Group Post - Final Cut Pro X: adding transitions / problems synching

Final Cut Pro X: adding transitions - problems with synching

After adding this blur transition in between the shot of Sophie's eyes and the trees we found that the lip synching of Julian became out of sync with the vocals on the track.

Originally the markers that we had added onto the original track and the film were perfectly matched on the time line. However adding the transition appeared to move the video of Julian singing further in the time line which then meant that his lip synching was not in time with the original track. This is extremely frustrating as it takes an extremely long time to perfectly sync these up on the time line.

Group Post - Our overall filming schedule

We ended up having a initial of 5 shoots, our original shooting schedule got disrupted by our actors, so here is the shoots we actually did. 

Shoot 1: Lauren's house - 23rd of October

3pm - Shots of the passports and bath bubbles

Shoot 2: Rhiann's house - 25th of October 

10am - actors arrive for shots in the living room - playing playstation - tea - necklace - laughing

11pm - Drive the actors (Sophie and Julian) from Rhiann's house to the Humber bridge - The actor playing Abby's (played by Sophie) new love interest has been asked to arrive at the viewing area via walking as he lives very close, in Barton. Got of shots of two on bench and enjoying view - Julian crying - necklace dropping. 

12:30pm - Lunch break, Rhiann's mum provided free lunch to all the actors

2pm - Drive  Sophie and Julian to Baysgarth park to shoot - holding hands - walking. 

Shoot 3: Rhianns House - 26th of October

CCTV - dropping money - making tea

Shoot 4: At the actor (Julians house) 27th of October 

11am - Shoot the piano shots as well as various out door shots singing into camera around the village.

Shoot 5: Sixth form - 24th of Novemeber
Shots of phone receiving message - (late shoot due to music video changing theme. Needed more reasons on why the female role wants to leave star image, therefore shown as obsessive with several messages coming through. 

Planning: Drafts of Production Company Logo

My partner, Lauren and I decided around two months ago, before filming that we both like the idea of having "IMAGE" as our logo, as with artists and people in the media it is all about their image and how they appeal to a particular audience, therefore "IMAGE" is very related to our music video and artist, as "Ben Austin" is the star image, this links strongly to Dyers theory on how a star is a constructed image.

Flickr - Target Audience Research of new photos

I have added the photos on to the vale media group to get comments from my peers and teachers. I have added descriptions on to each photo of what they would be used for.

CHANGE OF PLAN - 2nd Photo Shoot for DIGIPAK

Unfortunately Lauren and I, had the wrong camera settings on when taking still images for the digipak and digipak advert for the ancillary task - this lead to the picture quality being very poor and making our digipak and digipak advert look very unprofessional.

Therefore we organised a second shoot and thankfully our star image was available and happy to take further photos - we organised this using our facebook group chat which consists of myself, Lauren and Julian.

Research: Digipak, Social Media, Website - Nathan Sykes

I chose Nathan Sykes as he is currently re branding himself as a new artist since leaving his previous band "The Wanted".

 

His twitter account has his main picture of the album cover that I have used thing link to analyse, and  his cover photo seems to be similar to a digipak advert however does not have any institutional details, but does follow the conventions of using sell lines such as "out now" and advertises his famous most recent track "Famous".


Nathan Sykes twitter bio also has a link on how to download the album on iTunes, and then a link to his website, which has the clear synerdy and sign of the N above S throughout.

http://nathansykesofficial.com/promo

Research: Digipak and Digipak Advert - Sam Smith

 The digipak has strong synergy with the digipak advert. The font used on the digipak is consistent with the back of the album and with the track names. Sam is breaking conventions and not looking directly into camera.

The digipak is very minimalist and raw and I feel that's to show how Sam Smith is as an artist as he is a very pure acoustic singer.

The shot is a studio shot and is actually chopping off the top of his head and is breaking conventions in that way too.

The page furniture on the digipak is limited too as it is simply in the center of the square digipak over the image.

The digipak advert breaks conventions as it is not an image with overlaying text and is almost a split page, with the album on the left and simply repeating the artist and the albums name in contrasting colours.

The digipak adverts follows conventions as it has track details, promoting his most famous song "Stay with me" and also has the release date in large numbers. I am assuming this digipak advert was in America from the order of the date.

Sam Smith also used twitter to promote his debut album and gave his fans details on the track list, and also created a hashtag to get it trending and create a strong word of mouth.

This research has influenced me as 
-I will now definitely use the twitter account to promote perhaps the back of the digipak with song titles on.
-Maybe consider the digipak advert being taken up with a third of the digipak cover.
-Ensure I have the release date in large clear numbers.

Star Image - Social Media

How can we get everyone talking and noticing our up and coming star?


Our target audience is teens and young adults of both genders, and what social media app do we use the most to connect - Twitter.

I've created a twitter account for our star image to engage with his fans and create a strong word of mouth about this new star "Ben Austin"

I am using the photos we took on the day of shooting as his twitter picture and header photo to create synergy from the digipak and the poster with his social media. I also set the "theme colour" to grey as that is the colour me and Lauren have decided to use with hints of blue.

I think it is crucial we create an online presence for our star image as we are the online digital age.

Using Final Cut Pro - Editing and Transitions

Before posting my first rough cut on YouTube, I had only used the blade tool and slight use of over cranking and under cranking.

Cross dissolve-

After this first rough cut, I have been trying out new editing techniques, cross dissolve I feel confident with now, however some newer tests is the use of "flash" and "lens flare".

Flash- 

I used flash before the artist begins to start reminiscing on the memories, and is simply a flash of a white screen.

Lens flare-

And used lens flare as I panned around the loved up couple in the park and it works very well with the natural lighting. 

Guassian-

I also used the effect of "gaussian" which I'm not even sure what it means, but after tying it out, I think its a good way to introduce the new boy in the music video and "Abbie's" affair.

PANIC editing

As I was editing the music video, I layered two clips one on top of another and wnet to disable one clip to watch the original to understand which parts to blade off and use the other clip in them spaces...

BUT

the macs are very old so as I clicked to fast, I clicked another option by accident, and all the clips disappeared and only the clip i went to disable was there and it was placed over the song.

My heart dropped, I thought ALL our hard work had gone, but thank fully I asked my teacher and she simply pressed the reel and it was all there.

Planning and Research: Digipak photos on Flickr

Editing: Rough Cut 1 on youtube

Research: Digipak Adverts and Tour Dates - Tom Odell

I used bubble.us to research into the codes and conventions of Tom Odell's Digipak Advert.

I chose this tour dates poster of Tom Odell to research into as it is not a studio shot and we have similar images of our artist playing a piano like this. 

This is following conventions as it is a full scale image with text overlay, and the text being aligned left of frame. To my knowledge it doesn't have any sell lines, other than promoting a special guest. It is also following conventions as there is an orange font layering over the artist with famous tracks the artists done. Also has institutional details in orange, to match the synergy with website, telephone and email. This specific tour poster also has a logo of the institution that is running him, that being "forestive" in our case we would put our logo there.

This research has influenced my planning:

- as it has shown me it is important to have a strong colour of font which can contrast with the image

-to have a range of text sizes

- to have a range of contact details on a tour poster

- to make sure to put the digipak cover on the digipak poster

Research; DIGIPAK & tour dates - James Arthur

The two pictures either side were James Arthurs first digipak after becoming an artist and winning the X factor, and that is shown in the bottom corner, along with the charity the donations go with.

His whole look is very clear in the medium shot of James, showing his tattoos and his style which make him more memorable as an upcoming artist.

This is the third digipak James Arthur released, and his tattoos are still noticeable, however his name is not as big as it was before as he is becoming his own individual artist now and people can already identify him.

He is following conventions and is looking directly into camera.

The institutional details of Sony which own pretty much everything in the music business are on the CD cover.

It is interesting to note, as we are creating a tour dates poster for our artist too, that James Arthurs first tour date poster was very dark, and as an upcoming artist, it is breaking conventions to not look into the camera and have a clear image of his face.

There is a range of font sizes in both tour dates posters, with contact institutional details - with websites - emails and numbers. Then in the second there is social media added.











However it is also interesting to note that his tour two years later is much lighter, and has huge synergy and is practically the same image as the digipak. They've followed conventions and had a picture of the front cover of the digipak, using the sell line of 'out now'.

The font style has remained the same, and the alignment of the texts have also remained the same with the text being towards the right. The font is bold and all capitals.

James Arthur is following conventions in two out of three of these images as he is looking into the camera, the writing is on the write of frame in both of his tour date posters and has very small kerning and doesn't use any drop capitals.


I was unable to find a digipak poster so therefore had to use tour posters.

Filming improvisation

We found that it was very easy to improvise some shots despite having a script breakdown and storyboards which included all of the shots we planned to film. 

While filming all of the essential shots for our music video we also filmed those that weren't originally planned. For example we experimented more with different types of shot e.g. if we had planned a medium shot of Julian playing on a game console we also filmed close-ups and different angles in order to include a wider variety of shots which we could chose from when it came to editing in order to get the best possible combination.

We originally only had two shots planned of the necklace falling (one in his hand and one falling to the floor. Although when it came to the time of the shoot we found it much more effective and interesting to include a shot of him holding the necklace in a medium close up, loosening his grip in a closeup and then the shot of the necklace falling to the floor which enabled us to include continuity in our music video.

Both Sophie and Julian are very talented actors and therefore they helped us to improvise some shots as well. For example when Julian's character has seen Sophie's character being unfaithful he drops the necklace. However Julian was also able to cry on cue and therefore we asked him to do so while filiming his face in close up which is a very emotional and effective shot.

When Lauren and I arrived at Julian's house to film the piano shots, we noticed that there was a stone ornament near his house which provided natural framing in the form of an arc which we then decided to use for some of our singing into camera shots. We also filmed some shots of Julian aggressively walking through leaves which we thought would show a natural angry response to being heartbroken.

To add to what Lauren mentioned - we also found a bench in the local village that had beautiful scenery and lighting around do decided to have him singing into camera whilst panning around him, whilst also getting shots for our digipak. 

Group Post - Organising Actors

 In order to organise our actors my partner Lauren and I thought it most appropriate to create a group chat on Facebook in which we could all discuss which times and dates were most suitable for each of us individually.

The screenshot to the left shows me asking Julian what days of the week he was free in the October half term from the 21st of October to the 31st. 


We originally schedules to shoot on a Monday the 24th of October with Sophie, Julian and Joe and Tuesday the 25th of October with just Julian. 

Neither me nor Lauren had a piano at our house and therefore we asked one of our actors (Julian, playing the role of Ben) if we could use his piano. We asked him to send a picture of the piano so we could see that it had a sufficient amount of natural lighting as well as being in the right position for us to film it. We decided to go to Julians house on the 3rd day of the shoot. 

The group chat was an effective way of organising actors. However when people had plans that conflicted each other and meant that we had to decide on a date and time that suited everyone we found it more helpful to have actual conversations via phone call so that we could discuss more effectively.