Costumes

For the female performer we have put her in a floral dress to show happiness and joy. This is to show the different emotion while she is with the male character while she hides her real feelings of sadness to herself and when she is alone.

We have put the male character in dark mute colours. This reflects the personality of the character and is the total opposite of the female character. It also helps promote the on going conflict between the two performers and makes it obvious through costume to the audience that they don't get along.

Update - Filming

Today, we filmed some additional scenes in a local café near college, the scenes included a mid-shot of the preformer and a over the shoulder shot. In addition, to this we also took some photographic images to be used for 'Stop Motion' and filmed some hand held scenes to help the people watching the music video empathise with the performers and their emotions.

Before hand, we requested permission on Tuesday and booked a time slot during the Friday lesson, in doing this we had to speak with the manager to make sure we could go ahead and use the cafe area this resulted in receiving permission to do so.

Stop Motion

We found this video on YouTube and thought it was put together really well. We enjoyed the stop motion used in the areas of this video and felt really inspired to use it similarly in our own music video. The smooth transitions of each frame shows no distinct or obvious jumps throughout the video and holds well together to relate to the song. Hopefully the stop motion we use in our video works just as well as this.

Research on Stop Motion Animation

As a group we came up with the idea to use Stop Motion in order to increase realism in our music video. Influenced by one of the videos from the previous year, we decided that our music should also have Stop Motion in order to portray certain attitudes and emotions of our characters.

This is what we found, when researching Stop Motion with Final Cut Pro, this is the site we found the information regarding the Stop Motion Animation on:

http://www.geniusdv.com/news_and_tutorials/2010/09/stop_motion_animation_with_final_cut_pro.php

We therefore found that in using stop motion, we would have to take a number of photographic images of what we wanted the stop motion to be of and that each photograph would show the objects moving slightly. This would result into a 'flip book' of photographs, effectively working like a flip book to create stop motion.

Filming Room Scenes

Over the weekend, Caroline took home the video camera and filmed some scenes around the home. The tripod allowed her to film independently as she could set it up and film the scenes needed. A variety of shots where filmed, from long shot to close ups, this of which will accommodate the numerous shots needed in the music video. The scenes around the home help portray the emotions of the performer as she is alone in all these scenes and therefore show that the male performer is no where to be seen.

Hair and Make up

Having that we are doing a music video for Kate Nash's song Foundations, we thought that it would only make sense to have the performer to relate back to her. We have therefore kept the hair and make up in relevance to Kate Nash meaning that even though we are making a new take on her video we are still keeping the element of Kate Nash through the hair and make up of the performer. Consequently, we have looked at images of Kate and have found that her make up is very simple, she doesn't over use make up or apply it outrageously and doesn't use it as a trademark. For example, Lady Gaga, who would use make up to do herself up and is known for her outrageous style.

The hair again, is very simple, however, we found that she often wears her hair down in its natural waves. We have therefore made sure that Caroline curls her hair before recording as she has naturally straight hair.

Costume For Opening Sequence

This is the costume for the opening sequence. We decided that as it would be a performance of the character playing on the keyboard, it would be nice for her to dress smart casual, as if she were performing to a watching audience. We also thought that by keeping the colours dark, helped portray the characters feelings when she is alone, as opposed to the contrasting dresses she will be wearing when she is out with the male character. This gives the idea that the brightly coloured clothes hide her true feelings. The clothes do this by making a statement through colour which gives no reference to the opposing emotion, of which she really feels.

Tuesday 12th October

For the first sequence of our music video, we have decided to use the performance room so that we can control the lighting to create an alone atmosphere. By having the black walls as the background makes it more dramatic and adds more depth to the emotion of the character we are trying to portray. This of which being lonely and sad.

Also, the performance room has enabled us to use 3 cameras at one time. Allowing us to film at 3 different angles and shots in one take. We therefore saved a bit of time whilst doing this, as we didn't need to film all the different shots separately.

Filming park scenes

Today, we spent our time filming in Alexandra Park in order to get footage for our music video. We filmed on some of the locations we mentioned in are earlier blog post, and began to film additional footage for our 'Foundations' music video. We currently plan on using all of the recordings we made and made sure to take multiple filmings of all the scenes to enable us to pick out the best footage to use on our final product.

We spent as much time as we could here using the different areas of the park grounds enabling us to get different shots and camera angles. The autumnal leaves and pleasant view in the park was a nice touch to the shots the we filmed. It was cold and looked as though it was about to rain but we carried on through with the filming for our video.

Update - Filming & Editing

So far we have filmed our keyboard scenes and are in the process of editing it into what we planned for our video. Our time in the studio was cut short so we used the rest of this time to transfer what we had alredy filmed onto the computers in the editing suite. This means that were are ahead of our shooting schedule. We are there fore going to start the filming of the park scenes during friday's afternoon lesson, earlier than planned.

Opening Sequence Practice

Seeing as we chose to have the main character performing on the keyboard, we thought it would look good if the notes were played correctly, so that it didn't look silly when she is pretending to play. Therefore, although we wont hear her playing during the filming, at least it will look realistic and professional.

Consequently, as we are not music students and don't know how to read music, we have searched for tutorial videos on 'Youtube' to help learn the notes. This way we can see the notes being played and copy it rather than searching for the music sheet that we cannot read or will know how to play from.

This is one of the videos we looked at to get the chords to the intro.

We then looked at this video of a piano cover to see if we could pick up any of the notes that make up the rest of the song.

Animatic For Opening Sequence

Shooting Schedule

We will start with the parts that we can film in college such as the piano scenes. We need to speak to the music department to find out when the music rooms are free. So our first week of filming is not set in stone as we are not yet sure whether the music rooms are avaliable. After that we can start the filming in the various chosen locations in the park. We will also film in a café for conversation scenes. We have not yet decided here else we will film. We may also film on weekends and after college so that we have more time during lessons to edit as we go along. This means that we all have to sacrifice spare time to put toward the filming process of our video.


11th - 15th October - Piano scenes in college

• Tuesday Morning: Set up in the performance room and filming of piano sequence
• Friday Afternoon: Uploading piano sequences to Final Cut Pro and rough edit

16th - 17th October - House scenes

At this time Caroline will take the camera home over the weekend and film a few sequences around the home to show the female character going about her everyday life. We will use these shots for gaps in the video where there is just instrumental, and possibly put a fast forward effect on it to give the essense of rushing.

18th - 29th October - Park and road scenes

• Tuesday Morning: Travelling to the location, preparing and filming with both characters
• Friday Afternoon: Carrying on with what filming was not previously finished
• Tuesday Morning: Carrying on with what filming was not previously finished
• Friday Afternoon:Uploading park scenes to Final Cut Pro and rough edit

30th - 31st October - Café scenes

As Caroline and Lillian live in the same are they will go to a local cafe over the weekend to film the cafe scenes. These will be used for the conversation parts of our video.

1st - 5th November - Notebook, stop motion

• Tuesday Morning: Notebook work can be done in college
• Friday Afternoon: Editing in the notebook work to fit with the song lyrics

Locations

We have decided so far that we will do parts of the filming in the park, so we have taken some pictures of areas in the park that would be ideal for what we intend to do. The autumnal colours of the leaves tie in well with our theme of colour and will also extend the contrast of the male character in dark colours.

We have specifically chosen to use the swings in the park for parts of our video. This will help us to show the contrast in the characters attitudes towards the relationship they are in, through the girls' reliance on her partner, and his casual indifference to the matter.

Costume

Costumes are important to performance based music videos, as it can provide insight into the characters personality and their role in the video, dark clothing commonly means a darker character while brighter gives the impression of a cheerful, bright character. In the pop music genre slightly brighter clothing is commonly used, in contrast to rock in which dark clothing is more common.

In order to illustrate the conflict going on between our two characters, as a group we came up with the idea of dressing our characters according to what the character is portrayed as through the lyrics of the song. Therefore the male character is set to wear black clothes to match his characteristics of being a dull, boring, troublesome individual who is the cause of the failure of the breaking relationship. This leaves the female character to wear something bright and cheery, as she is the one fighting and complaining about the fall down of their relationship. However, to evoke the deepness of the female character's sadness, the female character is also set to wear something dark, when she is alone, which elevates the point that only she can feel this sadness. The reason we chose our female character to wear something bright whilst being with her boyfriend, is to show how the male character is unaware of the female characters loneliness.

In order to keep up with the timeline of today’s image and to associate the mise en scene to the genre of the song, we chose that the female character should wear a bright patterned dress which also refers to the original version of the video.

These images are examples of what we are considering to use as our female character’s costume:

For the piano scenes, she will be wearing dresses like these:

Floral bright dresses like these will be worn when she is with the male character.

These images are examples of what we are considering to use as our male character’s costume:

Weather for Tuesday 5th October

For the moment the weather doesn't really matter due to the fact that it will work well with the theme we are trying to portray, of which being that the relationship has its ups and downs. therefore the weather will show pathetic fallacy, following the feelings of both the characters.

As you can see, tuesdays weather doesn't look so bad, as it states there will be light rain. This will be ok to work with, unless it had rained heavily over night, because we will need to record the park scenes and the main character will need to sit on the swing. However, this could be overcame, if we bring out some tissue to wipe the seat dry.

More so, we might not even get to record the park scenes as we need to record the piano scenes first and will need to vary the different shots we can take.

Consequently, if we don't end up filming in the park, we can take location shots for our blog. All in all, with regards to the weather, it pretty much won't affect our filming time as we can work ways around it.