The Root of Memories

For the album title we have chosen to call it 'the root of memories' we picked this video from a advert we saw while we were filming in south shields beach and we think its a really nice saying and it works extremely well with all our ideas. For example we have based the whole of the music video around the female character reminising about her past relationships and the scenes that show her flash backs show the memories the couple shared together so this links the album title with the music video narrative. It also fits perfectly with our theme and the indie pop genre as this style of narrative is usually frequent in many indie pop music videos as we found when researching.

The Root of Memories

This font is our least favourite as a group but we wanted to try a variety of different fonts instead of limiting ourselves to the same style. However we discussed as a group and all think this style may be slightly too feminine for the album title front cover as the cover we got and the artist we have is male. However this is an interesting and nice font so we may be using it somewhere in the digi-pak.

The Root of Memories

This writing is more of a masculine style and this is the type of thing we are heading for. It is clear to read and the thick boldness makes it very eye catching. It is also quite a old fashioned style as it reminds me of a type writer type of font and this will fit well with everything else we have included in our music video that goes with the old fashioned theme such as the females clothing and the rest of the album digi-pak art. We think this font would look extremely good against the simple romantic background of either the sun set or the beach setting but we have not decided which of theme pictures we want yet.

The Root of

Memories

With this font i think it works well with the spacing. We have chosen to use different font sizes and make the 'memories' part in larger font and positioned underneath and more spaced out than the rest. This then makes this work inparticular the focus of the title and gives the audience or anyone who read it a insight into what the album is about. Also the fact that the font is large bold and spaced out makes it easier to read. It is also alot more masculine that the first font we looked at and this then makes it more obvious that it is an album of a male artist more anyone listens to the music. This style is more straight cut and easier to read than the first but not as straight as the second as it still has a vintage look to it as it is slightly squirled and i think this makes it still masculine but also something girls can listen to as it is a album about love and memories.

 

Please comment and give us an idea of what font you think is better.

Digi-Pack Pictures

These are some of the pictures we took when filming at South Shields beach. We all decided these were some of the pictures we wanted to use in the digi-pak. We think it would be nice to use quite a simple image of the beach because these naturalistic and simple theme is quite common for many indie pop album pictures. Also we took these pictures while we were filming at the beach so it all links together with the beach setting and enviroment. We used a app on an iphone called 'Instagram' and this let us put a nice effect over the image. For the image of the poster we saw at South Shields we used a filter that gave an old fashioned vintage colouring and style to it and this is the theme we are going to stick to for the whole album art, digi-pak and magazine advert and this will help all of our project tie in well together.

Balloon problems

When it came to editing the clip with the female character and the red balloon we added the 'leave colour' effect that we had been using successfully on previous clips and and we found that because we had to mess around with the contrast and brightness of the clip to make it look better this effected the 'leave colour' effect and lead to it not working. We obviously wanted to just leave the red balloon as the only colour in the clip as this is something we are using through out as i have talked about in previous blog posts but because it was a sunny day when we changed the contrast to a better colour it then made various parts of the characters face and hair remain the same colour as the balloon and this then doesnt give the red balloon effect we are really wanting to use. We are on working together to find another solution to using this effect and using the internet to help us with various tutorials that will give us the same result. Hopefully this won't effect the red balloon idea and we will find a solution soon.

Black and white test

This is a quick video I put together t show a couple of the beach shots we are using during the black and white part of the video. I think since we added this effect it makes the video look alot clearer and gives the video a more meloncholy and quite calm feeling which is the mood we are wanting to portray to the audience. While we were filming we took quite a few shots of various little bits of things we found on the beach such as the stone/rock things you can see in this clip. We thought it would be good to include quite a few stop snaps of these throughout the whole music video and this would make the naturalistic theme we are wanted come through more. We picked this type of idea when we did our research into the genre. I looked at the music video for Old Pine by Ben Howard and this type of thing is frequent throughout and that influences us to include a similar thing but at the beach for our music video.

Red Balloon 'Leave colour' effect

Before we had filmed all the shots at the beach with Catherine and the balloon we tested our the effect to make the shot black and white but with the remaining red. We did this on a picture of a poppy using the effect in Adobe Premier called 'Matte' this worked fine and we were hoping it would work the same for the balloon. However when we were filming it was a windy day and this made the balloon move a lot. When we went to use the same 'matte' effect on Premier it didnt work properly due to this problem. We then worked as a group to play around with other effects and other ways to do the red balloon idea and finally we were able to work out another way which was called 'leave colour' and this did the same thing that it had with the poppy.

Retrospective overview

From the beginning of the music video project me and my group have researched in a lot of detail the codes and conventions of the indie pop genre and identified what makes it different from other genres. For example I looked at various artists and bands that go by this genre and picked out certain things that are saw commonly used throughout their style, existing music videos and adverts. I found that the majority if not all music videos featured a heavy naturalistic feel throughout and this is most evident in artists such as Ben Howard, Mumford and Sons, Lana Del Rey and Noah and the Whale that i have done most of my research on. 

I also identified that there tends to be a narrative focusing on love throughout the music videos and songs of indie pop artists and this has helped build on ideas for mine and my groups music video. We chose our main location to be a beach as this fits in well with the naturalistic feel and tranquil style that is common for this genre and we have focused the narrative around Catherine’s female character and Ryan’s male characters past relationship. I found that a lot of music videos and album art of artists going by this genre that feature one significant object whether it be an instrument that is frequently used or a balloon which is what we have chosen to be the main symbol of our project. We thought it was a good idea to use this as it represents the idea of love with the red colour and it is something that the female character will be seen holding throughout the music video until the end when we releases it which will signify her moving on and letting go of her past relationship. This narrative that we have chosen fits in well with the song Lover’s Eyes by Mumford and Sons as it is a song about love. We also chose the female character’s clothing around the indie pop genre by dressing her in vintage style clothing as we found this was something that was common in people featured in indie pop music videos such as the artists themselves or the characters that the music video focuses on. We also decided to use the balloon throughout the digi-pak and the advert as research has also shown that there tends to be a theme throughout a lot of artists work and music and this will make our project fit in well with existing indie pop work.  

I think this year I have done a lot more planning and research into the genre we have chosen and this has enabled me and my group to be more organised and that has made our filming a whole lot easier. We have also considered other alternatives in case we have any problems with filming and this is something I did not think about last year. We also thought more about what we all want the music video to look like and this gave us a lot of interesting ideas to consider for the story board as well as the shots we plan on using. This made filming easier and gives us more variety of shots to chose from. We also hired out two cameras for our project this year rather than one and this made filming better as we were able to get loads of footage that included everyone’s ideas. This made the editing process easier and more interesting as there was various shots we didn’t look at as a group but that has been effective and something we plan on using in the final piece. I have also maintained my blog more than i did last year and hopefully this will help me get a better grade. Although when looking over my blog entries i feel i could be blogger more times a week about everything i have done during my media lessons so when it comes to submitting my work it gives other people reading my blog more of an insight to any problems we as a group may encounter and how we have overcome them. I am pleased with the outcome of our first set of filming and this has given us all more confidence with the second set which we will hopefully have done by next week. 

Footage overview

Today we looked through all the footage we got from filming on Sunday and we were all pleased with the majority of the shots as they captured the location well. However we think that when we film our second set of footage that will involve all the scenes of the couple we will use more adventurous shots because we seemed to limit a lot of the beach footage to simple pans and close ups. However these shots are still useful and effective because they show the setting perfectly. We are going to use a variety of shots for the second set of filming and hopefully this will enable us to boost up our grades and getting a higher level and give us a good final outcome. 

First part of filming

We completed our first part of filming on Sunday at south shields beach. We think we got some good footage because it was a nice day and it made the beach look good. Unfortunately we had some problems with the wind and the balloon but we think we got some good shots regardless however it may make the effect we are wanting to use harder to add. We hired out two cameras to use when filming because this would allow us to get as much footage as possible. We each took turns filming various shots of either Catherine's character walking around the beach with the balloon or some simple pans and close ups of the beach and the sea and we followed our storyboard as well as added some other effective shots that we thought looked good. Luckily the beach was quite empty so we didn't have any problems of people being in the shots when we didn't want them to be. Today in our lesson we went through the footage from the first camera and deleted anything we didn't want and made a folder with some behind the scenes shots of how we filmed things and explaining why we did them.

Camera problem

Unfortunely we switched one of the cameras on tonight and it was flat and we had some difficulty getting the battery out to charge, luckily we managed to and we are now charging it for filming tomorrow.

Filming delay

We had orginally planned to have our friend Ryan Hawkins with us today so we could film the shots that were the females flash backs of her past relationship, however he is extremely ill so we are delaying it till he is feeling better. Fortunately this will not set us back too far as we are still planning on filming the beach shots at the weekend and that is going to be the majority of what the music video is focusing on so when it comes to getting the shots involving the male it won't take long.

Contingency idea

Me and my group have decided it would be a sensible idea to come up with a back –up plan in case we are prevented from filming at the beach due to various reasons such as the weather or any other problems that may occur. We decided we would film on a setting similar to our secondary location that is a nature reserve with plenty fields and woods etc. However it may make the music video less effective as we will have to be cautious that the secondary location showing the past relationship of the female character reminiscing is noticeably different so the audience understands that the two parts that will be featured throughout the music video are two different places and times. We will still be using the balloon idea as we think when it comes to editing and having it the only colour in that part of the video it will look effective and help tie the music video in well with the digi pack/album art and advert we will also be producing. We have briefly looked at the location for our back up plan and we are still able to get some similar shots to our initial idea. Fortunately we will still be able to keep the scenes of the female character walking around alone in black and white and this will make it a clear difference from the scenes of the character looking back at the past relationship that will be in colour. We will also make sure the female is shown wearing different clothing when it is the scenes showing her in the past and this will also help make it evident that it is her reminiscing. 

Call sheet x3

Time to meet	9.45am 11th November
Meeting location	We will be meeting in Durham bus station
Location of filming	We will be filming at south sheilds beach
Description of filming location	See other call sheet on 17th October
Group	Kelly Senior, Sarah Hewitt, Catherine Kirk and Ellie Snowball
Characters	Catherine Kirk will be playing the female
Props	See call sheet from 17th October
Other info	See all sheet from 17th October

Filming Sunday 11th

 

We checked the weather for Sunday the 11th of november and it seems to be good weather so we decided this is definitely the day we are going to go and film at the beach.

Storyboard

 

This is our storyboard for our indie pop music video.

Filming delay

We met up as planned today to film the beach scenes but unfortuntely once we got to the beach it was raining and this prevented us from getting any good clips so we have moved filming till next sunday which will be the 11th of november. We will be making another call sheet with the information on for the next day of filming and hopefully the weather will stay nice!