Idea following first editting

Following our start to the editting process we have decided that there needs to be a clear difference between the shots of 'James Morrison' (Neil) in the present and the shots of the boy and girl when they were younger. We will use a black and white effect for this to make it clear.

Also we have decided to do a ruff cut of the whole video first, putting the right shots in order and to the music before we add the small details like adding effects and framing the shots. We decided this becuase it will allow us time to go and shoot some more footage if its needed and will we have a clearer idea of how the video will look from start to finish.

Chris

First filming attempt

On Saturday (26th january) we went to 2 of our locations and started our filming. The initial shots we filmed was the main performance shot at Dunorlan park which we found took a considerable amount of time to set up the cameras and set up the shot at various angles. We filmed a medium long shot of Neil and close ups of both his face whilst singing and of the guitar to reinforce the authenticity necessary to adhere t0 the conventions.

We recorded various shots in the house for the start of the video where the boy and girl wake up and we also recored the other main performance shot of Neil in the house whilst sitting on a sofa. We managed to add some movement to this shot by resting the camera on a skateboard and slowly moving the skateboard from right to left to create a panning shot and we also made a pedding shot by moving the camera up and down.

We will be continuing filming this saturday in an attempt to record the remaining shots and visit our final location, a graveyard, for the shots towards the end of the video.

Animatic

We produced an animatic in order to see how the shots we storyboarded flowed with the track and how quickly we needed to cut the shots from different angles to keep the audience interested. When watching the animatic its clear that we will need to have a lot of movement within the shots as there are a variety of shots that are reasonably long, mainly performance shots, which felt too long with the static picture in the animatic.

Planning review #4

You have completed your animatic, however you have not met the deadline to post on the blog. You must use the blog to record reccies, practice shots, comments on costumes, key shots you want to use, issues with locations etc.. it should be a busy, working document.

Post up your animatic, reflect on how you made it and what you have learnt from doing it ASAP.

planning review # 3 - CF

Well done guys - excellent pitch. Well planned, good use of PowerPoint, excellent research into track and you had thought about the purpose of your video in terms of positioning the artist. Creative concept and well considered ideas on camera and mise-en-scene. You now need to do a reccie and take shots of locations and also characters / artist. This could be an excellent production - make sure that the blog reflects this.

Chris - Audience Research

Our initial plan was to do a focus group using 4 questions after listening to our chosen track as this would allow the those in the focus group to bring up new ideas about the track that we hadn't thought about. However, a focus group can also just mean everyone agrees with one persons's view as they don't want to share their idea or may feel it is wrong and so a questionnaire allows people to write down their own thoughts without others hearing or seeing them. We asked 5 people to complete the questionnaire, all of thom like James Morrison's music and are familiar with the genre.

The questions we asked are as follows:

1. What words or images you would associate with James Morrison.

2. Listen to the song, After listening what comes to your mind? For example what images do you see? And what emotions does the song evoke?

3. On a scale of 1-10 would you associate this song with; a rural or urban location? 1 being rural and 10 being urban

4. Using the same scale, how popular would you say James Morrison is?

5. What do you think this song is about?

6. Have you seen the other James Morrison videos? And what do you think of them (naming specific examples)

7. What would you expect in a video of this song? For example filming style Sepia colouring, black and white, or normal? Please give reasons.

Here are some points following our research:

• There was a mixed response to the question whether the song felt rural or urban, 3 people felt it was more urban whereas the other 2 felt it was further towards the rural end of the scale.
• Two out of the five got the purpose of the song very close to what it is really about, the emotion Morrison has about his childhood and how his Mother treated her children, showing the song is sad but also about forgiveness.
• Acoustic was a main feature of the answers to questions 1 and 2 showing that this is an image strongly related to James Morrison's image and so we should include it in our video.
• Two of the five felt that the song related to a love story between a girl and a boy, and one of the two picked up that the song had a forgive and forget element even though they felt it was to do with the boy and girl relationship.
• All of the five said that they hadn't seen any other James Morrison music videos or that they couldn't remember any of them so it shows that perhaps they dont have a lasting impression on the target audience so we could either follow this style or make our video one that they do remember by leaving the audience thinking about the issues we bring up.
• The idea of using Sepia had a positive reaction with all 5 feeling it was appropiate as the song has a depressive tone and that colour scheme would suit the song.

Track Choice

Our final track choice is This Boy by James Morrison

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDo6CiPueEo