Light Flares and Leaks- Safwana

Double Exposure - Safwana

Feedback from Year 10 - Yagmur

As our music video is aimed at a niche audience, we knew that it wouldn't be to everyone's taste or that some people may not even understand the deeper meaning/symbols in the video. Our media teacher suggested showing our video (which is almost finished) to a year 10 group to see their reactions and what they thought of the video. Even though they're not our target audience, it was interesting to hear their opinions which is beneficial to us as we can make some minor changes.

Person 1 - They found the song boring and the video slow pace and that they prefer Pop/R&B.

Person 2 - It's not for our age group.

Person 3 - The part of the song that says "Back in 1991" has the reverse shot of the friends jumping which is quite good.

Person 4 - The video is about two best friends.

Person 5 - The girl lost her friend because some shots shows them together whereas others show the girl by herself.

Person 6 - The friend died because of the shots of her walking into a graveyard.

Person 7 - There was a book of memories.

Person 8 - There is no friend and that she is actually imaginary.

Person 9 - The scrapbook is left in the graveyard, which must mean that she died.

Person 10 - The shadow/silhouette of the guy singing is really good.

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Below are some post it notes which the students wrote their initial ideas of the video before they gave the feedback in the video.

Framing, composition and lighting - Yagmur

This shot is framed quite well as we used the rule of thirds. The two friends aren't directly on the right and are closer to the middle so we still focus on them.

The lighting in this shot is quite dull and we may need to adjust this because it's hard to tell what is actually going on in the shot.

Similarly, the lighting also needs to be slightly brighter in this shot because as we filmed it at night, it's quite grainy and dull so it needs to be brighter.

This is one of our favourite shots because of how it fits in the frame. The windows are directly in the centre with the protagonist on the side and a plane flying out of the shot on the right.

This is also a good shot because of how it's framed. The trees/flowers all around the frame make us focus on the two friends more because they're directly in the middle.

Filming update/Location - Yagmur

As we decided we wanted some performance in our video, we decided to film the artists silhouette while he was lip singing.

We filmed in the drama studio in our school as there's a lot of studio lights which are perfect for casting shadows on the blank screen. After we set up the lights, tripod and camera, we played around with the composition of the shots and found that the rule of thirds was the best. This is because when we edit our video, there's going to be shots in the background at the same time as the artist singing, so there needs to be some space for the audience to see that.

The person we chose wasn't familiar with the song so we printed out the lyrics sheet and played the song at the same time so he knew exactly how it sounded and knew how to lip sing it perfectly.

We found that it worked really well as you can clearly see what the artist is lip singing (once we put the audio over it, it became even more clear). We found that on final cut pro it also looked really good when we put footage behind it and decreased the opacity so it was faint in the background.

Peer Assessment - Safwana and Yagmur

In today's lesson, we did peer assesment on our music videos. We went around our class and looked at other blogs and videos and filled out a sheet which had different mark bands on it. Specifically, we gave them feedback on composition, editing, shots etc. The group that assessed ours will comment below with their feedback.

Filming update - Yagmur and Safwana

As we're coming to the end of completing our music video, we realised that we still had gaps in our timeline in final cut pro and we decided we would do some more filming. We needed more shots of the two friends together so that they can be used as flashbacks and makes it more nostalgic.

Experimenting with sihouettes - Safwana and Yagmur

As we decided to add some performance in our video of the 'artist' lip syncing, after getting feedback from our class, we wanted to be more creative with it and make it more interesting. Indie rock/pop music videos tend to have artistic and creative elements to them so they're more unique and quirky.

We first decided and planned that we will take footage of our male model in a park and have him lip syncing and walking around at the same time. A lot of indie music videos tend to have the male artist doing this, but as mentioned before, we wanted it to be more creative and add something more visually exciting to look at. We were originally relying on shooting on a sunny day so we can get that shadow/silhouette look, but then we looked at a lot of videos on youtube and found that it was easier to create silhouettes indoors with high key lighting and a plain background. 

This is the opening credits of a TV show and we thought that the silhouettes of the heads with the images on them looked quite impressive and generally more interesting than looking at a black silhouette.

This video inspired us to add our initial idea of the silhouettes as well as playing around with editing techniques. In the example above we can see that they have used projectors to add an affect on the silhouettes and have moving images on the silhouette, with this we were thinking to have footage of the friend and the protagonist. However instead we decided to use the double exposure technique which gives the solid shape, which in this case is the shape of the artists face, some more depth. The internal solid shape has the footage, instead of it being black, and the external area is completely white.

These are some screenshots of how we used this video as an inspiration and in cooperated it to out own music video.

We used the drama studio to create the silhouettes. There was a white screen and I stood in front of it to cast a shadow which we then took a video of. We tried to see if it would be clear when lip syncing and it was because we put the music on top and it was clear - as if the artist was really singing. We also played around with the exposure/contract and we made the silhouette even darker.

We put two copies of the same video on top of each other and then another video such as the protagonist sitting down drawing. We found that this gave a really nice effect and we thought we could put all the videos together of the friend in black and white to make it even more nostalgic.

Final cut pro process - Yagmur

Stage one:

I wanted to reverse a couple of shots to show how the protagonist wants time to be reversed (before her friends death). I did this to the shot of me blowing out the candle so instead the candlelight isn't blown out. I also reversed the shot of me sitting down on a bench in a park of gravestones and there's one leaf on the bench which could represent loneliness, or her friend.

Stage two:
There are some parallel shots such as the one of the protagonist running down the stairs and both friends running down the stairs together. I decided to blade each of those videos and rearrange them so it flows. The protagonist runs down the stairs and then it cuts back and forth to the friends running down the stairs. It's a good editing technique to show the past and the present of how lonely the protagonist is now.

I also did the same for these shots to show the contrast of her happiness before and her loneliness now.

Stage three:
We wanted to drop 'hints' throughout the video of crosses, gravestones, angel statues etc. This shot shows the protagonist running up the stairs and the camera panning up to the cross which is symbolic of the friends death.

Stage four:

After the first chorus of the song, there's a lot more blurry lights and focuses in/out to show how distorted the protagonists' life is now without her friend.

Class feedback - Safwana and Yagmur

During lesson we watched every groups music video in progress and used the assessment sheet to see where the groups were at and what they can do to improve. This was the assessment sheet we got back, and we got a lot of feedback as well as constructive criticism.

On the sheet, one of the skills that we needed to have were "appropriately integrating performance and narrative." Although we got lots of good feedback for our narrative, we were given criticisms of the lack of performance we have. We started planning out what kind of performance we could have. We decided we would have some lip syncing of a guy who could be the lead singer of the band. We don't want to clearly show his face, so we want it to be mostly his silhouette as the narrative is more important than the performance.

Final cut Pro process - Safwana and Yagmur

Stage one: 
We began importing our footage onto Final Cut Pro, this allowed us to watch the footage in our organised folders and put them on our timeline in the order that we want. We started off dragging the footage from the desktop which became quiet difficult, as we had to go through all our footage and drag them individually onto the timeline, also it became crowded so we decided to start over again and import all the footage onto Final Cut pro. 

Stage two: 
We used our story board to order the footage, firstly we started off with the first section, which is a tilt of the protagonist looking out of the window. We cut the beginning which was too long, and started where we got the light flare. We also had to take into consideration the music, we planned to have some of our footage link with the lyrics, such as "we were young". Here we had a quick clip of the two friends taking a picture. 

Stage three:
The lyrics for this part of the song were "back in 1991", we decided to reverse the shot of Yagmur and Selcan jumping off a log. The reverse shot presents us with the past, all the joy that they once experience is now going, as the friend dies.




Stage four:
The lyrics for this part of the song were "when the story first begun". We decided to use a shot of pages which we sped up to represent time going by really quickly, especially as death is unexpected.



Stage five:
The lyrics for this part of the song is "I remember" and the pace of the song is slow so we decided to slow down the shot of the merry-go-round to fit the music. Additionally, it reflects childhood and past memories which goes well with our theme.

Stage six: 
Here we have two shots which are parallel to each other. The first shot is of the protagonist taking pictures alone and the second shot is of the two friends taking pictures together. The flash represents a 'flashback' which leads us to the past memories. 

Stage seven:
Here we have two shots that flow well together because the first shot pans up to the light, and the second shot transitions into light which then pans down to the protagonist. The light can be a representation of 'heaven' and the friend is looking up at her. 

Final Cut Pro Practice - Yagmur and Safwana

Once final cut pro was installed on the Macs, we decided to start experimenting with different tools and just practiced using it in general so it would be easier for us once we actually started editing. As The Neighbourhood videos have a letterbox/widescreen aspect ratio, we decided to see how it would look with our shots and it actually looked better than the original full screen aspect. We first tried to crop the actual footage but we found that it cropped out the majority of what we want to show to the audience. We searched further and found the letterbox option which made it easier.

We also started to experiment with different filters. We tried a lot of filters and we stuck to black and white. The neighbourhood videos tend to have a grey tone to them rather than a regular black and white which can have a really high exposure and dark contrast which can sometimes look quite strong and sharp, whereas we're going for a more faded look.

We haven't quite decided whether we want our entire video to be black and white with the letterbox frame, or if we want it to be full screen with coloured filters like more green/yellow tones or purple/blue tones with a grainy effect over it to give it a more nostalgic feel. We think that both effects can make our video look nostalgic. With the black and white, it expresses the darkness and depressing theme of the video a lot more, and with the coloured filters it can still show the dark theme behind it because the old film effect can bring memories of the past (in our case, the death of the friend). We will experiment further with the different footage to see if these effects suit the entire video, but first we need to make sure that all of our videos are in order and in place.

Example of our music video - Yagmur and Safwana

We used the footage we already filmed and decided to make a quick trailer/montage of some of our shots together. Our actual music video is going to be black and white so we decided this will give a an accurate representation of the official music video because we're going to be using the same shots. We will be experimenting with a lot more editing techniques such as slow motion, speeding shots up, quicker cuts etc. This briefly gives a glimpse of the entire 3-4 minute video.