Research and Planning- Audience Research.

To see how we should market our chosen song and band Ravenface, This is Annihilation. I have looked at a website that shows me similar bands to Ravenface. This is helpful because I can look at the different methods of marketing and branding that these bands have used, as well as concepts and interesting camera techniques that they have used in music videos.The images of the bands are useful because it gives me ideas for how we should represent our actors.

Here is a link to the website:-
http://www.last.fm/music/Ravenface.

The bands that the source listed are as followed:-

• The Defiled.

 

• Across the Sun.

 

• Skiller.

 

• Vanisher.

 

• The Artifact.

 

• Sarea.

 

• Tasters.

 

• Dawn Under Eclipse. 

 

• Invisius.

 

• The Unguided.

 

• The Blinded.

 

• Zero System.

 

• Hell Within.

 

• Figure of Six.

 

• Rise To Remain. 

Research and Planning:- Shot List.

We will be re filming this week and after using footage from our previous filming we have made a shot list of all the gaps and footage that needs to be re filmed. We have also added some aspects to our narrative. As we are taking an apocalypse approach to our narrative, we were told that that isn't very clear. So we are going to interject hints to old lives using objects shown in the woodland. These objects will be precious objects, like a pocket watch, child's toy and family photo that will be old and obviously left outside for a very long time. We can then use this for our ancillary as we will take photographs of these objects and use hem in our digipak.

Here is our Shot List. I have colour coded the shots. Green will be filmed in the woods and Blue will be filmed in the Car Park.

• Re-shoot shot of tilt up from woodland floor or replace with an abandoned object.
• Shoot medium shot of guitarist playing solitary note at the start of the song.
• Re-shoot bird's eye angle of drummer playing the beat. Visual match audio.
• Long shot of band playing together.
• Low angle shot of drums.
• Side shot of band preforming- Tilted angle.
• Medium shot of guitarist playing note.
• Wide angle shot of band playing, camera tilts down to car park floor.
• Camera tilts up from woodland floor to woods.
• Re-shoot low angle shot of vocalist jumping over the camera.
• Re-shoot bird's eye angle of the band running through the woods- create more enigma.
• Re-shoot close- up of vocalist.
• Re-shoot close-up of vocalist, head moving down.
• Re-shoot close-up of vocalist pointing at the camera.
• Re-shoot medium long shot of guitarist playing.
• Re-shoot shot of band running through woods- side angle.
• Re-shoot low angle close-up of drummer hitting the base drum.
• Re-shoot close-up of vocalist head banging.
• Re-shoot medium close-up of guitarist playing.
• Re-shoot close-up of guitarist 2 playing.
• Re-shoot vocalist acting out actions.
• Get rid of band helping up guitarist and replace with shot of object next to the guitarist on the ground. (or something else)
• Film more close-ups and shots of band preforming.
• Re-shoot close-up in the car park.
• Quick cuts to the objects.
• Re-film close-up of guitar.
• Re-place the siking up shots.

Ancillary- Designs.

I have designed our second idea for our ancillary cover. This design would be a photograph of a flaming R. We haven't decided whether it would be in black and white or colour so with he drawing of the design I have looked at both. We would also like to experiment with having a water mark of feathers behind the design.

Coloured Design.

Black and White Design.

Research and Planning:- Continuity and Costume.

As we plan on filming again next week we have made a list of the costumes our actors where wearing so that there is no continuity errors.

Performance based filming:-
Jake:- Storm Trooper T-shrit/ quarter lengths.
Dean:- Ripped black jeans/ black top/ sylosis hoodie.
Stephen:- Sylosis hoodie/ blue jeans/ red converses.
Perrin:- Black jeans/ Suicide silence hoodie/ black gloves/ T-shirt.

Narrative based filming:-
Jake:- Ed Hardy blue jeans/ Grey hoodie/ Leather jacket/ Black t-shirt.
Dean:-Chelsea Grin t-shirt/ sylosis hoodie/ black jeans.
Stephen:- Sylosis t-shirt/ Sylosis hoodie/ grey jeans.
Perrin:- Black jeans/ leather jacket/ black hoodie/ black t-shirt.

Ancillary:- Designs.

After looking at Ravenface's existing album covers and mind-mapping our possible ideas i have done one design. It depicts a dead tree in the back ground and gothic, tribal font reading 'Ravenface'. I have done two of the same idea exploring colour. One being very dark, with black, blue and white. The other being very angry/fiery with the use of red, orange and brown. After looking at the two designs, i think that the darker design works best with the overall feel of our chosen song.I will continue to design covers, also looking at using images/icons that relate or reflect our song.

Dark Design.

Red Design.

Ancillary:- Research and planning.

To get an understanding on how Ravenface has marked and branded themselves through their album covers I have analyzed each one, looking at colour, media, mood, font and style.

This has been very useful as I can now look at the styles they have already used and our group can start doing designs experimenting with media and colour soon.

Ancillary:- Planning.

As we are unable to film until next week we have started to plan out what we are going to put on our digipak. We have taken into consideration thee genre and the feel of the song and have thought of images and designs that we could possibly use for the cover and booklet. We have also thought about the context of the pack. Will we put in the actors names and their role they played, the lyrics to the song, thanks from the band? Again we have looked at similar bands albums and what they have put into them.
We are going to start designing ideas this week, using both photography, art design and computer designing.
Here is the mind map we made in the lesson:-

Research and Planning- Re Filming Schedule.

After piecing our footage onto our timeline we have made a list of the clips we need to re-shoot or missing footage. We will make sure that our actors are in the same clothing as previous filming so that there is no continuity errors and we will be using the same props.
We will film this next week on the following dates:-

Performance clips:- Thursday 29th November.
Narrative clips:- Saturday 1st December.

We have started to storyboard the new clips that we will be filming and are thinking on showing clips of the hidden threat.

Research and Planning:- Lighting and Colour Research.

We have now uploaded all footage from both shoots, the car park and wood scenes, and have started editing it. Throughout the editing process we have been using a variety of different effects on Final Cut Pro, such as: 

Strobes and Blink- We have decided that we don't want to use the strobe effect that we learnt earlier throughout all of the performance shots as this can get a bit off putting and would draw attention away from our shots and just make people focus on the flashing. For this reason we have only started applying it to certain shots within the breakdown of the song. As well as strobes we have used the Blink effect, which means the shot flashes. We have decided that this looks more effective so we will not be using the strobe effect.  The difficult aspect on using these effects is trying to get the flashes to black in time with the tempo and beat of the song.  

The Speed tool on Final Cut Pro.

Speed- We have also been changing some shots to half-speed (slow motion), such as the opening shot of water dripping. This is because it makes the shot a lot more effective as it makes it seem more dramatic and it means the ripples of the water are easier to see and this then matches the pace of the beginning of the song, as it is a lot slower at the start.

Motion/ Scale- We have also used scale to zoom in on our shots and this means that we can

 cut into certain parts of the shot quickly, without having to film the close-ups separately, which could lead to some continuity errors. Whilst this is good, for extreme close ups we will have to film these separately as the quality of the shots goes down the more we zoom in and we don't want any shots to look unfocused and grainy as this makes them appear more amateur and not effective enough. 

The Colour Correction tool from Final Cut Pro.

Colour corrector- We have been using the three wheel colour corrector which edits the lighting from our shots. We are using this effect to dim the shots as they look too bright and this is making them appear too cheerful, which does not fit with the dark and brooding atmosphere that is common for a heavy metal concept and it is the effect we want to create. So far we have edited the highlights down to 214, the blacks to 88 and whites down to -12 and this has made them look a lot more gloomy which fits the stereotypical atmosphere in our genre music videos and looks really good.

Research and Planning- Filming Log.

Date:- Thursday 8th November.
Location :- Car Park in Maidenhead.

Yesterday at 4 we went out to our second location in Maidenhead to film our preformance based aspect of our music video. We had our four actors with us, as well as a drum kit, guitars with amps and a microphone. When we first got to the location is was really busy. However we did find a nice area outside the location so began filming there. When it got later and people began to leave the car park we moved in side. This was a much better place to film as the lighting was much brighter and it had a nice feel to the overall location. We played the song for our actors to play to and filmed a lot of our storyboard. However after a few hours people began to get fed-up so we will continue filming the last clips some point next week. Overall the filming went really well and we will begin uploading the footage and putting it into place today in our lesson.

I also took some pictures of the setting up and filming, which help creates an idea of what we were doing:-

Research and Planning- Filming Log.

Date- Wednesday 7th October.
Location- Newland Girl's School.

Today in our lesson we filmed some water droplets which will be played at the beginning of our music video. We tried dropping water droplets on rusted metal however this didn't have a very good effect. We then found a dripping drain and this looks really effective. We then edited the lighting on the macs to make it much darker, which will give it more of a foreboding, menacing feeling. We will find a sound effect of water droplets on youtube and convert it into an MP3 film to insert it into the beginning of our video.