Day 1 of the shoot...

The first half of our shoot took place on the afternoon of the 17^th, a post lunch studio setting. The night before we had helped paint our white room, hauled out our hollow piano from the back of a shipping container, and cleaned a huge piece of Perspex, which made up the performance segment of our video. Now, with those necessary props in place we were ready to start filming.

We followed a half improvised, half written shoot schedule, capturing images of the hands on the piano (supplied by our lovely hand double, always make sure your actor can actually play the instrument you need). Luckily for us our actors hands were similar enough and the 2 bits of footage cut together fine. We also shot most of the lip syncing and a few artsy, shallow depth of field shots which we had the time to do. A difficulty arose where our actor was tense on camera. He managed to fidget and maintain ‘panic eyes’ throughout the entirety of the afternoon, making it very difficult for us when logging our footage. He also refused to spit out his gum despite being told constantly to “Stop chewing!”, meaning again we have been compromised when editing.

We got to a part of the shoot we were all nervous and yet excited about, drawing onto the Perspex as if drawing on nothing.  We struggled with how to get the surprisingly heavy piece of Perspex upright without a complex bracketing structure. In the end, we had a man either end of the perspex kindly holding it up for us, and used carefully placed masking tape to guide our actor as to where he was allowed to draw.  Despite one tiny hiccup in the first take, involving a spelling mistake with our artist’s name, ‘Peter and the Wolf’, the footage has come out really well and the drawings have given the effect that we were looking for.

Unfortunately as the day drew to a close, we ran out of time to do one shot idea which I was keen to do, where we threw purple paint over our actor to then slow it down in post editing. However overall the day was a success and we all left with a feeling of relief that it wasn’t a giant failure.

Peter and the Wolf music video; The making of...

Here's our 'making of video' compiled from footage shot on the 2 days. Enjoy!

Digipack Plan...

For our digipack we have come up with a basic structure of what we want it to look like.

On the front cover we want a picture of 'Peter' in a wolf hat, tying in with the name of the band. The picture is a polaroid and it is place on an aged wooden table. He will be holding a red chupa chup, and on the bottom of the polaroid in scribbly writing will be the name of the album 'Lollipop'. On the table next to the polaroid will be a relevant item to him/the album, which hasn't been decided yet.

On the back cover will be the same table, the track listings in black on a white outline/highlight and the wrapper of the Chupa Chup.

On the left inside cover there will be writing on the perspex we used in the studi oset up, thanking all the people who contributed to the album in scrawly writing, surrounded by doodles.

On the right inside cover where the CD goes, there will be a large picture of a lollipop.

Animatic & Feedback...

Here is the anamatic we put together of our music video, with the current working version of the storyboard. To create we filmed each shot for 10 seconds and compiled them into one video, following the song to create a more solid and visual structure than a page of images. The editing process showed us that we really need to think about where we are going to place our cuts, as the song doesn't have a heavy beat to work off of, and the vocals are very fluid and soft. We want the overall effect to be quite cinematic as the film is more about the content than relying on the song.

It is clear from this video that our movie lacks content, which was something that was mentioned when we presented the anamatic in the class. As the song is slow, it is vital that we don't just repeat a small set of images as the audience could lose interest quite quickly. Whilst the content is slow moving, we need a lot of it to keep the movie interesting. As a group we are planning on coming up with a lot more rejuvination ideas for the house, e.g. a notebook begins to write without a person, old flowers blossom as Peter walks past, and an old photo leaps into life when Peter straightens the frame.

Whilst the video may lack content, I think this process has shown the group that we now have a solid framework to build on. Looking at the anamatic it seems the story comes through a lot more than it ever did from just the storyboard alone. It is much easier to visualise the final product now. All we have to do now is fill in the gaps.

Feedback

There is some detail here and plenty of evidence of how your idea is going through a variety of different phases as the group develop it.  You have begun to cover the necessary planning documents, but there are some major gaps in what you have been asked to do this week.  In particular:

• the animatic and evaluation
• shooting schedule

This posts need to go up as soon as possible so that we can start to focus on the production phase.

James

Timeline #3

Timeline #2...

After going through the first version of our storyboard, we edited it down and created a revised version with a slightly different storyline, it has a lot more content and we have included the element of a performance piece at the start, using a piano.

Timeline #1...

Here is the first attempt at a timeline for our music video...

Music Video Timeline...

To take the plans of our music video further, we started creating a timeline to organise the many jumbled ideas of our film into a cohesive order.
However we got halfway through and realised that the due to the nature of our film, it would be better to just produce a storyboard, as it was hard to vocalise the images into words. So we scrapped the timeline, and moved onto drawing out the storyboard.
Below are the scribbled remains of our struggling timeline...

Cast, potential actors for our video...

For our video we are looking for a boy, around the age of 17 (due to the fact that we are looking for someone within the school). Ideally he would in his early/mid 20s, so we shall just have to find someone who looks older that he is.

We want him to have an arty and vulnerable feel to him to match the fictional artist persona. I think that he would probably have a pale complexion with dark hair and a skinny frame. To show you the look we are going for, we compiled a list of models and existing artists who we think would suit the character of Peter.

Conor Oberst - Bright eyes

Asos model

Sam Riley - Actor

Joseph Gordon Levitt - Actor

After having a look around the school we have decided on 2 final options for the character of Peter, who we shall tell of our decision and organise the further details with them.

 

Walter Daley

Taymour Williams

Letter to Warp requesting permission to use the track...

To whom it may concern,

We are a group of A Level students working on an A Level project for a qualification in Media Studies. We are writing to request permission to use the following track as part of this project:

Grizzly Bear - Foreground

With your permission the track would be used as the accompaniment to a short form video that is made purely for assessment purposes and will have no commercial usage. The video will be viewed only by members of the school community and the assessor of the examination board.

The artist and the copyright holder will of course be fully recognised in the pre-production and evaluation material that accompanies the project. We can also include a full copyright notice if required both in the planning material and on the video itself.

Yours sincerely

Helena Lageder, Paula Romy Riemann, Grace Anthony and Leyla Jafarian Sabagh.
Hurtwood House School

Anamatic storyboard...

Here is the anamatic storyboard we produced to outline the action of our music video.

Props List...

Here is the current working props list/mood board for things we will need for the video. We have also been looking into different styles of tutu for our ballerina scene which you can see below.