Snow!

Update: (26/11/10)

Snow is set to be here for a predicted 2 weeks! So if the weather happens to be snowy on the day 0f the shoot a few things will need to be changed.

I will use snow balls to throw at the character instead of the little plastic ones that I have lined up. The man will possibly slip up instead of trip up and will be pushed over instead of tripped.

If there is snow and I can't get to the field because of the roads then I will consider another date for the filming

ACTION PLAN

HOPEFUL DATE FOR FILMING: 18TH DECEMBER

TIME: 8:00 - 12:00

Things to do before then:

ASK YOUTH GROUP FOR HELP (Facebook and in person)

Check if people can do this date

FOR FILM DAY

Equipment:

Cardboard (From Tesco)

Little Balls (From Hoppers)

Blow Up Boat

Buckets, Water Pistols

Map

Cardboard Wings

Signs:

Family, Friends, God, Work, Play, Life, Girlfriend, School

New, Coming through, Change, Difference

Home

Diversion signs

Setting Up The Field

(click on the picture to enlarge)

This is how I can imagine the field will be set up like. The bit with the crawling near the end may change if I can find a suitable hedge which could work in this video. This will essentially be the general set up though so it could be a useful document for me to have on me on the shoot.

Movements Final Scripting

MOVEMENTS FINAL SCRIPTING

this video will be in one shot

Man is walking backwards with small person and a 'God' placard in their hands

Zoom in on their hands and they part the camera moves around to look at the small person standing still.

Move to focus on the main character with several other people jumping around him shouting at him with girlfriend, friends, work, play, life, family, written on them. The crowd parts to let the camera through the crowd and we are now in the circle looking out at the people in and spinning around.

The camera pans around onto the man looking around looking concerned

The crowd starts moving backwards out of the way and the man starts walking backwards away from them. The camera pans around so he it is behind him. It moves all the way around.

He stands still and dodges the punches being thrown at him by someone. He then moves backwards some more and falls over but gets back again. The same thing then happens.

Loads of balls gets thrown at him but he moves backwards through them

Walks backwards through the wall of cardboard. Camera pans around the wall as he goes through.

He gets water thrown at him and water pistols shot at him from all sides

Gets thrown a paddle and starts moving in a different direction. Rowing BACKWARDS. Looks really confused as he does this. Camera is on the side of the boat

Buckets of water thrown at him.

Crawls out. Moves backwards for a sec. Camera is still by the side of him and then pans around to the front

Gets out a map and looks at it and then throws it in the air.

Sees someone with a sign pointing to home and follows it. THE SIGN FOR HOME MUST BE POINTING THE OTHER WAY

Moves his way through some people that are standing in his way. Camera following him from the front. He is moving backwards

Sees a man with a diversion sign. And another. And another. Must be pointing in different directions. These people are beckoning him and smiling. Moves on backwards

Gets signs saying 'new' 'coming through' 'people' and 'friends' written on them

The camera looks at the signs on the floor before moving onwards

The man then crawls under a bush and the camera follows him through. **THIS MAY INVOLVE A CHANGE OF CAMERAMAN**

He then runs moves on backwards

He flaps his hands as he moves on

He then throws these away and carry's on running away. The camera spins around him several times. We see another sign for home. THIS AGAIN MUST BE POINTING THE OTHER WAY

The camera then stays put. We see the man move backwards and fall over and lie flat on the ground

A group of people then shuffle on to screen and sing 'Ah!' like at the start of the music.

The video ends. With an abrupt cut to black

Digipak Layout

From this I can see exactly what I need. The top layer would be folded over so it would be upside down. Once it's all folded up it should look a bit like this:

So this means I need 6 things on the digipak:

CD print

Front Cover - Main image, title, artist

Back Cover - Track details, Barcode, price

Fold in Panel - Another picture

Inside panels - Pictures, information, lyrics? credits,

Digipak Idea

This is the kind of thing that I maybe want to produce. I created this picture using several different photos so it does look a bit weird but I will actually try and set up this picture while we are filming and then take a general picture maybe using a slow shutter speed so that there is a bit of a blur on the person running.

Actors?

So next monday when I go to my youth group, called Ignite, I'll ask the people there if they could get involved with the video for me. I will ask my friend called Dan, who is my age, if he can be the main character in the music video. I think he should be fine with doing that. I will also ask some of the younger people in the group if they can take care of the throwing the water and setting up the boxes etc.
I'm hoping that these guys will be available on the date that I choose to film the music video. I'm yet to decide on a date but I know that it will need to be soon as the nights are drawing in very quickly.

CONFIRMED!

Great news! The field that I wanted to use that belongs to one of my church friends has been let out to me. This means that before christmas I can do the filming that I want to do! Now all we need to do is confirm the final script for the shoot and then I will ask to do a Saturday of filming in the field. This means that everything can go ahead as planned and seeing as I have had new ideas for the shoot I can go a bit more free knowing where the location is going to be.

TO DO:
Final Script
Confirm actors
Film

Reverse Music Video

So after I told my teacher what I had planned she advised me on another genuine reverse video that is on youtube. It is a music video from Coldplay for the song, The Scientist

What I can take from this video is that it is possible to do a reverse video like I want to do. Now obviously I am not going to have the lead singing backwards or a car going over a hill but I think that from here I can see that I should be able to create a good effect. I think that the music video works well in the way that it builds up to a climax in the opposite way to what we usually assume a music video to work. I think this could also work in my music video and as it will be coming together alongside the one shot that I will be doing then it should add to this idea of the climax being the wrong way around.

Location - My Friend's Field

So on this satellite picture you can see the area that I think it would be possible for me to get hold of. The area in red is their own house and the garden. The section in green is the section I think I could be able to use. This is the field that came with the house.


It would be nice too because there are some hedges in the field itself so should be able to use this for the 'crawling' part of the song. It also means there are no limits to how wet we could make the main character and how much of a mess we make as long as we don't do any permanent damage to the grass or trees.

If it turns out that I can not use this location then there should be another thing that I can use that might change the script slightly but should not be of too much concern and may create a nice effect of going in and out of a building from two different sides. It will mean I won't be able to do anything too messy unless it is outside because of the nature of the building. This is what we call The Hub. It is an independent charity that our church set up so that we can do community projects within the town.

The one benefit of doing it in this location is that it is literally 30 seconds away from the town and may be able to move the camera through the town although it might be a bit awkward if it was in reverse and in one cut so I may stick to The Hub itself.

I will confirm soon if we can use the first location and if not adapt the script accordingly

Rend Collective Engagement!

Rend Collective Experiment, the band that I am going to be using in my piece, have no real means of contact apart from on facebook and a bookings e-mail. So through facebook I sent a message to the band and managed to get a short reply from them! Here's the message:

Its very encouraging to know that the band support me in what I am doing and means that I can get even more confident that I can create a good music video that is true to their musical talent.

Digipak Ideas

While I am thinking about locations and actors I thought it would be a good idea to look at some ideas for what could eventually become my digipak:

So from these I can start to think what sort of photos I need to take maybe while we are on the shoot and also afterwards. For example I think that because the song is called movements and has the person moving throughout the song I could take a picture of my main character running along and then blur his arms and legs and then possibly his whole body as if he is streaking down the field. This is only an idea however.

I can see that a lot of covers show lots of editing and processing that have been done. I think that with my knowledge of Photoshop and editing photos I may also be able to have a go at this if I can come up with a solid idea that relates to the video. I may even trying cartoonifying the character as to maybe relate it back the the actual album cover which you can see is the second picture on this slideshow.

So just something for me to think about for the moment however something that will definitely be able to be developed.

Experimental With Reverse Videos

I did this experimental video to test out how well reversing the video would actually work. I wanted to especially find out if it would create a good effect if I walked backwards and then reversed that to make it seem like I was walking forwards. I am happy to report that this is good and as you can see on the video it is fairly convincing and should work well. Therefore I can do this on my video with the main character walking backwards when filming instead of him walking backwards once reversed.

I taught the class!

So recently, as I have been doing all these little videos on after effects, my teacher thought I had gotten so good that she thought that everybody else needed to know how to use the software and so got me to do it! I taught two classes over two days and for two hours each class. I gave them a very rough idea about how to make their way around the software and create a good little video by taking the colour out of it or putting some lightening onto the video.
I also showed them how to do motion tracking and video stabilisation so a graphic would follow something if it was moving in the video. I briefly also went on to 3D space within AE too however this was very quickly done and not explored properly.
I hope this will be useful for everyone else in the classes