Magazine Advert Analysis ~ Luke Leadbetter

Advert Analysis on Prezi

Overall, the importance of Daft Punk's anonymity is vital in our production.

Diary Of Editing - Day 3 ~ William Dixon

Yesterday we managed to get all the clips from our last filming on to Final Cut Express. During this time, we learned what clips we need to redo and what ones we can keep.
One of the shots we were worried about was when all the disco lights come on because we weren't sure it would look good on camera. Turns out that the shots looked great without any need of editing and we don't need to worry about adding any extra lighting. The only shots we didn't get done this day was the typing on the keyboard shots as we didn't have enough time to play around with the speeds of the shot, so we will continue to work on that during the next editing session.

Diary of Editing -Day 2 ~ William Dixon

This day, we cut up what we had filmed the day before into subclips. We also managed to get some of the clips into Final Cut and edit them up. During this we came across 2 problems. The first problem was that the tripod we used when filming was really unreliable. Basically, when we wanted to use it for panning, it was too loose to do a slow pan and when we tightened it, it was too stiff to do a smooth shot. So when it came to editing, most of the pan shots we couldn’t use because they were too wobbly. Second problem, was that we didn’t realise that when you add a new clip into Final Cut, it pushes all the other clips along, so all our synced clips so far had moved.

Although both the problems are annoying, we will take these as lessons. We now have devised a technique on adding the clips without pushing the clips. And also, we now know not the use that tripod in the filming as it’s unreliable.

Diary of Filming - Day 2 ~ Luke Leadbetter

On our second day of filming we all converged upon Will's house at 5pm. After making sure the set was exactly as it was the last time we filmed we started straight away to film the shots we missed last time, due to lack of props. This time we remembered to bring Will's electric guitar and a desk lamp, allowing us to do a pan across the guitar and the desk. We filmed a few shots before Jess had to leave at 8, leaving myself and Will to continue filming until we decided we'd done enough for the night at 9. Will and myself managed to a large amount of shots, surprising ourselves with how much we got done. We discovered more difficulties with hiding the puppeteer in several shots, but we managed to overcome this with large quantities of small cramped spaces and pain. Overall it was a very successful session and I now very much look forward to editing our clips in our next lesson.

Editing Diary - Day 2 ~ Luke Leadbetter

Today we continued editing from clips captured last lesson. Due to the fact we haven't had an opportunity to film since our last editing session, there was no new clips to insert. This gave myself and Will the opportunity to further fine tune the editing of our previously inserted clips. Next lesson we hope to have many more clips to insert so we can start filling in the gaps and adding more to the video.

Lip Syncing ~ William Dixon

Throughout our video, there is lip syncing with the lyrics with the song. Although, because we are doing it with a puppet, it's quite difficult (much to our surprise) to get the lip sync accurate all the time. We thought at first that this would be a problem, but through research with other Music Videos featuring puppets, we realised that it's not all that important to get the lip sync 100% accurate.

Take the Music Video, Ass Like That by Eminem. You can clearly see that the lyrics are not always in sync, though they are always accurate enough to make it clear that that's what the puppet is singing. Same with the videos, Life In Technicolor ii by Coldplay and Land Of Confusion by Genesis. All these videos have the same features where the lip sync is always very close but not always 100%. Why this is, I think, is because it just adds to the humour of them using a puppet. Puppets are, at the end of a day, a toy that is built for Fun. So having these tiny mistakes, adds to the fun.

So what we will take from this research is that we should try our absolute best to get the sync right, but if it does happen to be a little bit off, then it'll just add to the humour and fun side to our Music Video.


To watch the Music Videos a referenced above, copy and paste the following Links into your URL

For Genesis' - Land Of Confusion
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlBIa8z_Mts&ob=av2n

For Coldplay's - Life In Technicolor ii
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXSovfzyx28

For Eminem's - Ass Like That
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yf15kikC_g

Analysis of a magazine advert ~ Jess Hitch

Magazine adverts on Prezi

- Jess Hitch

Diary of Editing - Day 1 ~ Luke Leadbetter

Today Will and myself captured the clips from filming onto Final Cut Express. I then proceeded to cut the reel into seperate sub-clips, giving each appropriate names. This process was fiddly and irritating, trying to find the best take of a particular shot and then cutting it in the most suitable place. Once this had been accomplished, Will then changed the file type of the edited song (Due to Final Cut Expresses's inability to use M4A format) before placing it into Final Cut. I then positioned the clips into the timeline, applying suitable editing to the brightness and contrast of the clips, with feedback from Will. It was quite difficult to align the clips with song correctly, to create a smooth lip sync, but once this was accomplished the results were extremely satisfying. Through this section of the editing process we have realised that we need to re-do a few of the shots, and be much more aware of mise-en-scene and framing.

Owl City Digipak ~ Jess Hitch

Digipak - owl city on Prezi

Metanarrative: From this digipak, we can see that the artist, whose face we cannot see on the cover, feels as though he is living in a strange fantasy world which is not that different from our own but contains some obvious differences. The contrast between nature and technology suggests that those two things living in harmony is a normal occurrence. The fact that we cannot see the artist anywhere on the exterior of the digipak suggests that he doesn't want to reveal his identity to people easily and that he is mysterious and hidden. - Jess Hitch

Diary of Filming - Day 1 ~ Jess Hitch

Last night we filmed the first few shots of our music video. It was fun setting up the room to how we wanted it and the coloured lights which Luke borrowed from church looked very cool in the dark, almost exactly how we imagined it whilst we were story-boarding.
Before we started, we made a mini-vlog just giving a tour of our setting for the blog and also a mini-vlog for the lighting, they'll be uploaded as soon as we've edited the first part of our filming.

We started at around 6 when the sun was down so that none of the light ruined our setting which worked out well, however, it did mean that we didn't have a lot of time to film before I had to go home. Luckily, they boys stayed behind for a few more hours after I'd left and got a few more shots done.
It was fun filming with the puppet because as soon as we saw it for the first time, we knew that we'd made a good decision about choosing to use that instead of filming the performance aspects with a real actor.

Today we decided that instead of doing all the filming at once, we were going to film a bit, then edit it when we're not filming to save more time. This should make things work more efficiency because some of us can be working on the filming while the other films. It also works out well because I can also do some editing at home as I also have Final cut Express. So today we're editing some of the shots that were usable since most of the shots were just to get an idea as to where and how were were going to go about shooting some of the more awkward positions (ie. trying to hide the puppeteer behind the bed whilst still having enough room to move the puppet naturally.)

So having watched what we filmed back on the computer, we realized that we would have to re-film a few of the shots due to minor issues with framing and lighting but that shouldn't take too long as now we know what to do to make our shots better.

- Jess Hitch

Diary of Filming - Day 0 ~Jess Hitch

Today we'll be filming after school at Will's house. It will be about sundown so around 4 o' clock when we start filming, this is to make sure that we keep to the fact that our main character has woken up at night so filming in the day with the sun streaming through the windows was out of the question.

We have decided to leave the stop-motion elements until last so that we have an idea how the live elements will interact with them and also to see if we can recreate the stop-motion away from the set and thus saving more time.

We've made a list of all the things each of us needs to bring to decorate the set. I'm bringing:

• Coloured disco ball
• Fishing wire
• ipod
• torches
• Cellofane - for creating coloured light 

The camera will be booked and we'll be ready to go at sundown!

We're all looking forward to it.

- Jess Hitch

Story boarding ~Jess Hitch

We started our story boarding a few weeks back and although we're 5 days behind schedule, we're making good progress. We've been playing through the song and imagining exactly how we would want it to look. At the moment, it's still very rough so that we can get it finished quickly and start our filming as soon as possible. Once we have started our filming and are making progress, we can go back to our story board and make it more presentable for the blog. I've done majority of the drawing within the story board with 90% of ideas coming from the guys. At the moment, we only have about 1 minute left to story board which shouldn't take too long as there are no more lyrics from this point onwards which allows a little more room for creativity as we can be as abstract as we like without contradicting any lyrics.

Due to the fact that we've had to cut the song down, we've had to run the story board against our edited version so that we don't extend parts that have already been cut but this wasn't really a problem as we had the edited song on itunes to play against our story board. We've discussed chopping the video down by a further 8 seconds however, we decided against it because we didn't have the time and we'd already story boarded past the point that we wanted to cut which would affect all of the frames past that point.

The good thing about using stop-motion frames is that we can each do some stop-motion at home with free software and we won't have to do it all on set, so it'll take a lot less time since we won't be wasting filming time at our location which will be used to film all of the live-action shots. Of course any stop motion that requires a particular background will have to be done on set as the audience will get confused as to why our stop motion elements have been moved out of the room.

We've already taken mise-en-scene into consideration at this point as its important we set the room up correctly to match the meaning we are trying to portray. We are going to decorate our location with coloured lights and Daft Punk and other electronica band posters on the walls, this is to represent bright, cold technology and show intertextuality between Deadmau5 and Daft Punk. We're also including Luke's Daft Punk and Will's Deadmau5 figurines to further the intertextuality in the video.

Luke and Will have also been discussing what kind of effects we wanted to add into a our shots by toying with the transitions and effects on Final Cut Express and we've found some interesting effects that will further present our theme of drug-fueled fantasies and vivid dreams which include interesting colouring effects and wavy transitions, when put together, it can enhance the atmosphere of our video.

- Jess Hitch

Edited by Luke Leadbetter-

Here's a slideshare of the storyboard:

Story board

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