thing, we decided to split our editing workload, but I ended up being home and sleeping in bed because I got really sick and needed to be out of school just for the day. Emily was gone too due to the passing of one of her relatives. Jaheim and Andrea ended up having to work together to put the commercial together the best they could. It probably was pretty tedious, I feel kind of bad for not being able to be there to help work like I said I would. But I guess you can't exactly postpone a sickness, and I didn't want to spread it to anyone else. Jaheim later told me over text in the group chat that him and Andrea were able to filter through all of our takes and pick the best ones. We had about thirty of them, but they chose seven good ones. The takes themselves, i'm sure, weren't exactly very good. We messed up a lot on the filming day and forgot a lot of bits. Plus we ended up taking forever and we almost ran out of time while filming since we have really bad time management. The seven we ended up using were just better than the other more weak links. 

Another problem we ended up struggling with in the end was the amount of technical difficulties we faced. There was a problem with our file type so there was trouble when actually trying to import the files into the editing software. To our dismay, nobody really knew how to fix it so we just had to use a different program besides Pinnacle Studios. We tried to just keep going with Pinnacle while also using the other software, but our ordered footage made Pinnacle crash. I'm not sure how, perhaps Pinnacle's auto save feature kicked in at the perfect moment, but our files started actually working again until just when we were going to finalize it and save it. We tried to put the video onto one of our Google Drive accounts, this time it was Jaheim's, but there was an issue. It was saved as a .axp file which basically can't be opened unless you're specifically opening it with Pinnacle. Second of all, it somehow became an audio file rather than a video file. So we have no option but to leave it on the computer and save it and just hope for the best. 
On the bright side, for the second day of editing I was able to actually be there in class to pull some of my weight. The big problem me and Jaheim found was that the transitions between the shots we had were really awkward. We had too many different angles and the timing was just off in general so it was hard to get it to be  smooth without it looking super weird. We had to put together shots from before that we initially didn't want to use just so that we could get it to work. The film itself also is a bit weird. It feels short even though it's in the time frame we were told to do, but I think it's because of our story. Maybe we didn't have enough to it, or it was just literally rushed from us panicking when we looked at the clock. But I guess we all are trying our best, and none of us including myself have ever made videos before. I've only ever made casual edits for things on social media and all that. This is okay for a first try.