Finding a Studio

To use this new idea of a plain white studio, like Jessie J's video 'Price Tag' and Miley Cyrus' video '7 Things I Hate About You' we both need to find an appropriate studio that is nearby so that we can easily get there. We have therefore emailed photography studios in Lutterworth/ Rugby and Leicester. So far we have emailed 7 photographers asking to use their studio, 2 have replied saying they are fully booked and too busy up to Christmas so we are now waiting on replies from the 5 others. Using a white studio will completely strip back the video and will make it look more simplistic. As the basic narrative has already been done in a house (Lilly Allen's video) we thought that using a plain background would work well and would emphasise the bright bold colours used and would give it more of a ‘pop’ look.

Location Change Idea

From looking at our new ideas we have came to a conclusion on the basis of a studio giving us access and permission we will use their facilities. The new idea is to film our 'Alfie' song as normal and instead of location shots, setting and what is in the shots being the 'mood' and theme maker, we are now instead going to use a white studio. Below is a video called 'Price Tag' by Jessie J that has inspired us to do this.
 
We think that by doing this it will make us able to use bright colors better in what 'Milly' wears and the props that we decide to use and involve with the video. These will play a big part within the video as the setting/white background will be very boring therefore everything else within the video needs to stand out and get a clear idea through of the pop feel we want to get.

New Ideas For Remaking The Video

From recieving feedback of our music video we have been advised to change a fair few parts of our video such as creating and coming up with a better way to use our 'Alfie' puppet or having different scenes and locations. After having conversations and discussing what ways we are able to do this, we managed to come up with some ideas, these ideas are as followed.

1. We could use a young boy around age 9 which would completly change our idea of the puppet however would still create a good effect which would tie in with the video and the puppet scenes as we wouldnt have used someone older, which could hold the potential of taking the comedy effect away as it wouldn't portrait a realistic sense within the video of a young boy needing a job etc. An example of this which inspired us with this idea is

2. Take off the puppets head and replace it with another real life boys head which would mean that our video would still include the puppet sense, just have another comedy side to it by using another head which could potentially be really good as it would enable us to give the puppet real facial expressions rather than just the same face which it does now. This could also add to our video maintaing a comedy feel. An example of this which has inspired us is this

3. Change the location and use more of a 'doll house' which would emphasise the bright colours and 'plastic' look of everything. This therefore would mean that we still would hold a strong looking video that would stand out the puppet and add a clearer effect of what style our video which is mean't to be 'puppet like' and 'fake'. An example of this idea that has inspired us is this

4. Use the idea of having a puppet set up such as red/black curtains and act out pupet scenes through that during the video to emphasise and develop the idea of using the puppet in the first place to make it clear of the idea and portrait a strong theme throughout the video making it interesting and different.

Filming Progression

When fiming our video we had some difficulties as our location which was my house, we had the cleaner come to the house and we had to hurry up with some of our clips in order to get out of her way this unfortunately happened coninidently on both the days we decided to film. With better organisation we could have re-arranged a day where the cleaner was not there. Aswell as this when we did our first filming session the lightint from outside was a lot darker than the second time we filmed this therefore mean't that in some of the clips the lighting may appear different to other clips.  Also our choice of character became really hard to be able to get Meg (our artist) again to be able to film without her being busy, at college or unable to get to the location. Therefore to overcome this I had to pick her up and bring her back to the location in order to be able to film. With all of these factors combined we had slightly fallen behind with our schedule and missed out some filming of clips meaning we had gaps in our draft which we still need to film. For our final one I think we will refilm certain clips of the video to get our ideal lighting and do the bits we have missed out.

Progress With Digipak

As the digipack deadline is now on Friday it seems that I am slightly behind on track to getting my final digipack in for the deadline. After being given feedback from my first draft, I have started to make these changes and continue with putting it together. I have made changes which surrounds font sizes, texts, logos and image editing. Lastly, all I have left to complete is to complete one of the inside pages of the digipack. I have scheduled today to complete this inside page and fill it with text such as 'credits' or infomation about the album.. Once I have chose to put there, I will then be able to go ahead and start planning how to present and what font/sizes etc I will use into the pack. Similar to how I had done for my draft. Overall, everything seems to be coming in place nicely surrounding the completion of the digipack and advert.

Props

The props and equipment that we need to be able to use and
have access to whilst filming our music video is

- Themed cups and kettle (Vintage)
- Ironing board
- Male suit
- Alfie puppet
- Camera
- Tripod
- Kitchen utensils
- Play station
- Alcohol bottles
- Breakfast items such as milk, bread and jam
- Table
- Chairs
- American Fridge

Draft Magazine Advert

Alfie Music Video Draft 2

Final Magazine Advert

Final Digipak

More Milly Evans Photos

Milly Evans, a set on Flickr.

Final Digipak

To improve my draft digipak it was stated that I need to take more pictures of my artist Milly Evans wearing something plainer such as a black top. As we both struggled to get the same days free, I have not yet taken any more pictures of her. However due to re-filming her today I am will be able to take my pictures and will have them uploaded onto my digipak as soon as possible. Despite replacing the pictures, I have not made many changes to the other pages on my digipak due to my feedback being positive. However it looks a lot less pixelated to my draft and the information is clearer. Here is my final digipak without the two images of Milly Evans.

Improvements

After making our draft video we have noticed that there are many ways that we can improve on. We have therefore made a list of what needs to be changed when re shooting bits of our video.

List of things we need to improve:

·         Lighting needs to be altered – The left hand side is a lot brighter

·         Mise-en-scene – we can make the house look a lot tidier

·         More interesting angles can be used on our artist.  A lot of it seems to be repetitive and standard shots are used

·         We need to be more careful when filming the puppet- there were shots where our arms were visible

Today we have decided to reshoot parts of our video as there are parts that are missing and some that didn’t turn out very well. We will make sure that each of the points listed above are achieved.

Editing our video

When editing our video we had a couple of difficulties, one being that we couldn’t upload the footage onto the school computers easily which resulted in us taking a little longer to make the video. We eventually got the clips working on Livs mac which made it simpler for us as the software that was provided (iMovie) was very straightforward. The other being that we had realised that we had missed some shots and therefore had to add in the spoofs to fill in the missing shots. The shots of our artist worked okay but we both feel that they could have turned out a lot better so we will therefore have to reshoot certain parts. This makes it more difficult for us both as we have to make sure our artist is dressed exactly the same and will have to make her hair and makeup identical to how it was when we filmed it the first time.
As our video is based on a narrative, Milly is singing and acting out the words throughout. This made it very difficult to get the lip syncing accurate. There are parts in the draft where it is clear than it needs to be re-edited. Despite this we feel that we have developed our skills and are quite proud of our draft.

Alfie Animatic

Alfie Music Video Draft

Draft Digipak