Update of the Week

This week, we filmed our music video for our media studies coursework. We were one of the first groups at the college to film, which meant our shooting schedule and storyboards had to be completed on the Friday before we started shooting, so they could be approved by our teacher. Now that filming is complete, we must spend the week following half term working on our digipak and advert, before beginning editing the following week. The editing process takes four weeks, and all this time will need to be used wisely, so it is important that we finish our digipak and advert this week.

Second day of shooting

Today we completed our filming of the media coursework. We shot the scenes at Clifford's Tower, at the phonebox, in Coney Street and in the Museum Gardens. This meant that our filming is now sucessfully completed. We kept to time well and have ensured that we have all the footage we need. Editing will now commence on November 8th. Being one of the first groups to film, we now have the week beginning the 1st November for completing our digipak. Today we took a number of photos for the digipak also, and have decided on a different front cover to the one shown in the original draft. We also have additional photos in case we change our mind on what pictures to use.

First day of shooting

We completed our first day of shooting at 4 pm today. We made a good start on our video, shooting the house scenes, bus stop scenes and establishing shots, although we still need a shot of a flat block. We overcame some problems early in the day, when we unable to get hold of a bear suit. In order to continue work whilst waiting for the suit, we shot the house scenes, which do not contain the bear, meaning that we did not fall behind schedule.
We asked permission before filming outside of the shop today, so we do not have any issues there. We chose to shoot the shop today, as they are near to the house we were filming in. When shooting in the house, the necessary changes, such as the removal of the poster and rearrangement of instruments were made in the bedroom we filmed in. Overall, we had a fairly productive day of filming.

Our locations continued

A key part of our video takes part when our main character is waking up on his unusual day. This takes place in his bedroom, and below I wil post an image of the room we intend to use.




We also intend to use this image for the front of our digipak, but there will need to be some changes made to the room, such as the poster will need to be taken down.



We still need to choose a shop to shoot ourside, and a bus stop, but hopefully this will not take too much longer, as shooting commences on Monday. The bus stop will need to be in town however, as we will only have the bear suit for one day.

Update of the Week

This week we have completed our storyboards which I have now published on the blog, although the scans may need to be redone due to issues with contrast. We have also found out that we are shooting on Monday and Tuesday next week, which will be the 18th and the 19th, so we have had to finish our shooting schedules, which are posted below. All details have been removed for privacy issues.

Whilst I was working on the shooting schedule, Nathan and Kassie worked on the storyboards, and Beth wrote a shooting script, pictured below.

Storyboards

These are our storyboards, which will be used when we head out filming to plan our shots

The first three shots are establishing shots, used as we zoom in towards the house where our star is asleep. The fourth shot is the first sighting of the star, who is asleep in bed, and as an alarm is played he will wake up and start to get up. In the sixth shot, we see an abrupt cut to him coming down the stairs, before entering the kitchen. The camera will then zoom in on a noticeably empty bread bin.

On the second sheet, our first shot sees the star frustrated by his lack of breakfast, but by the second, the issue is overcome by a second character handing him a piece of toast, from which he takes a bite and rapidly discards it. In the song, there are lyrics about heading to a shop, so our character goes to a shop, and no sooner than he closes the door, it opens again, and he reappears with arms full of shopping. The first introduction to the two other characters that feature throughout the video appear in our 16th shot, sat at a bus stop, where our star joins them.

In the 17th shot our character is looking for a bus ticket, and when he cannot find one, the camera zooms in on his disappointed face. However, in the following shot, he spots a ticket under the bear paw, and is able to use this to get on the bus. We see an extreme close up of his happy face, before zooming out and finding he is in town. The character walks down the street with the bear and the busker following, before turning a corner, where the others continue to follow him.

Our character continues his journey through town, and eventually comes to a telephone box, where the bear is stood inside on the phone. The group then arrive at Clifford's tower, and start dancing on the slopes, before the final shot features the group saying good bye, where the bear high fives our main character.

Possible locations

As we have been unable to go and visit York yet, I have used Google Maps to get some images of possible locations.
The first one here is Clifford's Tower

Another possible location is Spurriergate

A third possible location is Coney Street. There are two images here. I personally think the second one would be better as I quite like the idea of using the mansion house as a background.

Finally, another possible location I found is St Helen's Square

These locations are good because they are all near to each other so we would not need to travel too much, which could be costly. We still need to consider a possible bus stop for our video, and the houses we are using.
All images are (C) Google Maps

Update of the Week

This week, we began our plans for the storyline, performance, costumes and locations for the video. These are published below on this blog. We are also drafting our storyboards so that we will be one step closer to going out and filming.



Our initial ideas include an establishing shot of the house where the man lives before we cut to his room, head downstairs, and finally finish in the streets of York. As soon as the man steps outside of his house, the music will begin. As the song we have a chosen is only 2 and 1/2 minutes, we will have around 30 seconds of silence at the beginning while we set the scene, and our actor gets up. This is actually fitting, as the song is a fairly happy one, and the happy events do not start occurring until the man leaves his house, and is handed a piece of toast.




We have also been considering possible locations, as our earlier plans show, and two of these may be the City Walls of York and another street for him to walk down (The Shambles is pictured) although neither of these are definite yet.

Planning the Video

This week we began making plans for key aspects of our video, and started storyboarding.

This is a list of the key aspects, such as costumes and locations, that will be used in our video.

The storyline...

The video will be about an ordinary man going about his usual daily routine, random, but positive events occur. When our character leaves his house after discovering he has no bread or milk, a piece of toast is handed to him, and later balloons will be handed to him. Other aspects in the story will include a busker playing a guitar riff and a man dressed as a bear. The theme of the video is that positive events will remedy the negatives that could have happened.

Why we chose this...

The Coral's videos are unusual yet quite simplistic, so we came up with a similar theme, but expanded on it with our own ideas.

Performance...

We are still completing our final ideas on the performance, but these are some we have decided on so far.

• bear pops up occasionally in the shots, "playing" the acoustic guitar


• the actors handing the balloons and toast sings along to certain parts of the song

Why we chose this...

A bear often appears in the Coral's music videos, so we wanted to continue this theme and there is often someone singing along in their other videos.

Our locations...

The video begins in his home, when he is getting up and leaving, and then continues in the streets of town, possibly on the city walls.

Why we chose this...

The Coral's videos are filmed generally in average streets/fields in England, and they all have a distinctive English look.

Our costumes...

For the main character - Converse, casually stressed jeans, t-shirt with some sort of design, dark casual cargo jacket

Busker - someone dressed scruffily

Bear - if we include the bear we will need to hire a bear suit

Why we chose this...

The main character will fit the stereotype of typical Coral attire, while the ideas of a musical bear came from the "Dreaming of You" video, where the bear was featured playing a trumpet.

Update of the Week

This week, we have continued our work on the coursework. We spent much of our first lesson this week studying some of the Coral’s other videos, and like the album covers we had previously looked at, we discovered that they are very diverse. They all have a confusing theme running beneath them, but the actual stories in the videos vary completely. One features the Coral singing on a mountain, whilst another features an elderly lady dancing. The theme of a bear also reappears, this time with someone dressed up as one. The videos largely feature crosscuts between their storylines, and shots of the band singing.

We have also discovered further steps in our coursework this week, such as creating a shooting schedule and planning a storyboard of shots for our film. We are still working on our digipak, as the plans need to be carefully put together. Although it will be done in Photoshop, we are planning on paper and using other programs whilst we become more confident with using Photoshop, as most of us have not used it since planning our magazine in last year’s coursework.