Editing

So far, me and Emma have edited about 50 seconds worth of our footage. We feel we are progressing at a good pace and plan on filming the rest of our footage in the next few days.

However, we did come across some problems during our editing of the shots we had filmed, for example in our stop motion of Steve standing in front of the calendar, we noticed that the last shot was very dark in comparison to the previous ones, something we didn't notice during filming. Therefore, we decided to edit it to make it black and white to emphasise that the day was the most crucial, the anniversary of her death, of which our video is based around.

The Happy Couple :)

As we've stated before in previous posts, Abbi and I want the relationship between our characters to be believable. And we thought the best way to do this is to let Steve and Chloe have fun in front of the camera, so the audience can see how much fun they have together. And in them having fun in front of the camera, we found some natural shots of them being themselves together. The outcome of these photos is what we wanted, with a happy mood coming from them. I think we need more pictures and possibly some natural videos. But i think we might stumble across some natural videos in our out takes, where they're both having a laugh together.

Photo's whilst doing filming

Here are a few of our photos that Abbi and I took whilst filming and some props we used for our Mise-en-scene.

The filming so far has gone really well, we had to bring in lamps to make the room lighter and move a few bits and bobs around to make the room more like how we think our main boy character would be.

We've spent a bit of money on our props, but it's all in the name of making our music video realistic.

Our new main character...

Here is our new main character Steve Taylor. Abbi and I were lucky enough to find a boy main character in such short notice.

Fortunantly Steve has the style that we wanted our original actor Jack, has with the quirky indie style. He also is friends with our girl character Chloe Smith, so it wouldn't be awkward for them when we wanted them to be close in the filming of our music video. 

Change Of Male Actor

Due to a clash in filming schedule's we have had to change who is playing our main male character.

Jack was not available for when we needed him to film so Steve Taylor is now playing the main character role.

I think this will make us be more prepared next time and to sort schedules out earlier on in the creating process to avoid clashes and unavailability.

Filming Schedule

Tuesday 19th October

• First scene - alarm clock
• Sock stop motion
• Pan of room scene

Friday 22nd October

• All scenes in boy's bedroom
• Calendar stop motion
• Down the stairs and leaving house scene

Friday 29th October

• Moving figure stop motion
• Outside shots
• Girl on bed scene

Monday 1st November

• Ending scene with balloon
• Solo shots of male character

Thursday 11th November

• Re-film sock stop motion, use shoe instead

Tuesday 16th November

• Re-film of Steve solo shots in town

Friday 19th November

• Re-film stair shots with Steve
• Party scene
• Additional stop motion

Stop Motion

Today, we did a practice of filming our stop motion sock scene. We got about 10 minutes of footage and managed to easily edit and cut it down to make it appear as if the sock was crawling along the floor. However, we did not have enough time to transfer our footage from our Macs to the other computers so we could gain internet access, but we plan on doing so when we are next in school.

I think it was very beneficial for us to do this as we got a feel of what it was like to film and how specific the timing and shots need to be for when we record our actual video.

CD Cover Ideas

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Ideas for CD cover

As our band is going to be a new indie pop group, when looking for CD covers, i had to think about who has an indie feel or pop feel to their music, and does it come across in their CD covers?

Here are a few bands that I think their covers would be easily to recreate and also i think show an indie style to their image. 

The All American Rejects CD cover i think would be very easy to recreate using photo shop and editing the contrast of the colours. The randomness of this photo i think helps with the indie style, as it's unique. However, i dont think it's the best CD cover as it doesnt show much of what All American Rejects are about and what kind of music they play, which is more rock indie.

Personally, I think Miike Snow is amazing as is his music. He had his own logo, which is seen on the front cover of this CD, which also links to his name which the ice and his surname being Snow. Again, I think this would be very easy to recreate, but we'd have to come up with a logo for our band to have to put onto the CD cover. The only way you would be able to use just a logo instead of a picture of the band, would be if the band were well known and the logo was shown on everything they owned and made. 

Jack's Mannequin, this photo reminds me of a post card or something Paolo Nutini would make, as it's more jazzy looking rather than indie. This point kind of puts me off the idea of having his type of image on the band CD cover. Also, we would have to find someone who could draw resonably well to be able to pull this idea off. 

This cover I think is smart and can easily be done. I love the "old school" vibe about this cover, which the kid being like super man or a hero. This cover would be easily done, however, we would have to be able to draw our own character or have the rights to get hold of another cartoon character to use on our front cover. This would therefore, be a very long and stressful task of being able to use someone else's image as our idea. 

The verve, completely different to their other CD cover of them all sitting down on the grass as one group, showing a relaxing vibe, this is of the "world" being relaxing. I think this doesn't show much about their band and their image, which i would want to do for our band as it doesn't allow the audeince to see who is playing. Also, to recreate this you would have to have a very good artist at hand to draw something along these lines. 

Mumford and sons, my favorite band and so big at the minute! I think this kind of CD cover would be really good to use as a cover for our band, as it shows the unique style that the band has, as they have their full clothes on show and the folk rock musical instirments in with them. Also, the classic look using the streets, make the audience look at the cover more, and then they get pulled into what's in the window. 

We could easily do this by asking a shop owner if we could use their shop window to put our models in and take photos of. Hopefully, their are some nice shop owners who would be happy for us to do this... 

The one man band, Michael Tolcher. His CD cover shows him and only him, as he's the only one in the band to be shown. His cover would be so easy to recreate by taking a simple photo and mkaing sure only his face is in focus. However, i think this kind of front cover for a CD is rather boring, and as it's so easy to do, kind of makes me think that not a lot of effort went into the idea of the photo.

Maximo Park, are a long the same lines of our band, with the indie pop factor. The front cover here would be easy to recreate and also would link to the music video that we are making with the boy and the girl. I think this idea would be effective if we were to do it. We would have to experiment with different positions for the models and different edits on the photos. 

The Libertines.. Straight away from this image you can see that they're the "bad boys" of indie. And i know that they're the makers of indie music and the image that indie bands put across. However, as our band only has one main character we would have to recreate this shot with one person, which wouldn;t be as effective, as this photo shows the relationship (bromance) between the two characters. Also the tattoos and clothes show their image straight away, this is an idea i'll keep in mind, as i want the audience to see the band's image as soon as they see the cover. 

Biffy Clyro, this is such a great front cover. But, the art within this cover would be so hard to do, that again, we'd have to find someone who's really good at art to make a version of this that we could all our own. As for the fact of it showing an image for the band, i think that it doesn't show much of an image, just what kind of "taste" they have for art. Maybe this painting links to a song on the album?

Personally, i think this is such a boring front cover. And it looks cheap. This is the kind of front cover i would not like to produce, as it looks like no time, effort or thought went into it. As it's just black and white with some scribbles on it. Boring Jason Mraz. Boring. 

Ida Maria, the first girl on the list of CD covers. I think this kind of cover would be really good to use for our band, as we only have one person in it. So it would show the audience who they're listening to, having a relationship straightaway via a picture. The quote on her hand i also think would be a really good idea to have, as we could take a quote of the song, or the name of the album could be written across his hand. The fact that the audience can only see her nose and eyes in this photo, show an innocence in the character, using her arm as a deffence from the audeince. Overall, i really like this photo cover and i think it would be could to remake and make our own.

This cover links to the name of the CD cover as their a girl on the front cover and the album is called "Dizzy up the girl". I think this kind of front cover would be very effective to use, as it links to the relevance of the name and the clothing that the girl is wearing links to the image of the band. 

Crowded House. This front cover i think is amazing. The way they've made their front cover into a moodboard, i think is very effective witch the overlapping of random things that link into their band. 

I also think that the way they've put different pictures of the band members in is very effective, as it allows the audience to know who is who in the band, as i assume the guitarist is the one with the guitar on him?

Again, another moodboard type thing going on. I really like the way they've added the sticky tape into the image, this shows the roughness of the band. Also the polo shirts their wearing links into their indie style. This would be easy to recreate using photoshop and overlapping images. 

Air Traffic's CD cover i think is very clever, but must of taken a long time to create. I think if we were to do a front cover like this, we would have to draw up what we wanted to achieve and how we aimed to do it, before we went ahead and created a mess. I like how it looks like toys and fun, which i think we want to achieve with our band's image, we just want them to look and sound fun and for the audience to enjoy the "funness"

The Jam. This front cover would be so easy to do, if you had mature actors who weren't gonna mess around and pull stupid faces. 

However, as our band is only one person, i think having a cover like this would be boring as there's no action or fun happening in the back ground. So you would have to have more than one character in the image.

i love the vintage theme and feel of this CD cover. Even though, this photo got Vampire Weekend into a lot of trouble as they didn't have the rights to use it, i think if we could achieve a photo like this of a pretty girl, and edited it on photoshop, the cover would be very modern and interesting. But, we would have to have something within the cover to show the style of our band. Like a logo on her clothing...

Possible Band Names

Abbi and I needed to think of a name for our band, so we thought of names which could describe the song Sleepyhead. The only word we could conclude on was random, so our choice of a band name was pretty much anything...
The band names we thought of are;
Kids With Knives
Lego Monkey
Bad Luck Chuck
Logan
The Old School Hate Clowns
Power Ranger Rendezvous

We had to then narrow down the choice of bands, the ones that we thought were either too random or just didn't suit the band at all. We then decided to get rid of Logan as we thought it was too vague with the band image.
The next two we got rid off were Bad Luck Chuck, as it's too much like the film Good Luck Chuck, so we thought it would be a bit cheeky to steal it. The other name we got rid of was Lego Monkey, as we weren't sure about that particular name as it was again too vauge.
We then got rid of Kids With Knives, because we thought it had no connection to the band's image and it sounds more like a rock genre rather than the indie genre that our band is.
We then had our two favorites left that were; The Old School Hate Clowns and Power Rangers Rendezvous. We asked other people in our class what they thought of the names, the overall result was that The Old School Hate Clowns was too wordy and the other name was more fun and random. Which we then thought was the right name for the band, as all Indie bands have random names, for example; Two Door Cinema Club, Passion Pit and Mumford And Sons. So this links very well for our intended genre and theme of song.

Inspiration For CD Cover

This poster is simple yet effective. It portrays the image of the band and the style of their music. However, it doesn't give much away, which could be bad, in that the listener does not know much about them, but it also creates mystery surrounding the band which makes the listener want to listen and know more about them.

I like the style of this poster as I think the effects that are interweved together, work well. Yet, I don't think it creates enough of an impact on the audience as to who the band are and what they represent.

I like this image as I think it reflects the bands style and the image that they put across. I think an image like this for our own created band, would work effectively with our video and style and genre of the music.

I think this poster puts across the newer and updated style of Kings Of Leon, compared to their older look.

I think this poster again is simple yet effective. Although, I think it needs more to catchpeople's eyes as it doesn't have much to draw your attention.

Lyrics Of Sleepy Head

And everything is going to the beat
And everything is going to the beat
And everything is going

And you said it was like fire around the brim
Burning solid burning thin the burning rim
Like stars burning holes right through the dark
Flicking fire like saltwater into my eyes
You were one inch from the edge of this bed
I dragged you back a sleepyhead sleepyhead

They couldn't think of something to say the day you burst
With all their lions with all their might and all their thirst
They crowd your bedroom like some thoughts wearing thin
Against the walls against your rules against your skin
My beard grew down to the floor and out through the doors
Of your eyes begonia skies like a sleepyhead sleepyhead


When we heard this song, we automatically knew we wanted to use this song. This is because we wanted to make a video which doesn't link to the song, using a contrapuntal aspect, as the music is happy, until you read the lyrics, so we wanted to make the tune and the action clash together to leave the music video with a dramatic ending.

"You were one inch from the edge of this bed
I dragged you back a sleepyhead sleepyhead" This makes me automatically think of a relationship between a couple, with the intimate side of the relationship.
The last verse, i believe to be talking about a dream, which can relate to our music video as the action taking place with all the flash backs, and him waking up in the morning is like a dream. But the words in the last verse also make me think of him protecting his girlfriend from the nightmares or something else, which again relates to the action taking place in our music video, as the boy in a way protects his girl, as they're relationship shows him taking care of her.

However, if you have heard our music, you cant really tell what is being said, this i think links to the way people act when they're sleepy, by talking or saying things that don't make sense... again this could relate to our music video as the action taking place can be confusing until the end when it all becomes clear.

Actor - Jack Fox

This is Jack Fox who is playing the main character in our music video. We chose to have our central character as a male because our song choice is by an all male band so it is more appropriate than using a female character.
We feel he also fits the 'indie' style of our video, through his everyday look. This relates to the popular trends today so the audience will be able to relate to him as the main character.
We have decided to use Jack as our actor for his look and also because we are good friends with him so we know that he is reliable and won't let us down when it comes to filming.
He is also good friends with our female actress, Chloe Smith. Therefore, they will get on well during filming and there won't be any rifts or tension whilst we are recording and which will hopefully make the video appear more real and believable to the audience.
We want Jack to wear something which is on trend right now, which will make our video up to date and be able to relate to our intended audience. We will be changing his outfit several times, due to our different time slots in the video, e.g. the flashbacks with Chloe.

We want to make him look different in the flashbacks with Chloe, to how he looks now, showing a contrast of how his life has altered. For instance, we will make him look more rough and tired in the scenes of how he is now due to the effect Chloe's death has had on him.

Through showing his everyday life, our audience will hopefully build up a relationship with Jack and connect with him. Through also using the enigma of who Chloe is and who she is to Jack, when it is revealed they were in a relationship but she has passed away, we intend that to create catharsis from the audience.

Actors being used

This is Chloe Smith, who will play the second main character in our music video.
The role in which Chloe will play is the girlfriend of the boy character, but she wont be shown as much as Jack.
The reason we picked Chloe to play our girl character is because we wanted someone who we could make her look innocent by minimising the makeup and adding blusher to make her look sweet. Another reason is because we can easily meet up with Chloe and film anything we need, she is also very reliable.
Chloe and Jack have been best friends for a long while, so when we want them to do the scenes of them holding hands and acting couple like, it wont be awkward. This helps with the part of the music video when we want to have real photos and real videos of them together, so them being friends there's bound to be a lot of these.

The costume we want Chloe to wear is something cute and floral, to give the effect of her being innocent as we want the audience to have an instant relationship with her as she hasn't got a hard shell like characters in music videos like, The Gossip Standing In The Way Of Control or Blink 182 Always, when the girls look hard and quite bitchy. We also want her clothes to be fashionable, which will make our music video be more appealing to a wider audience who have the same indie style.
Make up wise, I think we want Chloe to wear the same amount of eye make up, as it will make her eyes stand out, but add more pink blusher and pinker lips.
The overall aim of Chloe's character look is for her to look "normal" so the audience can easily relate to her and the relationship will form quickly. This will also make the ending of our music video, when we reveal that Chloe passed away, will make the ending more dramatic for the audience, making the aim of moving the audience achieved.

Location Ideas

Location ideas

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Prop List

Prop List

• Male outfit
• Female outfit
• Camera
• Tripod
• Boy's bedroom
• Alarm clock
• Calendar
• Socks
• Flipbook
• Jacket
• Keys
• Wooden Figure
• Phone
• House for party
• Shoes
• Red Balloon
• Note

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Random pictures to link in with the theme of our song

The story of 500 days of summer, I think in a way is relevant to the story Abbi and I are trying to get across, even though no one dies in 500 Days of Summer. But the relationship they have at the beginning, when they're all happy and it makes the audience feel warm and enjoy watching them. But then at the end, the realisation hits and you start to not enjoy the action taking place, but you remember it. This is what Abbi and I are aiming for.

This photo, although it's random i think fits in with the colourful funny side of the music video. Also, how the person being used is not of the usual character, as she's old and small.

This kind of photo makes me think of stop motion, and the colours used for the birds with the blue back ground are also very relvent to the colour skeem Abbi and I want. Overall, i enjoy this photo.

Our Storyboard

Costume ideas for our Girl character

For our girl character, the picture I have in mind for her is to be classic and innocent looking.
At the moment, we're unsure whether to keep her in the same clothes all the way through, so the ending makes more sense. As the whole music video is basically him reliving the past time with his girlfriend, and she died in an accident. Or to have her change outfits, which might be confusing.
We're sticking to the idea of having her in one outfit, as this is more relevant to the action and the story taking place.

This type of costume for our girl would be really good for portraying the idea of her being innocent and sweet. We also need to make sure that she's stylish and classic, as, again the image shown of the band is up to date and modern.
The colours used here are calm, which is a good idea to have for our girl as she needs to looked relaxed at all times.

Even though, this image is different clothing style to the one above, I believe it fits in to the the story, as the jumper looks like a boys jumper. Which shows a link between the two main characters. She also looks cute with her hair. But i think it'd be more femine to have her with her hair down.

This look, in a way combindes the two looks above together, with the classic floral print, but then mixing it with worker boots, oversized cardi and fraying the dress at the bottom. I think this could be a good idea to have for our girl, as it's modern and creates a good image for the music video. Her hair i think we should try and acheive, this could easily be done. Using all the hair accessories that us girls have, also the curls make her seem more innocent. However, the girl we have in mind has blonde hair, this again adds to the innocents.

Bruises by Chairlift

Me and Emma also found this very influential as we like the style of the video, a style which we hope to recreate. I like the use of 'natural' clips being shown on the screens as we hope to incorporate 'natural' clips of the couple in our video to make their story more real. The music video appears effortless without too much action and chaos taking place, something I think we would be able to recreate in our own video.

Outfit ideas for our Boy character

In our music video, our main character, who is a boy, will have at least 4 different costumes.
The first one will be him in his pjs, or in trackie bottoms, this is because it's a shot of him waking up in the morning and getting out of bed in his bed room.
The second costume will be him in his outfit for the day, we want to have this possibly in jeans and a t-shirt, but make sure they're fashionable but simple.
The third outfit will be him in a flash back with the girl. Here it's really important to have him in a completly different outfit, as this shows him in a flash back, and it'll help not to confuse the audeince.
The fourth costume will be him at a party, maybe just change his top to show that he's made a little bit of an effort.
The final outfit will be him in the morning on a feild, we're considering having him in the same outfit as the night before, to show he's been out all night thinking. Or we put him in a completely different costume to show, again time passing.

For the main boy's costume we want a casual theme but fashionable. The reason for us wanting to use him in everyday casual use of clothing is because we want to make it clear to the audeince that it's every day normal people. The reason behind the fashionable use of clothing is because we want to create and image for our band, Passion Pit. As image nowa days is so important for a band and the characters within the band.
This look me and Abbi both think is really quirky, which we think fits in with the idea we have for our music video, with the stop motion and bright colours. This might suit the idea of him at the party, as the tie makes it seem like he's made a bit of an effort for the "event".

This look is kind of the same as above, just minus the tie. This could be achievable for our day time look. We dont want the boy to wear sunglasses, as we feel the prop is something for him to hide behind, and we want him to build a relationship with our audience. Also, the sunglasses will stop the emotion coming through.

This is the type of costume Abbi and I love, as we think it's easy to achieve and very fashionable. His hair we think is also very very nice, as well as his face, which we want our boy to have to have the opposite to Laura Mulvery's male gaze. We could use this look for either the flash back or next morning.
Origninally, we had the idea of having the boy in gloomy clothes, to add to his mood, but we thought that this doesnt convey much about the music or about the character. So, we took aspects of this idea, like the tatoos and the hair, which we might add into our end idea.

As we want our boy to be modern and stylish, we've thought about product placement a lot. For example, using mise en scene in his room, having a mac, iphone, ipod, docking station etc, anything to make him up to date. Because of this idea, we even want his PJs, to be modern and stylish and maybe even have a band, again using product place ment. Using Jack Wills loungewear bottoms, would be ideal for our character. This is because of his age and his style. Also the target audience is teenagers, some of which will still be at Universities.

The colour theme I'd like to go for, for this character is blue, as blue has many different tones and the old saying "why so blue" fits into the theme. However, we still want to make his appearance fun and interesting by adding different hair styles, layers and accessories.

Blink 182 - Adam's Song

Me and Emma found this video influential in giving us inspiration for our own music video as we aspire to include our own shots of our characters in a party scene. We hope to recreate something like this but ours will be more crowded and upbeat. However, we plan on making it similar to this as we want the main focus to be on the couple in our video, with a few shots of other people at the party.

Music Videos that have Inspired us

This clip by Miike Snow called Black and Blue really inspired Abbi and I with making our video happy and fun by using stop motion. The way in which the doll plays the music in a dark room, with the spot lighting i also find really infulentual. It shows us how we can use lighting in a dark room to add emphases onto certain act taking place. Another thing that inspired us was the use of using a unusual character, but we're unable to think of anyone who would fit the unusual role.
The point that the story is of two different worlds coming together, but both link together through the words and the action.
It also shows different ages, as there's a old man who is the main character, middle aged men singing (Miike Snow) and a group of teenage people outside his house.

Applying The Male Gaze To Our Music Video

In our music video, we are incorporating Laura Mulvey's Theory of The Male Gaze. We are doing this by using two attractive leads for the main male and female characters.

Busted Preliminary Task

This is ours, Maz and Luke's version of Busted's 'What I Go To School For', which we filmed and edited for our preliminary task.

Pitch

This is our pitch for our music video idea, with feedback from our classmates.