SR: Reflection on Narrative Shoot #3

Kristian and I filmed some more narrative scenes, after having gotten audience feedback that our narrative was a bit thin, because we didn't have enough scenes of our two character's so that our audience could get to know them. 

Overall it went really well, we wanted to include some more scenes of them being happy together, which we did by filming some scenes of them cooking together and smearing cream on each other's faces. It was quite hard to film, because the actor's autmatically moved out of frame, which meant that we had to film 3 scenes in total and they had  but in the end we managed.

Also, we wanted to film some scenes, where our female protagonist burns the pictures of her and her "boyfriend", because we thought that the slap scenes weren't enough, since it is only a few seconds long and we wanted there to be more emphasis on the breaking up and the negative side of their relationship, since we thought it would also link better with the dark metal genre.

However, one problem that we experienced was that we were not able to film the burning pictures  and the cooking scenes at the same day, because it became dark quite early and we had to film the footage of the burning pictures outside, so that our female protagonist could throw them onto the concrete. Also, we had to print out the pictures first, which took some time.

For the polaroid pictures, we asked our two actors to take some selfies of themselves with out phone after, which we printed them out as the sterotypical polaroid picture. We chose polaroids because we would be able to attract a young female audience, due to the resurgance of polaroid pictures lately. 

TECHNOLOGY: Polaroid Pictures

After they break up we wanted the female protagonist to burn some photos that where taken when they where together. We wanted to burn Polaroid pictures as this was more fitting for a couple stereotype. We got the actors to take selfies using an iPhone 6 which we filmed them doing. Then to get the Polaroid pictures we printed them out using a Bluetooth Polaroid Zip Instant Printer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKda-8GlY_A

Reflection on Narrative Shoot #2

I filmed some more narrative with the 2 main character. When I was filming I took a few things into consideration one of them being where the sun was shining. I didn't want the sun to be facing the camera as this would create a few problem such as their faces would be dark as the sun would blind the camera. I also wanted to film in the sun rather then in the shade as this is supposed to be a happy memory and filming in the shade would give the opposite effect.

I also deliberately filmed hand held shots as this is not only common in narrative filming but this would also create verisimilitude at is feels more personal. But I had to be careful not to have to much camera shack as this would break verisimilitude by looking unprofessional and in some cases could make the viewer fell nauseous.

We also decided to film a diegetic ending where the main actor is sitting on the bus listening to the music, looking out the window and the female protagonist from the narrative walks past the bus window. This gives the audience a bit of narrative enigma as it makes the audience wonder if he was dreaming the the whole thing or if he actually is in the band and its a fragmented narrative as the beginning of their relationship starts at the end of the video.

SR: Reflection on Narrative Shoot #1

Kristian and I went to shoot the narrative scenes together with our male and female protagonist, Emilie and Wayne. Our music video contains a linear narrative, which consists of scenes where the two of them first have ice cream from a shop during the summer and then later on in the music video break-up. 

One thing that we really focused on this time was that our character's would wear different costumes in the different scenes. 

We especially emphasised this by trying to signify different seasons of the year, summer and winter. This was achieved very well with the difference in costume. In the summer scenes, the female protagonist was wearing sun glasses, a flower covered blouse with short sleeves and some nike shoes and the male protagonist was wearing a very simple T-Shirt. By also having them drinking a smoothie, verisimilitude is achieved and the footage really comes accross as having been filmed during the summer. 


Whereas in the winter scene, where the couple fights, they are wearing warmer clothes. Our female protagonist is wearing a warm blue scarve, gloves, a warm jumper and a leather jacket over it, and our male protagonist is also dressed more warmly by wearing a winter coat and gloves.

The only issue we faced with our narrative shoot was that we didn't get enough footage of them being happy together. Unfortunately our actor's weren't available for some weeks and therefore we intend to  film after the winter holidays at the end of February. 

As for the special effects, we added an effect called "Dream", so that it would look as if the leadsinger was having flashbacks back to the time when they were happy and where after a while everything escalated. Our music video therefore follows 2 steps of Todorov's 5-part narrative formula.

SR: Reflection on pool shoot

Kristian and I went to shoot the pool scenes in a pool here in Luxembourg. For this we decided to use a waterproof GoPro so that we could not only get shots of him falling into the water from above, but also underwater. The underwater scenes turned out as the best ones in our opinion, which is also the reason for why we have included so much underwater footage. In conclusion, the shoot turned out quite well and Kristian and I were really happy with what we filmed that day. 

We got our inspiration for the underwater footage from two main videos. One of them being MVid EG9 - Runnin' by Naughty Boy ft. Beyoncé on my blog and the other one being This is Gospel by Panic At The Disco, which Bronwen blogged on. 

After having looked at these two videos, I quickly came to the conclusion that we had to work a lot with special effects for the water to look like an ocean and more ominous rather than a general light blue pool. The picture you see here on the left, is the footage without any effects added yet, whereas the footage below is after I added effects. 

In Final Cut Pro I therefore decided to use one of the color effects called Tint. I had also worked quite a lot with the Tint color effect at AS and had a good experience with it. Hence I decided to go back to this special effect and work with it.

The bubbles that automatically appeared because I was underwater also had a really nice effect and gave an "extra touch" to the shot, rather than it just being shaky underwater footage. 

When working with Tint, it was really important to change the color and work with the amount of Tint there should be in it. If I hadn't changed the color it wouldn't look at all like it does above, since it would really have turned very dark blue and not have the desired effect of an open ocean. 

Due to this, I went for a very dark blue/green color that made the water look very dark. It took me a while to discover which color to use however after a while I found that this was the right one. We also got good audience feedback for it, because in Rough Cut 1 Draft 1, I hadn't worked with any special effects yet and our audience argued that it was to plain and that they wanted to see a lot more special effects, especially for the underwater footage. 

FOOTAGE: Narrative Rough Draft #1

This is a very rough draft of the narrative. There is still a lot of editing still to do this was just to get feedback on what was good and what can be improved on.

Improvement's:

• Before music starts edit to the beat
• Remove shaky footage
• Might use layering (0:18)
• Use layering where one half of the screen is empty/out of focus
• Experiment with filters
• Don't have female protagonist on screen for to long, might ruin the immersion
• Experiment with having two of the same person on screen (eg 0:28 have him stand next to himself)
• Shot the drop through editing

Notes:

• Intertextuality to Blair Witch Project at 0:23
• The singer is not glamorized and due to this audience can identify