Audience response questions

This is a script for our audience response video because it's difficult to hear at some points.

First group listened to Skip Moses - Seasons Reverse.

What did you think of the song?

"Allright"

"OK"

"I liked the background music but couldn't understand the words"

Was it because of his accent? Or was it too rushed?

Did you think the vocals were good?

Is it something you would go for?

"No"

Would you turn off the radio if it came on?

"Yes"

What artist does this song remind you of?

"Paolo Nutini"

What images do you think of when you hear this song?

"A guy playing guitar in the street"

What emotions do you link with the song?

"Depression"

Why do you think that?

"You can't understand the words, can't hear him."

What do you think of our idea for the video?

"I like it."

"I think it fits with the song"

Would you change the song?

"Yes, intro is too long. Boring"

Would you make any changes to our idea? Add anything?

"No, I think it works well"

The second group listened to Howie Day - Collide

What did you think of this song?

"I really like it"

What does it make you think of?

"It's very deep and meaningful

What about comparing it to our last song?

"Much better than the first one"

"Faster paced"

"You can understand the words"

Is it more hopeful? Not as depressing as the last one?

"Yes, it starts off slow and keeps you on your toes. It makes you want too keep listening"

Is it the kind of song you would listen to?

"Yes"

Would you turn the radio off if it came on?

"Hmm... maybe? It's not that bad though"

What do you think of our idea for the video?

"You can picture it. It fits well with the song."

"It's obvious but not in a bad way, I wouldn't make any changes to it"

After evaluating this feedback we came to the conclusion that our audience preferred Howie Day - Collide and since we all love the song we decided this is what we will use for our video. We hope it's well recieved and we reckon it fits better with our idea.

- Cara

Filming at continental market

Filming on Friday night went really well, we've got a few good shots with our Howie Day played by Emmet Cummings and of course our couple - Steven O'Neill and Emma Catney. We also brought along Danielle McGuigan to help with props. The lights on the trees look great on the footage and we're pleased with the overall look. This Saturday we're hoping to get shots of Emma Catney in a rage with words flying past her head of the argument and hopefully get more shots of Emmet singing and playing guitar. Good times :)

- Cara

Updates to this week

The group went down to film on Friday at the Continental Market at Belfast's City Hall.

An hour of filming took place, and then it was too dark to get much more filming done on account of the lighting in the area.

We won't be able to get a lot done this week, most people are working in the group.

Hopefully this weekend some of us can get together and film (:

We are interested in a shot in a Darwin Deez music video of Radar Detector, which has already been mentioned through this blog but we intend on using it but making the shots relevant to the mood of our video which is quite depressing to be honest throughout before it reaches it's more optimistic ending, (forgetting all the shots of the optimistic memories of course) we still will attempt to keep the mood lifted with the thoughts of their relationship and how much it meant to them.

Radar Detector, in my opinion, is a completely different approach to a music video in comparison to what we have began to create, HOWEVER we do desire to have a few quirky ideas throughout our video, which will consist of aspects like the stop motion at certain points, Reverting angle shots, the desaturated colours in our shots with maybe one or two items in each scene that will have vibrant colour to bring the viewer's eye to the subject in matter and also a few more ideas that we still need to discuss as a group as to whether we will actually go through with it.

We may be going with a superficial storyboard but we are traveling away from that with the idea of stop motion from videos such as OKGo and Darwin himself.

We shall give updates soon (:

Also check out Pez on youtube for his small stop motion video clips =D

Audience Response

This is our audience's response to both of our songs (Season's Reverse and Collide). I will post a script of this video sometime soon!

Stop Motion!

This is our first ever attempt of stop motion, I think we did pretty good! The way it's jumpy and not completely perfect actually makes it quite good, you can tell it's stop motion and it's really quirky. We all like how this turned out and we're currently working on an new version of the same stop motion this very second!

Continental market and Belfast City Hall Lights

I got a few quick photos today of the Christmas/Continental Market in Belfast City Centre and Belfast City hall lit up at night (well, it was just tarting to get dark). It looks lovely, I can't wait to get some filming done here!

I like the use of effects in this video and think there are some ideas that we can learn to do and put in our own video. Especially at 0.18-0.24 - an idea that we are planning to use: having pictures of Emma and Steven in a photo strip, which will be green screen and each of the pictures will be moving showing happy memories of them together. If we are unable to get a proper photo strip that looks realistic then we can just choose one photo.





I found this while browsing for techniques and tutorials on youtube and think that it is very interesting.




So far, we have filmed the start of our video where Steven and Emma are fighting. When we uploaded it onto the mac in school as a group we all agreed that it looked very narrative- just like a tytpical story between a boy and girl falling out. We want to add some more fascinating cuts into it to make it more attention-grabbing. In this video Radar Detector by Darwin Deez, between 1:48 and 2:24 there is an interesting use of cuts. I beleieve that we can create this same effect when Emma is looking at the phone. We will also have to use it in a different mood for it to tie in with our theme.

Filming session #2: Stop Motion

Ok, so we met up at my house today and done some more for our music video, only we didnt do any filming - we tried stop motion. Today was just to help us evaluate the whole stop-motion idea, i.e. what it looks like, how long it will take us, how to do it and how much work is involved in creating stop-motion. Altogether the day was successful because I think we all had some good ideas and we actually got some decent stop motion pictures. We can't wait now to get the pictures onto our Macbook now to see what it all looks like!

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Everyone drew out and explained their own ideas

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Catherine and I acting out for some stop-motion pictures

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Sharing ideas

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We finally decided to try something with the photographs Cara got printed and cut-out hearts

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Starting the stop-motion pictures

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Eilisha, Cara, Catherine and I all needed to help with the stop motion - it was definately not a one-man job and took surprisingly quite a long time!

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Checking the pictures to make sure that we got it right



Audience Feedback

Hey guys, 

We just filmed our Audience Feedback.

Pretty chuffed, ultimately we got a lot of great feedback about the idea of the video and the choice of song. 

We are currently saving our camera file as a movie file so we can upload it onto youtube and then we can post it up here, should be up by tomorrow (= 

We'll let you know (:

Bye-di-bye =]

Eilisha

Lyrics of Collide

The dawn is breaking
A light shining through
You're barely waking
And I'm tangled up in you, yeah
I'm open, you're closed
Where I follow, you'll go
I worry I won't see your face
Light up again

Even the best fall down sometimes
Even the wrong words seem to rhyme
Out of the doubt that fills my mind
I somehow find you and I collide

I'm quiet you know
You make a first impression
I've found I'm scared to know
I'm always on your mind

Even the best fall down sometimes
Even the stars refuse to shine
Out of the back you fall in time
I somehow find you and I collide

Don't stop here
I lost my place
I'm close behind

Even the best fall down sometimes
Even the wrong words seem to rhyme
Out of the doubt that fills your mind
You finally find you and I collide

You finally find you and I collide
You finally find you and I collide

More Ideas

This is a students media studies coursework that I found on youtube. My group used this music video as inspiration last year but only in the fact that we were trying to narrate a similar theme using alcohol instead of drugs. I think that this year it is still useful and the idea with the photo with the green screen is a brilliant idea which we can use. It will make our music video even more interesting as what we have so far is very original. The OK GO videos which we posted on the blog at the start of the year are more popular because of the qwerky ideas in their videos than their actual music and because its such a slow song we need something to engage the audience with.




I like using this as an idea, except maybe having just a line from the song "Even the best fall down sometimes" it could be as if Steven is writing it to Emma- an apology letter, though we prefer not to have his hands showing. From previous experience with stop motion i am guessing that there will be approximately 8 frames per second. We plan to have this happening letter to letter instead of word to word like this video because it is only one short line we are filming compared to the paragraphs in this vid.

More photos taken on set

- Cara

Change of plans

So we've changed to song to something we feel fits our story line better. So on Friday we're hoping to film another audience response with the same people to see if they have a better reaction to our new song as 'Seasons Reverse' wasn't to their taste. After looking over our footage from Saturday we're going to try put more effects, camera movements etc in so it doesn't look boring or too dry. We want to avoid making it seem more like a short film. Our actors turned out really well even though Steven was drafted in last minute, they had good chemistry and were able to portray the fight scene in a belivable way. In the next post I'll upload more photos taken on set. This weekend we want to try and film in Lady Dixon with Gerard our 'Howie Day'. - Cara

Pictures from filming on Saturday 6th

Cara, Catherine and I did some filming on Saturday, and although Peter (the male actor we had planned to use for our music video) was sick, we managed to find a replacement (Steven) and luckily we were able to continue with filming. Also, after editing the clips today in school, we realised that the song we had chosen was not perfect for what we were planning to do. Upon playing the clips with Seasons Reverse and then Collide by Howie Day, we unanimously agreed to switch songs but keep the same theme.

This is the first scene we filmed. Emma, our actress was brilliant and very co-operative and we did a few takes of this shot to make sure that the lighting was good and to make sure our props were doing their job (we had some minor problems with using our phones as props)

Cara and I trying to sort out props (we eventually had to film using a second phone as the first one was not suitable).

Catherine double checking the clips as the lighting had changed between shots and we had to re-take.

Cara explaining to our two actors what to do.

We tried a range of shots for this room as we found it hard to fit in Emma and Steven in the same shot because Emma was standing up and Steven was sitting down.

Catherine explaining how to act out the fight.

We had Emma slap Steven across the face... but it didn't turn out as planned!

We were careful to ensure that the continuity was perfect, as any slight movement in Emma's scarf would've been noticeable in the final product.

After filming the door slam a few times we finally took the descision to have one of us standing behind the door to make sure it slammed properly for dramatic effect.

Cara and Catherine setting up outside.

This was Emma's outfit for filming:

And we made sure that Emma and Steven wore different sets of clothes for the photographs we needed to take to use as props.

We will be using these photos or similar photos to these later on in filming to symbolise memories between the couple.

-Aisling

Photos (Misé-en-scene/atmosphere/angles/lighting)

Here's some photos I took last weekend. I was thinking about the use of light for our video, and I was also experimenting with the different kinds of shots we could put into it. I liked the atmosphere and mise-en-scene of these photographs, I think perfect for the theme of our video if it is possible for us to get the right weather to do it.

Sun through the trees:

I like how the sky looks in this picture, even though it is on an Autumn night:

I like how the light blurs out in the background for this picture. If it's possible for us to video something similar it would make a nice addition to the effects:

If we could get the light to shine like this on our own Skip Moses for our video, it would be great as it fits the kind of atmosphere we are looking to create:

Notice the different positions of the sun in these two pictures:

Autumn leaves:

Sunset:

Audience response questions

1. What do you think about when you hear the song Seasons Reverse by Skip Moses?

2. Do you think our storyline is effective?

3. Are there any changes you would make?

- Cara

Costumes

We're going to have 'Skip' dressed in a checked shirt, jeans and converse, we'll have him playing a wooden acoustic guitar. Our actors Peter and Emma will be dressed in a range of seasonal clothing throughout the video: autumn, winter, summer and spring. E.g. scarves, hats etc

We want to keep the theme of 'seasons reverse' and tell the story of their relationship throughout different times of the year. - Cara

Location shots

I got some pictures of Lady Dixon where we're hoping to film. Theres a tree we'd like Skip to sit under when hes playing guitar. Its a lovely autumn scene we hope to capture. - Cara