Today's filming

Today was a mix of stress and relief.

In the morning i was playing the mad hatter in christina's music video, but because of people being ill or transport or whatever, we didn't start filming till about 12 when everyone was a little fed up and cold. I hope the footage turned out well for their group though. I also played as an extra in Yas's video.

I got to Coleridge at 1:30 in the end where we managed to grab Liam as an extra performer to go with me and Rob. We also brought Sven for cinematography as the pieces i've seen him film are impressive. We started walking towards town and due to the weather everyone was losing their morale and the performance had to look convincing so we managed to find a staircase to a park where we filmed a couple of run-throughs in different costume and a close up on the singer (me). We then decided to go to the train station to do some filming there. I didn't get a chance to look at the footage but i hope it's good because it turned out to be a spectacular set with the sun setting as people came in and out of taxis. In the end only Tom turned up and had made the sign for the protest. As i said yesterday though this was not integral and due to time constraints we didn't end up filming the protest and just did lots of run-throughs in different set ups. One in particular which i though was good was a walking shot, front on of the singer wearing the same shirt as from the bank meeting lip synching the song.

Overall today went better than expected we are still minus a few cutaways but those can be filmed at long road on monday.

CHANGE OF BLOG

I recently decided to change my blog to make it look more appealing, now to me the header at the top looks poo-brown to me but i've been told that it's red so i'll have to take their word on it.

ENJOY!

Photos from Rob's group video

I wont actually get a chance to transfer the photos i took from the shoot onto anyone in Rob's group laptop so i'm just gonna put the photos up here.

I actually took more than 4 photos but my camera sometimes decides to randomly put things out of focus when the photos are transferred onto the computer just to piss me off

so these were the ones in focus.

Tomorrow!

Today we filmed the bank scene so tomorrow is the scenes filmed in town. In the morning i'll be helping Rob's group in their Alice and Wonderland style music video, playing the Mad Hatter. After doing so i'll be meeting Tom and Alex in Coleridge to get cameras and leave for town. Alex said he'd be making the sign for friday so hopefully that'll be brought for tomorrow. If Alex wasn't able to make the sign we'll simply have to do without the protestor. To be honest when watching our rough footage shot in long road, while it was shabby and you could see the camera sometimes, i found it amazing that different shots with lip synch could actually make a good music video. This has lead me to consider bringing in several changes of clothes for myself in which i can be wearing at different "pitches" in town (a pitch is where a busker plays). I was quite apprehensive towards this idea at the beginning as i was determined to have a storyline present but from watching other peoples rough footage i found that a storyline really isn't necessary at all. This doesn't mean the man with the sign's story is gone but it isn't integral to the quality of the video.

Hoping the shoot will go down well tomorrow and everything will be filmed so i can relax for the weekend :D

MANSION IN THE SKY TABS

Quite awhile ago when we started the project i decided to learn the chords for the song. This would give the final video more authenticity about it being a live performance.

Am G Am
Could you forget the awful things ive done
Am G Am
could you forget the awful things ive done
D Am
im sure i will become your favorite son
Am G Am
if you forgive the awful things ive done

Am G Am
sweet jesus could you take this pain away?
Am G Am
sweet jesus could you drag this shame away?
D Am
if the devil offers know that i will say.
Am G Am
"sweet jesus blood it washed my sins away."

Am G Am
so open up your big house in the sky
Am G Am
yes open up your big house in the sky.
D Am
but don't ask me what i've done cause i will lie.
Am G Am
just open up your big house in the sky,
Am G Am
open up your mansion in the sky.

Some f the lyrics i found don't actually sound clear in the song so the lyrics i wrote for tom previously still look good on camera, even if they aren't the correct lyrics.

Photos from todays footage

Today we filmed the bank scene for the second verse of the music video

These are the written lyrics i held up for Tom when he lip synched the final verse

These are other photos of us filming on set

I brought in two different shirts to wear to see which one went down best, in the end i decided to go for white shirt with a black tie and black jeans. I also had a choice of being scruffy or neat. In the end we decided looking neat was best. Here are the photos taken of different costume and whether it was scruffy or neat

NEAT BLUE SHIRT

SCRUFFY BLUE SHIRT

NEAT WHITE SHIRT (chosen)

SRUFFY WHITE SHIRT (worst choice)

Please excuse my lovely expression on the last photo, it was pretty early.

DIGIPACK (SINGLE VERSION)

This is what my digi-pack would look like if it were a single

Rough cut

L3 TEST FOOTAGE - MANSION IN THE SKY - MAX, ALEX & TOM B from cmdiploma on Vimeo.

Work done on Tuesday morning 9th Feb

Filmed rehearsals of Mansion in the sky

We started filming the rehearsals of mansion in the sky. We ran into a few problems. For one, when performing the song the performers (Myself and Rob) had difficulty getting the speed right. This required several takes to be shot and the last take still isn't perfect. In the afternoon we will be filming more test footage in and around the college.

Schedule

Monday: 10:50 - 12:20

creating digipak pictures using pictures taken from town
Tuesday: 10:50 - 12:20 full video run-through
01:05 - 04:10 find props, film practice, cutaways
Wednesday: Unavailable due to college activities
Thursday: 09:00 - 12:20 Film bank scene footage
Friday: 10:50 - 04:10 Editing and maybe more filming, depending on time

Deadlines for music video

2nd - 5th of Feb - Animatic week

This week we are going to be doing our animatics. This will be at least 30 - 40 seconds long and can be for any part of the song. Its purpose would be to give the band/manager an idea of what the video will look like. We will be trying to think of literally ever shot we could put in there so that it keeps up a pace and looks effective.

8th - 12th of Feb - Test footage week

This will involve making phone calls to get proper permission to film then once we have this we will drive over to all our locations and get as much footage as we can. We will experiment with different angles, static or moving and see how we will manage the suns position as this could very easily be a problem for us. We may then very roughly edit this together with the soundtrack and upload it to the blog.

15th - 19th of Feb

HALF TERM

22nd - 26th of Feb - Filming week

In this week we will be doing all our actual filming. We will take what we learn from our test footage and shoot everything. We will try to shoot more than what we've planned so that we can be sure we have enough footage.

1st - 5th of March - Rough cut week

This week will be focused on creating a rough cut. The deadline for this is friday the 5th. I am looking forward to this part as it is when we see all out work start to come together. Hopefully it will all go well and we won't have any problems with the amount of footage we get etc. We are tying to avoid this. Any time that we have free this week we will be spending on our digipaks as these are due in next week.

8th - 12th of March - Finished video week

Our final video has to be finished by the end of this week so we will be working hard to finish our edit. 11th of March is the deadline for our digipak.

15th - 19th of March - Evaluation week

In this week we will be doing a lot of evaluation tasks and looking back on our project.

Some rough storyboard set ups