Production - Making Changes - Looking Over Shots (Annotation of Lyrics)

From the feedback we got from our class, one of the criticisms was that at times it is not visually exciting and the shots seem repetitive. I decided to analyse the lyrics and link it to the music video by colour coding the different shots and angles for each line/word. 

Below I have shown a code stating each different type of shot with a different colour and then highlighted the lyrics according to the colour code. This will help me and my group see where the colours are constantly repeated and allow us to change the shot with shots that have not appeared as much in the music video to make our music video more visually exciting. 

COLOUR CODE:

Close up 

Mid Close Up

Mid Shot

Side Mid Shot

Left Side Mid Shot

middle long shot

Long Shot

Low Angle Shot

Past Scene

Extra Shots

Back to Ismail

ANALYSED LYRICS USING COLOUR CODE:

[Hook — John Martin:]

Lay down your head - Side mid shot

You're not alone - Side Mid Shot

Anywhere you go, I follow- Side Mid Shot

Oh - Low Angle Ismail to the sun

We are the children of the sun - Side Mid Shot

That's all you need to know - Side Mid Shot/Long Mid Shot of him walking in sunset

Lay down your head - Left Side shot 

You're not alone - Left Side Shot

Anywhere you go, I follow - Left Side Shot

Oh - Left Side mid shot

We are the children of the sun - Left side mid shot

That's all you need to know - Left Side mid shot

[Verse 1 — Tinie Tempah:]

Bitch I'm a moon walker like Michael, - close up

sky walk all over my rivals -  close up

Both hands on that Bible, bitch, I'm next in line for that title - Low angle shot

A nigga had nothing to do - close up

I was idle, - Past scene

but we was in the studio with - close up

Taio - mid close up

Now we climbing high, 

we ain't on the Kiliman- mid close up

jaro, 

and they're panicking - mid/Long shot

They don't really know what's - mid long shot

happening - low angle shot

Never gotten clothes off - Low angle shot 

 a mannequin, - mannequin - back shot

 we don't want no - - low angle shot 

comparison - mid shot (side)

I overdose on extravagance, 

we went for gold and got - mid shot (side)

platinum - mid long shot - (front)

I told my bro to get an ambulance 

'cause I caught a cold and went - mid long shot

spaz on them - yeah - mid close up

How can home be where the heart is 

when your shadow even fucking leaves you -  mid close up 

when you are in darkness? - past scene

Still get stopped by Sergeant Pepper, 

looking for that ziggy stardust - side mid shot

After a lifetime of regret,

 I'm just looking for some answers yeah - mid shot 

[Hook]

Lay down your head - long shot

You're not alone - long shot

Anywhere you go, I follow - long shot 

oh - same as the last ‘oh’

We are the children of the sun - long shot

That's all you need to know - ismail slow motion

Lay down your head - long shot - middle view 

You're not alone - long shot middle view

Anywhere you go, I follow - long shot middle view

oh - is mail’s location

We are the children of the sun - long shot middle view

That's all you need to know - fades to ismails next shot

[Verse 2 — Tinie Tempah:]

I had opportunity in my window, 

wise words in my - long shot 

kindle - mid long shot 

Disturbing London, we raise the bar, while your team still stuck in limbo - mid long shot

Like Freddie, Bruno and Ringo, - blue alleyway

 I saw the signs and sym- mid long shot

bols -  close up

With that top down on my yellow ride, 

let bitches hate on my bimbo -close up

I'm yards away from that milestone, international  - long shot

dial tone - close up

Put me through amaro when you Instagram with your - - close up

iPhone - mid long shot

From yellow bricks - mid long shot

to them brown stones, I ring bells - past scene

I'm household - mid close up /close up

Look at all the rappers we outsold so - mid close up

 shhh keep your mouth closed - mid close up

yeah - mid close up

How did I become so jaded,

 maybe all these insecurities are making me feel naked - long shot

Feel like Harry did in Vegas, - mid close up

had my privacy invaded - mid close up

That's a liberty a pity, the epitome of what fame is - low angle shot

Priest up in my parish, keep on putting me in their prayers - mid close up

Swear I'd never sell my soul, my pride and dignity is too major, - long shot

yeah! - long shot

We rarely ever get those second chances, - long shot

 after a lifetime of regret - close up

I'm just looking for some answers, - close up

 yeah! - close up

[Hook]

Lay down your head - mid shot

You're not alone - mid shot

Anywhere you go, I follow - ismail shot swaying

We are the children of the sun - mid shot - focus on sun

That's all you need to know - mid shot - focus on sun

Lay down your head - past scene of ismail

You're not alone - past scene of ismail

Anywhere you go, - mid shot - focus on sun

I follow - ismail walking down the stairs

We are the children of the sun - mid shot focus on sun 

That's all you need to know - mid shot -  focus on sun 

[Verse 3 — Tinie Tempah:]

Looking for a light that can outshine the sun - side mid shot 

I know one day our time will come - front mid shot 

Bought a camera to capture these cinematic nights - side mid shot 

Still don't satisfy my appetite for this lavish life - walking in lights

Tell me, doctor, am I fit for all these flashing lights? - mid front shot

Like Michael said, it doesn't matter if you're black or white - close up

Look at the colors of the sun to descend above us - mid/long shot

All we have is each other in case you happen to wonder - mid/long shot

Let's go - mid long shot

[Hook] end of lyrics

Lay down your head - long shot side 

You're not alone - long shot side

Anywhere you go - location cars

I follow - long middle shot

We are the children of the sun - long middle shot

That's all you need to know - long middle shot

Lay down your head - Back to Ismail

You're not alone - - Back to Ismail 

Anywhere you go, I follow - long middle shot - panning

We are the children of the sun - Back to Ismail

That's all you need to know -Long middle shot - Back to Ismail

After Analysing the lyrics it has shown which shots we are not using a lot. 

• Low angle shot
• Past Scenes
• Extra Shots
• Back to Ismail (In first two chorus's)

Also, in each individual verse we see a lot of the same type of shot which can be switched very easily. 

The colour code allows us visually see which colour we are using too much and change it to one we haven't used so much. 

Finally, one other fault I have found whilst analysing the lyrics was that the editing cuts in the middle of words and lines and does not fully complete them. This is also a change we will need to fix in the next editing sessions. 

Production: Roughcut Feedback

27.11.2014

SABIHA: The artists performances was good, a clear daytime to nightime transition, suggestions 'Yeaaaaah' change the shot or location

JULIE: The people walking on the street was too much of a random shot put in

KRISTIAN: A bit too repetitive need more jumpcuts

DURIM: Its effective but should add more slow motions

CORY: Strong performances, however we should shake the camera around more, more sharp and liked the ending with the different costumes

REBECCA: Make it more visually exciting on base tracks, bleed the colour out on past scenes (gamma down), rest is more vibrant. One really jumpy camera movements, sort out framing in last performance

What do you think about chorus? 

FERGOS: dissolve used properly, liked first two chorus how they are done individual and then in the last chorus both artists come together, looks really good
dissolved used properly.

EDLINE: bare cute

Rough Cut Feedback

Rough Cut

Production - Editing Day 5 - Finalising The Rough Cut

Today we are just finishing up the rough cut for our music video. We will use this to show the rest of our class and get feedback on what went well and what we need to improve about our music video. 

Production - Editing Day 4

The third day of editing allowed us to notice more issues with our music video. Whilst we were editing, we realised that there were not enough good shots of Lukas's chorus in London Eye. They were either very shakey or the framing was not right.

We tried to fix this issue by using an effect called 'Flop' in Final Cut Pro which flips the shot the opposite direction to look as though it was taken from a different angle. This effect could have worked if there was a blank background, but we had the silhouette of the London Eye which did not show continuity well. 

We decided that after we show our rough cuts, we will try and re-film the scenes in London Eye again and hope that the weather is good. If the weather is not good, our back up plan is to use the shots we already have that are good  and combine shots of Ismail's scenes where he is not singing.

Production: Editing Day 3

We have synced several clips towards the soundtrack.

We have also added extra clips in the chorus as it didn't have any but now we have resolved this issue. I believe day 3 of editing was very successful as we had almost finished the rough cut of the video before the deadline and we also added many effects such as slow motion and dissolve transitions.

The image of the left is where we placed an extra part of the chorus of the artist saying "OH" We added a slow motion effect of him saying it and a dissolve transition for us to jump cut to another location.

Production - Brief Notes and Ideas for Evaluation Question 1

Production - Self Reflection - Blogging on Filming And Editing

Production - Using INSTANT SHOT

Instant shot is a software that was installed on our hard drives. It is a very useful software because it takes screenshots every 30 seconds to capture everything going on during editing This is extremely useful because it means that we don't need to remember to screenshot while we edit as we have a software that does it for us! It helps me with blogging too because it allows me to show pictures of our process so far!

HOW IT WORKS:

5 minutes before the lesson finishes, we are asked to stop editing and collect the screenshots and blog about it. Because there are so many screenshots, we select the title which sorts them by the date and  we select the current date.

We then create a new post on Blogger naming it for example, 'Editing Day 3', and paste all the pictures from the current date into blogger where we can all access it when we create individual blogposts at home. 

Below is an example of how we used it:

This is our blog post where we posted the pictures from instant shot

This is where we found all the screen shots

And here is where we uploaded all our pictures 

Production - How We Are Using Vernallis Theory In Our Music Video

To start with, I went back into Glogster where I presented my research on Vernallis theory to remind me of what it consisted of.

This is how we followed Vernalli's theory!

1- We broke the rules of continuity editing as we are using 3 different master shots for our music video. We have a theme of the past and present of Ishy's lonely and corrupted life in the past and his success in the present. We use cross fades to emphasise the difference in shots. 

2- We have edited all the footage to be in sync with the beat of the music video. All cuts match the beat of the song. for example, the first two verses are upbeat therefore we have fast cuts; whereas the chorus is slower so the cuts last longer to match the beat and tone. 

3 - We involve 3 base tracks to our music video, his past life, present life and chorus which appear throughout the song. 

4 - We use slow motion in our music video which is an obvious edit to emphasise his low past life and to allow the audience to understand the emotion in his face and empathise with the song. 

Production - Feedback On Our Editing So Far

Please open in Full Screen

Production - Target Audience Feedback On Our Music Video So Far

When we initially presented our ideas of choosing the song 'Children of the Sun', the reaction from our class was that Ismail will find it hard to rap the song because the original artist raps very fast and performs it well. We were still willing to continue with the song and give it our best shot. We just had to make sure that Ismail kept practicing at home before we started filming to make sure we have a good performance.

After watching parts of our music video whilst we were editing, they were really impressed with the performance from Ismail as he looked like a real rap artist and he looked very comfortable in front of the camera. They said there was room for improvement on the past scenes and it would look better if the video had a filter over them to show a contrast. 

Production - Editing Day 3

Also, here are some pictures of us all editing on day 3!

Nadia Alam's Slidely by Slidely Slideshow

Production - Filming Day 5

As said in the blogpost (Production - Editing Day 2) , we noticed that the alleyway scenes for the last verse were again too dark. This time we decided to use the DEDO LIGHTS which are very powerful lights that can be used in very dark lighting.

We decided to take the camera in for the weekend and film the same alleyway scene all over again. I was holding the lights while Lukas filmed Ismail on the final verse. We did face a lot of problems though because there were people who kept walking past the light which blocked the light but it was okay because we took several different shots which we can replace bad ones with.

Looking back at the footage, we noticed a huge difference as you could see Ismail's face a lot clearer. 

Here is the comparison to when we used the headlight and when we used the Dedo Light. 

With the Headlight

With the Dedo light

Production - Editing Day 2

We had a three hour lesson to continue editing our music video. This time we had a lot more footage to work with. Ismail came to workshop before in his own time to edit the music video which helped us in the editing lesson because the markers and footage had all been put in and it was a matter of choosing which ones were best suited for the scene.

When we were selecting some of the footage, we noticed that some of the footage was a very shakey. A boy from another group had told us that he had the same problem with some of his footage and that there was a solution for it. On Final Cut Pro there is a special effect called smooth cam which makes rough movement in the camera appear very smooth. This was perfect for us because it meant that we could use this effect on some of our footage without putting the original to waste.

We also used a lot of cross fades in the chorus which made it look very nice to watch as it emphasises the beautiful scenery. The fades also give a sense of slow motion which also allows the audience to take in the beauty of the sunset.

Finally, again we noticed that the footage from day 4 of filming was again too dark even though they used a head light. So, that was something we needed to re-shoot once again.


The video is now slowly coming together and so far it is looking very good. Here are some pictures of Editing Day 2







Editing Day 2 by Slidely Slideshow

Production: Filming Day 5

 

Filmed the artist ISHY walking around for extra footage for our music video, this picture is for the final verse of our mainartist walking up and dowen the stairs for the final verse which is meaningful to his life story.

 

Wefilmed in Carnaby Street because the lights created a positive atmosphere which would look superb on our music video.

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Production - Editing Day 3

 

We started fixing what we have done so far by attending workshops as well as staying back after lessons.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

    We included the element of slow motion from Vernallis theory. We decided to add the slow motion to the old scenes as this will make it viusally more interesting so the audience can see the transition of the artist.

 

This picture shows the videos being chopped and we selected the footage we liked for each part by deleting the bits we didnt want this created our baseshots throughout the music video

 

We used smoothcam to clean our footage which makes it look much better quality and less joggy. It makes it look like a quality music video

 

Production - Editing Day 2

 

 For the chrous we began to chose and crop the appriopriate videos making sure lighting, lip sync and video quality was perfect. The featuring artist was the first video to be edited, the first base shot

 

 

 

 

Playing around with video transitions on the featuring artists footage, we put a crossfades,  

however later we was told we couldn't use them so we took them out as we want to follow the feedback to improve our video so it is the best it could be

 

 

So far, the video is finally coming along togther nicely, better than what we intially expected, we had quite positive feedback from peers and teachers of what they have seen so far, but we have rooms for improvement which we are willing to do.



Production: Vernallis Theory In Our Music Video

In our music video, we included:

Base Tracks

We included 3 base tracks for our main artist:

City Road Basin

London Eye

 

 

Slow Motion

We used slow motion for the main artist to highlight the transition between his past and his future

 

Production - Editing Day 1

First we exported and imported all of our footage onto Final Cut Pro. Then we put down red markers on the song "Children of the Sun" everytime it changed from the chrous to a verse. The purpose of this was to make it easier for us to edit between the slow chorus and the speedy verses such as cutting between clips to make it seamless.

Then we placed markers on the timeline after each beat, we started off with a couple of markers than as the speed of the track built up the markers increased. It helped us a lot because we was able to match every beat to the conventions of the rap video where there are lots of fast shot cuts and fast tempo beats.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We bagan looking back at all our footage and chose the apprioatate ones we could potientialy use for our music video. We noticed that some videos was slightly out of focus or had to much space above the head, so we focused on trying to improve that by reshoting another day

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We ensured we put a marker on the clips the artists performed when they say a particular word, usually the first word of what they say. This enabled us to without difficulty match it up with the marker on the timeline to make it in sync.

 

 

Production: Audience Feedback

I decided to review someone for some feedback before our rough cut deadline.

Production: Target audience review

I decided to interview a member of our target audience to see what they liked about our music video so far and asked what we could improve on.

Production: Editing day 2

In today's lesson we encountered many obstacles such as the footage not being light enough for us to use in our music video.

So we have planned  to re shoot some footage.

We added our extra footage onto the music video to create a more meaning towards the video. Also you are able to see that the markers placed on the soundtrack are more accurate than last time, we placed the marks towards the beat more accurate to allow our video to look more professional.

In this photo you are able to see the sun with the feature artist. We cropped and sliced footage to allow the music video to flow through.

Production: Vernallis' Theory in our music video

In our music video we included:

Slow Motion
Slow Motion is one of the main points in Vernallis' observation and because there is a mixture between fast cuts in the master shots and slow motion in the cutaways the rule of continuity is broken to draw attention to what is on screen.

Base Track (Master Shot)
In our music video, we made use of three master shots in order to give the video a structure. This then allows us to film cutaways to form a narrative.

Camera Movement
The Camera follows what  ISHY is doing by moving in correlation with his hand movements.

Wipes/Dissolves
In our video we also used dissolves to highlight the transition from ISHY's troubled past and his successful present. Furthermore, this allows us to focus on the fact that the music video is the visual of the lyrics and that there is a narrative we are trying to create.

Production: Editing day 5

On the fifth day of editing we placed our footage of the third verse in and added a fade out effect after the second verse to signify the fact that it's changing from day to night.

As the pace of the song has slowed down, we re did the markers in time with the slower beat and cut accordingly after every beat.

Production: How successful was day 8?

Our 8th day of filming was filmed on a backstreet called Woodstock street which was well lit. We had problems with this street in the past as we didn't film with enough lighting the last time we were there. However, today we brought a dedo light and turned our top light to the highest point to ensure that there is enough lighting on the performer. We found in our other clips from this street that it was too dark as our top light wasn't strong enough on it's own, it looked fine on camera but dark on the computer. So overall, we successfully re filmed the third verse with perfect lighting.

Shot on filming day 5:

Shot after day 8:

By looking at both images above it is evident that the use of the dedo light helped us in capturing the artists entire performance as it is well lit, showing his features and more importantly capturing him saying the words.

Production: Filming day 8

Filming - Day 8

On our final day of filming, we re filmed the third verse at Woodstock street, which we were having a lot of trouble with. This shoot was after sunset and done at this time to indicate to the audience that the mood of the song has changed but more importantly the pace has slowed down. This is why we chose to film on a calm evening. We had a deco light and a top light which perfectly lit the performer. We also ensured we had a variety of shots and angles.

Editing pictures day 3 - FROM INSTANT SHOT