Set Build and Lighting Design

This week we had a dissuasion with Dan who is the set builder and lighting director. With him we would discuss what we have planned and weather it would be possible to carry out. Our first concern was the bird cage. We were talking about all the different options that we have on how we can get a human sized bird cage. One option was to see if we could rent one out from a party company but this would coast loads of money which we want to try and avoid spending. The second option was to build one. Dan said that this is possible and easy to do with no coast so we decided on building one ourselves. Together we discussed what the bird cage would look like. One of the media teachers alex said she had a bird cage lamp shade that we could use so I asked her to bring it in for our meeting with Dan. The bird cage that we got was white and had too much detail on it to build. We thought that we would keep it simple and have a 6 walled cage but it won't have a top because it was not needed and because of the swing that is going inside we could not have it. We then decided what colour to have it. I thought that it should be cream because that is how I imagined it like but the other girls thought it would be good if it were a classic bronze colour. In the end we decided that it would be best to have it as the bronze colour because it looked more like it should be indoors. The bird cage had been built before the half term so in the last couple days of half term all three of us got our overalls and a paint brush and painted them.

The other large prop that we had was a swing. We all imagined it to be a garden sing with vines and flowers on it. He said that we will build the swing no problem but we would have to get the things to decorate it with which was no problem for us.

The instruments were proven to be a trouble. We could get hold of most of them but the harp was quite an issue. We asked around to see it the school would have one that we could borrow but no one played the harp so they didn't have one. The only other option was to hire one. The only offer we could fine was to rent it for 3 months for £150 which was too much for us. It looked as though we wouldn't have a harp in the video but there was a kind of harp that we could have with was a little different to what we wanted but at the end of the day was good as we were going to get so we settled for that.

After discussing all the probes with Dan it was then time to start talking about lighting. Our lighting idea was quite simple. We wanted really simple three point lighting with was warm and gave the feel of being inside of a house. This was simple for him to do. For the other set we wanted to have shadows of bars across them so that it gave the impression of them being inside a birdcage. This didn't present and problems for Dan so our lighting was completely sorted.

We have had a few problems with the cast. We got told that our main actress for our video could not be in it because she in someone else's. We then had to sort this out because she said at the beginning of the term that she is fully committed to our video so we had to talk to a few people and luckily we got her back however there are a few people who now cant be in ours who we cant get back so we will have to re-cast.

Studio Design, Lighting and Location

To help us organise what we need and how we will put it on the day of the shoot we all together discussed how it would be and I drew out the set design, the lighting design and the layout of the studio. This were the drawing that I did to give us the idea of what we will need to get how we are going to do it. We had two designs. One was of the band and that was really simple it was just a blue screen with lighting as if it is the bird cage is making shadows over them. The more complicated set design is for the lead singe. We wanted to get a human sized bird cage with a garden swing in the middle. We were thing the lighting will be really simple 3 point lighting.

This is our set design and lighting design our first set:

This is our set and lighting design for Set 2:

Camera Test

A camera test is for making sure that the people that you have chosen work on camera. This is really important because if our person doesn't have presence or energy then our music video would not work. The audience needs to be able to connect with the character in order to sell the song and her band so having someone with dominance and charisma is extremely important. Our main person that we would be filming was a girl called Karis. All we had to do was to put her in front of the camera and to a few turns in long shot and close up. Form this we found that she was good on the screen. Just form this short clip you can see that she was really energetic and she would be fun to work with. She has just the right look that we want and we are excited to work with her.

Storyboarding

Storyboard is like a Timeline but it allows you to visualise the shots individually and makes it really easy to go through the each shot type that you should use and why you should use it. The storyboard works out the type of shot, angle, movement, the colours and shapes, mise en scene and how the picture composition rules will be applied in the film. Anything and everything is thought about in the storyboard so that no time is wasted on the shoot. We only have one to shoot so we need to have everything ready. The storyboard is the plan you shoot to if it works on paper that makes it a lot less expensive then to waste time on camera for hours yet day.

On our story board we had a shot that started with a close up of her mouth and had a slow track outwards to revile herself and the rest of the band. We drew this out on the storyboard to see it this would work. We found the tracking would really work because it makes you feel closer with the person. This also will be really smooth making it feel calm which would go with the tempo of the song. We then drew out that the part of the song where it was loads of quick sharp shots that will go with the fast tempo so that it will look exciting and will draw people in. We chose to use loads of close ups on her face so that the audience feel intimate with the main character and connect more to her.

This is a video of an example of storybording. This video shows the prosscess of storyboarding we went through our storyboard like this.

These are some of our storyboards

Time Line

Time line is the first attempt to organise and write down the ideas of our music video. For a time line you link the images with lyrics of the songs and the music riffs. By doing this you can see what works and what does not. We worked out weather each shop worked for the time for each shot in the music video.

An example is we decided that starting with her mouth and tracking slowly outwards would work for the first part of the music video to slowly revile her surroundings and the band. The time line showed that this work because we could time how long the lyrics are and make sure that we had enough time to track out as much as we needed to. What we saw that didn’t work was that What didn’t work was when we tried to time line the ‘OkGo’ part of our video because we only knew very roughly what was going on and we needed to know in more detail what to do. This made it really hard to develop and take further.

To get a better understand of a time line we developed and started story boring.

Copyright Permission

Below is a copy of a letter sent to the copyright owner to ask for permision to use their song. We had a legal obligation to seek their permission and this letter did this.

Head of Copyright and Legal Affairs
Universal Island records.
22st Peter Square
London
W6 9NW

Dar sir or Madame

We are a group of A level students working on an A level project for a qualification in Media Studies. We are writing to request permission to use the following track as part of this project:

Bird Song by Florence and the Machine

With your permission the track would be used as the accompaniment to a short form video that is made purely for assessment purpose and will have no commercial usage. The video will be viewed only by members of the school community and the assessor of the examination board.

The artist and the copyright holder will of course be fully recognised in the pre-production and evaluation material that accompanies the project. We can also include a full copyright notice if required both in the planning material and on the video itself.

Yours sincerely

Gabriella Meech.
Hurtwood House School

Composition Rules

The 11 Golden Rules

There are hundreds of composition rules in film making which are important for our shots to look professional and to create the desired effect. They will be useful to use in three different ways this year. These are: We will have to understand 10 compositions rules and write about them. We will then apply the 10 composition rules when making our pop video They will also be used in our exams essay fro examples of how we have improved.

Different types of shot size
These are a few examples

Close up- This kind of shot is for when you want to show emotion in someone’s face so that the audience can connect more with them. It is also used for showing detail. Because of the intimacy with the person you get in a close up this is how we are going to sell the band.

Mid shot – This kind of shot has a similar job to the close up it allows to get close with the character but in this one you can see a bit of the body too.

Long shot – this kind of shot is used so that people can see the actions that the character does and you can get more of a feel for their personality because you can see what they wear.



Extreme long shot- This is so that you can see their surrounding and understand what situation they are in.

Establishing shot – This is important because the audience need to know where and what time the video is set in. This means that they can soak in the atmosphere of the film.

Camera position and angle.
The angle and positioning is really important in film making because it can subconsciously play with the viewers thoughts and feeling towards a character. If you position the camera in a high angle looking down then you are making out the character to be vulnerable and weak, shy and timid and under threat. If you place the camera in a low and looking up them you are making the person out to be really superior. In film it is called the hero shot because it is used a lot on heros on the film and makes them look powerful and heroic. It can also have another effect which is it could make the person look arrogant and cocky. If you position the camera flat on to the person it gives the no definition and makes the look really boring and dull. If you shoot them at a 32 degree angle then there is more depth and it makes them look friendly and exciting.

Camera MovementsCamera movement includes tracking and cranes. Tracking is when the camera moves with the character as if we are walking beside the. This can make you feel really close to the character. They make you feel aesthetic pleasure.

Cranes allow you to get really fluid shots form every angle going to any angle. This makes for really beautiful smooth camera movements.

Rule of thirds
Our eyes scan through a photo using the rules of thirds. The first thing that our eye is drawn to is the hot spots of the photo. The hot spots are the point on the grid where the lines of the grid

meet each other. We can use the rule of thirds to suggest the character of the person we are filming. If you subvert the rule of thirds the it suggests that the character on screen is a villain it will also make them look edgy and rebellious. If you follow the rule of third then they are made out to be heroes or ‘good guys’. This is what pop video usually do because they want the audience to like them so they sell more records.

LightingLighting is really important because it can set the mood and atmosphere of the scene. There are many different types of lighting in film making but we are just learning about the most basic kind which is three point lighting. The lights used are the following.
KEY – The key light is your main and strongest source of light. This can be the sun or an electrical light source.
FILL – This is your second light source, softer than your key light, which crosses the key light to “fill” the strong shadows created by your main light source. This can be a reflector or an electric light.
BACK– The back light is used to separate the subject from background. It makes the scene look more three-dimensional. Sometimes you can use the “setting sun” as your back light or another light source.
Here is what a typical three point set up would look like in a studio. We will most likey use this at some point when shooting and we will use the red heads and the blondes.

Leading the eye.

When you are thinking about composition, when filming, you need to make sure that you lead the audiences’ eye around the screen, for example using the curb of a street to lead you eye up to the character. This picture is a good example for leading lines.

Colours
Colours are really important because different colours can give different moods and in clothing and set design because the choice of colours can be really suggestive about there character. This chart shows all the different colours and what they mean. Colours can also suggests things about the surround they are in. For example if it is cold blue light is usually used and if ti is warm it is yellow, orange and reds are use to imply heat.

Shapes and lines
different shapes and lines can provoke different emotions.For example:
- horizontal represent rest, harmony and tranquility. Think when you sleep on rest you are lying horizontal.
- Vertical lines give the feeling of power, strength and very dominate. For example picture of trees.
- Oblique have a very dramatic feel and create a sense of movement, action and make us feel unsettled.
- S shaped lines represent calm and create a sensual similar to horizontal
- Converging lines show scale and give the illusion of depth size and distance.
You can use this in film to get across someone’s character and sway the audience on how we feel about them as a person.

Detail Arrangement in the frame

These are little details in the frame that you might include because it gives you a clue of who they are. For example if you are interviewing a mother you may have a babies bottle in shot.

Entering and Leaving the Frame
There are different way in which you can follow someone which will tell you something about the character. If they are face left to right you see them a a 'good guy' because that is the way your eye naturally goes and we read left to right. If someone goes from right to left then you feel awkward and gives you the impression of being bad and the villain.

Editing techniques
There are many different editing techniques in the film industry and each are used to create different atmospheres and it suggests the personality traits about the characters. If you cut the images really fast then it can create tension, excitement and danger. Slow editing can suggest romance clam and sadness. In music video we will cut to the beat of the song. So we will use both of these editing techniques in out video because our song is slow and then goes really fast.

Another thing that we have learnt to expand out editing skills is Balletic editing. This is a type of editing that allows you eye to be lead arrow the screen smoothly. This diagram shows how it works. Doing this makes the scene really smooth and a calm and really easy to watch. If you subvert this style then you get a chaotic and unsettling effect. To research this we watched the ‘Wild Bunch’ which had a perfect example of Ballectic editing. We watched the part of the big shoot off at the end. It used Balectic editing whilst having chaos and murder. This made it even more unsettling for the viewer because there are two massive contrast that to us don’t really make scene when in our heads we try to make sense of it. I think that this is really cleaver I would love to apply this to my work in a later project. This is a really difficult type of editing to do and hopefully we will touch on it when the time of our editing comes along.

First Pitch

The explicit and unashamed promotion of the artist’s “image” (aesthetic/generic/ideological) as a specific product with a brand identity, ready for mass consumption

The featuring of the artist (almost without exception)

Repetition of reoccurring thematic elements and generically specific iconography (one key element often being dominant and providing the skeletal structure for the promo)


A wide and extensive use of shot types, camera angles and movement. 

A possible performance element

The flexibility to disregard Realism!

 A possible narrative structure

Use of special effects (lighting, animation, CGIs, in-camera effects)

 A carefully constructed Mise en Scene appropriate to the content and tone of the track
Shots cut tightly to the beat of the track
High impact instantly! (Don’t forget that competition for airplay on the main music channel outlets is intense)

This music video of gwen stifani directed by David Chapelle keeps to all of the 8 conventions. This means that it is really easy to follow and will attract peoples attention. What he has concentrated most on in this video is the miss en scene and the special effects and it comes together to make a flexibility to disregard realism. This made it very popular.

Our group then pitch our ideas to luke who will tell you which ones he think will work and which ones won't so that we can make the right decision with what idea to go for. We had three main ideas. The first of these being a tramp that is on the side of a road who sees the stories of strangers unraveling in front of him. The idea was discussed a little further with luke talking about where we would do it how we would get permission to film on a street and how many extras would we need. There were a lot of problems that would have needed to be sorted out if we were to do this one and Luke didn't think it was a very strong idea so we moved on to the net one.

The next idea was to have a girl and a boy who's relationship falls apart. The two elements would be ,one, of the artist standing on stage, by himself, sining and the second shots of events that have happened in the relationship. This video ended with they guy ripping up pieces of paper in anger that he had made a mistake and the gill left him. The papers would then start to fall on the stage on the guy. Luke immediately said that it was too cliché with the boy and girl with relationship problems because that is what everyone does and it isn't very exciting because its been done so many times before.

Our third idea was my idea. I pitched 'Bird Song' and explained that the song is about guilty conscience and the idea of a visage in a perfect world. I thought that as the