Production - THE FIRST SHOOT HAS BEEN SHOT

Planning - CELTX SET LAYOUT

Using movie-scripting software Celtx, I can use various objects in a 'sketch' mode to illustrate the layout of my set. This layout is not a strict rule, but a guideline: I have always found on-set experimentation leads to better results. Nevertheless, this is a good guideline and can speed up the setting up process as it helps my crew instantly visualise what I want from the set.

Planning - SHOT LIST FOR BAND PERFORMANCE SHOOT

Friday's shoot is coming up fast, and in tying up all the loose ends a shot list is to be compiled. Due to the abstract nature of the shoot, and my (by personal preference) improvisational style, I cannot obviously predict the order and timings of the shots in the final edit - for the editing process is where all the experimentation happens. The purpose of this shot list is to provide a guide for what material I need on Friday.

Focal Lengths (with 18-135mm Lens): 

• Extreme wide shots
• Multiple wide shots
• Medium close up shots
• Close Up shots

Shots with movement:

    

 - On the Jib/Dolly

• Wide angle pitching shots
• Wide angle panning shots
• Wide angle pitch/pan/tracking shots 
• Medium close up pitching/panning shots 
• Arc Shots
• Shots with lens flares (a convention of music videos which usually goes ignored)

- On the dolly

• Tracking shots
• Wide Shots
• Medium Close up shots
• Cutaway shots (instrumentals/film gear/film crew)
• Panning tracking shots
• Pitching tracking shots

Steady Shots:

- On the Shoulder Rig (Camera with 28mm Lens)

• Wide shots
• Medium shots
• Medium close up shots
• Close up shots
• Cutaway shots (instrumentals/film gear/film crew)

As I will need as much footage as possible for maximum freedom in post-production, I will be using three cameras.

All three cameras are Canon 550D. One is my own, one belongs to the media department and one belonging to fellow Sixth Form student who I have taken on as part of the crew. 

I will be using three lenses; Two my own, a ef 28mm Lens and a efs 18-135mm lens. I will also be using the Media Department's efs 18-135mm lens. The dolly and the jib/dolly will be equipped with the zoom lenses, and the camera on the shoulder rig will be equipped with the 28mm lens.

Planning - THE FIRST SHOOT

Organising the first shoot was not easy, but I managed it.

GETTING THE SET

I double checked with the head of the sports department, and I have a slot in the gym hall on this coming friday between 4 and 7pm. Equipment I will be using will consist of my own, some of the media departments, and some of several friends. I will be providing one camera (Canon 550D, with a 28mm Lens), a tripod and the shoulder mount - the media department I will ask to borrow their Canon 550D with 18-135 mm lens, - from a friend in the year below, a second Canon 550D (again with a 18-135mm lens) - and finally from an old friend (Greg) with which I have been filmmaking for years, a jib and a lighting rig. 

ORGANISING THE GEAR

To move Greg's very large and heavy equipment into school was a hurdle which needed to be leapt over: neither of our parents are able to drive to and from Greg's house to move the gear. The solution was to hire a taxi from a reliable company, who will be able to take us from school on Friday (during a mutual free period) to his house to gather the kit, and then have the taxi take us back to school where we can begin to set up and shoot in our allocated time slot.

ORGANISING THE CAST AND CREW

Cast and crew may have potentially been the hardest of all to organise, as I am asking fellow A2 level students and even people with careers underway to contribute. However, miraculously, everyone I asked to either participate as cast or crew was free. Louis, my singer, Tom (neighbour and classmate), the drummer, and Ben Ressa (former Claremont student, now works at film studios), the bassist. Due to the nature of Ben's work, he may be called in last minute - so I need a back up. My crew will consist of myself, Greg, and potentially a friend from the year below. My crew members, including myself, will also hopefully feature in the video to sell the behind-the-scenes idea. 

Planning - COSTUME FOR THE BAND

Costume is a very important but often forgotten part of music video. 

In the screenshot above, Chris Cornell (in the official You Know My Name video) is wearing very simple clothes: blue/gray T-Shirt with black rims at the neck and sleeves, and black jeans. However the video is about 80% of clips from the film Casino Royale - these clips boast Bond wearing his classic tuxedo and Vesper in her glamorous evening dress. 

For my video, I don't want to stay too casual - but I don't want to go the full whammy and go all out dinner jackets either. Instead I will ask the singer playing Chris if he can wear smart casual; jeans are fine, but perhaps with a smart white shirt loosely worn. The rest of the band could make their own choices between casual and smart casual. 

Planning - THE GEAR LIST AND PROFESSIONAL STANDARD DIY

The planned gear list: 

- Three Canon 550Ds

- Two ef-s 18-135mm lenses

- One ef 28mm lens

- Two smoke machines

- Three lighting stands

- 6 Lights 

- Lighting dimmer box

- Jib

- Dolly

- Shoulder Rig/Tripod

- Speakers and iTouch (to play music)

- Complete Drum kit

- Electric Guitar

- Microphone and stand

- Megaphone (for directing purposes)

- Bizarre amount of power cables and various extension leads to make everything work

Almost all of the gear in the above list is owned by either myself or by fellow Sixth Form student and old friend Greg Flynn. Only one camera, smoke machine and zoom lens belong to the school's departments. 

Greg's solution for the dolly and the jib was ingenious - with professional standard dollies costing easily over £1000, my friend constructed one for under £30 from a Lego train and Lego train tracks. The tracks would serve as the dolly tracks, and a tripod's feet would slot into custom built slots mounted on Lego train bases. Complete with an electronic control system, the dolly can glide smoothly up and down a 5 meter stretch, completely by itself. Recently Greg has revealed plans to ration the tracks between the dolly and the camera jib he owns, meaning I have some incredible gear at my disposal, gear which would normally accumulate to over £2000.

As seen in these images (*this blog post was updated after the shoot) All of the required gear was present.

Production - EDITING TECHNIQUES

10 seconds in, you will begin to see some of the editing techniques that I plan to use for my video. The opening shot of scene 20 (When Justin meets the Dealer) opens with the character of Justin, played by Louis Blakeney who will also play Chris Cornell, blurred. Throughout the video this artificial blurring technique is used to give the scene a grungy, hobbyist-artistic look while emphasising what parts of the screen the viewer should be watching. 

This is technique I plan to use in the music video for You Know My Name: artificially blurring shots in post, combined with in-camera depth of field, to indicate what to look at during the live performance shots - this can be done using After Effects.

The scene above relies on shot-reverse-shot to convey the narrative - this will obviously not appear in the music video as there is no conversation. 

As the video is not narrative, ellipsis is unlikely to make an appearance - ellipsis being the skipping large, dull chunks of narrative to keep up the pace of a film. 

However other techniques will be to use various textures of shots - slower verses will be edited to put pitches and pans, tracks and tilts together while the more lively chorus will almost certainly use shoulder-rig footage to achieve a smooth handheld look which can immerse the viewer in the moment. However using very stable footage in the chorus can also emphasise what I call the awesome moments in the song - these are often at the beginning or ends of lines in the chorus. 

Production - TRIMMING THE SONG

As seen in the screenshots above, I have trimmed the second chorus out of the timeline in order to ease the strain. By cutting at the silent moments bookending the chorus, and overlapping the ambient guitar sounds just before the silent parts, I can create a smooth transition from one part of the song to another -  viewers who do not know the song's exact timings won't notice the cut. The cut have taken over 30 seconds off the timeline - although I don't feel the effect of the missing 30 seconds now, I may be glad of it in the near future. 

I later went back to the song trim, noticing the transition felt rushed and sudden - so I scrubbed around the part of the song I deleted and found a half-second-long drum solo which is the entry to the chorus after a short moment of silence. I cut the drum section out, extended the silence by a second and added in the drums when the section main section of the song begins - now the transition flows much more smoothly.

Production - 'SHAVING FOAM' ABSTRACT LANDSCAPE VISUAL EFFECTS TEST

A visual effects test of my CGI abstract Landscape along with the first verse of You Know My Name to provide atmosphere. The video is uploaded to my youtube channel, Venturay Productions.

*The video is captioned 'shaving foam' abstract landscape, as when my media teacher first glanced at the early renders (which looked like either a jagged mountain range or a giant pile of rocky shaving foam) the shapes within were christened as shaving foam, and the landscape has been referred to as foam ever since.

Production - SETTING UP THE PROJECT FILE

After having tweeted to Chris asking permission to use his song, I brought the track into school (There are three versions - I will be using the version of the song composed for the opening sequence of the film, due to it's increased cinematic feel) and set up the Premier Pro project file. After putting down the track on the timeline, I put in two of the test CGI pieces I had created to give myself a perspective of the timing of the song. All the files and folders are arranged; All I need now is my finalised cast and crew, and of course, recorded footage.

Planning - ASKING PERMISSION TO USE THE SONG

Earlier today I Tweeted to Chris Cornell's official twitter to ask permission to use his song 'You Know My Name'

Research - SOUNDGARDEN - CHRIS'S BAND

As I discovered today for the first time after many months of listening to Chris Cornell's music, he has a band named Soundgarden. I discovered this through the social medium of Facebook.

The members are Kim Thayil, lead guitarist, bassist Ben Shephard (who replaced Hiro Yamamoto in 1986), drummer Matt Cameron and of course, singer Chris Cornell.

Planning - ORGANISING THE FIRST SHOOT

Organising the first shoot 

Earlier today I approached the head of the Physical Education department and requested to use either the sports hall or the gymnastics hall as a location for my first shoot.

My reasons for this are because I need a large, open space into which I can set up the film gear and band, and light without having to see the surrounding walls. Furthermore, the darkness of the halls without the lights turned on will give the cinematic lighting rig full reign. 

The date I asked for was the 28th September, the time for after school.

I have already begun to cast the band - Louis Blakeney I have asked to play Chris Cornell, as Louis is a friend of mine in school and out and I have previously worked with him and his acting skills on the set of our Lower 6th media production Gaia's Army, and on the set of my short/feature film Psyched which I am producing, directing and editing in my own time. 

I have also asked another student who is skilled on the drum kit to act as the music video band's drummer. I say 'music video band' as Chris Cornell performs alone as a vocalist and maybe guitarist, and all other instrumentals are by hired bands. 

Planning - LEARNING COMPOSITE NODES IN BLENDER 2.63

Nodes Tutorial Link Here

Learning composite nodes is very important in Blender. They are the After Effects of Blender  - a little fine tuning to add to the finished image. For example; in my scene, the cubes of light appear simply as blown out 2D objects, which have lighting effects on the objects around them. However, to give depth to these cubes I add two 'glare' nodes which adds a lens flare of sorts to each cube.

I also added a brightness and contrast node to increase the contrast and therefore the cinematic-ness of the image. 

Before

After

Planning - FINALISING THE CGI WORLD

The CGI world design is nearing completion - the screenshot below is of the final composition. It is the fourth test, after much thought and experimentation, and I have decided for practical purposes that the platform on which the singer stands should be stationary. This will make the green screening process far easier than it currently is. 

The black pillar extends up from the abstract ground, glowing turquoise with the light of the green and blue light-emitting cubes around it. 

During the transition from the first verse to the chorus, I may make the cubes shatter to create an explosive entry to the highlight of the song. 

Shots taken of this world from the chorus will require a much more lively look - for example, I may change the colours of the blue cubes to orange and the green cubes to red.

Planning - TREATMENT

The Music video I will shoot will be a video of the filming of a music video. 

Like Inception, dreams within dreams, my music video is going to contain a fictional music video within itself - a video which will be filmed as I am filming the real world music video. The music video within the music video also will have an Abstract CGI Element to it, a computer generated world in which my singer - who will play the role of Chris Cornell - will be singing and relaxing in.

The behind-the-scenes style footage, the 'music video' footage and the CGI world footage will all be spliced together to create my A2 Level music video of You Know My Name.

Planning - NARRATIVE IDEA - SONG BREAKDOWN

Song Layout

Verse 1

Chorus Bridge

Chorus

Verse 2

Chorus Bridge

Chorus

Finale Bridge

Chorus

Finale

For the opening of the song, I show the first level

For the first verse, I cut to the abstract part of the second level

For the bridges, all three elements can be shown

For all choruses, I cut to the first Level/the performance part of the second level

For the second verse, I cut between the abstract and performance worlds of the second level

For the second last chorus, I show chaos in the abstract world of the second level

For the last chorus, I show the first level

For the finale (You know my name x7) I show the first level dissolving into the abstract world in the second level.


However, to ease the workload as the project is hugely ambitious (with all the CGI Rendering to be done) I may cut out a chorus to make life easier for myself. If I carry out this plan, I would axe the second chorus.

Planning - YOU KNOW MY NAME LYRICS

If you take a life do you know what you'll give?

Odds are you won't like what it is

When the storm arrives would you be seen with me

By the merciless eyes of deceit?

I've seen angels fall from blinding heights

But you yourself are nothing so divine

Just next in line

[Chorus]

Arm yourself because no-one else here will save you

The odds will betray you

And I will replace you

You can't deny the prize it may never fulfill you

It longs to kill you

Are you willing to die?

The coldest blood runs through my veins

You know my name

If you come inside things will not be the same

When you return to the night

And if you think you've won

You never saw me change

The game that we've all been playing

I've seen diamonds cut through harder men

Than you yourself

But if you must pretend

You may meet your end

[Chorus]

The coldest blood runs through my veins

Try to hide your hand

Forget how to feel

Forget how to feel

Life is gone with just a spin of the wheel

Spin of the wheel

[Chorus]

The coldest blood runs through my veins

You know my name [Repeat: x7]

Planning - FURTHER EXPERIMENTATION

These experiments are attempts to find an abstract landscape or world in which to place the singer, a landscape which reflects the mood of the verses or choruses during which they appear in the song.

Planning - DESIGNING THE CGI WORLD

Everything below is experimental

With Blender 2.63 I have taken to designing the CGI world. Just like last year's AS Media thriller film opening Gaia's Army, I am starting the visual effects now to give them as much time as possible. Also planning the shots in the CGI world an storyboarding will not be possible until I have the shapes built and the camera movements planned. 

For each and every shot in Blender, my singer will be needed to be greenscreened in - this means that either I design the world first, then recreate the shots on greenscreen, or do the greenscreen shots first with a basic idea of what I want and later build the worlds to match the footage of the singer.

Planning - CONCEIVING THE IDEA

So far I've been aware that live performance will be a large part of my music video. However I want to veer away from what most students at A Level do with live performance - I don't want to imitate a concert on the stage in the school's theatre. Instead I have chosen to film the recording of a music video.

Essentially, my music video is about the fictional narrative of recording a music video. 

On the first level, will be the 'recording of the music video' world. This will consist of mostly behind-the-scenes type shots of a camera crew with various pieces of film equipment recording the band perform in a clear space in the middle of all the equipment. 

On the second level, will be 'the music video' world. This will be the music video consisting of shots recorded on the first level, and will contain both the performance and surreal abstract element. The abstract element will be a CG (computer generated) edition, which the music video will cut to often. On the first level, the abstract world appears as a large greenscreen to the side of the band. 

What exactly is in the abstract world I am yet to specify, however I am certain that I will use Blender and After Effects to use 3D modelling to build the world (and using the Cycles render engine I can render out photorealistic images) and then composite my singer into it. 

Planning - A2 FIRST EXAM PRACTICE QUESTION

Describe and evaluate your skills development over the course of your production work from Foundation Portfolio to Advanced Production in relation to creativity

Due to my history of hobbyist film making, I already knew the basics of framing and editing (establishing shot, two-person shot and shot / reverse shots) intended to be learned by the preliminary exercise. However I was able to learn from it nevertheless. During the exercise I practised the importance of subtle camera movement during dialogue scenes to subconsciously keep the viewer interested. During the shoot the idea to use such camera movements was a stroke of creativity which added t the comedy of the scene. Static shots can, whatever the topic of conversation on screen, become tedious to watch – subtle movements such as pans and pitches (left and right, and up and down movements respectively) can add tension, excitement, and comedy values. Our preliminary was comedy based – the dialogue is between two friends, a drama student and a classmate. The drama student is having difficulty trying to choose between two hats as part of a detective costume, so he goes to his friend for advice. However an argument quickly escalates in which each student prefers and argues for a different hat. After each line of dialogue, the student who spoke will move the hats (placed on a table) in order to indicate his preference. A very subtle and synchronized pan following the direction of the movement of the hat adds comedy value by highlighting the movement of the hats, which are the focus point of the scene. 

The brief of the coursework production was to produce the opening minutes of a thriller film. This allowed for huge portions of creativity - together, my classmate and I conceived the plot from inspirations found all over the world of thriller film, but the creativity did not stop there. It was needed in the creation of all the visual effects - the title sequence, the opening shot effect, and in the transition from visual effects to recorded footage. My classmate and I also needed creative filmmaking skills on location in the IMAX tunnels - as our two characters were supposed to be in a secluded space with only the dying secret agent, creative framing and even timing during the shoots were key to create the illusion that the crowds among us were not there at all. 

Planning - BLENDER PROGRESS

Although not yet sure exactly how I could work this miraculous software into my music video, here are some of my dabblings with modelling with different render engines, shattering and cloth simulations.

Planning - BLENDER 3D SOFTWARE

A few days ago, we had family friends over to stay for a night or two during the summer. It was Alex of this family (from http://www.youtube.com/user/ShatteredGamingUK) who introduced me to Blender, a piece of 3D film animation software, available for free as a download from the internet. 

Naturally, I was excited. Two days after I have grasped the basics of this initially-incredibally-complicated program, and now I am at a basic level of using Blender. It has only just occurred to me that this program, should I find anywhere appropriate to use it, would be a fantastic contribution to my music video. 

Below are images of my messings on Blender.

Research - CHRIS CORNELL'S JOURNEY TO STARDOM

Chris Cornell, an American singer currently in a band named sound garden, found his way to stardom though initial exposure by heavy social networking through sites such as Twitter and Facebook, and later though the recording of many singles and movie themes since 1991.

 Some of Chris Cornell's albums include  Euphoria Morning (1999), Carry On (2007), and Scream (2009). 'Hit Parader', a music magazine which focuses on hard rock and heavy metal, ranked Chris Cornell as fourth in a list of "Heavy Metal's All-Time Top 100 Vocalists".

Research - STAR IMAGE

Musical Stars, the big names in the industry, are relied upon to make almost all the main money in the music industry.

Only ONE in TEN 

singers or bands succeed in earning decent money for the industry.

The 'meta-narrative star image' of a musician or group of musicians is very often heavily represented through music video. The star image is sold to viewers, who watch the stars performing or larking around in videos. The stars can choose what sort of image they wish to sell through the narrative of a music video.

A specific example of this would be Muse's recent Maddness music video.

The song features images of Matt Bellamy, Dominic Howard and Chris Wolstenholme, the three members of muse. However the main focus of the music video is a woman who wanders around an underground train station as riots and protests begin to arise both under and above ground. Eventually she finds her partner, who have a touching reunion in the midst of the fighting. Muse's messages here are clear; they are a mildly controversial band who's main aims are to highlight the importance of love and peace - in Madness, represented through both the lyrics and (ironically) the riots. 

The aim of a music video is to promote an album; for this reason, almost all music videos contain the image of the star(s), the singer  or band, to help promote the album.

Because of this music videos often feature a wide variety of shots (especially close ups) on their singers, and give them a large percentage of the screen time within a music video.