Filming Blog for Music Video

                                                          Filming Blog for Music Video                                    

      This is my filming blog which highlights the important parts about my filming! First of all, the music video my group and I were making is on the song, "Hey There Delilah". My group is just me Elijah and Zeke. The storyboard we made directly recreates what our video would most likely look like. The setting for the storyboard was at a park in New York City. The time it would be at is at  nighttime. Of course we couldn't fly to New York City on such short notice, so we decided to film at Young Circle in Hollywood, FL. The park is rather big and represents what a park in New York City would be. The date we decided to film was on November 23, 2019. The time we started filming at was around 8:25 pm.
      By the time I arrived there it was dark, which was according to plan. Zeke and Elijah were there, along with a few other old friends to help out with the filming. We needed a leading role for a female and a male, which was supported by a volunteer. The camera was not charged so we had to film off of Elijah's iPhone 7 Plus. We then followed along with the storyboard starting off with the man and his guitar by himself in the shot. We took it with Zeke sitting on the edge of the fountain. The next one was the lady walking down some sort of path. Then, one of the volunteers had to walk along a path that went up to a big open area with a Christmas tree to end off the shot. The next scene in the storyboard was with the man in the guitar perched up in a tree with the girl walking past the tree not noticing him. We found a low hanging tree branch and decided that would be a good area to film.
      Once this scene was filmed, I had to leave early at this part.
However the filming went on good without any special problems or events (experiences taken from Zeke and Elijah). Now for the props, clothing, lighting and other necessities. The props we only needed was the guitar, meant for Zeke to pretend play and play along with the song. We had the song playing on a phone to help Zeke mouth the words for the song. For the clothes, they were all casual clothes meant to represent a simple and easy to follow kind of theme. The lighting was dark and bright depending on the shots. For example walking up the path in the second scene was met first with dark and then light coming from the Christmas tree. Sometimes the lighting was too dark so we had to improvise and use it to the best of our abilities. The acting was great since Zeke represented the guitar player really well and the volunteer was following along with the skit. The filming stage was a really straightforward step we took in order to complete our music video.

Planning Blog for Music Video

                                                        Planning Blog for Music Video                             

      Coming into our next project, we have a lot of new variables to consider. These variables include location, health and safety, props, costumes, and finally our schedule. Being that our music video will have a dark kind of gloomy feel, we plan to have our variables work along with this tone. For the location, we know that we want it somewhere dark with a lot of little and pretty lights. This is as close we will get to a New York feel. A place where we know we can get this is Young Circle. Young Circle has a lot of different environment types and we plan to use all of them. From the park, to the little restaurants that surround the circle. We will be filming in a public place and people will surround us adding to the effect of a big city. With this said, some health and safety precautions must be in play while filming. For starters there will be a lot of people potentially with intentions to steal camera equipment or harm us.
      We will make sure our parents come and supervise while we our filming. A First aid kit will also be on site because we plan to perform a few small stunts by our actor/singer. This may include climbing a tree or sitting on a high wall. We obviously aren't gonna have our actor/singer playing the air guitar so we will be bringing a guitar. That's pretty much it for props. That brings us to costumes. We will be dressing our girl actor with regular modern clothing and our male singer/actor in modern clothing. The clothing will be the same as always. The song was made recently so the singers and actors should match the time period. Being that this is a time sensitive project, we have to follow very strict timelines on certain due dates throughout the two week period.
      We started on 11/14. Song choice, and genre convention. This was not a problem because we as a group easily picked a song. 11/20 is our planning blog. Well because i'm doing it right now and not having a problem with it, it will be turned in as planned. 11/25 will be the time to turn in our filming blog. I felt this was one of the easier blogs on our last project so turning this one in on time I think will be the easiest. We'll simply do our filming and right the processes. 12/6 is the final due date. This I know will be turned in on time because if not it will have an extreme impact on my grade. As a group, the need to finish this project and turn it in on time is a responsibility that we feel the need to fulfill. All the other turn in dates after are straight forward. You do what you have to do and turn it in on time. Should be no problem. If we do run into the possibility that we can't turn in a project on time we will pass the responsibility to one of our three group members. Either way, we will not accept a failing grade on one of our due dates and will exercise any way to make sure we do well.

Storyboard Blog for Music Video

                                                      Storyboard Blog for Music Video                                 

      For our second blog, we are finishing our story board and writing about what we drew and did. The story board was no different then our last project. We planned out between us what we wanted our commercial to look like and what scenes we wanted to include. It took us a while to agree on how we wanted to film our scene but in the end we came through. The only difference is that because this video is considerably longer, so  is our story board. Instead of 6 slides, we made 12. We began by watching the original video to get some ideas. The whole video revolves around the idea of a distance relationship and the love they share. Our video complements this in the idea that when Delilah thinks hard enough about her true love, he will appear. That's exactly what goes on in our story board.
      For our first slide, it shows a man singing on his guitar sitting on a stool. The back ground is blank and he's alone with the lyrics of his song. The second slide brings us the park, or "New York." The dark sky, with the many lights lighting it up. Just like New York. This is when Delilah appears on our third slide. She's walking on the path as she thinks of of her true love some where far away. She passes a tree and the sound of her true loves voice fills the air. She turns towards the tree and see's nothing but a normal tree.
      It was in her head she assumes in this 6th slide. We get a medium close up of her confused expression on the 6th slide as well. It happens again in the 7th slide. His voice fills the air except this time it sounds closer. Almost real. She turns around again just to see nothing but air again in the 8th slide. She sits on a nearby bench and cries. She regrets leaving him and misses him with everything she has. She lifts her head and there he stands. He flew all the way to her and surprised her. The other times she thought she heard him may have been in her head but this time it was real. Their love brought each other together again. They hug and set down the path of lights holding hands while humming the song he made for her together.

Music Video Research Blog

   
                                                         Music Video Research Blog                            P.6
  On Tuesday, I turned in my final commercial and my Creative Critical Questions. Also on that day, our teacher introduced us to a new project we have to complete, the music video. She briefly talked about how we need to choose a song to make a film on it. She also talked about groups and the next few weeks. The groups can be as big as 4 people, but Zeke and Elijah wanted me in their group so I joined. This music video will be due in 2 weeks and a half. Now looking at today, she told us that the project will be finished just before the midterms. The other teacher went into talking about how Cambridge has upped their standards for the music video, so our work must be more professional looking. By today we also had to choose a song and form groups, which was half settled on Tuesday.

       My group decided that the song will be Hey There Delilah by Plain White T's. I didn't have much to say because the song was good enough. Elijah first wanted Sweet Caroline as a song choice on Tuesday, but changed it. The song is a part of the alternative/pop rock genre of music. Many people are familiar with it which is a good thing.

     There are conventions for the music genre, alternative/pop rock. There are establishing shots such as the city or a town. There are also many eye level shots in this genre. The sounds are of course the music itself. There are also a wide variety of editing in this genre for example split-screen, jump cuts, cross-cutting, and different-angle transitions.

     This genre has a unique mise-en-scene, this is it in the form of CLAMPS:
1. The costumes/clothes are simple and not flashy. It varies to the tone of the song and its meaning behind it.
2. The lighting for this music video and most of them in general are mostly dark but there are instances of lights shining in some parts of the screen.
3. The actors are adults who are playing the role as a musician, singer, or some other leading roles contributing to the backstory of the song. A leading role for example can be a lover of the musician.
4. The music in the alternative/pop rock genre is distinct from normal types of rock. It does not have blasting instruments, but a much more mellow and lively tone to it.
5. The props for this music genre are usually instruments that the song is using. Other props can include chairs or drinks, according to the backstory of the song.
6. The setting for the genre is typically in the city or out in the country. It has something to with the leading role's characteristics and backstory.

Final Blog

                                                                    Final Blog                                                   

    Today is the last day I could work without rush on my commercial. I finally entered the ending portion of the editing stage. Today was also an early release day for school so I only had 40 minutes to work on my commercial. The last class, we had some time to edit, so I got everything prepared and tidied up some of the clips in order to finish it today. We also had to save our work on the laptop we got, which mines was number 20. Just in case I also saved it onto my flashdrive. When I pulled out my laptop today, I signed out under #20. I booted up my laptop and plugged it in. Then, I tried opening the commercial from the laptops storage but the file was corrupted so the footage was blank.
Thankfully, I saved it on my flashdrive just in case this happened.

    When I pulled the file off my my flashdrive, it was not corrupted. Pinnacle Studios 18 was the software I was editing on this time. The loading screen popped up and I was ready to work. I noticed and remembered that I had to get music into the commercial. In my previous blogs I mentioned how I was going to use upbeat, repetitive rhythmic music in my Gatorade commercial. After barely one minute of searching I found a good song to use. It had the upbeat tune and the drums were playing repetitively all while being rhythmic. I had to download the .mp3 file for the music so I copied the link and headed to listentoyoutube.com and got it. I then uploaded it into pinnacle studies, then instantly to track 3. I adjusted the audio to the starting point and tested it out.

    The music fitted in perfectly with the video. Even the editing from last class, when I edited all the bad and good clips of the high five part into one, matched the beat of the music. So then in order to hear the talking that was featured in the footage, I clipped off a section of it and deleted it. The running sounds playing from the footage at the end of the video was a good idea to keep, but i decided it would match the ending to get rid of it. Last class I also put up a Gatorade Logo at the end of the video big and clear in the middle of the screen. To follow up before the logo appeared, I put the slogan "Is it in you?" at the bottom of the screen as we were running. As soon as the last drum sound finished before the video ended, I cropped the music and deleted the remainder of it. The lack of sound at the end announces the video is about to be over. This is about the time the bell rang, so then I saved the commercial onto the laptop and flashdrive. The long process to complete my commercial was a new experience to me and I liked it a lot, and now it is about nearly done.