In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real life products.

I wanted to try and keep to the basis forms and conventions for my advert cover. The reasoning behind this is so it appealed to more people who are into hip-hop music, if other adverts do similar things and sell well then it means something is working well which is the primary reason I wanted to keep this as close to the general stereotype of hip-hop magazine as possible. The way I conformed to this stereotype is having just the model on a back ground with a small obstruction, in this case the artists name over the eyes. This is very common for adverts and front covers in XXL magazine (the magazine my advert would have been in). I decided to challenge the codes and conventions when it came to my CD cover, my reasoning for this is I wanted it to stand out and be different to give my artist their own personality rather than just conforming to a basic image of his face on the front which is exceptionally common in hip-hop CD covers. Making the CD cover obscure makes it stand out more and is more recognisable that others which may look very mundane.  For my main product I wanted to conform as much as possible in order to make the video more appealing. In my video I wanted a lot of quick shots in order to give a fast moving and upbeat atmosphere which is very typical in hip-hop and rap music.

Howdid you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning & evaluation stages

Social media

•During the research stages I decided to use a diverse selection of media platforms such as Facebook, Blogger, Twitter and Youtube as these all often offer music videos both produced by official companies as well as people doing a similar course to myself. This helped with both getting inspiration for a music video as well as helping me to understand the codes and conventions of the different music genres in videos. The main platform that I used for research was Youtube as it showed a lot of different types of music videos helping me to understand what fans of different music genres like to see in a music video, this varied from slam metal to pop to hip hop. Eventually I decided to do hip hop as I found it to be more convenient to film a music video of this genre. After doing research I found the music videos are often a lot of quick shots in varying locations, normally in front of somewhere rundown or in front of a car which I incorporated into my music video several times in order to fit the genre well and focused a lot on the codes and conventions. Another place I found to be helpful was music channels, although they are not as popular were a great source of information as they show only music videos once again allowing me to get a better understanding of the type of videos different genres of music get.

Another great platform that helped with constructing my videos idea was Instagram. Almost all celebrities use this and this helped find outfits for my model to allow him to fit the genre more effectively, commonly hip hop artists wear clothing like snapbacks and Gucci which I tried to implement into my music video.

Photoshop

 

To create the ancillary texts I primarily used Photoshop as I had a lot of experience with this program as I use it on a day to day basis. I decided to change up my design as I felt my new design was more practical and all round fit the atmosphere of my song more effectively than my previous design. I opted to use Photoshop over other software's as I have significantly more experience with Photoshop allowing me to use my skills to the best of my ability. I created the entirety of my front cover on Photoshop, I started off with just a regular stock image of a person and then used the magnetic lasso tool to highlight his outline and coloured him in black making a blank black image. Once I had done this I coloured the background in a pink colour, I got inspiration for this from using various vaporwave backgrounds which I felt was not as successful. Once I had done this I wanted to start playing around with the black image and decided to colour in the inside of him and keep an outline which I felt worked very well and it fitted in well with the genre. As for the background I didn’t want to keep the same pink on the front so I used a crystalize texture on it in order to change it up and make it more diverse to the colour on the front. I decided to put the font in white for the back to once again keep on the theme of vaporwave. One issue I had when first making the back cover was making sure the font was an equal distance away from one another, in order to make sure it was accurate I used guidelines in Photoshop at 10% each time in order to keep them an equal distance. I feel this worked very well and makes it look very neat which is what I was aiming for.  For the extras such as parental advisory and the barcode etc. I used google images to obtain the “Parental Advisory” logo for the front cover, this is a very common thing to be on CD covers for music of this genre. As for the XL recordings logo I used a black and white box and used the straight lasso tool to etch out the “X & L” and coloured them in the same as the background and then applied the crystalize filter to it similar to the rest of the background. The barcode I used a barcode generator and for the remainder I used the text tool in Photoshop.

 

Serif MoviePlus X6 & Paint

 

Similar to the reason I used Photoshop, I decided to use Serif for my editing as I have used it in almost every project previous to this one meaning I knew how to use it although be it limited as Serif is not very advanced. Initially I wanted to use Sony Vegas cs6 as I use that extremely often at home but we were given specific instructions to use school computers to avoid any technical issues with laptops etc.

For the majority of my editing I used a frame by frame animation technique involving paint. For each frame I wanted to animate I needed to snipping tool the frame, paste it into paint, draw the outline with my graphic tablet (Huion h420) and then save the image, paste it back into serif and & overlay it over the frame I wanted to change. This created a lot of lag problems in server because it was trying to render 60 different images for every one second which for school computers is a lot. In order to fix this I deleted the clip of the frames unanimated and then dragged the jpeg’s down into the slot where the clip would have been, although a long process it was worth it eventually.

In planning stages Serif came in very useful when I was planning my video as I was able to make an accurate animatic on it by scanning in images of my storyboards via the page to computer scanner and then crop each frame and place them in and extend the length of the still image to that of the shot length to see if everything would fit. At first it was slightly too long but a few small changes and reductions of some shots allowed it all to fit and flow well.

 

 

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

I will be answering this in two ways, the first will be in a text format here and the second will be a short video I composed to go over some finer details.
The main piece of feedback I was given is that the animations worked very well and I agree with this, although a lengthy process I feel like the work was worth it in the end as it fits well with the codes and conventions of a hip-hop video, these being quick paced and sometimes quite "out there" in terms of editing. From this I would say if I got the opportunity to I would have more animations in more parts as well as making a few a bit longer.

How effective is the combination of your main product and anciallary text

In this evaluation I have created a short video with the main actor in my music video and we are going over how both he & I feel about my main video and the bonus ancillary texts.

Finished product.

A few days ago my final piece came to a finish. It's be a long time coming and I'm glad to finally say that both the music video and the ancillary text's have been fully completed. There were a few complications which meant I was unable to post before this date. I will link bellow both the ancillary and the music video.
One issue I had whilst filming was lighting and general lip syncing. Often the model would sing the line quicker or slower than the original artist and would need to be reshot as you could clearly see the actor was not singing. Something that went well in this aspect was the fact the actor fit the voice very well which I feel makes the video more believable.
Editing was something that took up significant chunk of both time and effort as for a lot of it I needed to redraw the various animations for e v e r y frame which filmed in 30fps was a very gruelling task but I endured through it and got it done and I feel it was worth it in the end.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQH6qbd0vLI

Music Video

The final product is coming to a close very soon, I have a few more small edits to do as well as my model being ill delaying the process for my final shots a bit, I will be hoping to finish it within the next few days.
The primary issue here was the outlines and frame by frame editing which has taken more time than I have expected and I had a lot more to do than I had anticipated. I have finished the vast majority of this now but of course I have a few shots to finish shooting once I have filmed them I need to edit them.

CD cover

The CD cover has been completed. I went through a multitude of different designs to experiment with which I felt was best and most appropriate for my target audience. I eventually settled with the image bellow as I felt it was more appealing to my target audience rather than my other designs. It's simple design makes it stand out from other CD covers which is important as it will catch a viewer's eye and possibly make them have a second look. The parental advisory also allows viewers to know its for a more mature audience. I opted to have the album name on the side and just the artists name across the front which will capture fans' eyes. I placed the artists name across where the eyes would be on the outline as often when people look at an image they will look at the eyes first meaning the initial viewing will be of the artists name.

Editing

Editing is now in full swing, there was a lot of lag when I was doing outlines and I needed to find a way to resolve this without compressing the videos as this would remove the currently high quality, I experimented with various different ways including pre rendering but to no joy. Eventually I decided to cut and delete the parts of the clip that were no longer required and move the PNG images down and to my surprise this worked and eliminated the lag as serif was no longer trying to render both the clip and 40 odd images on top of that clip eliminated the frame rate issues.
The photography has been completed by as of the moment my camera has been misplaced when I allowed someone else to use it for their photography. Once I get it back I will be uploading the images and starting work on my advert magazine and cd cover.

Filming over half term and editing progress

Over the course of half term we were set the task to begin filming for our music video, I managed to acquire all of the footage I needed from outside of school during this time making it easier in future as I am able to record the remaining footage during lesson time.
Editing has begun and it is a lengthy process, for each frame I need to screenshot and crop each frame to then put it into either paint of Photoshop and draw the white outline and then replace that singular frame back in serif with the edited image, as of the moment I have managed to do 31 frames and am over half way with the first shot that I need to edit in this way. If things keep up at this rate I'll have more than enough time to finish.

Animatic

Had a few issues uploading this alongside my storyboards so I have uploaded this in a different blog update.

Storyboarding and animatic have finally come to an end.
This has taken significantly longer than I would have wanted because I wanted to make sure the animatic was as accurate to my video as possible with timings. After tweaking it a bit I have finally finished and edited together my animatic. The storyboarding had a minor detour when I managed to forgot how the song went and I story boarded a large portion of it incorrectly causing me to have to start that section again, overall glad its done and am looking forward to starting the filming in the coming days.

 

Music video treatment

Treatment
-Headlines with artists name, potential pictures of him with a girl
Paparazzi
Highlighting his fame and progression
Showing off girls and money- generic

Smoked room, guy sitting on chair/bed looking down
close up of back of girls legs, clothing drops and the legs walk forward implying he's promiscuous which fits the stereotype of rappers being very promiscuous.

-Verse starts actor jumps off of a low wall and begins rapping- jump cut to a room with the actor and the girl from the first scene, actor throws stuff off a table onto the floor implying arguing etc
Cuts back to him in a different area rapping, a lot of junk in the background, filmed by some large containers looking like an abandoned area. 
Lyric "son of a gun" makes gun symbols with hands.
as the verse ends spins hands at camera, camera spins as a transition to chorus.

Chorus
Sat in a chair in the middle of a field.
Circling shot of actor pointing upwards "so far so far"


-Next verse
lyrics "extra extra" shot of a news paper with actors face and name on (artists name not actual name)
actor walking down a road and throws news paper towards the camera "double triple doubted" will have small animation  emphasising this, continues shot until next chorus, parts of it will be animated via Sony Vegas and Photoshop

-Chorus
Sat in a chair in the middle of a field.
Circling shot of actor pointing upwards "so far so far"


-Final verse
Singing final verse on a stage, empty dark room no one watching, camera zooms in on the lyric "so I sang" lifts hand up to give the impression he hits the camera, shot spins back and cuts to final chorus.


A lot of my video will be reliant on my editing which I am fairly confident in, the animating will be a long process but in the end it should come out high quality 

Vibe magazine

Vibe magazine is a great magazine to find new genres of music and research existing ones. The theme of the magazine is made to appeal to a diverse audience from all around the world. Vibe is providing a demographic experience when multicultural audiences are inspired by the magazine and music.

In terms of audience Vibe is quite balanced  in gender being 51% male and 49% female.
The age is more diverse.
From the charts bellow you can see the target audience of Vibe magazine would primarily be 21 or older African-Americans as these are the two highest by a long way in both age and ethnicity. This is also the stereotype of hip hop and rap fans. In terms of gender its aimed at both genders as its basically split evenly in half, this is different to other magazines such as XXL which has a primary male focus and a significantly higher male audience.

XXL Magazine media kit

The next few blog posts will be media packs and analysis' of various magazines to decide which would be the best and most appropriate to advertise my artist and new album cover on.

The first magazine I will be analysing is XXL magazine.
XXL was founded in 1997 with a circulation of 140.000 in 2016.

 

From these graphs I can see this is kind of similar to my artists demographic, the majority of people buying this magazine are mainly African-American males between the ages of 21 and 29. My artist demographics age is slightly bellow that.

 The target audience would be Male 25-29 year old African-Americans as these are the three highest in the charts show above.

Lyric analysis part 2

Now the lyric analysis has been completed I can move onto the rest of the work such as more research into the demographic, psychographic and eventually storyboarding.

Demographics and psychographics

This is some work on the demographic of my artist. As stated more specifically above the primary audience will be teenagers and young adults from working class or bellow families as well as secondary audience of more middle class who don't live in similar  conditions. Another reason for this audience is that some fans may be able to relate to what the rapper is saying and take inspiration from it. After doing some market research around 80% of the audience is male making it a primarily male following. This is usually due to the way artists will over sexualize women and objectify them, this is common in most modern rappers/hip hop artists. These fans would usually be between E class and c2, this is because these classes are the usual social classes of fans of rap and hip hop music, its stereotypical for higher classes to listen to different genres such as pop and classical. My demographic is slightly different t the real artist, the actual artists SonReal does various different genres of music including pop whereas I wanted my artist to be more grime/rap/hip hop. SonReal's demographic would be c2 and upwards as that's the general demographic of pop music.

Psychographics
 The general psychographic of my artist would be aspirers, this is typical in younger audiences and these often seek status and are more interested in fashion and their image which is very usual in fans of hip hop and rap music. The audiences also typically are teenagers to young adults which fit this psychographic. Another psychographic would be strugglers, strugglers often seek escape which is often in rap and hip hop music as in a lot of interviews successful rappers described music as their escape. Strugglers typically drink a lot of alcohol and smoke etc. which is a stereotype for rappers who often drink a lot and spend a large amount of money on booze and drugs. This is more common in the young adults rather than teenagers although it does still occur which is illegal another stereotype for teenagers who listen largely to hip hop and rap music. Often these fans desire to be like the artist who typically will follow these traits and conform to the stereotype.
This is very similar to the real artist SonReal's psychographic. I have decided to keep them similar as both are quite stereotypical audiences for this genre.

Lyric analysis part 1

Asking for permission and track reveal

Asking for permission

The track I have decided to use is "So far" by Sonreal

As of the moment I have sent two emails asking for permission from the artist.
I am beginning to do lyric analysis whilst posting this update which will be released tomorrow.

I have chosen this song as its very upbeat and I feel I have more experience and would enjoy  to make a music video to an upbeat song rather than a slower, sad song. I have also made sure its in the rap genre which I find the most realistic to produce to brainstorm video ideas for as they often follow the same style of video. Often its a mix between narrative and dance routine, for this I will be primarily focusing on a narrative though as its difficult to find actors willing to dance.

I have changed my song to this as I feel its more upbeat and the lyrics reflect what I want to make more and are more realistic for me to make whereas the previous song by logic fit most of my criteria, once I have analysed the lyrics I realized it was going ot be difficult to do so I changed it to "So far" by SonReal. It was difficult to find a song without a music video by him that was upbeat as the vast majority of his jollier songs already had a music video. I originally decided to do a different song by SonReal but after researching a bit more I found it already had a music video.

Demonstrating what I've learned

In my previous blog post I talked about various new editing techniques which I taught myself over the duration of summer, the following clip is a small preview of what is to come in future. Both edits in the clip will be heavily used in my final piece.
I have edited the audio adding the quote "Let me ask you something, does a machine like yourself ever experience fear" which was quite a challenge as it had backing audio, I resolved this issue by having it fade out which makes the backtrack to it essentially inaudible.

Original video (first 18 seconds)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydtQyE6M0QI

My edit
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcGZacdQA4E

The white outline and devil horns take a crazy amount of time to do, as  this was filmed in 60fps I have to re-draw the outline and devil horns 60 times for every 1 second I wish for them to appear on screen as well as saving and importing each individual edited frame, in my final piece this will be done to a higher standard also.

The end of summer

The summer break has finally come to a close.
Production of my latest music video is underway, over the past 6 weeks I have managed to rack up a whopping 30 hours of learning how to animate frames, add special effects, green screen and motion track. A lot of learning has been happening and I'm confident this is going to be the best yet, a lot of effort is going to be going into this piece, one idea I have will require me to animate 60 separate frames per 1 second for the best outcome.

Looking forward to revealing more in future including the song I have chosen so keep up to date.

Goodwin's sub genres

Goodwin's sub Genres.

Performance

This is where the artist or band will perform their song, this will often be done by metal core bands as instruments are more important to the videos than other genres such as pop, often there will be guitar or drum solos meaning an entire section of the video will be based around it unlike modern boy bands who don't play instruments and only sing. The example I have used for this is "If You Can't Hang" By Sleeping with Sirens where the entirety of the music video is the band performing their song.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UwWYtLWEZg

 

Narrative

Narrative is a short film in the music video which will often go along to the music. Often this will be done by more pop bands and singers but is not uncommon amungst alternative rock bands. The example I have used for this is Ice Nine Kills cover of "Someone like you" in which the band acts in a short story about a dog. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0vmjT-00DU3

Cameo

This is similar to narrative in the sense of it being a short story with the primary difference being that the band/singer does not appear performing at all. This once again is common amongst pop singers and boy/girl bands. The two examples I have for this are "A Team" and "Lego House" by Ed Sheeran, one of which is a celebrity cameo where the artist isn't show performing or in the video but a different celebrity does.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4BLVznuWnU

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAWcs5H-qgQ

 

Dance routine

As the name suggests, this is when an artist or band performs a dance routine throughout the song, this is more common in the hip-hop genre. The example I'm using for this is Soulja Boy "Tell'em- Crank that"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UFIYGkROII

 

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New Project

Music Video

Evaluation 7

Evaluation 6

Evaluation 5

https://www.surveymonkey.com/results/SM-JB9JTHSG/

 

Evaluation 4

Target Audience Transcript

Weekday Runup with Frank Schnellhammer: Chain of Memory

Frank

Hello and welcome to Weekday Runup, I’m Frank Schnellhammer and on tonight’s programme, I’m with Stephen Lawrie. He’s here to talk about his new film ‘Chain of Memory’. Stephen, Welcome.

Stephen

Thanks for having me, Frank.

Frank

So, Stephen, we’ve all seen the hype around ‘Chain of Memory’. People of all ages are talking about it. Yet, who do you feel is your primary audience following the production of this film?

Stephen

I think we probably had the over 30s age bracket in mind when developing the piece as the film covers rather sensitive subject matter that some young people may not be able to directly connect to. Y’know, the loss of a child is something many people within our target audience haven’t experienced either first hand or through friends so it’s likely that those over 30 will be able to relate to the main character more.

Frank

Yes, I see what you mean, that’s an entirely valid point, Stephen, on the other hand, have you thought about how your heavy promotions on social media may attract an alternate audience as the demographic of people on social media tends to be a lot younger than your intended audience. What’s your insight on that?

Stephen

Yeah, of course, we had that in mind. But, I mean, as social media begins to grow and develop, many more people of a variety of different ages are – branching out to join sites such as Facebook and so I think our branding on such sites is warranted. I’d say we’re always open to consider a wider audience in future productions, yet I feel uhm, with ‘chain of memory’, well [.], we always wanted to connect directly with our audience. I feel creating a, a rather niche film, we capture the interest of a much more specific audience type.

Frank

I see exactly what you’re saying, it’s interesting you say that – as a viewer myself I would expect someone with the intention of producing a multi-million dollar movie – you would want to appeal to the widest audience possible

Stephen

Yes

Frank

And I find it rather humble of you to produce something with the intent of connection – direct relation to the movie, would you say the project was more of a personal journey for you and the rest of the production team, or that of a commercial challenge?

Stephen

Well as I say we worked extremely closely with the writing team – to the extent they took on production roles, and thinking about it now I think it became something much bigger than originally intended, an expression of some sort presenting the emotions of not only the characters and scenes in the film itself, but how the writers truly felt when in production.

Frank

Well, you’ve enlightened me and our audience alike. I think that concludes tonight’s Weekday Runup, thank you so much Stephen Lawrie for joining us, and we’ll see you next week. Goodnight.

Evaluation 3

Evaluation 2

How does our product represent social groups?

We represented social class and groups well through mise-en-scene in our task. During the time period it was a common thing for men to wear suits showing that he was not of a higher class which is what we were aiming for. Men of this class were often not that rich which is also what we were going for, we wanted to show that all classes and social groups lost people in the war and we showed this by choosing a quite regular mundane family that were religious. We based our opening in a church to further show they were religious. We decided to use a fairly old church for it to fit into the times. A lot of men were religious back then which really fits in with your idea of a normal every day family which shows the effects of war on all social groups, often movies will have either very poor or very rich families as the protagonists but in our case we wanted to use a half and half to further show our message.

 

Evaluation 1

Camera
The camera we used was something we had to thing long and hard about as we wanted both good quality and a good frame rate. The default cameras provided were not even near up to the standard we were looking for so we had to look for an external source. Eventually we found one of our peers had a very expensive modern camera in which we were able to record our piece in 1080p and 60fps. The main reason we waned this is because it gave our piece the best quality and didn't degrade from our overall project by being bad quality

 

We have finally finished our film opening, here it is, we want to thank you for sticking around but don't go anywhere as there are still more posts come
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JRsgYt5L6Q

Camera Angles

Camera angles were a very important part of our filming as it really shows how a character is feeling and their importance, for example a higher angle on a character will make them seem less important to the viewer whereas a lower angle would make a character seem more powerful and more important. For ours we wanted to keep a mid angle shot other than a few shots to give the impression are protagonist was just the average man and nothing too big. We did this to show other effects of war on normal mundane life as apposed to more modern films where each protagonist is something special.

Animatic
We used this in a regular way, looked at how well the shots fit in with the music and how long the actual clips would last for as we were on a 2 minute time limit with 10% each way making the timings very important. We found it very useful to find out the timings as it helped us cut down on certain clips and extend on others to try and make the intro the best it could be. For the animatic we used Serif rather than Vegas because it was a lot easier to use. We took pictures of our storyboards and uploaded them before pasting them into Serif as still images then placing them next to each other to see how long it would last.

Sound track in depth
This was a difficult one, we needed something that fit the movie and the time zone as the movie was set in. We played around with two different soundtracks before finally deciding on Fantasy by the XX which we managed to fit perfectly in time with our intro which we feel has greatly impacted how well the intro works.

Risk assessment

This was something we needed to think a lot about as were did some shots in a quite dangerous area, this being the bell tower so we needed to find a way in which we could safely record from the top. My group did this by staying behind the low wall in the bell tower. Another risk was slipping on the icey paths in the mornings. We countered this by walking very slowly across them and walking across the grass when we could, this was a big issue not because we could hurt ourselves but the risk of breaking our camera equipment.

Titles is something we had to do very quickly in order to meet the deadline. Our first problem that we encountered with the titles were the amount of time they spent on screen which we feel really took away from our final piece. To resolve this we moved two onto one shot which we feel worked a lot better. The other issue was trying to make it not look like a movie trailer which we didn't think about until it was almost too late, to fix this we had the titles roll back quite quickly.

Colourisation.
For a lot of our shots we wanted to show and give a cold feeling to them to fit in more with the times. The genre of the film also allows this to link in very effectively because its meant to be a sad looking film and the protagonist spends most of his time sad and upset in it which allows the colder colours to be more effective and be almost overused. We wanted to go for a more of a cold feeling in this because it reflects how the protagonist is feeling.
We needed to experiment with this feature for a while as none of us knew really how to use it correctly, our first idea was to just look at Youtube videos on how to do it but we wanted to learn how to use it together rather than watching tutorials on it. Eventually we worked out to correctly use the colourisation tool and we went right on our way. One of the main problems with this was we needed to colourise every clip rather than just one which made it a very long process as we needed to do it to each clip separately as some clips didn't need colourising. Eventually we managed to do this and are very happy with the end result.

Market research, this is something we did quite a lot of as we wanted to see how what our audience would look like. We started off by asking simple questions to those around us and then further moved onto sending out emails with small surveys so we could understand how our potential viewers would feel about this movie. The main part of our market research was our survey. We made it using a website called Survey Monkey which allowed to make our survey with ease and then send it to multiple contacts making it very easy for us to find out a lot of information in a short amount of time.

Mise-en-scene in depth.

One of the hardest things about our project was the mise-en-scene. As we based it in the 1940-50's we needed to have clothing and props that fitted the part. In one of our scenes we show the protagonist's son unwrapping a present which means we needed to have wrapping paper to fit the time period, to do this we used brown paper and string rather than modern wrapping paper so it fit the time period better. For clothing we used an old looking pinstripe suit for the protagonist and a small jumper and old grey school shorts for the son which we feel worked very well and looked the part.

In depth location.
We spent a lot of time looking at various different places. We needed something that looked very 1940's or around the time era which was very difficult in modern times. Eventually whilst just browsing Google earth in our local area we came across a small church slightly hidden away from the road which is perfect as it hid cars very well meaning we could keep it looking like its from the correct time.
Once we had chosen our location we needed to confirm we were allowed to film there so we got into contact with the staff there and they allowed us to record inside and allowed us access to the bell tower where we filmed our high angle shots.
For our second location we needed an old looking house which was very easy as one of our group members has this and an old fire place which made the mise-en-scene fit well with the location.

Another major problem we faced whilst doing this task was the editing software. We used a program called Sony Vegas pro which was quite intimidating at first as it all looked so alien to us. Eventually we learned to use the program with help from Youtube videos and help from our peers who knew a bit about the program. One of the main problems in Song Vegas we came across was the stabilization of the camera. We didn't have a tripod so some of the shots are extremely shaky meaning we needed to stabilize them but this made the frame rate drop dramatically so we needed to find a perfect balance between the two.
Another thing we struggled with was the colourisation. We wanted to try and make it look very cold, colder than it actually was to really set the scene, this was by far the hardest thing we had to do as none of us knew how to use the colourisation and we couldn't find a very clear video. Eventually we powered through and figured out how to use it and successfully colourised our video.

More in depths with  the shots and why we wanted to use certain ones. At the start of our movie we wanted to experiment with shots we haven't used in the past such as one from above or from a high place. To do this we needed to use the bell tower of the church which required me to email and ask for permission to gain access to the tower. Once we had access we needed to set up a tripod to try and get a steady shot but the tripod was very unstable and we had to use a lot of stabilisation in Sony Vegas to fix this. We also wanted some shots from above inside the church so we used the stairs on the altar and se the tripod up in a similar way, we used a different tripod this time which meant the shot was a lot steadier. We wanted to use these high shots as it typically shows a character is quite weak which is what we wanted to show in our protagonist. We aimed to show the effects of war not only on those involved but the families of them too. Showing the father is now weak and worn from mourning the loss of his son was far easier by using these higher shots than through mise-en-scene which was our initial idea to show this.

Editing has finally come to an end. We have worked very hard on the editing side of things. We decided to use a program called Sony Vegas Pro so we could have the video in 1080p at 60fps for the best quality.
Firstly we needed to make sure all of the clips were in chronological order, we didn't film this way so this took a while. Once we had all of the clips in order we needed to trim a few so it reached the 10% either way of the two minute limit. In total we were 0.5 seconds off the 10% over which was quite lucky. Next we needed to work on transitions and fades from each shot to have it in sync with the music, this by far took the longest out of everything we did. Keeping the music in sync with the video was an extremely frustrating task but was worth it in the end. One early viewer described getting "Goosebumps and a shiver down my spine" because of how well the music fits in with the video. The final parts were titles and colourisation. We wanted the movie to have a very cold appearance as the film itself is quite a sad one we needed to set the scene. Titles were quite difficult to fit in without filling a large amount of our film with them but we worked around this and put two on the same shot making things look a lot smoother.

Casting
Casting was a real issues for this project like I've stated in previous posts. Eventually we went with a middle aged man to play both the elderly man and the younger man and our reasoning for this is because he fit the part perfectly. With a beard he looked far older than he actually was, because of this we didn't record the intro in chronological order. We filmed the 1950's parts first where he had a beard, once we did this he then shaved it and we moved on to record the flash backs.
As for the son we had a few ideas and initially had a different actor who then was unable to act in the end causing us to use our other actors son which worked out very well as they look similar.
Overall casting took a very long time to decide as we wanted this to be perfect which meant perfect casting.

Editing has come very close to an end. We've changed a lot of things during the editing. To begin with we have put all of the clips together in chronological order so the film actually makes sense. Next we added the music over the top. We spent a large amount of time making sure the music fits perfectly with the audio clips. After this we needed to slow the footage down at certain points for effect. Finally we needed to change the colourisation of the opening to make it seem colder. All of this took a lot longer than we had thought it would but we're extremely close to finishing and hope to finish by the end of the week so stay active for more!

Hello everyone. Filming has finally come to an end and we're extremely happy with the footage we have got! Now begins the hard part, editing. For the most part we have actually finished the editing, we have gotten the lighting and the transitions fitting in perfect with the music. Now we're moving on to more complex stuff such as key framing our titles which is something no of our group knows how to do but we're learning! We hope to finish this by the end of next week and it will be released soon! stay tuned for more updates!

Hello guys just a quick update to let you know filming has started!
Our actor fit the role better than we expected and the first day of filming as a very big success. We now have a few shots which we can edit. A few shots are very unsteady but the editing program we are using allows us to steady this. We filmed in 1080p at 60fps but due to the conversion and compression its reduced to 360p and 30fps so we have decided to use an external computer in which we can edit using the better software program as well as using the better quality footage. Editing on this first shots has began today. Stay tuned to keep updated!

Sorry for the lack of updates but we hit a rough patch dealing with casting and filming times. Thankfully this has all been sorted out now and we have also done a lot more research and planning and have put a full presentation together about it.
Our main problem, as I have previously said was casting. We needed someone who can look both young and old. For this we decided to use one of our groups dad, we will film the shots of him being young without a beard and his older shots with a beard. We are also using a friends brother to use as the child. Our research and planning presentation is shown bellow.