Final poster and digipak

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Clever and creative post - but lacking detail in analysis and evaluation of what you were trying to achieve!

In the making of a Digipak & poster. The photo shoot.

In the Making of a Digipak & Poster

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Excellent blogging, fully reflective and knowledgeable of the production shoot, well done.  Try to consider further, any decision making that was made for key shots and themes in the video.  Well done.

Evaluation of shoot!

Evaluation of Shoot

Last friday, the 4th of november we shot our music video for our media coursework. The day before we had been into the media studio to create our set ready to film. The building of our set was reasonably simple yet it took time and care to arrange. We had stars leading up to a very royal red looking thrown. On the steps we stappled red carpet onto them to make them look more grand and also link in with the thrown. Either side of the steps we had two Ionic Columns. The reasons we used these is because it balanced the set out and also allowed us to place objects on top of them. On one of the columns we placed a stack of Flat Caps, we choose to do this because it gave the set a slight twist and also juztaposed the 'Kingly' image. Although we had a shooting schedule we didn't stick to it maybe as much as we should of. We decided to have 3 different sets, these included two in the studio and one in guildford. Because we had such a variation of all three sets and also the weather becoming a concern we couldnt follow the shooting schedule because it meant we would have to come up with more shots to film so we would have a back up if the weather stopped us from filming in Guildford. As a result we ended up filming a huge variety of creative shots in the studio and not heading to Guildford until the late afternoon. 



Our first Set Design



Affi & Georgie were both asked to come to the studio for 9am ready to start shooting, but we soon realised that we only needed Affi for the morning as he was to play the main character and singer. Georgie stayed to watch so she could get prepared for the role she was playing later on in the shoot. One problem was that Affi was not as prepared as we would of hoped. The lyrics are hard to learn and are sang quickly therfore this meant Affi struggled with quite a few of the verses. We gave him many run throughs to allow him to become comfortable with the set and the camera. The last few verses Affi found particulary difficult so we had to let him take time out to read over the lyrics and go back and film it gradually. As a result of Affi not being familiar enough with the words we had to do more wider shots instead of the up closes of his face because otherwise you would of been able to see that he wasnt singing the words right.



Lighting effects


We had a variety of shots which we alternated between. These included :

• Extreme close ups
• Tracking shots
• Establishing shot
• Extreme close ups of different parts of his face
• Shutter Shots
• Side shots of the side of his face
• Shaking effect shots

We had not decided before hand that we were going to use all of the above shots but on the day because we had the worry of the weather we decided to be creative and find more shots we could include that we could use as back ups.

Tricky Shots -
Above is a photograph of Hector using the dolly. The dolly helps you to film a tracking shot and keep it stready. Without the dolly all our shots wouild be fuzzy and wobbly. We had to place the tubing that the dolly ran along all around the set and make sure that there were no tangles or bumps because otherwise the dolly would not run smoothly. Whilst on the dolly you also had to make sure that you kept a steady hand and kept slowly turning the camera the way the dolly was being pushed. Overall i feel the tracking shots looked really professional, i watched them on the television screen and they all ran smoothy.

To get the shaky effect  camera shots we had to slightly shift the camera side to side when we were recording. This proved difficult at times because it was hard to shift the camera side to side quickly, therefore the shaking effect would stall and we would have to record again. We had to find the right balance between the spoeed of the shaking. After a few trials we decided that instead of having the whole shot very shaky we would alternately have the occasional shake. I feel this looked much better as you could actually make out what was being filmed but there was still a little shaking and movement to it.

As i said previously our group decided that we wanted to film with three different sets. Two were in the studio, and the other in Guildford. We wanted a variation of different sets so we could really show the contrast between both characters. We had Affi in the 'Royal' set which included the thrown and red carpet and then had Georgie in the streets of Guildford. This symbolised that 'Affi' had power over 'Georgie' and was almost looking down on her.

Apart from the king themed set we also had a set that consisted of just lights. These lights are called blinder lights. There were three rows of six blinder lights. We had rather a few so when turned on it was incredibly bright. The image we wanted to achieve was to have the lights over powering our characters so we simply could just see their silhouette and the rest would be beams of light.

The weather was going to be an issue when it came to filming in Guildford but we decided to take a risk. Luckily the weather was fine but because we left filming until the afternoon we were loosing light quickly. We chose to film along a river bank that had buildings either side. We wanted it to look secluded and barren. Originally we had only selected a few specific shots that involved 1) an establishing shot & 2) a few shots of Georgia walking towards the camera. To make use of the time we came up with a number of different shots. My favourite was the fast tracking one of Georgia, it involved one of us holding the camera and walking backwards as Georgie walked towards the camera. This did prove difficult because it was hard to keep the camera steady and at the same time see where you were walking. It got dark quickly so we only got an hour and a half to get a collection of shots that our group could bring back to the editing suite, although it was limited time i feel that the group managed to get some really creative and professional looking footage that we could potentially use in the final cut video.

To finish with i thoroughly enjoyed our media shoot day. It was tough at times because there was alot to concerntrate on and also balancing the work between each of the group members but overall it was great fun. I was very nervous about how the shoot would go before we had set up our set but once we got into the studio and started filming everything came together and it all ran smoothly.