Our Group

This is the group we will be working in for our coursework. It consists of Emma(left), Amy(centre) and Sophie(right).


Amy and I have been good friends for years, but neither of us know Sophie very well at all so we're going to get to know her better so that we can work well as a group.

Filming session cancelled

We've filmed nearly all our scenes and have edited them in to place. We are now waiting to to film our final scenes for the narrative which we planned to do last Tuesday however due to rain it was cancelled.

Our plans were to film the final scene where Emma was scene leaving in a taxi and leaving her house in a complete mess, which is contrasted with Amy by using match cuts in the video as one scene will be Amy walking made up down the stairs, then cut to Emma also walking down the stairs however she's stumbling from being drunk and her make up and costume is all out of place, and then followed by Emma leaving in a taxi.

Our preferred viewing of this is for the audience to realise that both characters are going to the same event, the cuts in between the characters are to create tension for the audience as the audience has seen Emma increasingly get more angry, upset and drunk through out the narrative. Showing similar activities between them suggest they're going to the same place which inevitably will lead to a climax.

We planned to film outside of our school where students are going in to a prom-like event, Emma will see the couple and we would film the reactions and expressions of all the characters which will me remorse and regret from the couple, and fear from Amy, Emma will be shown as really aggressive. Emma also will be shown shouting and provoking an attack from Amy. We have decided to film two possible endings as we cannot decided which one will be best.

One ending is that the final cut for the scene will show the three in a silent awkwardness showing the signs of their emotions as we wern't sure whether its suitable to show  a proper revenge as our style model for the artist is Taylor Swift its rather unconventional for her to show such aggressive acts as she is a role model. However this song differs from her typical songs and shows a darker side to her which we've already explored through the drinking of alcohol which is absent from her other videos. In which case we would end of a climax of her lunging at Amy, but not progress it further to see the actual revenge.

Showcase Evaluation

Yesterday, our teacher arranged for our class to showcase our music videos so far, to each other and some extra peers who happened to have a free period at the time. During period two we compressed and transferred our video so that our teacher could access it on her computer. Most of our class conversely, didn't manage to do this in time for period three, so our showcase began about half an hour late, causing it to run into our lunch hour. This didn't affect the quality of our discussions and evaluations though.


Although our teacher had been keeping an eye on the progression of our music video throughout the editing process, this was an opportunity for her to summarise her opinions and advice for us. Her comments, in her exact words, were:


- Love the baseball reaction
- Not sure about "fight"
- The syncing was mostly perfect
- Matches the style
- It's INTERESTING - you keep the variety going
- Seems that the style matches Taylor Swift
- Performance is really good and convincing
- Lighting on the dart board is perfect!
- The spinning looks like perfect space
- Did people get your narrative?
- Emma does evil/disgust well.. !
- Like the red lighting when singing into the camera


It was good listening to other people's reactions to parts of our video, that hadn't been watching the progression in composing it. This gave us an insight into how our targeted audience would perceive it, which we no longer have ourselves. Personally, I had been worried that outsiders wouldn't be able to follow the narrative, perhaps at all, due to the heavy number of locations featured throughout. The showcase fotunately, disproved this as everybody followed it "easily" and knew exactly what the narrative was.


The evaluation sheets involved completing a bipolar chart to begin:

Followed by the questions:
-What was especially GOOD about the music video?
- Would you watch this again? If yes, why? If no, why not? and,
- Did you notice any serious issues such as continuity errors, strange edits, did anything not make sense to you?


The bipolar results convey that generally our audience enjoyed each aspect of our music video, though perhaps we need to fine-tune our synchronising and camerawork a little.


Having read through the other questions on my own, the main aspects that people liked, involved:
- The lighting
- The performance itself
- The close-ups
- The mixture of performance and narrative
- The pace - "doesn't get boring"
- Funny at some points
- Believable miming and acting
- Strong narrative
- Story made sense
- Very much like a real music video
- The ending - lights out
- "Fantabulous" edits and effects!
- Seemed professional
- Variety in costume


Every person that took the time to evaluate said they'd like/love to watch our music video again. The recurring reason was that it's "entertaining"/"interesting".


There was some constructive criticism, which is arguably more helpful than anything else. Here are all of the issues from our pilot audience's perspectives: 
- Some parts were out of sync
- "A form of revenge would be nice to see"
- "Didn't really get the fight"
- Amy laughs when I push her face in the dirt
- Brief black flashes
- Emma's face is a bit too comical at times!
- "wuh-ooh" - cut a bit shorter?
- Emma coming out of the car is odd
- Use more effects

A lot of this comes from our video still being incomplete. (Every other group's incomplete too, not just ours.) Some parts being out of sync, the black flashes and lacking a bit in effects is down to this.

HOWEVER,

The fight scene seems to have been highlighted as being too friendly and not fitting in with the video. A few people also stated that Amy laughs whilst I'm pushing her face into the dirt. I know Amy really well, so I know that when she's scared, she does look like she's laughing. Our audience of course don't know her, so it looks like we will have to refilm this part. Whether we scrap the original material completely or just add in another camera angle on the laughing part to cover it up - we'll have to see.

The "wuh-ooh" being too long with the suggestion of 'cutting it shorter' can't really be done as that would involve making actual changes to the audio track itself which wouldn't be right. We've taken this onboard though and might try to involve another camera angle to give the illusion of cutting down the length of this part.

"Emma coming out of the car is odd" we don't agree with. Every consumer is different, so although we don't agree with this opinion we have respected it and taken it into consideration, but seeing as only one person has said this, we're going to put the thought to one side.


OVERALL,

We've found that showcasing our work has not only reassured us that our video is of good quality, it has also highlighted aspects that could potentially be issues that we had overlooked. Being able to watch and reflect off of other groups' videos also helped for us to compare and contrast and feel more comfortable with our video."Emma's face is a bit too comical at times!". There is one part I could understand that my face looks comical, but it does still fit in with the overall video and genre. Also, multiple people complimented the fact that there are funny parts throughout the video, so we plan to keep it.

Update

It's academic review day tomorrow so previously as a group we'd agreed that we couldn't easily film all together until next Wednesday during our double lesson. However, as I went into yesterday's lesson my teacher announced that our first draft deadline is next Friday. Our group would be physically unable to film everything in one day so we're going to have to film before this, and probably even use the double lesson on Wednesday for editing the new footage in time for Friday's deadline.


This does probably mean that we won't all be able to record together, though I'll do everything I can to make sure that we can all make the final sessions. We also have to bare in mind that the closer we get to the deadline, the more booked up the cameras will be, and as we've been using the new cameras, there are only two to choose from.


I planned to talk to Amy and Sophie today about it in our theory lesson assuming they were both in, however our theory lesson was cancelled and Sophie was absent again so this wasn't possible. I saw Amy briefly though so I told her all I'd thought about, and we agreed to discuss it all during Thursday's lesson with Sophie to arrange our next filming sessions for either the weekend or Monday, possibly both.

'Aggyness' Technique

A term we are constantly using for Emma to portray whilst we are filming is 'aggyness'.  As it is quite a slang term of today's youth and you may not know what this means, it is how we feel she should embrace the anger and hatred for the 'bitch' character (played by Amy).

As the song goes a long Emma's character is getting more and more angry about the fact that she has lost the boy of the video.  To show this we use alcohol constantly which is also creating a depressing feeling with her character.  When filming we often feel as though Emma might not like us this isn't me talking badly of her but in fact positively, and we might feel like it because of how well she is portraying the character which she has to play.  When she is infront of the camera she is very focussed and knows what is wanted for her from what we have planned as a group.  When we ask her to give an 'aggy' look she knows exactly what we mean, and the looks are often to help us fill some of the instrumental parts of the song which we need to fill but, it is also helping to show how the character is moving emotionally throughout the music video.

Filming Session: Field Scenes

In 'Better Than Revenge' we have a part of the song where Emma as the lead character is going to be in a field reading through a diary as if she is telling a story.  This is because of the line "The story starts when it was hot and it was summer and".

During the day we had already been filming for our live performance part of the music video.  We were originally going to be doing a lot more of the field part during the day, however we didn't feel that it was appropriate to be filming it in as it needs to look like summer.  After we had finished school though we realised that the weather had picked up and the weather would now portray the appropriate atmosphere for which we needed in our video.

As me and Emma live near each other and a big field and we still had the camera on us, we thought we should take advantage of the weather for as long as we had it.  The scene which we were creating needed to look summery, and so had to have the right lighting etc to fit perfectly with how we had planned it all.

Emma got into costume which was how we had planned as a group, this consisted of a white dress and leggings.  The white dress was to symbolise how she was the 'good' and 'pure' character and the victim of the music video apposed to the comparison of the 'bitch' character of whom I play. In music videos hair styles are always changing, to show different parts of the story of the video so it was appropriate that we kept up with that so for Emma to make her hair look different she decided on doing a different style,  this was because for quite a lot of the video it is the same, down and curly.

For props we took a long a diary, as it would be what she is reading from as well as a country straw hat.

During the filming we didn't encounter any problems, except the occasional person walking behind the shot.  Although that would have added a sense realism, it wasn't going to make it look like a professional musical video to the standard of which we want to obtain.  Therefore every now and then there was a lot of waiting around for people to move but all in all the footage which we got was what we wanted.

For the filming of this part, as well as quite a lot of the other filming I was responsible for.

On top of what we had wanted to get and planned on getting, we realised that there is a lot of instrumental parts within the song and so to help fill those up we just filmed random parts of the field and walking round.  A term we are constantly using for Emma to do is 'aggyness' and although you might not know what this means, it is how we feel she should portray her anger and hatred for the 'bitch' character.  So we tried to show this in the fields but improv of angry jumping, and looks and just spinning with the camera in the field.

"Live" Performance

For our "live" performance Amy and I had arranged an allocated time with the drama teachers to use the drama studio prior to turning up, and a quick lesson with the lights as neither of us have ever studied drama or performing arts at this school.

We arrived for this hour on time and fully costumed, propped and prepared. I even brought my own microphone from home so that we didn't have to bug the drama teachers further.

Amy went upstairs for a couple of minutes tutorial on how to use the lights whilst I judged where would make the best location in the studio to make the most convincing stage. I figured that standing in front of a black curtain would be good for medium closeups/close ups - intimate camera work as Amy could get up close to me. There was a black backdrop as a background for the stage, however using the other curtain would allow Amy to stand on the stage herself and get more high-angled shots of me - more unusual and showbizz.

As Amy was trying out the lights I was shouting up to her about trying the red lights out for anger/revenge/passion/etc, and then green for jealousy to see what that looked like. She called down to me saying where the mist lit up positions around the studio were so I memorised these. In front of the curtain on the floor (see above picture) wasn't very well lit, but I said that this could be a good thing, having my face partly in shaddows increases our desired effect of plotting and mysteriousness, and of course the darker, hurt side to my character, remembering of course that it is supposed to be a live performance and not designed for the music video itself.

I mimed the song through for the duration roughly five times, whilst listening to the track on my ipod to make sure it was all in time, as well as recording random stage-like body language to  possible feature as fillers if needed in instrumental parts of our video.

Amy used a variety of different camera angles, including one from the perspective of a fan in the front row of the audience. As the camera is directed upwards with me singing "to the fan", the red lighting and spotlight is visible behind my head, giving the frame a unique look suitable for the music video genre.

Overall, the "live" performance we all feel, looks extremely genuine and professional.