Storyboard Blog

For our story board, it is more of a guideline then strictly what we are going to do. But, we do have an idea of what we want. We have thought about the aesthetic we are going for, and we are all happily and smoothly moving forward with the project. We plan to get all of the filming done on the weekend, hopefully that is all we will need.

The storyboard starts out with a shot of the sunrise, preferably still on the monopod. We will need to remember where we are when we take this shot, as we plan to make a parallel shot during the daytime for later in the video. There is the same line for both of these shots: “so slowly a sunlit dream pulls me out of sleep.”

The second shot is of blinds, from the inside during the morning. The light breaking through, maybe we can catch some dust particles. The same place for the parallel shot later in the video, only during the day. The reason we are focusing on the blinds is because of the lyric: “feel the morning through the blinds.”

The third shot will be of a flower. We don’t have a specific flower in mind, but we will find a flower in the morning, do some takes and shoot the same flower during the day for later in the video. The lyric for these shots are: “I turn my head to meet/I get to thinking ‘bout your sun-kissed face.” None of us really wanted to finalize what the face the artist is singing about, as we wanted a more abstract feel. We had the idea of a sunflower, and settled on just finding a flower to shoot.

The lyric for the fourth and the last shot is “In this/And a quite place where I can give you all my time.” There was some debating what we should use as symbolism, and we decided that a palm tree would fit, from the beach. We would shoot it twice, in the morning and daytime.

Then we switch it up a little, we want to get graffiti into this video, and this would be when we would put the first one in. For the fifth shot the lyric is “You know I want to be your rock, my love.” If we don’t find a graffiti we like for this we will probably take some takes of a boulder. These shots don’t need to have a parallel later in the song, so this will be during the day.

The sixth shot will be something of a cliche, but we like it for this lyric: “You know I want to be your light.” The shot will be a sort of tilt, where the sun hides behind a persons shoulder for a second, but ultimately silhouettes the person as the sun ends up above their shoulder. We don’t want to have any focus on the face of the person, so it will be of their back. We aren’t sure where we are going to shoot this, but the background won’t matter so much as it being during the morning. This makes the previous shot almost out of place, so we might need to tweak the plan a little, but we will make it work.

The seventh shots lyric is: “In darkness how you find me just in time.” We want to have a cloud pass by, where the shot starts shadowed and ends up in the light, so everything brightening. We know we will probably not have the perfect cloud pass at the perfect time, so we are prepared to edit and add effects. Maybe just changing the brightness? We will work it out when we get there. The thing we will be filming will be a wall, with graffiti. Or it will be the door to the C&I cafe, one of our locations.

The next few boxes on the storyboard(the eighth, ninth and tenth), are all of the same shot. The camera will tilt up, focusing on the foreground first(a coffee cup), then the middle ground(a book) and finally end up focusing on the background(train tracks). This will be done in the C&I cafe. We wanted to have some sort of focal shot in the video and this will be it. The lyrics for this is, “To tell me what I needed to hear, So if you don’t know what you need, You can leave it all to me.”

The next takes will take place outside(daytime) in FatVillage(another location). The actress in this shot(who is carrying a coffee cup) will be calmly walking down the graffitied street. The shot after this will be a shot directed at one of the graffitis from the street. The lyrics for these shots are “Don’t want you worried about a thing, I know you’d do the same for me.” Maybe in the shot directed at the graffiti the actress will be walking through or off screen.

Now, here comes the chorus. The first two lines in the chorus will be of two different graffiti(“‘Cause you’re so lovely, you’re so lovely.”). The next part will be of the coffee cup the actress is carrying. It will be open and we will request the barista to create a heart of froth on top of the drink. There will be two shots of this, one from the side and one from the top(“I can’t help but fall for you my love/when you love me.”)

The next lyric(“It’s so lovely loving you.”) will be of the actress spinning carelessly far away, down the street. We will change the shot to be slow motion to make it seem for weightless.

The next lyric is a simple “uh-oh” that the artist sings. Each part of this will be a different shot of the same graffiti. For example a little closer or from a different angle.

The next line, “So lovely loving you,” will be of the actress spinning again, only the camera will be close enough to be a medium shot. Again, slow motion.

There is another “uh-oh,” and it will be almost the same as the “uh-oh” before it. It will be two different shots of the same plant, like from a different angle, etc.

The chorus ends there. The next lyrics are the same as the first. These will be the parallel shots that are during the day, instead of during sunrise(as explained earlier).

We are super excited to execute our plan and hope we can find everything we need.

Planning Blog

For our music video, we have chosen several locations: the beach, FAT Village, The Alchemist, The Top Hat Deli and Wynwood. Most of these locations are public, we won't have to ask permission before filming there. However, some places within these public spaces, such as the C&I cafe in FAT Village, will require us to ask permission. I am not worried about this, as the cafe is very art friendly. We will have to film at the beach twice, to get shots in the morning and daytime. This might be a problem as there will be more people at the beach during the day, making it harder to get the shot we need. Similarly, timing the shots of the sunrise on the beach might be difficult, as if we end up taking a timelapse we would only get one chance. Moreover, going to Wynwood might not be necessary, as we can get plenty of graffiti shots from other places like The Alchemist. This would simplify our schedule, as the drive to Wynwood is quite long.

Safety is an important aspect of our music video, as there is a lot of traveling involved. Seatbelts, as always, are a must. Sunscreen and hats for sun protection are to be used as we will be filming outside for the majority of the music video. This is especially necessary for filming at the beach later in the day, as nobody wants to get a sunburn. Winter is approaching, and even here it is starting to get cold. Packing a jacket to keep warm is a good precaution in case the tempurature drops. Of course, throughout the entire filming process, we will have adult supervision. They will drive us to each location, and stay with us until we need to leave.

The chosen costumes and props are relatively simple, thankfully. To keep with our established aesthetic, sweaters and jackets will be used. Preferably, they should be autumn themed, in colors of orange and red. A sweater that fits this description has been obtained, so no panic over costumes is necessary. Props might be a different story, however. In the storyboard, there are books and a cup of hot chocolate that are used in some shots. While they are not hard to come by, it's the aesthetic that might be harder to match. Fortunately, the hot chocolate can be easily purchased from one of the locations we’re filming at, so it’s aesthetic will match. A wide variety of books could be used for the shot, so this is really the only problem we could face while filming.

Our teachers offered each group to check out the provided equipment, but we chose not to. This is because we will use our own! We will use our own tripod, camera and SD card. This might be a slight problem as any technical difficulties with the camera’s won't be excused by the teachers. The choice to use our own equipment is a good one, though, as the last time we lost some footage when dumping it on the provided SD card. Lastly, we might get the chance to use a professional editing program that’s not Pinnacle studios, which would be a very interesting experience. One last concern is that our story board might be a bit vague. Most of our shots could easily change, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but this would complicate the editing process. If we end up taking a lot of unplanned shots, we could spend a great deal of time sorting through them when we could be editing.

Introduction to Music Video

We have finished the commercial project! I think we did a good job, though I think we should definitely use more the tripod for our next projects. Everything went smoothly, besides our minor mishaps due to technology and IMovie. Our strongest point is the filming, as we are quick and efficient, and hopefully we can keep that up for our new project. Our weakest point was probably the editing, mostly because IMovie wasn’t agreeing with us. I’m sure for our next projects we will not use IMovie, best possible scenario would be for us being able to use Pinnacle Studios. Besides that, I think our group is a good one!

We are all staying in the same group for our new project: A Music Video. I’m excited for this, as I’ve made a few before in Middle School. We were forewarned of the music video project so we’ve been looking for songs. We found one that we all like and think will work for our vision! I had the idea of doing more of a chill song, slower and more quiet, and I imagined us recording in FatVillage and on the beach. FatVillage is a tiny art community in Ft. Lauderdale, and after some thought we might also venture out to Winwood, Miami’s art district.

The song is Sunkissed by Khai Dreams, it’s a pop song. I’m not a big music person, but when I heard the song  I didn’t really think ‘pop,’ but oh well. It’s exactly what we were looking for. It’s about 2 minutes long but we found a round about way to trim it down to fit the time limits for the project. We searched up other pop song music videos, more indie pop than anything else, as we wanted to get an idea of what kind of video we were going to make. They were all down to earth, very colorful and dramatically lit, and they were also funny. I think we can manage the first three things, but the song we chose isn’t the ‘funny’ type, so I’m sure it will be okay if we exclude any humor. Along with those things there were quick cuts/shot, and panning.

We plan to apply those techniques that we observed. The close and far shots, the slight movement, and to edit to make the colors pop, adding tints and the like. For Mis en sen, we have an acronym for that!

C - Costumes. If we include ourselves or others in the video(I don’t think people will be the main focus), we will try to have a natural artsy look/indie look. If anything big jackets, tank tops, rolled-up jeans, and flat shoes.

L - Lighting. We want it to be bright and colorful, so we will have to come up with a way to apply that. Maybe a flashlight? We could put colored plastic to change the the color or something.

A - Acting. As said before, people won’t be the main focus, but if we do have people I suppose acting happy or calm will be the best thing.

M - Makeup. We want to have more of a natural look, but we want people to be themselves so if they are a person who uses dramatic makeup, they will keep their look. We want everyone to look natural and comfortable.

P - Props. For props, perhaps a mini  purse or backpack? Or some circle glasses? I definitely think there should be a form of coffee cup, like the to-go kind, but we will see.

S - Setting. We plan to mostly record the buildings and surroundings, especially the graffiti in the places like FatVillage and Winwood. Lots of plant shots too, so maybe a park?

All in all, I’m excited for this project! We have lots of people willing to help with transportation and the camera we hope to use. We even have some lighting equipment! Can’t wait to plan some more, and actually get to filming. We might have some trouble having the video make sense, so we need to work on that, make a visual story to go along with the song. We still have a way to go, but we have a great start!

Editing Process

Today the class is working on editing our commercials. I came in late and my group was already working. I helped turn on the computer as it was unplugged. Checking on the file, I saw again that most of what we shot wasn’t there but we still had enough to work with. We took at least six takes of each part, but only two showed up in file. I’m sure we can still work with it. When we tried to open Pinnacle Studios we couldn’t get it to work, as with the rest of the class, so instead we started to focus on sending the important takes to our own google drives. For this process, we went through each part of the commercial.

I had, along with my group members, debated on each shot and which would be the one we would eventually use. We got through all but the last shot, along with the audio backups, because the computer wasn’t loading the videos. In the end we sent the rest of the last shot that we hadn’t reviewed. We also sent all the audio files that we could because we didn’t have headphones ready to hear them. When sent, we now have reassurance that if the computer is to be wiped to keep it working that we have the important takes to work with.

This is far from what I had expected today to be like. I wanted to get everything done, only in need of the background music. I have been looking for songs to use in the background, but we haven’t truly decided on something. We didn’t really get to work on editing today but we are a good team and I’m sure we can finish within the rest of the time we have. Still enjoying this project, and can’t wait to see it developed further.

Filming Process

The other day we had filmed for our commercial. It was fun! We went to and claimed building 17 easily, able to shoot with out a problem. We started on the second floor hallway, taking several takes, and then moving outside. Again, we took multiple takes. I was the one filming while Madelene was the main actor, Josh caring our things while he wasn’t acting. We were quick, as the camera only had 30-40 minutes on its battery life. Eventually we moved to the first floor, and took lots of takes. I directed Josh and Madelene in where they should start and act. They were cooperative and trusted me to direct them, so everything went smoothly.

When we were to move onto the last few shots we had a little problem. In our minds we imagined the places to be closer then they actually were, so we filmed a few different endings. Once we completed that we decided to do the same process again but with the tripod. We experimented a lot with the shots(tracking and angles) but we still wanted something still to fall back on if the handheld wasn’t what we wanted. At the end we decided to record the few lines again so we could seamlessly edit them in later without messing with the ambient noise. This took up the last of our time and the cameras battery life. When we got back to the classroom we swiftly returned the equipment and acquired an SD card reader. We dumped the footage onto the computer, making our own folder although it took a few attempts.

For some reason the file we created doesn’t have everything we shot, which isn’t ideal when wanting to find the perfect take to use, but at least we had a few for each part of the commercial we planned for. Hopefully this won’t be a problem, but I doubt we will have to reshoot anything, even if we were able. Anyway, my group worked well together. Before we started to film I was a little worried if it was going to be difficult, but it went by in a breeze. Everything we did was efficient. Can’t wait to start editing and working towards our finished product.

Storyboard

Today in class we were supposed to create our storyboard, but, our group had already finished the storyboard in previous classes. The storyboard we worked on is for Building 17, but if we need to, we can film in lots of separate locations. 

The first shot is of actor M walking down a hallway(maybe a tracking shot?), eventually leaving the building through the double doors at the end. We have planned to have music in the background, where it is actually what actor M is listening to, so actor M will need to wear headphones. The next shot will be actor M beginning to walk down the stairs after leaving the hallway(maybe a wide shot, showing the surroundings?). In the third shot(probably wide) actor M reaches the bottom of the steps as actor J walks across the screen. Actor M gets actor J's attention with a "Hey, wait up." Then the fourth shot shows actor M catching up to actor J, and the fifth is of their shoes(specifically actor M's Converse), actor M asking "Want to listen?" to actor J. Continuing the fifth shot, the camera is still as the two actors walk out of the shot, with text appearing and a voice-over reading the words, "Converse, keep it simple."

 We have been struggling a little with the sound, though we are still working to find a song. Also, we think that each shot will vary in length, each one might not be exactly 5 seconds. Here is a picture of the storyboard:

Editing Lesson Blog

Today we learned about the filming and editing process. We learned how to check out the camera, tri-pod, SD card and reader. It was a little complicated but necessary. Hopefully when we actually do it, it will be more simple. Then after that we learned the editing process. My group and I asked about some specific things for our own commercial. After we also talked about some details of the voiceover and so on. I’m excited to work on the project and can’t wait to get started!

The actual editing process was some things that I have seen before. I made sure to take notes on specific orders and some titles of things I needed to know. The Pinnacle Studio looks like a good program, if a tad slow, but I can be patient. I hope it won’t take long to eventually edit our commercial. The actual process included opening the computer and dumping all the takes into a personal folder. Then opening Pinnacle Studio and importing the takes into the program. Then dragging the takes to the bottom. There were three layers, the top being the titles, the next being the video and then the sound/music.

You could delete the music or the video to isolate one, overlaying it. We could use that to voice over. We also learned some of the transitions, though I’m sure we will only use the regular cut. But we might try out some, not sure. We also learned how to put text on the screen, which we will use for the last part. We have already started working on our storyboard, so we have some idea of what we need to do already. I think this project will go smooth.

Planning Blog for Converse Commercial

Today we are planning our commercial. Figuring out the props, costumes, schedule, locations and our backup plan for if anything goes wrong. We want our commercial to be simple. Just following a normal student, and eventually revealing they’re wearing converse. The slogan we are going for is “keep it simple,” and “made by you.” 

Props: definitely a backpack(not branded or too distracting). Maybe a binder/folder/notebook or book, to show more context of the actor being a student, but it’s not completely necessary. We want the actors to look natural.

Costumes: keeping with the “natural” and “simple” theme, we want the actors to wear their own non-branded clothing, enough to give them personality but not enough for them to distract. In the event we cannot use the clothing worn, a jacket will be used to cover it up.

Schedule: today we are planning and we might draft the storyboard. Next class we will complete the storyboard with definite shots. Then the next we will film. Having planned so thoroughly, filming shouldn’t be a problem and won’t take more than 30 minutes to accomplish. We don’t quite know what editing program we are using so we aren’t sure if it will be difficult, but we will make sure to have plenty of shots to choose from.

Location list: for what we have in mind, all we need is a hallway, stairs and a somewhat open place. It could be the balcony hallway of building 5, the media center stairs and the patio in front of it; It could by the second floor of building 21, the stairs and the walkway next to it; Or it could even be the second floor hallway of building 17, the stairs and the stone path by it. Any of these locations can be used, and there are plenty of others we have planned for if some don’t work out.

We have talked about each backup plan within each subject, and can’t wait to execute our plan!

Research Conventions

My group started to work on our commercial project today. We will be creating a commercial about converse. We had to choose from a list of topics, including Starbucks/Dunkin Donuts, Wendy’s/McDonalds, and Nike/Converse. We decided against doing a chain restaurant because we couldn’t think of any strong ideas on the spot. Once we thought more about converse, we saw that it would work the best.

We started to research more about converse. Like their past slogans like “made by you” and the like. We saw that most of their recent commercials were all about the diversity in daily life. This is great since our school is very diverse and we can only shoot on campus. All in all, Converse is looking to be a great choice for us to choose for this commercial project. 

In class we started working on ideas for various shots that are commonly used in their commercials. We noticed that they used a lot of closeups on their actual shoes, and generally revealed their brand towards the end. We plan to storyboard our shots like theirs. Unfortunately, we didn’t have enough class time to discuss this all in class, so we decided to plan via group chat!

Introductory

Hello, my name is Breanna. I am in an AICE Media Studies class, and I will be using this blog to record my experience during my projects. This class interests me because it is about filming, and I was raised up on movies. Filming something has always been of interest to me. Coming into the class, I had already known some things, but there are lots of things I don't know. I am ready to learn about it.

The class has already done a project about the genres of film, and we have been told on the projects to come; such as a commercial and even a two minute film at the end of the year. Ever since I heard of this I have already started to brainstorm, as I know that creating a good idea and film takes time. So far I enjoy the class, and two of my friends and I have decided to work together all year, Madelene and Josh. I live near Madelene and our moms are close friends. I know Josh from biology last year.

I don't have much experience in recording my everyday life, in social media or otherwise, but I think writing these blogs will be easy. Hopefully this class will be fun, and I can get everything done in time in a way that my group wants.