Progress Update

Early this week we have spent our time finishing off the video, by adding in the narrative shots, filling in gaps, tweaking small bits, tightening cuts etc. I used a lot of my free time to edit and we have been focussing on that to get the video finished as quickly as possible before Friday’s deadline.

Last week we used some time to finish the inside sleeve for our album cover, as well as the track list for the back cover. However, we’ve decided that we’ll split the rest of the work between us so that we use our time more efficiently. Therefore we decided I would design the MySpace and Mel would design the rest of the album. As we had spoken about what we wanted from both the MySpace and the album cover, we both knew what to do. Therefore I spent the rest of this week completing the MySpace so that it was ready for today’s deadline. Mel also finished the album cover, so our digipak was complete. The music video was also finished from earlier this week. Therefore we completed all 3 products in time for the deadline today and so the production stage of this project is finished! I feel it’s gone really well and I’m happy with all three products and I think they all work well together.

Test Screening

Today we decided that our music video was finally complete and ready to screen to other media students. This was so that we could get some final feedback and make any last minute changes. So we held a test screening which went really well. We could see it on a bigger screen, and this meant it was easier to spot any mistakes/problems.

One of the main problems was that the lipsynching was out. It was quite obvious, but we hadn’t noticed it on the edit suite. However this is easily changed if we move certain shots backwards or forwards by 1 or 2 frames. Some also said that the blur effect that we added onto the flashbacks was too much and they couldn’t see the shot properly so we just need to take that down a bit. They also thought that the white effect that we added around the edges of the shots was also too much and took up too much of the frame, therefore we also need to make this smaller, which I agreed with when I watched it on the big screen. Someone also didn’t see the relevance of the last shot (the one that’s out of focus) but our reason for this is that the last shot is summing it all up as it represents how he’s feeling which is lost and confused so we saw that as a good way to end the video.

Other feedback that we got was that everyone agreed that the performance that we got out of our actors was really good and believable as they felt sorry for Daniel’s character and saw Bernard’s as cocky and not really showing much emotion. They also liked the editing, particularly where we cut quickly and when we cut on beat. Soo overall it was really good and we only have small changes to make which shouldn't take long and then we are complete!

Shoot (Narrative)

We had a shoot yesterday where we filmed the narrative shots that are going to be in our video. We had planned to do quite a few shots, but a lot of these didn't work out on the day. This is because the actors found it quite difficult to do and we had to film when it was dark so we had some lighting issues even though we were inside. However after capturing the footage, I think we still have enough footage that we can use in the video.

We also made a decision to put the narrative shots in black and whites too (these were going to be in colour but it didnt look right), as well as adding the effect of a slight camera blurr and slow motion to distinguish it from the rest of the video. Another idea suggested was to put a white circle around the edges of the shots to achieve that dreamlike effect. We thought this was a good idea and represents the fact that it is Daniel who is thinking back to these moments.

Today we have also managed to come up with an artist name which we were really struggling with. But after playing around with the idea 'Tainted Dream's', we have come up with 'TainteD' where the 'T' and 'D' represent the artist names, which are 'Tyler' an 'Daniel.'

Update

Since our last shoot, we have been concentrating on editing the video. We have made some changes such as deciding to do the performance part of the video in black and white, with the narrative in faded colour. The relevance of the black and white is to show that we are documenting the relationship of them now, and this will be distinguished from the narrative which tells the background story and will be shown in colour, but faded to show that it is a memory. We are also going to experiment with split screen to make the narrative more interesting and we can show two perspectives through this.

We have also made a decision about the artists themselves, and after much discussion, we have decided to make them a duo rather than two seperate artists with one featuring on the track, which we had planned before. However, as the two artists are so different, we thought we could play on this, with regards to the album cover and their name. An idea for an album cover name is ‘Blurring Boundaries.’ The idea behind this is that these two guys are coming together through music, and breaking new ground, as they are so different. We have also tested images for the album cover and have come up with an idea that reflects the album name and is a close-up image of the two guys with their heads joined and blurred together.

Our plan now is to finalise a band name for them, and then start working on the MySpace. We must also plan the other images that we want for the album, as well as plan the shoot that we are doing on Tuesday for the narrative part. We are going to create a schedule for the next week so that we know exactly what we are doing and can therefore work more efficiently to get everything completed in time.

Shoot

We had our final performance shoot/re-shoot this weekend, where we filmed Daniel on Saturday and Bernard on Sunday. The shoots went well and we had both actors moving a lot more in order for them to look more enthusiastic and this came across really well on camera. We also experimented more with the camera by doing more handheld shots and taking the camera into our hands to add more movement, as we noticed that the shots on our last shoot were slightly too static. This all meant that we had an overall more interesting set of shots to use.

Now we plan to edit all of our performance shots and put them into the video, as well as plan for the narrative shoot which will be next week, and try and finalise our album cover and MySpace at the same time.