Issues with the track

We were talking to Matt this lesson and he told me that the speed of the track was wrong. The original track was increased by 150% which we thought would work, but we did not know that we were going to shoot the slow motion sequence at 50 fps and the normal sequences at 25 fps. This is exactly double the speed. This means that we need to change the speed of the track again so it exactly double as fast as the original track to match the frames per second, speeding up the track by 100%. The track has no been sped up to 200% which is significantly faster than the original fast version. We are thinking that this is going to be extremely difficult to lip sync, this might mean that we might not have a good amount of footage for lip sync. We are going to have to think of other things to film during that sequence. We really have to reinforce our plans on what is going on around Franek so we know we have a good amount of material to be able to fill that whole sequence up and for it not to get boring. We plan to rehearse him again tomorrow with the newly sped up track,

Glowed Up test shoot feedback

COMMENT	RESPONSE
Well casted. The lead suits the role that he has to play. Strong performance from Franek. He holds his own, quite interesting to look at himself. Although he could smile less	Rehearse the lead actor. Look out for him being less smiley and looking directly at the camera. Tune up his performance. Specifically do the 200% rehearsal a few times before the shoot.
For the element with the dancer, it could look really boring after a while as it quite repetitive.	We should think about expanding this a bit more, they suggested using different shot types, different colours for the screen. In addition to this we are going to edit this section to make it more interesting which will be left for post prod.
They look like extras not really contributing to the shot much. Could have the extras doing different things other than dancing.	The extras need to be more into it. Figure out actions that the individual actors could do to make there always be interesting things to look for the audience. This prevents repetitiveness and make the whole scene look like less of a music video shoot and more of a hangout.  Phil also said specifically to consider having some of the cast not dancing but rather doing something like pouring drinks or chatting. This is something that we will have to talk about a group.
Content wise, it is a little bit thin. Think about different shots, maybe lens, something needs to be a bit different. We see everything early on. Arch in the strands, makes what we are seeing interesting whilst keep the initial idea.	Although our animatic was close to the final product, there are still a lot of features that were left out of the product. This will hopefully increase the content. We will also consider with the group using different types of shots, lenses and/or technical effects that we could have included which again would bring an alternate interest to the video.
Consider we would use slow motion	To transition from normal speed to slow motion we considered having shooting someone pouring a drink that we could slow down as the drink is pouring.

Overall, I think that we need to continue to solidify the idea. We have 8 days before we shoot the video, we should try to make sure that we figure out some of these 'arches' to our ideas.

Glowed Up Pre Prod.

'GLOWED UP' PRE PROD from Victoria Bird on Vimeo.

This is the full video that we cut together that would be a rough representation of the video. We shot all 3 elements and made sure that these all fit together. It worked quite well, obiously we were missing a lot of a features from each element which we could just bring in for the test. For example, the LED balls in the first element, we had to use a sheet for element 2 rather than floss paper, we were missing a colour back light, the dancer himself. Overall we could not get all the props and lights that we wanted. This test was more to see if our ideas were comprehensive enough to be able to fill 2:40 minutes of the song and the audience still be engaged. I think that our test showed that we would be able to do this. With all the props, set and lighting we would have much more content than this test videos and the composition of the piece would be a lot more interesting to look at. In addition to this we had to use footage from the old test shoot for element one because we didn't have time to shoot it again. This made all the clips seem a little detached from each other. We will be able to solve this when shoot the video because we will have all the set and lighting required.

Conformation with the art director and Luke

The art director, Laura, and Luke came into our lesson and we discussed how we received the ideas and feedback they gave us from last time. We told them some suggestions, for example, we are gong to LED tape the crevices in the wall of the set and then we will have artwork on the back wall that Alec will do the night before. This will be painted in normal acrylic paint rather than UV paint as we were planning last week. We went over the logistics of everything that we had in our shoot and they said that it would be okay. Something we need to complete before is to decide what the artwork is going to be and how large its going to be. Then we can maybe get help from the art director who will help us figure out what will look good on camera and how we can execute this. We also talked about the different colour of lighting that we wanted in our video. We ordered purple and candy pink tube lighting.

Test Shoot 2- Prototype Video

Today we shot a prototype video in the studio. We invited in all of the actors that we want back into the studio, we set up some lights, and we shot the dance sequence again in normal time. Even though it was only simple lighting, The black back drop and a few florescent tube lights really pulled the set together. The test shoot does look quite cool. Alec and I are editing together this version of the test shoot. The other version is we shot was the double time version. Alen put this version together. We did this by speeding up the track by 50% when recording it and then slowing down the footage when editing it so that the lip sync was in time with the normal speed of the song. Before recording it, we forgot to set the camera to the correct frames per second so when we slowed it down the footage became a little bit laggy. Now after the test shoot we have learnt that we need to change the setting of the camera to make sure that the camera is able to capture the slow motion. This is the slow motion version:

Slow Motion Lip Sync Test from Alen Guseynov on Vimeo.

The complete prototype will be uploaded once it is finished

Timeline

Anna made a Timeline of the video that could give us a brief way in which we could edit the video together after the shoot. It also helps us visualise how the video would look, it means we can figure out how to fill the time and what the different people could do.

Shot 1	Dolly in of element 3 with everyone frozen
Shot 2	Tracking shot of element 3 with everyone frozen
Shot 3	Medium close up element 1
Shot 4	Mid shot Element 2
Shot 5	Long shot Element 3
Shot 6	Close up of dancers Element 3
Shot 7	Low angle shot element 1
Shot 8	Mid shot Element 2
Shot 9	Tracking with dolly across element 3
Shot 10	Close up Element 1
Shot 11	Close up of shoes Element 3
Shot 12	Mid shot Element 2
Shot 13	Mid shot of laughing & drinking Element 3
Shot 14	Close up Franek Element 3
Shot 15	Tracking of extras Element 3
Shot 16	Mid shot Franek pull out focus shot Element 3
Shot 17	Individual shots in Element 3
Shot 18	Tracking through luminous balls Element 1
Shot 19	Mid Shot Element 2
Shot 20	Close up Element 1
Shot 21	Mid shot Element 3
Shot 22	Close up dancers Element 3
Shot 23	Mid shot Element 1
Shot 24	Close up of Franek hands Element 1
Shot 25	Mid Shot Element 2
Shot 26	Dolly in of element 3 with Franek not moving
Shot 27	Mid shot Element 1
Shot 28	Over the shoulder Element 3
Shot 29	Close up Element 3
Shot 30	Extreme close up Element 3
Shot 31	Two shot laughing Element 3
Shot 32	Mid shot Franek Element 3
Shot 33	Long shot Element 2
Shot 34	Mid shot Element 3
Shot 35	Close up Element 1
Shot 36	Mid Shot Element 2
Shot 37	Medium close up element 1
Shot 38	Tracking of extras Element 3
Shot 39	Close up Franek Element 3
Shot 40	Low angle shot element 1
Shot 41	Mid Shot Element 2
Shot 42	Long shot everyone frozen but Franek Element 3

Props list (Updated)

1 week out- CRITICAL TASK

Tasks to complete for the music video:

1) Test video or animatic- meticulous understanding of final product

2) Reheasals- improve performance

3) Art direction- pre-production, getting costumes, making sets, props booking locations

Emailing the cast

I emailed the cast again for another rehearsal/test shoot at the same time on Monday. I emailed the list of people who are now casted in the video and a few other people who we want to test. We decided not to do a separate test shoot for those newly casted people and would rather put them into the main test shoot. We emailed all the people to remind them about this.

We will also remind them in person if we see them in school and also on via text or facebook. We were able to get all the email list last rehearsal by constantly reminding them the day before and the day of. It is quite difficult to round up 15-18 teenagers so we delegated different people to houses. For example, I had Ewhurst and half of Bwebb, Alec had Peaslake, Anna had Cornhill and Alen had Bwebb. Therefore it was easier to keep track of who in the group reminded who. Alec also did a massive sweep of the cafeteria and PS before the shoot to see if we could gather all he people together. It worked quite efficiently and we got everyone and a few more to come to the test. Hopefully we will be able to execute this again on Monday.

Editing the track

Luke asked me if I could cut down the track to 2:30-3 minutes so that we could use it in our video becuase orginally the track is 5 minutes long. I went to a site called bleep where I bought a copy of the this song in WAV. It was much better than my Mp3 file draft cut and the audio was much fuller and richer than the mp3 I ripped of the internet. I payed £1.45 for the copy of the song.

To get a mix of the track that was suitable for the video,  I went into Logic X Pro. I cut down the track to 2:40 seconds where I thought it was a good time to cut in the track. I used the fade tool to add a short feed to get rid of the click in the track where I cut it. Because the space where I cut it was quite small, the ending sounded quite abrupt. I started trying out different kinds of Reverb plug-in that I could add to the track. I used a SilverVerb plug-in with a "Meeting Room" preset, manually tweaking the options to suit. I also used automation to turn the "Wet" level of the reverb up for the last second of the audio which the reverb would grab on to.

Reverb

Then I also added volume automation so that I could cut out the "n" words in the song to make it more of a "radio edit". 

Volume Automation

Art design meeting

Today we had an meeting with two women who came in and helped develop our ideas and suggested ways that our idea could become real. We discussed the logistics of mainly Element 3 which is the slow motion, chill sequence. After the UV art idea was scraped, we were suggesting ways in which we could move it forward. They thought that the colours and lights were clashing between elements 1, 2 clashing with 3. So then we talked about the overall lighting of the video. We decided we were going to change the colour scheme of element 3 to match up more with the other ones. I think UV idea was also adding to this. To do this we will print out a colour wheel to show to Luke, Phil and the Art designers and show them the selected bit of the colour wheel we want our whole video to resemble. This way we are able to keep consistency of colours, but maybe change up the tones to make it more interesting. Next, we entertained taking out the art on the walls out just because it would be worth much in the video, but I thought that it would just make everything a little bit more interesting. We pushed ahead with the idea and one of the art directors suggested that we make art out of LED tape on the back wall. We were thinking the idea of an artist stamp that we could also feature on the the digipak and website, but she suggested doing an eye. The design has not been finalised yet, but it something we can do in the near feature. We would also have to discuss the feasibility of the design and whether or not it would look good on camera. In addition to this, Luke also suggested the idea of an LED door frame which the camera travels through to reach the set. We thought this was a cool idea and would help the sets to connect together more.

Things to do:
- Print out colour wheel
- Decide on the art work
-Discuss if all of our sets are going to connect

Set Design

To help get a more visual computer generated picture of the sims set design Alen created a 3D design on The Sims. It would help out set designers understand how we envisioned our sets to look. He created 2 different elements. He said couldn't create the second element, but the Sims did not have any silhouette features which could make the set look like the backlit dance element. He tried to look for more Mods and other features that he could download to create this sequence but there were none available so created elements 1 & 3.

element 1

element 3

Anna & Alec  created some more versions of the set design with the Props list that I created using really images of the studio, to help the art designer as well as us.

Test Shoot and Audition 2

Test Shoot Day from Alen Guseynov on Vimeo.

Alen edited all the clips that we filmed on the day of the shoot

We brought in a bunch of extras today as planned to have an audition/test shoot to see if we could have them for the role and if they suited the style of person that we wanted. After watching the video collectively we picked out the individual people and focused on the way that they danced and if they blended well with the group. We started to cut down to people who we wanted and we came up with:

Singer:
-Franek

Dancer:
Hugo/Ashen

Extras:
-Esme
-C Mcgee
-Daisy
-Ellie
-Elena

-Jamie
-Josh
-Max
-Manu
-Myles
-Jonty
-Ashen/Hugo

Possible: Tori, Alfie, Hugo, Ashen, C Agace, Luella (to be auditioned)

After this we looked at what we learned from this and what we could improve for the next test shoot we have. The first point was the amount of dancers that we had looked good. We should aim to have about 14-16 people on the actual shoot. Surprisingly, all but one turned up for shoot which means that they are reliable and interested in doing the video. Also the people we chose were specifically picked because we thought that they would look cool for the video and they know how to dance. Additionally, the performance was a lot better from Franek than in the first test shoot. Now he knows almost all the lyrics and is more comfortable in front of the camera. He is also smiling less which is good becuase he fits more into the artists profile and star image. We also agreed that rehearsing the cast is very important. We need to make sure that they are good for the part and they know their roles. We discussed that we should assign the extras different things to do in the video so that it doesn't get boring for the views. Phil all suggested that we try out different shot types whilst we do these test shoots so that we can get practise doing that and we can also see if the types of shots work. This also applies to editing techniques. He also said to try to get the costumes, lighting and colours for the test video. To basically get the test video looking as close to the real video as we can so that we can work on what to improve.

Shot List

Shot List that Alen wrote up

This is a draft of the shot list that Alen wrote up for us. The purpose of this shot list is that it'll give us a guide to follow when test shooting and on the shoot day. It means that there is no confusion over what needs to be done between the cast because it is all clearly stated there. Obviously this will change and be added to as the process goes on, but this will give us a rough idea of how the product will look. We used this to help use shoot the test shoot on Monday. From there we learned that we weren't able to use most of the things on shot list because we didn't have all the props and costumes and that took up some of the shots that we wanted to do.

Costume Mood board

Props List

Today we delegated the different jobs that we were going to do during the lesson to make the process more efficient. Although we were all collectively working together in terms of bouncing ideas off each other, we were set different jobs. Alec was delegated to do the job of set designing. He was planning how he could design the Art for the set. Alen was doing the shot list. Anna and I did the props list. We were able to finish that today and we started helping with the shot lists and set design.

The props list we made (which will probably change) was this:

We were also had an idea to create a mood board for the costumes, this way people can understand what kind of clothes we are looking for in our video. We have chosen people that dress in the way that we want them anyway so hopefully it'll be easy for them.

Copyright Issues

We came across an issue today that we discovered from uploading those Test Shoots. Within a couple of seconds the video was blocked from YouTube because of Copyright issues. We then had to contemplate our options and what we could do to over come this. Our first reaction was to change the song because we really wanted the video to be able to go up on YouTube, we spent sometime looking for songs but it was really difficult to fit an already approved and solid idea with another song. It was hard to find a song that really met all the criteria that 'Glowed Up' has. Therefore, after some discussion, we thought we would stick to the song because we don't want to change an already agreed up idea. If worst comes to worse we would put it up on Vimeo. Although we did try to contact the the artist.

it didn't work

We are going to keep trying though and hopefully we can avoid it being taken down. I will have to do some research into avoiding Copyright which I can than file to YouTube and hopefully the video will get unblocked when uploading on to YouTube because it is an Educational video.

Test Shoot- Main Part

Over the past few days we have been shoot a few candidates that we'd like to cast as our main actors. We first test shot Ashen.

This test shoot went alright. Although we came to the conclusion that he wouldn't really suit the part. Our criteria was that he had to be a bit more serious and more street kind of dancing. He will definitely be part of the video probably to be used as an extra in the slow motion dance element.

We then shot Franek

We thought that he looked the best for the part and with some rehearsal he could look really cool. We was really smiley in the test shoot, but I think he was quite nervous and we will rehearse him enough to pull it off on the day and so that he is confident in front of everyone. We decided that he should have the main part.

We test shot Hugo as well to see what he would be like

Although Hugo moved better to the music, we think that Franek's lip sync was better. We decided that Hugo should be the dancer in the element and that he would look really cool behind the screen. He is quite confident and looks good on camera as well so we can put him right at the front of the dance scene with Franek and get some close ups of him

Element 3 & Getting the Extras

Last lesson, we were still contemplating what we were going to do with element 3. We decided against using the UV art and just have normal art on the walls. Alec would help us do that the night before the shoot so that we don't have to do that on the day. We then went into the studio and had a look at the potential backdrops we could have. Phil brought to our attention that studio set ups looked like a set rather than location. He said if we wanted to make the walls look more real we should put up wall paper. We then talked about putting up white wall paper and which Alec could then paint over. This element of the set is yet to be decided and we will talk to Alec about it tomorrow. 

Luke also said it might be too much to focus on one scene and we could split up the elements, he said that we could have as many sets as we want if we were willing to put the work in. Anna and I discussed having another element, we brainstormed an idea of having a projection element with a few dancers and the singer with textures and pictures being projected on to them. This is just an idea to make it a bit more interesting, but this may not fit into the conventions and the look we are going for in the video. 

We emailed the extras to see if they would want to be in our music video. We wanted around 13/14 people, we contacted them as soon so that they know that we want them. We'll also test shoot them next week, that gives us plenty of time to see if they fit the role and find replacements if we need be.

List of things we need to do before half term

1. Test shoot Hugo - Tuesday First break
2. Draft set design- start now
3. Decide main part- Tuesday lesson time
4. Confirm extras- Tuesday lesson time
5. Rehearsals/ Test shoot for the dancer - thursday @ 2
6. Rehearsals for singer - thursday @ 3
7. Storyboard- This week 
8. Rehersals for test shoot- This week/next week
9. Test shoot entire video - Wednesday
10. Props list- Lesson time next week
11. Rehearsal with both extras and singer (element 3)- at least 3 extras- 
12. Test shoot colour and lighting
13. Shot list
14. Schedule for the day
15. Set Design

Talking to George- Lighting

George the lighting guy came in today and informed us about the lights. He told us to come up with the basic idea of the lighting that we want and they can bring in what they need but it will usually change on the day. The different lights that we have access to are:

Strobe Light

UV cannon (black light)

Thomas 4 Cyc (flood lights)

LED soft boxes (used to pick people out from a crowd, varying colour temperature)

Pixel Lights

Wash Lights

Martin Mac Profile 700 Junior

Source 4 (spotlights)

He then came to talk to our group, we told him about our idea and he suggest the kind of things that we could do with it. This was quite an important aspect of our pre-production, this is because it will help tie the whole aesthetic that we are going for tie together to create something cool. We discussed the first element and how we could get a hold of the LED spheres. George said that this was possible and that he had a contact that could provide us. He said that it would cost the school a bit, but we would get 25 spheres in total. Luke, Phil and George said that this would probably work.

For the second element he said that this would be cool to shoot and it would be fine. We discussed where the dancer could dance, there were two options, he could behind the screen so it would just be a silhouette and outline or in front of the backlit screen which means that we would be able to see the features on his face. He said that we should think about what the person would be wearing, if it was skin tight it would just be the plain silhouette, if he was wearing baggier clothes that these would show in the picture. We decided that we wanted the dancer to be wearing baggier clothing as that would fit into the convention of Hip Hop in terms of costumer.

The UV aspect of element 3. There were several issues with this. The first one was it could have been a potential problem that the camera could pickup the people if we wanted the UV to be visible. He said that it may work, but we thought that this was our strongest element and we want it to definitely work. We will decide what to do tomorrow in the lesson as a group

Talk- Ollie Allgrove (Exec. Prod)

Today we were visited by an Executive Producer who works for a company called The Mill. The Mill is one of the biggest and most award visual effects companies in the world. Won a visual effects Oscar for 'Gladiator' where they built the arena. His role is to working with the directors and helping them to achieve their vision with after effects, they also working with other production companies. Their statement is “They are artists, technologist and makers for all media, working at the frontier of visual narrative”

For us personally he said that we need to plan our videos well. The treatments should be mostly telling the story with images rather than text and giving the artist give of what it looks like rather than trying to explain it. Make sure that the treatment connects with the artist and that is specific to them this also include the production team, convince them that your idea is the best. Consider the capabilities of the artist, the length that they would be willing to go and make them feel comfortable with the idea. Storyboard the shooting process in the order of how you would shoot in rather than how it would be viewed. He said that use the time and facilities that you have to the best of your ability as this could help your video stand out from all of the others.