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Our video had to be changed on the basis of my right wrist having soft tissue damage and my left one being broke in 2 places. During the half term I was attacked leaving both my wrists temporarily useless. This affected our group massively as it prevented our original story from being able to be put into place. I was assigned to be the role of Matt (the character that follows keir) but due to inconveniences our video had to be rapidly altered. This held our group back as to be a four we were restricted to locations we could use, distances we could travel and time length we could film for. How ever we were able to work around this. With the little time we had left our group managed to scrap a half finished production and start fresh with the little time we had left. With Ethan (guitar player/singer) taking complete controll of the situation he managed to lay out a plan for how this production would work. Leaving me in charge of the camera work. Having the tripod at hand we were able to film a production which in overall content has worked better than our original plan of a fast paced chase scene.

Challenges when filming

The troubles faced whilst filming.

We faced many challanges when filming as to the availibilty of our locations and one of group members (martin) during the half term period broke his left wrist and fractured his right one.
The locations we used were not always available as they were public comunity centres, chapels, studios and street paths. The hardest location we need to film was the african public community centre which held the most dystopian style abonned theatre this fit perfectly with our song of choice as we needed a grotty setting to try and make it obvious Keir (main performer) was in a place of hurt. However the theatre was not always available to our convenience as it was some times closed or unavailable to public use as it was heald for some events.

The public streets were dificult to film as we wern't able to section the streets we used leaving public members walking past shots etc so we filmed minimal in more publicly populated areas.

The chapel was always to our convenience either. As it was a place of worship, people were in there weather it was ceremony occasions or just quiet time to think. The chapel was only for a small part of our piece so we didn't need film loads in there but it took several times off going before we had the privellige of filming inside.

The wrists. When Martin (our forth member) Broke his wrists it made it incredibly dificult for us to film as we had to change the whole stroy line of our production. Leaving us with 3 consistant performers meant we had to shape a new piece with a similar narrative. The story line we used was similar however we had to change vocalist from martin to ethan leaving ethan with another task on his shoulders of learning the whole song vocally and acousticly. Martin was able to use the camera to film which did leave us with a benefit as we had a consistant camera man however the advantage of a camera man did not out weigh the advantage of a performer.

System Error update for photos

The 'Blogger' system has been under repair recently and has prevented us form applying photos to the blog this week, this has set us back a few sessions as the necessity of the photos is apparent when reading and browsing our blog. The system should soon be fixed and operational, when that has happened we will insert the photos where needed.

Equipment Used

Camera

Tripod

Camcorder

Computer systems - Final Cut Pro., Photoshop, Preview, Quicktime.

Studio - Cameras & Systems.

Camera

We have been using a cannon camera provided by the college, when filming the 'outside of studio' shots such as in the theatre, and the outdoor locations. The quality of the camera in pixalation and clarity is shown through our end results. The resolution isn't as high as we would of hoped for but as neither of the team had a better camera or the intention of obtaining a better camera, we had to work with what we were given. The qualities of the camera are seen in the scenes where the natural light is strong, such as the scenes outside. The camera also had a amazingly long battery life, so this was never a factor that occured when filming for various lengthy filming sessions. The elements where the camera let us down, is the poor quality of capture in a darker enviroment for example the use of the Chapel, the picture to be honest looks grainy and murky which if say a HD camera was used, the picture quality would be a lot clearer, creating a higher resoluted shot.

Computer Systems

we used apple mac computers to create our poster for our c-d cover, poster, blogging and editing. We used photoshop as our software for the c-d cover and poster as the layer formating for chopping and changing pictures made it flexible to our convenience as to how are pictures would look. Another reason we used photoshop is the ability to change resolution and colour was made easy using tools such as the magnetic lasso. Photo shop is one of the mot advanced picture editing software and we were able to apply our knowledge in creating the best pictures could using photoshop

The apple macs were also extremely useful for editing when we were editing our music video. Final cut pro is the software we used and managed to produce a video to the highest qaulity we could. Using final cut pro we were able to adjust our video in terms of shot lengths, grainy stock, colour, lip syncing, transitions and fading. This was all useful in contributing to our final piece and making it look as professional as possible. Final cut pro allowed us to be able to piece our video visually as we had created mentally. We have now learnt things from final cut pro which we can apply to future productions.

The studio.

In college we have had acces to a professional filming studio. In this were able to create a dark effect which worked in sync with the story basis of our video as our performer (keir) is meant to be dead. Our vocalist (Ethan) sings in the studio our whole song and we were able to switch between 3 very hightech cameras to beatmatch to our son. The studio allowed us to produce film the most professional part of our music video as it the cameras were of the highest qaulity and stability. The dark effect controlled by the lighting was created by strobes and external lighting. We managed to keep the lighting volume to minimum as the storbes had a control of how dim or bright you wanted. The studio played a major role in our film as we filmed whole sequences in there which we applied in brief clips but contributed heavily to our final product.

tripod

The tripod was used mearly to steady the camera how ever a steady cam was important for some features in our piece. Alot of our piece was hand held to give a shakey effect as our piece was meant to be switching between the reality of life and death.

Location 2: The Abandoned Theatre

For our second location we managed to strike gold and come across 'The African Centre' located just a five minute walk from college, unknown to most poeple, this location perfectly fit our criteria as it was dark, distopian and ruined. Inside the building is the ruins of a 1930s theatre, once used by the BBC this place is know abandoned except for a few locals who are tring to restore it.

We asked for permission to film inside and the people were more than happy as it acts as a way of self promotion to the theatre. The ruins of its stage are clear in the video, and acts to the theme of the dream-like distopia, it also works well as the is natural light coming through from the back of the stage where part of the roof is missing, this helps the camera quality as the picture becomes higher resoluted.

We returned to this location many times to get different types of shots and angles. The variety of locations inside the theatre was truely incredible, from costraphobic pitch black staircases to a wide open bright stage and ripped up seats.

If we had had more equipment and better quality camera we could of filmed the entire piece in there and had so many different location, the cameras lack of quality and light exposure meant that we could and so we varied to other locations such as the studio and the backstreets. This was also decided when we were denied re entry to the theatre for stability and renovation reasons.

Abandoned Theatre Location: Wilberforce Close, Manchester, England M15 5, Uk

Locations 1: Studio

We spent two sessions of filming inside of the Loreto studio, with this time we managed to achieve three successful versions of the song through the performance element, this was produced by Ethan on the first one playing guitar, the second him singing, and the third him doing both together. This in the long run will give a variety of shot mise en scene to play around with when editing. It will also prevent the feeling of repetition being used by the changing set ups.

When in the studio we had the oppotunity of using three cameras at one time to capture different angled and ranged shots. We took advantage of this by have one camera shoot a full body shot from straight on, one camera shooting from a close up side angle of Ethan's face using a focus pull to react to the bass of the music and blur at parts, the third camera we used was a mid-ranged half body shot showing Ethan's upper half of his body, this shot enabled to show the detail in the expression and hand gestures he used when performing the song, it also gave a closer view of the guitar from the full body long shot. Throughout the numerous takes of performing the piece, Martin who was controlling the recording system and the camera choice, switched between cameras 1-3 in syncronisation with the songs beat and top line to represent the link between song and performance. It also helped build the intensity of the songs unlining attitude.

Inside of the studio we took advantage of the professional standard backdrops by using the simplicity of a balck background, then combining it with the powerful spolights. This helped greatly as the dark atmospheric pressure emphasised the sinster attutide the performers gave, teamed with the sharpe beams of light from the raw spolights creating shadows and imagery on the backdrop which influenced the idea of the 'dream' part of our video, espcially for the part where Matt hits Keir with the baseball bat.

Locations

Due to an interesting discovery our original locations have been changed from a built up city to an abandonded theatre. On our first day of filming we were outside an old theatre in Hulme getting some opening shots. We thought we could also get some great shots of the abandonded theatre inside, so we asked someone who was working inside if it would be possible to film in the theatre. After a quick tour round he told us it would be fine but we needed a letter from college to prove we were A Level media students. We returned a few days later equipped with a letter, our camera and our tripod ready to film. The theatre had a great atmosphere and provided many great angles from dark corridors to wide long shots of the stage. We felt it would be better to keep the locations set within/around the theatre to give our video a strong story element. We plan on going back to the theatre to get some more footage to end our piece.