Friday, 29 November 2013

Skills Development: AS to A2/ Editing

My first year in a AS was very different from this year. Last year was my first time taking Media as a subject everything was new information. As we were filming a short trailer the shots were very straight forward where as this year it was a music video meaning everything was fast pace. We had to film so many extra shots because of base tracks and shoot at various different locations for variety where as a trailer has to have more consistency so we only filmed in South Bank.  

It was interesting learning about two different areas of filming one for music and one for film. Though both were catered to a UK audience the trailer was intentionally also suited for a global audience where as the music video was showcasing the more urban scene of London and it's youth culture. Because of this we shot in location like Brick Lane and Camden and brought extra equipment such as a Dodo light because last year some of the shots in our trailer were too dark and would have been improved with a light if we had brought one.

Last year I was behind the camera but this year I got to be in front of it. It was fun putting costumes together and trying to match outfits with locations whilst still catering to our target audience.

Last year I learnt to edit but this year I felt more independent about doing so and when editing a music video you have a lot more to play and experiment with. Because of this we got to look at various other music videos and research different effects ect. allowing me to learn a lot more about Final Cut Pro and the amazing things you can do with it like earthquake effect and correcting colour/brightness to make the video look more professional. As well as cutting the clips and matching them in order to make our mouths in sync with the words. Ultimately I found it takes a lot more time to edit a music video but all the work is very rewarding once everything is put together.

GOODBYE!!!

Lastly I'd just like to say I had the best time working on the video with my two good friends Christelle and Zara I think we have uncovered our movie making magic when working together. Unfortunately Final Cut Pro will no longer be in our trio's near future but will rest happily in our memory! I can actually call myself a retired rapper.

 So proud of everyone :') To the premiere...which may be embarrassing but remember.... It's all about the cringe!

 image

MY FINAL SAY



The whole experience has been so much fun and challenging at times but I'm so proud of my group, Christelle and Tina. I think we worked amazingly well together and kept going when it was cold, dark and wet outside!
 I just hope all the hard work pays off and I guess the cinema showing won't be too embarrassing... ... Hope not anyway 


V - LOG


Update on whats happening at the moment, last minutes of music video blogs..... 

              

FINISHEDDD! : Last Words


Dropthatdirtbass Female-Mc's Slidely by Slidely Slideshow

What I feel Went well
I think that almost everything that we did in order to make this video was Successful, we intended to make this video bright, eccentric, colourful and 'In your face'. By Zara who took the character of Jessie J wearing colourful clothing and then her partner Tina who took the character of Becky G wearing much darker loose 'gangster' type clothing, it created a binary opposition within the duo and i feel the collaboration of the different styles really worked. The locations were also really successful, having the graffitied walls of brick lane in our background during the day and the lit streets of London Bridge in our background at night was also a really good collaboration as they kept our video colourful and this is what we wanted.


Just a little message for the girls..
Its been great working with you two again, I've had a great time filming and just making this music video, As I've been saying for the past week I'm so proud of us, we've done well and hopefully we continue to do well :)

My journey through filming our music video ....

Different pictures of me being filmed in all our different locations ..... 

myself on Make A Gif


I have to say, filming was actually more fun then I thought it would be and I'm happy I did it. Also Tina, the other half of XO made the experience more fun and we had a blast! 

Progress Review Blog

Dropthatdirtbass Female-Mc's Slidely by Slidely Slideshow





The "cringey" parts of filming


Filming with someone you've never met before was never going to be easy, it was quite embarrassing but a funny experience.

Also I thought I was quite professional as acting with someone you've never met happens sometimes when your an actress... (hahahaaaa) 






Adding Bad Tv Effect

Going back to the Kanye video Bellow, when i was watching it the other day i saw the effect 'Bad TV' and I felt that this would be a good one to use. 






Progress review blog.....

I am extremely pleased with my individual and group blogs. I believe that i have tried my best to produce the best blogs possible.


Here are some reminders of my own work... 



And here are some reminders of group blogs... 

Reflection on group blogs.. from Zara Kashmiri


I think overall, I've exceeded the limit on the target I've set myself for blogging this year as I think personally I've worked so hard in trying to do all the blogs possible and extra on top.

Also we managed to develop many blogs outlining the planning and research of our filming by making blogs which shows what we aim to do, like using different camera shots and and angles.

I'm proud of my group and self! x 

BLOG COUNT - I have 78 blogs in total, and 34 individual ones. 

Thursday, 28 November 2013

The Text is Back in a Cooler Way

Transparent Text

We had made a decision to scrap the text because what we had previously don't just didn't really go well over our video but in our lesson this morning we decided to take one more chance with the text and we came across this tutorial, Add A Transparent Text Area To An Image With Photoshop, There was Hope. We followed all the steps and saved the document as a 'psd', we then imported it into final cut pro and to our astonishment when we put it in our video the text was Transparent and it looked REALLY good so we are completely over the moon and excited to say that the text is back.
=] 






JPnmGQ on Make A Gif, Animated Gifs
make animated gifs like this at MakeAGif




Skills Development

 What I learnt from AS to A2... 


This year was different from last as we were filming a whole music video, there was more footage because of the different several base tracks and camera shots we filmed. Because of this the whole approach to editing was different as last year it was mainly putting in transitions and cutting clips but this year we had to look into more effects. Also as it was a music video, we had to sync our mouths with the actual song which was sometimes tricky to do as the song was fast and sometimes it didn't look like we were saying the words clearly or how jessie j said it, who sang our song "Excuse My Rude" 

However.....

I feel more confident with editing music videos as I have got used to the style of editing this year. It was much more complicated then last year as there are more edits and cuts to do in order to make it more like a professional music video enabling us to get the best grade possible. Also as it is a whole music video and not just a snippet of one, we had to make sure there were clean and sharp edits to make it smooth and look presentable enough like music videos today.

Ive particularly learnt about more effects such as, bad TV, colour correction and even some effects we ended up not using such as the blur and earthquake but could come in handy for future reference. 

Also I've learnt how to put in colour blocks which makes the video look more professional, along with this, I had to adjust some of the clips as sometimes our faces and vital scenery were cut off, this was quite simple but different to anything during the editing process last year. 


looking back on filming.....

The few days we went out to film were demanding as we knew we had a lot of work to do in terms of performing continuously and making sure we gave our fullest to the performance. Giving it all on the attitude scale and presenting ourselves to the audience portraying and layering the lyrics and content of our music video. 

Even though we knew we went out to work and film, we still had fun and made the time as fun as we could... 
I hope this video can sum up our time filming and my experience during the few days we had to create our music video.... !

 
zara kashmiri's Slidely by Slidely Slideshow

Editing Update...

Here is a video of editing through our eyes
enjoy x


Editing...1 DAY LEFT...

Adding effects to our video.... 
Colour correction effect



We were playing around with the effects on final cut pro and came across the colour correction effect which we found worked well with our footage so decided to use it.





This clip shows us adjusting the filters, we did this until we liked the effect it gave our clips 







To copy that effect onto the rest of our clips we had to copy the clip, right click on the rest of the clips and press, paste Attributes, we then selected filters







So to sum up, here's the Before and After....








Wednesday, 27 November 2013

Text To Be scrapped :/

Recently we thought that we would add in some text to our Music Video, We was feeling to add in our Duo Name 'XO' in black text with an outline of different neon colours, as stated in a previous blog we got the idea from Kanye West's music Video - All of the Lights.


What it looked like alone


Untitled from Christelle Belinga on Vimeo.

What it looked like over the Video

text2 from Christelle Belinga on Vimeo.


After attempting to make the text work time and time again we decided to scrap it because it just didn't look right and it interrupted the shots that we had at the beginning of the song.

But it was a good experiment and now we know how and what to do, we could use it for future reference. In terms of our music video, it didn't fit or feel right so unfortunately we had to scrap it.

Our Current Inspiration

When we were looking for effects on google and youtube we came across this video which has A LOT of different effects that we can use, whenever the effect comes up in the bottom right corner it says the name of the effect.

V - LOG ( update )


2 Days left! .... 


Tuesday, 26 November 2013

Additional Shots...

Projected Shots
To add an artistic feel to the music video, we decided to add a shot where our artist would be singing to the camera whilst a projection of the person that she would be talking about will play in the background. I got this idea from the Rhianna Video We found Love. Although it is not a convention of a music video, projection shots do happen in quite a lot of music videos and we though that it would be a good idea to add it in.
 Our interpretation

Text ideas....

We were thinking of adding text to our music video to show the artist presenting them to the audience so they will become well known and remembered by the audience.  

Some examples of music videos who do this are......


                             ALL OF THE LIGHTS - Kanye west ft Rihanna and kid Cudi


                 The first couple of minutes of all of the lights shows "kanye West" in bright bold colours
                             overlaying the video which is something we would like to do also.



BOUNCE - Calvin Harris ft. Kelis

l7CsL_ on Make A Gif, Animated Gifs
make animated gifs like this at MakeAGif



WHO'S THAT CHICK - David Guetta ft. Rihanna

Vzo_PI on Make A Gif, Animated Gifs
make animated gifs like this at MakeAGif



TALK DIRTY - Jason Derulo ft 2 Chainz

AjXDdh on Make A Gif, Animated Gifs
make animated gifs like this at MakeAGif




Monday, 25 November 2013

Editing: Skills development

What new Editing Skills Have we learnt...

- Using Markers to ensure that all the Base Tracks are in sync with the music


The markers are the little house shaped figures, the come up when you press 'M' on the key bored. To make sure that our clips were in sync with the video we pressed M when the artist said a certain lyric and a little marker icon would appear on the timeline or a highlighted clip, when we did this for all of our base tracks we then lined them up an all of our base tracks were in sync with the music.

- Making a clip slow motion whilst the lyrics that the artist in the clip are singing are still in sync with the original pace of the track


SLOW MO TEST from Christelle Belinga on Vimeo.
For this to happen, before we went out filming we had to speed up the song by the amount that we wanted e.g. 30%, then we filmed with the artist singing along with the sped up version. When we came to edit it we had to reduce the speed of the clip by 30% and the slow motion effect was complete. 

-Changing the Opacity of clips


Opacity from Christelle Belinga on Vimeo.

-Adding solid colour strips at the top and the bottom.


solid block from Christelle Belinga on Vimeo.

Sunday, 24 November 2013

Filming at ganary square !

Friday 22nd November .... 


Here are some snaps of us filming the dance routine, Verse 2 and Tina's rap. 







Our last time going out to film bits for our music video! Going to miss all the laughs and jokes we had on our days out but glad that we wont be out in the freezing cold all day 
anymore... However! , It was a lot of fun and Christelle and Tina helped me when I felt embarrassed as everyone would stare and make me laugh ( super cringe and awkward ) But we all helped each other out, Tina was great to work with and we all made the whole process easy for one another!  Christelle was the best director and choreographer (hahaaa) , she was always honest with us and made sure we gave our fullest to every performance... 



A liTTle CatCH uP



After showing Mary our rough cut, we needed to re - film certain shots as they came out too dark, this was mainly the rap scenes. So we went to film on Friday as we had a day off and spent the whole day out making sure we got enough footage to replace the original dark footage. 

We also shot some more base tracks for verse two to add more variety into the video, making sure we got more long shots as we already have a lot of medium close ups and extreme close ups.

Lastly, we had to film our dance scene for our music video which is now all done and will be edited in tomorrow ( Monday ) in our media lesson. I haven't yet seen the footage back as I find it too cringe to look back on the day but Christelle, who was filming said it was all good so it will be exciting to see how the dance turned out but also nerve racking at the same time because obviously we want it to be perfect.

 ( !Fingers Crossed! ) 

Friday, 22 November 2013

LAST DAY OF FILMING (Review)

22/11/13
Today me and the girls went out for our final day of filming. Looking over the clips that we already had and getting some feedback from our teachers we realized that some of the clips were too dark and we didn't have enough static shots so we decided to go out and re film and this time in the beautiful Ganary Square. 

So... we arrived at the scene and the girls started practicing the dance with the music and we kind of found out that some of the moves in the dance didn't go well with the music so i suggested we add a 90's Aaliyah style shoulder shuffle forward, a rock with the O signal and a little bounce around when they do the XO hand gestures at the end. I also suggested they do the dance back to back, at first that was an experiment to see if that would stop them from laughing but when i filmed it i found that it actually looked really well so overall filming the dance routine was in the end rather successful. 


After filming the dance we went on to film some more base tracks, this time a two shot of Tina and Zara whilst Zara was singing the second verse, and it was Freezing out. Filming this was a bitter sweet experience, It was bitter because we were standing out side for a really long time and my hands got so numb but it was sweet at the same time because the reason for us standing out so long was because we were just having fun finding everything amusing. 

 After that we went to go grab ourselves some Nandos and did our final round of filming. Because the two shot that went at the end of the video wasn't really lit properly, we took out a DEDO Light and a Top light so when it came to shooting at night time we had enough light to ensure that both our artists were lit.


 Overall  I am very Satisfied with all the clips we have now and i can say it has truly been an enjoyable/stressful experience.

Christelle x

    

Thursday, 21 November 2013

Rough Cut Feedback:

What we need to Improve
After we showcased our rough cut to our teacher and our class we got some feedback on what we could improve. 

What Our Teacher Said

Our teacher mentioned how some of the shots towards the end were quite dark and when it will be played at the cinema those particular shots will be hard to see. After hearing this we have decided that we will take the camera out tomorrow (because we have no college) along with a Dedo light so we can re shoot those clips and make sure they have lighting.

What We Think
During our planning we mentioned that we wanted our video to be bright, colourful and represent our Youth. We think that we have some really good shots and we are proud of them but we think that at the moment our video doesn't really have the impact that we want it to have, so we are going to do some digging and experimenting within Final Cut Pro to see if we can work on effect and transitions that will make our video stand out.

Rough Cut Feedback

Today we showed our rough cut music video to our class and teacher Mary, this is there reaction and what they had to say ...




We are pleased with the comments made and will carry on to edit our music video, making it even more better!

Thank-you :) 

Rough Cut!

This is our rough cut, theres still improvement to be made as we need to include special effects and transtions. But this is all our shots and scenes put together to form our music video...

ENJOY!




XO - Excuse my rude from Christelle Belinga on Vimeo.










Feedback from Target Audience


Editing in process......


Here are a few snaps of myself editing, making the video look sharp and neat. 
We added in two black solid colour strips at the top and bottom of the video to make it look more professional and an actual music video.

















I think editing is important as it can either make the music video look horrible or make it look perfect affecting our overall grade! 




It's important to make the video sharp and fast as it goes with the flow and beat of our song which I think we have managed to do this to our best!


Behind the scenes....

Our latest filming session, using the projection screen ... Enjoy!


Saturday, 16 November 2013

Idea for the location of the dance

Ganary Square
The other day when i was on my way home from kings cross i came across the 'Ganary Square' at  night and i just thought that the scenery was beautiful & it would be such a nice location to film in




Dropthatdirtbass Female-Mc's Slidely by Slidely Slideshow

Idea

I HAVE AN IDEA
During the first stages of editing after reviewing the clips that we had, i found that there was something missing and we needed something exciting that we could add so i suggested to the girls that we add a dance routine. After speaking to the girls they agreed that it would be a good idea so they went off and Choreographed some dance moves that they would do in the music video (Some of the moves are in the tutorial below!).


Tuesday, 12 November 2013

Reflection of Progress 2:

In my last reflection I was pleased with the way I was working but wanted to use a wider range of ICT Looking back on my blogs I probably still need to have more versatility for example using Prezi's ect. I think I've gone further in terms of research for example backing up a point with a video, image or text. My new more targets would be to blog more frequently and use more ICT. Overall I'd give myself a 15/20.

Editing - Combining the Boyfriend shots & the Chorus

Today we had a change of heart when editing our first chorus. We had a lot of shots that we wanted to use but such little space to fit it in, thats where we came up with creating a sequence with all of the clips that had the boyfriend in them and having them projected on our artist (Zara) while she sings the chorus.

The Projection Clip
 

BF Projection from Christelle Belinga on Vimeo.

Monday, 11 November 2013

Editing: Ooooo Fancy...

Whilst i was editing today i was kind of looking over the blogs that we did during our research and looking at our pitch we mentioned picking the song because we could do some exciting edits to it, reading this switched on a lightbulb in my mind and i listened to the song again and found a few sections which could have some really quick jump cut editing.

E.g. These are the lyrics to the first verse
Me - me –me – me – me 
That's all you ever talk about
Me - me –me – me – me 
Sick of when you scream and shout
Me - me –me – me – me 
So baby go and run your mouth
R- r - r run your mouth [x2]

Where the artist sings  'R - r - r run your mouth' i took the opportunity to add in a few jump cuts to the beat

I did the same thing when it came to the part where the artist sings 'W - W - W - W Wanna Care'


How i did it
First of all i had to slow the track down because when she sings these bits, she sings them really fast and it was hard for me to make a marking in the right place so i had to slow the track down by 50% and make a mark when she said a 'R' or a 'W'.
 For 'R-R-RUN'
Now that i had the markings in the right place and all my base tracks were in sync with the music i started cutting them in the place of the marking and deleting every other clip.

For 'W-W-W Wana care'
After cutting the clip where the markings were, I deleted the little clips that came after the first 'W', i then copied the first 'W' and pasted them after every marking and this gave the video a glitch effect.

Thursday, 7 November 2013

Editing Update -

Beginning

Today I started to piece together the clips for the introduction. At the beginning of the song there is a 23 second instrumental, we were totally aware of this when we went out filming so we shot a lot of extra shots where our artists weren't singing at all. This is the part that I worked on today, I inserted all the base tracks and I made markings to the beat and started cutting them, one by one i was eliminating the clips that i didn't need and by the end I had a sequence that i was really proud of.  


ANNOUNCEMENT : Dancers Axed :(

Hey,
Unfortunately we've had to Axe our freestyle dance shots that was captured at the Trocadero underground dance scene. During our planning we continuously mentioned that we are going to add in some shots of freestyle dancers to make the music video more interesting but between all the shots with the two artist and the shots with the boyfriend we just simply have no space to put them in. Hopefully our video makes an impact without them.

P.S. I'm Gutted to see them go :(

Costume Research...


As preparation of becoming the rapper for our duo XO I thought I'd research some extra costume ideas as a follow up to filming. Here's a video I found analyzing  the latest trends in Hip-Hop fashion.

 

Notable Items of Clothing:

Snapback Hats

Long Shirts

Camouflage Jackets

Leather

How to incorporate in XO: Outfits I made on website Polyvore...


styleselection:

Untitled #1112 by alyucma featuring timberland boots


styleselection:

Untitled #1109 by alyucma featuring leather boots

TUTORIAL ALERRTT!!!!


XO - EXCUSE MY RUDE (Dance Tutorial) from Christelle Belinga on Vimeo.

Hey Guys, This is the dance that will be featuring in our next dance video, we thought that we could put together a little dance tutorial for you guys so you could dance along to the video 
Hope you enjoy
XO 

BLOOPERS



Here are some bloopers from our filming... ENJOY! 




 


Wednesday, 6 November 2013

Tuesday, 5 November 2013

Original Video

Jessie J - Excuse My Rude Feat. Becky G


Our video will differ from the this because it will be live action. Whilst the original has the singer Jessie J feat. Becky G we have formed out artists into a duo known as XO. Because of this the featured artist will have quite a bit more screen time than usual as there's not one dominant artist in our band, whilst this video focuses more on Jessie J and no picture of Becky G is even shown. This video's color pallet consists of mostly light purples and grey's making it very sentimental, sorrowful and feminine- our video will be extremely vibrant and colorful to cater to a more youthful audience whilst still keeping the fun and London feel. Lastly, although effects where used throughout the original video we will also be changing the actual imagery of the video with effects e.g. black and white colouring as well as cartoon animation. It is in these way our video will differ from the original.

Monday, 4 November 2013

Editing Process - First things first, ORGANISATION

Soo..
Today when i went inside college I decided that before the editing was even possible to begin everything had to be organized so the process would be less shambolic, I suggested to the girls that we should look over ALL of the clips, what we realised was that all of our Base tracks were by Verse & Chorus, we had about 8 base tracks for verse one alone. So I made a few folders titled V1, CHORUS 1, V2, CHORUS 2, RAP, EXTRA, This enabled us to see where the clips for each section was so when it came to editing that part it was easier for us to access instead of rummaging through the SD cards to find the right clips for the right place.

XO - EXCUSE MY RUDE


Even more editing ideas

Lastly, I found quite a simple but effective editing idea. 
The 'apple reflection look", this could flip a clip or reflect it.

This can come in handy if we want to turn our clip around to show its reverse view or to have a mirror reflection for a different funky look, from what i've seen in the video, it looks like a good technique which could be interesting for our music video.

More ideas for editing...

To make sure we get the most amount of marks possible, it is essential to have a wide variation of editing techniques. 

I Found a layering form of editing which is encouraged in music videos, ecspeically in a dance routine which we have, although it seems quite tricky, I think it will be good to play around with incase we come across another style of editing during this process. Its always good to try something new and most probably something no one else would have, so unique too. 



Ideas for editing ...

For some of our shots and clips in the music video, we were looking to make some footage black and white to show the past possibly as flashbacks. This will probably be a good idea for the "boyfriend" scene as it shows the past to give the audience an idea of the negative relationship which lead us, "XO" to write the song 'Excuse my Rude'.

As we have probably forget some certain editing techniques, I thought this video can help refresh our memories on how to edit colour footage to turn it into black and white footage...



Overview of my filming experience and more

Being one of the main leads in the music video comes with a lot of pressure to perform and make sure I don't let my group down. 

The first day, I was quite nervous as it was my first time being filmed but I had support and encouragement from my group to carry on, from then on I was quite confident for the rest of the filming on all days but each day at the beginning when we was filming I always got nervous and laughed as there were people starring and also giggling. Although it was hard to ignore the people around me, I knew I had to forget they were there to fully act in character which helped to speed the filming process ensuring we finished most our filming before college started again where we would have to begin editing. 

Im glad that most the filming is now done as it was probably for me the hardest thing to do, but it was also really fun to do something like that as it was different and interesting to experience as I've never done anything like it before. It wasn't always taken to seriously as we had fun and laughed throughout the whole process which I think is important because it kept us going when we were filming from morning to evening getting so restless!

Now all that is left to do is to film mine and Tina's dance routine which we will be doing in our next lesson, then on to editing! And so on ....


Progress so far Animation

Part 2 by cnbelinga on GoAnimate