Thursday 25 November 2010

Filming Continued...

The next stage of our filming took us back to the living room in my house. This time we had Amy playing the female character in the song with us, so we were able to film more.


We added in some lip syncing aswell this time, as we were told this would gain us more marks.
We managed to get a lot of important footage filmed today that set the scene well.

Monday 8 November 2010

Song Lyrics Analysed




Artist Background - The Nites.


The Nites consist of two people. Anthony, who does the vocals, and Michael, who plays the guitar. Both men are from South London, they met in 2004 and began playing gigs round the acoustic circuit in and around London.
At first they only sung cover songs, but now they write all their own stuff.
The band have recently released a new album which is available for download on itunes.
The Mail on Sunday described them as 'Brilliant Pure Popular Rock.' They also went on to say 'The Nites continue to build on their experiences and thrive on the excitement of what lies ahead'

Locations Continued...

Another filming location will take place in a restaurant. We want to show the couple being together and use close ups and reaction shots to represent their feelings to the audience.
In the song, the lyrics mention about a 'fake smile' so it is important we try and make reference to this in the visuals. The timing of matching the lyrics to the visuals is extremely important, if the timing is out then it will be made to look like one of those badly dubbed translated adverts seen on television.

Friday 5 November 2010

Shooting Locations

We have a variety of different locations where we are filming the footage for our music video.
The order if which we are filming is not necessarily the order in which it will appear in our final piece.
The first location we used was my living room, here we filmed Alfie (who is playing the main male character) is sitting down looking through old photo albums, remeniscing through photos of him and his ex/girlfriend. We took a lot more footage than we will actually need but we thought that its better to have too much than too little. We used a range of different camera angles, such as close ups and reaction shots.
The next part of our filming took place inside Alfies car, he was filmed driving from Stevenage to Hitchin. In our video this will signify him just trying to clear his head and him having some time alone to think about what is going on in his life. We also filmed him driving into his road from an upstairs bedroom window. This gave us a nice high angle shot. Not all of this footage will be used but we will be able to experiment with it when we are editing.
The next stage of our filming took us to ninesprings park, this is where we film the main female character on a 'rebound date' with another male. (played by myself.) Close up and reaction shots are important here as we need to portray how the girl is feeling. The idea of this rebound date came from listening to the lyrics repeatedly, this is our interpreation of what may be happening. The lyric 'whatever you gotta do' shows that the girl is doing anything she can to try and move on but its not as easy as she hopes it is.

Wednesday 3 November 2010

Filming Effects and Ideas

Now we have a solid idea and understanding of the song we thought about how we could present our ideas through the camera.
We quickly decided to use the flashbacks in our video, to show different time periods and also to show emotions/feelings. We used flashbacks in our previous course last year, and we felt it worked well, so we decided to stick to our strengths.

Last time we used the flashback effect, colour represented present day, and black and white represented the past. However, this time we decided to do it the other way round.
Colour would show past memories of when the couple were happy and content with one another, and black and white would show the present day when things aren't so positive anymore. We decided to do it this way round because we felt colour shows happiness and black and white shows a feeling of negativity and generally feeling low, drained.
For the colour parts we would show the couple together and how they once were, the black and white would show them going their separate ways. The split screen affect will also work well here as we will be able to show what the two individuals are doing when they are apart.

Interpretation of the song







After listening to the song all the way through a few times, interpretations of what the lyrics mean are able to be formed. When we listened to the song as a group, Alfie, Joe, and I verbally brainstormed what we thought could be going on at particular points of the song, and tried to create a possible story line for the song itself. This helped us understand the song in more detail, and also gave us a good idea of how we would go out and film the music video.
The way we have interpreted the song may not be the same as how the artist interprets but we feel our interpretation works well for us.

We believe that the song is about a couple going through a rough patch in their relationship. The song is from the mans perspective of what is going on. He is saying that he knows his relationship is not working but he desperately wants to give it another go, his girlfriend however, isn't so sure that she wants to be with him any longer. The lyrics say that whatever happens he will always be there for her. 'You're gonna make it to the other side' shows us that he is confident that they will get through this tough time, and will, in time, be happy again.

Change of Song

After presenting our film pitch to the rest of the class, we decided we were not happy with the song we had chosen. As we were planning to make it a parody, we decided it would be too hard to make it work well and gain us a good mark.
So we went away over the weekend and found a new song by a new artist. The title of the song is 'Whatever Gets You Through' and it is sung by an unsigned pop/rock band called The Nites.
We feel much more confident using this song for our new project, and have some good ideas of how we are going to make it work as effectively as we possibly can. As the song is far more serious than our original 'Nando's Skank', we are able to come up with far more viable ways of filming it.