Account of editing phase and post-production

After shooting our video, it was time for the rough cut and then the final edit. We used Final Cut Pro to cut and edit our music video.  We started with a rough cut to put all of our clips roughly where we wanted them to get a vague idea of how it was going to look.

The first thing that was essential was linking up the music track to our lip sync and performance element. It didn't really account for the rest of our shots as it was mainly a narraive element that we had to place in ourselves. We found this a bit difficult at times because it kept slipping out of place, but we managed to get to grips with it after practise.

We started by cutting the pre-roll together which needed a lot of work because of the diegetic sound as it was speaking. We later edited this in soundtrack by putting in sounds of birds and footsteps to make it more realistic. This was relitively easy as it was similar to the thriller work from last year.

We used short cuts in sections of our video to the beat of the music to add the mystery and suspence, linking back to sections of the performance element. We realised that we never got round to shooting the band part and we were worried about how this would look. After our rough cut, we realised that it actually worked very nicely just having the lead singer lip sync throughout.
I found that my skills with Final Cut have developed a lot since using it in the past and I was a lot more confident with the tools. Once we started and got into the post-production, it became very easy and flowed well. We were finished in good time which allowed us to do some final retouches.
We used after effects to boost up the saturation to make the colours stand out.
Overall I am really happy with how the post-production went and I  feel we worked really well together as a group. I look forward to seeing the how the final product turns out with the digipak and poster alongside it.

Drafts of digipak and poster designs (and feedback)

I have been working on the digipak over the course and alongisde the music video. I wanted it to be very simple on the front and back, and when it is opened be big bright and colourful to create a sense of magic.

These are some of the sketches I have done and scanned in to Photoshop.

I used characters and themes from fairytales and I am going to edit this into being bright colours and quite psychadellic. This is because I wanted the inside of the digipak to be very distinctive and relate back to our music video when entering the house.

In terms of the poster, I think this will be mainly photography, I have pictures which I shot on the day which I want to edit into a more atmospheric poster plan. I think it would be good to have tour dates and a link to the digipak to keep the target audience involved at all times.

These themes and visuals which are seen throughout the digipak can be linked directly back to the music video as well.

When it comes to feedback, the rest of the group agree with the ideas I have for the digipak and poster. Other people I have mentioned it to find it a great idea but it is also hard to visualise until the music video is complete as some of these themes and visuals are hard to comprehend.

Account of Shoot Day

Our shoot day was a very long day which ended being extremely successful and great fun. We started the day straight away at 9am and got our actors to have their hair and makeup done by kika. Our character the Mad Hatter played by Jamie was inspired by the Tim Burton character from Alice in Wonderland. The make up took a lot longer than expected but this gave us enough time to finish setting up our shoot with things that we didn’t get to finish the night before. The first set was the tea party scene which looked great as we had loads of props.

This scene took a while to film as we had to do a lot of takes using different camera angles and close ups on all of the characters. All of the actors did a great job and Rose and Oscar were very patient as there was a lot of the same shot done. As we had a lot of sweets and cakes as props on the table, we thought it would be a great idea to take advantage of this and made sure we got some close up panning shots down the table. The lens that we used during this showed a higher level of detail in our video.

During this scene we did encounter a few obstacles along the way. One of these included the shot of Sabrina falling into the cake. Luckily this didn’t turn into a problem as it all went to plan, but we only had one cake and had already used our prop cake so if it didn’t work then we would have been in trouble.

The other hurdle that we came across was when we had to throw balloons in to the background. At times it was difficult to see when I was in shot as I was covered by a huge cloud of smoke. 

I think the main problem we had that day was that 3 out of the 4 members in that scene had to leave due to other commitments so we were unfortunately unable to get our perfomance element shot and decided we should just cut it.

 After a quick lunch break we were able to grab out singer Jamie to do a few lip syncs of the song. This was great fun to film as he fitted the role perfectly. We also changed the setting around to give it a different atmosphere. Here we made it smokey with tall white blocks with sweets on top. Again we threw balloons into the scene to give it a quirky effect.

When we were shooting in the studio, we all revolved around the equipment and took turns on the camera and on set. I mainly enjoyed getting hands on with the set as it was fun but I made sure I was behind the camera some of the time.

After we were finished in the studio we made our way to Courtney’s house to finish filming. All of our characters (Cinderella, Belle, Prince Charming, Pinocchio and Sleeping Beauty) already had their hair and make-up done before hand so that all that was needed was to get into costume and set up the camera and lights. It was then just Courtney and I that had to get our hair and make up done and into our costumes.

The setting and the stairs was already decorated perfectly the previous night which was lucky as by this point we were already strapped for time. This was one of my favourite shots as we did a tracking shot of all of the characters on the stairs. This included all of our cast members including me who was nowdressed as Snow White! In terms of the lighting in this scene, we gave it a red tint to create a sense of atmosphere and create a dramatic effect. This worked really well for us as it made it all look quite dreamy which was what we had in mind.

 Once the staircase scene was finished, we then moved on to our upstairs scenes which included a hallway scene, a bedroom and a bathroom scene. By this point I was very tired as it was nearing 5pm and the day had been pretty full on.

For the bedroom scene we used low lighting with candles to give it an authentic feel. We also used candles and red lighting in the bedroom scene with Courney and Max in bed, and used a flicker effect over the lights to make it look romantic. This scene took a good few takes as it was hard for our actors to get the hold of it but we got there in the end!

Overall it was a very succesful day, however there are still the begining and end scenes which need to be filmed as well as the pre-roll.