When Things Go Wrong...

We had it, finally a church, band members and the equipment, and so we went ahead with our plans to record at 'St. Michael's and all angels' Church. But we were soon told a week before our recording that the church will be under construction for the next 6 months and that the day we booked would be the last day we could get. Luckily i quickly e-mailed and spoke to another church, Holy Trinity Church, as soon as we heard the news, therefore giving us a back-up if push comes to shove.

But on the day of our recording the man didn't show and so we lost our date of recording which was Friday 30 December, within the school holidays. This set us back in terms of timings, so cause and effect took place and we ended up loosing our violinist due to his work, and we also lost our keyboardist/guitarist due to his work and school.

At this point we became determined to get a church, more members and replacements. Overall we wanted to use the singer as a guitarist, and since we already knew that the singer was a very skilled guitarist we chose to incorporated it into our band.

With the keyboard, we had gotten ourselves a keyboard to use but we couldn't find anyone who was willing to be filmed or wanted to help. We already knew that the keyboard wasn't vital for our video since all that was played was chords (like the guitar) also taking into consideration that the violin assumed a higher role over the keyboard we wanted to focus more on getting a part for that.

The Clothing

My group agreed that we wished our band members to be formal keep the imagergy of One Republic to give our video realism. Here my group memebr Jamie has drawn out the ideas of which we came up with. This will help us plan what our real actors should wear and help relfect a formal style fo video.

Animatic

Whilst creating the animatic we made various changes to the storyboard, for example the fading transitions at the beginning, reflecting the slow pace of the music. We then mirrored this idea for the end of the song to create consistency and also show that the music is slowing down again.

We had to find a powerful and unique shot for our final shot, so we began thinking of things we could use in the church. Candles and darkness gave a good contrast for our final scene so we thought that we could have the singer blowing out a candle at the end of the song. We then had to decide which shot to use, and we had two good choices. The first of these was a long shot whereby you could only see the singer blowing out the candle and the light coming through the stained glass window. Another idea was to end with a close up of the singer blowing out the candle and the whole screen fading to black.

We chose the final idea as our final shot because we thought it was more emotive and relevant to the lyrics. We knew that we then needed to incorporate candles into the music video throughout so that the video made sense, so we decided to have various candles dotted around the setting of the video.

Learning The Basics of Final Cut Express

When we started A2 we understood that no one within out group had any experience with Final Cut Express (FCE) at all, and so we each did individual research into learning how to use FCE and then shared our knowledge with the rest of the group. Our group member named Elliot used a Tutorial book called 'Final Cut Express, Video Editing for the Digital Enthusiast' to learn some basic video editing techniques that would be necessary for the completion of the storyboard and eventually, the video itself.

I went ahead and started looking into Final Cut video tutorials on youtube and the web. I found a really good user called 'FinalCutKing' and looking through his videos i found them useful within my research although i later discovered that he worked on a program called Final Cut Pro, this being different to Express we had a few problems when testing out some of his ideas. But for now here is an example of something we found and liked with his work:



Soon Me and my group had learned how to:

* Insert video clips and audio onto the timeline and move them around
* Insert and manipulate text onto the video
* Insert and manipulate video transitions
* Render the clips

Within our group we focus mainly on me and Jamie doing the Editing and Elliot would be working more on the ancillary task, understanding that at one point we'll be working on both tasks at the same time.

Review on: St. Michael's and All Angels Church

After meeting with 'St. Michael's and All Angels' Church we chose our placement of where we wished to record and asked the reverend questions of which we wanted to know. For example, we asked if we were allowed to move anything, where the exits are, light switches and other things.

He gladly answered our questions and was happy to work with us. I then asked him about any thing he wished to know. He was mainly concerned with what the song was about and if it had any blasphemy within the lyrics. After which he only told us of how we would arrange to meet and then allowed us to take photos and start planning things ahead of time.

Photos seen above!

FInal Cut - Things Learned from Animatic

Once we started using Final Cut Express to create our animatic we learned new things such as how to import music and shots into the program, even overlaying text and images. Also we learned how to add effects and transitions to our video. Also we kept accidentally finding new things, such as voices overs and other things we didn't believe we'd be using.

For the beginning of our music video, we wanted to reflect the slow pace within the music into our video so we added a nice fade in/out transition to incorporate the idea and therefore reflect the slow moving pace. The list of transitions and effects can be seen on the right. For cuts between a chorus and verse we used an additive dissolve, which appeared a lot quicker and sharper, depicting the quicker pace of music.



For some of our shots, we wanted to convey camera movement and pans but it was close to impossible for us to present this within our drawings, so instead we used a text overlay to show certain pans and movement that would occur when we film the music video.

Some of the screenshots shown give you an idea of the other effects and tools we could possibly use when editing the final video. Blurs and Lens Flares may be helpful as well as changing the colours of the video by using such extra effect such as 'Colour Correcter'. We could use saturation or contrast tools when making our video to liven it up but we disagreed with the idea of saturation as it wouldn't be fitting to our video.

Story Board - Creating Animatic

After settling on the setting of our music video and picking the various actors/musicians for the video, we vegan to work on our storyboard to understand where we would be going story-wise/performance based. Originally we didn't think it would take us that long but this process actually took a lot of time and we didn't believe this until we got down to doing it.

We started to continuously listen to the song, sometimes only a second at a time, and then write down what cuts and shots we should use. We had the idea of having a live band perform inside a church. The idea being that it would work with the theme of confessions and secrets. My group and I also thought about incorporating a confession box into our video so we was preferably looking for a church with a confession box, but we soon found out that many church didn't have one and that the idea was mainly incorporated within America.

As we began to create a storyboard in sync with our song, we realised that we needed far more cuts than we first planned. Also when reviewing our confession box idea it was unlikely to work well with the rest of our performance. The first reason for this was that the churches we had looked into did not have a confession box, also when we had began working in final cut, we found that the video was working well without the confession box.



As we progressed through our animatic, ideas came from all over the group about what we could incorporate into our story board. There were many disagreements during the process but eventually we found something that pleased everyone, which was setting up the background with candles which spread around the scenery. With this the mise-en-scene keeps to the natural flow of the music, which is calming at first but ends with the dramatic build of which we associated with the singer blowing a singular candle. It'll be much like This.

Within the group, Jamie and I listened to our song, and Elliot worked on listing shots and idea son a rough piece of paper. I used Elliot's notes and started asking Jamie to draw the angles and shots that i was describing. I also made note of the timings for each shot and their duration. I also began taking pictures of the shots and placing them into our final cut animatic. Elliot then listened to the song along with the images that we had drawn and pointed out flaws or weaknesses within it.

The image on the right shows some of the progress we have made with storyboard. as you can see the images we have put together and the piece of paper we used initially to record ideas.After we made it to around halfway through storyboarding the song, we took photographs of the images we had drawn in-case we lost any sheets, and then began to upload them onto the computers. We then began to edit them into final cut along with the music, to see how it was looking so far.

Story Board - Draw up

Now that my group have picked a setting and picked the actors for our music videos, we began to plan our storyboard. We didn't realise that the process would take so long until we actually did it. These are the steps we took when approching our storyboard.

1. We initially, sat down as a group and listened to the song. We started to imagine which cuts, shots and angles we could use. next was the harder part where we recording our ideas down onto paper and began to agree/disagree on the ideas as a group. We then had to continuously listen to the song, even sometimes only a second jsut so we could get our shots and ideas right. We started to write down what cuts and shots we agreed we should use. There were many disagreements within this process but eventually we found something that pleased everyone.

2. We then had to draw out the ideas we had already written using the storyboard sheets. Me and Jamie began listening to the song again, workign as a team to draw the angles and shots we wished for and that i was describing to Jamie. I began to make note of the timings for each shot and their duration so that we knew when everythign would play and so we knew where we placed our ideas. Elliot then began to listened to the song along with our ideas and images of which we had drawn. He helped to point out flaws or weaknesses

3. The image on the right shows some of the progress we have made with storyboard. As you can see the images and paper that we have put together are used initially to record ideas. After we made it to around halfway through storyboarding the song, we took photographs of the images that we had drawn incase we ever lose any of the sheets. We then began to upload them onto the computers so we could began to edit them into a final cut project alongside the music, to see how it was looking so far.

Progress Within The Location

With our music video, we decided to look into various churches and ask them if we would be allowed to access a churches resources and we had no replies until we reachieved notice from 'St. Michaels and All Angels Church'.



This was our original message sent to the Vicar of the church in the hopes we would be given a placement of which to work in. I had already looked into the location of the church and worked out it was really near by and my group could even walk to it, no bus travel needed etc. So i believed this Church to be really convenient.



With this response although late was greatly appreciated. Me and group now started to discuss times of which we could be free and then brought up the matter of not knowing of when he is free so we looked into the church's schedule. After this we decided to reply with the following:



Here we tried keeping formality within our reply, although we was excited. We hoped for a reply soon and was eager to see how the session developed.


So now with a booked appointment with Reverend Richard. Me and my group are preparing plans on what to ask and what we will do when there so not to miss the opportunity Richard has opened for us.

But incase this one wouldn't go ahead i was told by one of my possible band members that he has contact with a church in Greenhive called 'Stone St Mary's Church'. When looking into this church i found a bus route and possible travel arrangements to get the whole group up there.

With this in mind we wanted to visit this church ourselves and ask them aswell as look around. So my group and I are gathering together and head to the church on the following Sunday.

So now with two church investigations we should be able to access a church for our video.

Location For Our Music Video

Within my group, it was decided that the setting for the music video would be within a church since it would be best fitting and is a unique set. Since the song itself is slow and compared to normal rock songs it is very smooth and actually contains string instruments to replace popular guitars and such, it is very suited to the church's atmosphere.

We also chose the church based on the lyrics, "Need something to confess" - "I'm gonna give all my secrets away" - and "something to get off my chest", all these lead to an idea of confession which led us to the idea of a confession box which lead to a church. So we decieded within our music video that we would include a confession box from the church to add a greater relationship between the visuals and the lyrics.

I have the surrounding photos of a local church called 'St Michaels and All Angels Church' of which is a likely candidate for a filming location. I have also sent off an e-mail asking for permission to use this church along side with my group. I will post a screen-shot of that e-mail when we send it and any replies we get.

We also needed to make sure that the churches we asked would have the correct look for our video (ie We do not want to film in a modern church that doesn't have a holy or grand look about it. Churches made of stone and with stain-glass window(s) are what we are looking for.

There is also the possibility of having bad lighting within the church which will be address through means of technology and lighting support.