Production Diary-A2 Music Video

Lesson 1: Today we found out our groups for our Music Video Task. We then started looking for music / songs that didn't have a music video to them already.
 Lesson 2: today we started pulling together our ideas for our music videos. We have chosen our three songs with out a music video and Ben s is putting them into a power point to present to our class so that we can get feedback.
 Lesson 3: Today we presented our three songs to our class and gained some feedback about each of our ideas. out of our three song ideas they preferred our third idea, saying how the second idea would be too complicated to do / too similar to previous ideas. They also made the comment on how the ideas for Bastille would have to be done first time as once there is mess there is no going back.
Lesson 4: Today we worked on our feedback and chose our final song, These Streets by Bastille we then started pulling in ideas and worked on a timeline.
 Lesson 5: We drew inspiration for a powdered paint festival, inspired by the festival of love in India and also various videos online
Lesson 6:  We added more to the story board today, we are having a constant flow of ideas so we decided just to draw them down and then cut out each scene and stitch them together.
Lesson 7: Today we had our song on constant repeat in class as we allocated shots to different parts of the song, we now have a storyboard that we have completed and allocated timings to each shot that we will try to stick to.
 Lesson 8: Planning preparation for the powder festival including sourcing paint, mobile power options, reserving cameras and other recording equipment to make sure that we are prepared.
 Lesson 9: Mass advertising around school fro our Paint party, we also spoke to groundsman who gave us the keys to the back fields where we are going to have the filming session.
Lesson 10: The Final countdown, Cameras were checked, the ground covering was also checked, its really sunny today should be a good shoot! absences recorded to collect Generator. We also split down the 20 Kg of powdered paint into handy bags so that it is easy to distribute and throw. We also sourced a MASSIVE speaker from music as well as an air blower for mass paint throwing.
- The Paint party went really well, we now have about 20 students caked in powered paint, we have about 10 cameras and a go pro's worth of footage to sift though....
Lesson 11: With all the footage collected and stored safely onto the media computers, we have started sifting through the hours of footage and trimming different shots into an order that fits well and flows nicely.
Lesson 12: We continued to edit the collected footage from the paint party today. We also started planning when and where we need to be to film the rest of our shot list.
Lesson 13: With the editing of the paint party footage now on hold we sat together today to work out each other schedules and when we were free to films. We split the shots into 3 sections, Maldon Shots (anything rural or sea based) Chelmsford Shots (Graffiti, Time lapses, Paint Party) And Heavy Equipment Shots (The Paint Throw).
Lesson 14: We finalized plans for the rest of our shooting schedule with a major filming day the following Wednesday ( Maldon) as well as various test filming days in Chelmsford. We also planned what we were going to do about the Digipak and the Website constructions.
Lesson 15:  Our plans for next Wednesday were confirmed and finalized. We also completed some plans for various photography shoots that we will use in the construction of the website and also the digipak. We started creating the website.
Lesson 16: Today we completed one of the first photo shoots. This contained lots of photos in various locations these photos will all be used in the gallery section of the website and also to be used in the creation of the Social media pages. Some of these photos are likely to be used in the tour poster and possibly in the Digipak.
Lesson 17:  Today we went over to our test filming location for the graffiti wall section. Here we took footage of James walking across different sections of the wall in different costumes. When reviewing the footage we will decide what looks good and what costume we are going to get him to wear though out the rest of the music video.
Lesson 18: Today we looked over the footage from yesterday. we have finalized his outfit, a denim jacket with claret coloured t-shirt. We also split into two technical teams one to work on the digipak and the other to work on the website.
Lesson 19: Today we further developed our website and Digipak. towards the end we started pulling together ideas for the Tour poster.
Lesson 20: Maldon Filming day today! A 40 minute journey each way to get to our filming location. The sun is shining and the tide is rising, time to shoot some great shots!
Lesson 21: We pulled all of our footage off of the cameras today from the Maldon shoot. This filming session forms the bulk of our video. We are all pleased with how it looks, We have another filming day in Chelmsford tomorrow in which we aim to get the final shots we need for our music video.
Lesson 22: Today we took the final shots fro the music video. We have collated them all on to the media computers and will start on the final stages on editing tomorrow.
Lesson 23: today was spend editing our first draft for the video. We have screenings on Friday at which we are going to receive feedback on how we can improve them to turn our first draft into our final draft.
Lesson 24:  Editing completed today for the first draft of our music video whilst we rendered the final video and uploaded it to you tube we finalized the tour poster and also the digipak.
Lesson 25: Today we watched everyone else's first drafts and gave feedback on them. We then received the feedback for our own videos. This has identified areas that we need to work on and improve. We have set another date for re-filming some of the Chelmsford shoots, we have also purchased all of the extra equipment we need for the 'Paint Throwing scene'
Lesson 26: Today we received feedback on  our digipak and website. From this feedback we have lots of changes to make. After the session today we went to film the Paint Throwing Scene. James has volunteered to film the timeplase section we need for the choruses.
Lesson 27: We adjusted the digipak and tour poster in accordance with the feedback that we received from it. the final draft of the digipak is now complete and we have received positive feedback upon it.
Lesson 28: all of the footage is not together. We spent today editing all of the lasts bits of footage that we needed to produce our final draft.
Lesson 29: The editing finished today for the Music video and the YouTube upload began. We Are also making a few final tweeks to the digipak and some more major changes to the website.
Lesson 30: The digipak was completed today. We spent a lot of time on the website today, rearranging pages and changing the colour schemes. We also replaced the background image with one that we created today as well. The layout of each page was also changed so that it flows much better now and there is a concurrent theme across it all.

My Face - The Learning Journey

As the development of our music video came together our skills have improved along the way at each stage. Our team working and organisational skills came hand in hand through out the music video task and thus resulted in us making a good team. communication between us was strong throughout and this is reflected in our music video with a number of different locations filmed across multiple shoots.

Above is our first draft and below is our second draft. We received feedback from our peers based on this version. We took that feedback on board and made the following changes. The extreme close up of the mouth we re-filmed and included in the second version below. We also received criticism for not using our own time lapse, we rectified this issue by filming our own time lapse with James standing while the world moved behind him. This is also now included in the second draft. we also were told hold the beginning of our music video is quite slow, we broke this up by including some of the shots form the 'paint wall' footage earlier on. As this footage was used early on we changed up where it is in the first version by reversing the shot where he walks forward. Also we included some footage we had taken but not included in the first draft but did in the second. this is were James is walking across the Graffiti wall in different costumes. Another issue raised from our feedback was the length of the shot where James runs into the birds. you will notice this is now shortened in the second version. We added another lip syncing shot of James against the hedge with the industrial chimney in the background. Our continuity was also criticised so we had to re-film where James walks through the gates by putting his denim jacket on which he is pictured in throughout the video. The final change made between the first and second edit was the mistake we made at the end by leaving a too long gap before our final shot comes in, this is greatly improved in the second version.

The changes between our Second draft (above) and Third draft ( below) only really take effect towards the end of the video. The first change to this video are the transitions between the graffiti wall walk, the slight disolve between each shot in this section helps with the flow of the music video and overall produces a more professional video. we also decided to cut out the hedge lip syncing shot as it looked out of place in the video. To help with the flow of the video we moved the final shot of the second draft to where James walks away from the sea mid way through, also by doing this it cuts down the length of the shot where James walks into the gates.  We also played around with some of the shots from the Paint Party section they are now slightly re arranged and also more cropped / edited a few of the shots in there to remove dead space and to concentrate on the framing of the section.





We where generally happy with the look of our third version however we decided to include a shot of the MISTAKES wall reversed so that it the MISTAKES were removed leaving the painted wall. this follows the motion of James walking backwards and also matches the motion of the reversed paint throw. Now we have our completed version (below) and we are pleased with how it has turned out.

Digipack Progression

Below is an album containing all of the Digipack versions we have created. As the digipack has progressed so have my skills in using the photo editing software Photoshop. The changes were made on the back of practicalities and also from feed back we have received from our peers and also from teachers.

The CD: 

This is the progression from our first draft to our final draft for our Digipack. as you can see as skills have improved and feed back has been received. The first disk idea was to use the powdered paint image with text that is curved to the disk. this then progressed as an idea based on feedback to remove the large amount of colour overall in the digipack  and thus wee took the colour out and re arranged the text with the addition of two black lines. We then decided to add the colour back into the disk as it stood out from the rest of the digipack. 

Front Cover:

 The front cover only progressed twice as the idea to over lay the black rectangle with the powdered paint worked well, we then cut away 3 different sized lines and random intervals which gave two effects, the different sized coloured blocks and also the random sized black bars it created, the feedback we received for the new front cover was good.

Under The Disk:

Like the front cover the under the disk slide only took one transformation to make it into the final product. There were comments about this page looking out of place in the orignail digipack so we decided to overlay colours onto each of the guitars, this brought the slide into the digipack. However with rearranging the digipack this slide has become the inside cover.

Inside Cover:

This was the only slide of the digipack that we have kept the same from the first draft. the only change that was made was its location, this is now the under the disk slide.

Compleated Digipack: 

Early Stages Blog Feedback

Today we were given a quick heads up as to what to improve on the blog, Here is the feedback we received:

- digipak - much better cut the disc which is alone on the end and paste onto bottom left square. That would look fab and not unfinished. Sp. Closure maybe lose a couple of songs looks really full.

- Reflections label - everything from your prelim feedback to when you judged each other as group members to web/digi assessments just add the reflections label

- sign up to photobucket and create a few albums - one for filming another for website progression, mise en scene etc the point is to make it easy for the moderate to navigate through your posts easily and for you to convince them that you are a fab student.

- Your vid is lovely - sat with the kids last night and went through all of them - lots of positive comments (I know what you're going to say but I can be positive too!) beautiful scenery, great performance, wicked paint grafitti and paint party is very happy. Once you add the time lapse and the rain shots it's a wrap!

- don't upload photos or risk assessments without a little explanation and analysis so it's clear to moderator and the learning is evident Every school is different and you want to make their moderating as easy as possible 

- sp. schedule Benji when you uploaded shooting schedule

- journeys from scratch to final need to be clear, all over the place at the moment posted in various places

- at the moment they look like scrap books and we need to turn them into Pulitzer prize winning novels - not much substance - look at the top blogs for influence and the types of analysis needed.

- James Couleur prezi presentation is broken?

- Production diary who has these

- Braddy prelim spelling on your label

- Clifford why does your date say 2020? change it and get rid of group label -the label in your groups is planning and you need to say who did what

We will be working through these points over the next few days and improving our blogs accordingly.

Team Self Evaluation

Today in class we filled out feedback forms for each member of our team. This identified our strengths and weaknesses as viewed by others. it also gives me mental consideration when making decisions or what I am going to say as a result of this feed back. The members of my group ranked me pretty well.  I achieved top marks in the Group participation, Time management, responsibility and Technical Skills Categories. In the other categories my team gave me mixes marks (either a 3 or a two)  The only low mark I received was in Creativity and originality, this was a 2 (About average for the group in this respect) . Whilst this mark isn't too bad i will try and contribute more so when we come to the construction of the storyboard.

Halfway Presentations

Today in call we presented our ideas and some more information about our artist to the class. This is so the rest of our class know what our final piece is going to be about. It also gave us the chance to group together as a group and finalize all of our ideas and make 'James Couleur' come to life.



You can see our presentation at 36.08 through to 44.17

Halfway Presentation All About James Couleur

Here is the Presentation that we are going to present to our class in a few days time about who James Couleur is and his background. It also contains some information about his up comming music video and album release.