Below is our finished music video...

Below are the external panels of our Digipak. Left is the back and right is the cover

Below are the external panels of my Digipak

Below are the external panels of my Digipak
Left is the back of the album and to the right is the front

Below are the internal panels of our Digipak

Below are the internal panels of our Digipak

Below are the internal panels of our Digipak

Below are the internal panels of our Digipak
Click on the image below to be directed to our website


Sunday 28 February 2016

R+P Post 20: Reflections so far/ looking ahead

I feel that my group has worked extremely efficiently up to this point in the process. This is because we have all worked to our strengths. For example, I enjoy drama and literature so I wrote and re-wrote the script many different times in an attempt to get a quality script. Pheobe has very good organisational skills so she took charge of particular elements of research such as mood boards. Alex is very technical, so took charge of figuring out how we would achieve certain technical challenges such as our GoPro shots. Georgina enjoys drama so she participated as an actor. By working to our strengths we ensure an efficient work force of a high quality which resulted in us finishing our tasks very quickly.

Looking ahead I am looking forward to our two remaining shoot days and hoping that we do not repeat any of the mistakes which were made on the test shoot. I am somewhat anxious about the editing process as I have not edited in a while, however, I am sure that I will re-establish all of my previous skills once I have revised the software a bit. 

R+P Post 19: Our rough cut

Our rough cut was a great opportunity for our group to get a reasonably accurate idea of what our final edit would look like. We were able to practise all of the editing techniques that we will use in our sequence and figure out which techniques looked best. For example, we made decisions on which shot transition types we would use in order to create a more professional looking sequence. We also keep theories such as the 30 degree rule and continuity in mind when editing. Creating a rough cut also meant that we were able to find the planned aspects that we did not work or no longer liked. Once we were able to pin point these aspects, we made suitable alterations to our storyboard. Overall, I feel that making a rough cut was extremely valuable as it gave us a great idea of what we had done correctly and what we had to improve.

Thursday 4 February 2016

R+P Post 18: Our test shoot


Our test shoot was a very good learning curve for our group as we encountered many issues which we will hopefully not encounter again. 
some issue we had
There were some issues that could have been prevented by our group having better communication with each other. For example, people arrived at the wrong meeting location, whilst others arrived at completely the wrong meeting time. This created a shaky start to our day, however, once everyone had arrived the shoot began to improve dramatically. Throughout the day we did encounter other issues which we had no power over. Issues such as rain meant that we had to take a break from shoot which had a knock-on effect on the rest of our shoot schedule. We also struggled to continue shooting at our second location due to a power out at the house. This meant that we were unable to shoot some of our shots as they required electronics which obviously couldn't be powered. It also affected the quality of our shots as we were forced to shoot using only natural light, which was difficult as it was late in the afternoon. In an attempt to overcome this we change the iconography of our shots so that they received as much lighting from the Sun as possible.

R+P Post 17: Our planned costumes, hair and make-up

In order to have good characterisation for our characters, Pheobe created an extensive mood board for each of them. These tables had sections including the character's clothes, hair and accessories, characteristics, references and the actor playing them. We believed that this was the minimum amount of information needed in order to truly get a feel of each character for both the group members and the actors playing them.  


Mood board for Craig's character


Mood boards for the character of David

Mood board for the character of Shaniqua.
I think that creating theses boards were very useful as we created a direct reference point for all of our decisions, increasing the level of characterisation for each character. Overall, they acted as a very effective way of helping to bring our characters to life.

R+P Post 16: Casting


We chose Reuben to play the part of Craig as he is a very confident actor that take A-Level drama. We also felt that he had many similarities to Craig such as their age, look and certain personality traits. Reuben is also a very reliable person and has participated in other people's previous media projects, making it an easy decision to cast him as Craig.

We wanted Alex to play David as he had the particular aesthetic that we envisioned for this character. He has many parallels to the character of David such as the way they dress. This meant that he instantly stood out as an obvious choice to play this role.

We chose Alex and Georgina to play our bullies. Georgina was chosen in order to increase our representation as we had previously planned to have two male bullies, however, we found that we have no gender representation within our sequence. Originally we had planned to have bully number 2 played  by an actor with a different ethnicity, however, we felt that this would be a negative ethnic representation. Using members of our teams as actors was easier as we had to rely on less people and could travel easier.

R+P Post 15: Our planned filming location, set design and props

For our shooting locations we chose Boywer's Water (a forest area) and Alex's house. We chose Boywer's lake as Georgina was farmiliar with the location and we felt that we would be able to get a very good variety of shots in such a large forest area. We then chose Alex's house as it was large enough to film in and also meant that we had to do less changes to the decor of the room as Alex and Craig would have similar rooms. Below I have included a detailed list of all of our sets created by Georgina. Along with a description of the location, it also has a list of props for each location.  
                             
Props were very important in our sequence as they suggest a lot about our characters. For example, we ensured that Craig had his notebook on him at all times to show his great attachment to it and it acted as a running motif throughout the sequence. By doing this we immediately suggested Craig's introverted nature. Props were also essential in the setting up of Craig's room as we felt this would be a great opportunity to reflect some of Craig's characteristics. We added subtle props such as posters of films such as 'Casablanca' and 'North by North West' to reveal Craig's quirky nature. Despite only appearing in the background, we felt that small details were essential to create a three dimensional character. This idea was inspired by films such as 'Submarine' as we felt that the set design was extremely effective at reflecting the protagonist's characteristics and interests quickly. 

R+P Post 14: Our Call Sheet

For our main shoot we made a call sheet in order to ensure that all of our shoot day was carefully organised and planned out. We gave copies to all of our group members including our actors so that everyone was aware of where they had to be and when. On our call sheet we included all of our group member numbers in case of an emergency. We set ourselves goals of when we should be at particular locations so that we were efficient with our time.

R+P Post 13: Our Shoot-Board

We created shoot boards so that our day would be carefully and efficiently planned out. On our shoot board we included:
  • A visual representation of the shot we wanted to take
  • The shot number
  • The location of the shot
  • The time the shot would be taken
  • The actors in the shot
  • Any dialogue within the shot
  • Who was in charge of the which element of the shot
  • The amount of takes we took
We organised our shots by location as a way to save time during our shoot as it meant that we kept moving from different sets to a minimum. Other time saving methods put in place were deciding who was in charge of which element of each shot before the shoot as it ensured that all of our group was aware of what was going on. By assigning different shooting times to different locations we were able to manage our time very efficiently, tailoring breaks for our actors and crew. However, we underestimated how long some of our shots would take to produce , meaning that we fell behind schedule at certain points.
A section of our original shootboard

For our main and back-up shoot we refined our original shoot board, creating a more structured yet basic version. During out test shoot we identified shots we no longer liked and removed these from our shoot board. This meant that we were left with the shots that we were sure we wanted to include and were able to identify these shots with great ease. In the new version of our shoot boards we were able to take some of the extra columns out as we felt that they were no longer necessary.
A section of our final shootboard

R+P Post 12: Our Animatic

To produce our animatic we took live photos of the pictures on our storyboard. We then put these pictures on a timeline on Adobe software pro. On this timeline we also added music, dialogue and titles so that we could roughly visualise what our sequence would look like. We also worked on the timings within our sequence and used the trial and error method to figure out which looked best.
Creating an animatic was very useful as we were able to see any issues within our sequence. For example, we were able to sort out timing issues with the placement of our voice over. By cutting it down in certain areas, we were able to ensure that the dialogue within the sequence matched the iconography of the shots.

R+P Post 11: Our Timeline and Storyboard


Our timeline
For our timeline we created three sections that consisted of a soundtrack, dialogue/voice over and visuals segment. By doing this we were able to clearly map out what we wanted to include within our sequence and at which point. This method meant that we were able to figure out the specifics of our sequence. For example, we were able to ensure that the visuals included at any point matched the dialogue by altering where/how long we included the dialogue for. Overall, this was an extremely useful exercise as it enabled us to manipulate our sequence for the better, for example, it made continuity issues easier to spot and remove.
Our Storyboard
To create our storyboard we put post sticky notes on a large piece of A3 sugar paper. 
We used different coloured notes to represent different shot types. This made our ideas easier to see visually. Our key: Yellow=Mid shot Blue=Close-ups Orange=Long shots. Using post stick notes meant that we could easily swap our shots and shot order depending on what suited our sequence more. We could also asses whether we had enough variation in our shot types by looking at the distribution of different colours. By varying shot types we created a sequence that was more interesting visually and therefore more entertaining. When deciding which shot to use, we got inspiration from many film openings. For example, in the film 'Submarine', close ups are often used to evoke a character's emotion. We also decided to do this as it was a quick and effective way to accurately portray the mindset of our character.