CCR

 

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Music Video Blog: The Grand Finale

 Hey, welcome back! I can happily announce that my group and I have been able to produce the final version of our music video! I felt as though this project gave us the chance to improve on the areas we struggled in before and find unique ways to go about resolving issues, whether that be as complex as trying a new software program or as simple as positioning our camera at a different angle to make sure that we could hide the extra shadows peeking into our scenes. On the topic of software programs, we were able to use Davinci Resolve 17 and familiarize ourselves with an entirely new platform that possesses a wide range of useful tools that we'll be sure to employ in future endeavors to aid in our insertion of various clips and dynamic transitions. Working on this music video allowed my fellow groupmates and I to hone in on our abilities and specialize in what we're best at so that we could ensure that our final product was representative of our matured filming capabilities. I would like to acknowledge my appreciation of the entire process of initially deconstructing what makes up a music video, particularly those in the indie genre, to allow us to identify areas of similarity amongst said videos before actually executing our own film, being that it gave us the chance to use the ideas of others as a basis for our own creativity and ingenuity. This time around, I believe that we were all especially fond of the fact that, not only could we work with individuals outside of our normal selection of peers, but we could also film off-campus, giving us the opportunity to branch out and become more comfortable with ourselves as (forthcoming) filmmakers in the real world. 

We attend a school, that whilst not heavily focused on the arts, still maintains a genuine respect for the field, whether technical or fine, which means that each of us has likely heard the phrase "An artist is never satisfied with their work." Try as we might, we couldn't completely grasp the meaning of the expression because we'd never really been tasked with creating something that was truly our own. Of course, we were all given school projects where we were told to "Be creative", but were still confined to the strong "suggestions" of a rubric. With this project, although we presented certain guidelines that we needed to follow, I strongly believe that we were given true creative liberty to express ourselves and our message as we so pleased, which isn't something that not many classes can offer. Having said that, with each of the works we've produced so far, I feel like we can now begin to take ownership of our projects and shoulder the weight of not doing as good as we could've because, as with any work, our music video wasn't entirely flawless. That'll then push us to strive to do better the next time around, to shatter the high expectations we have already constructed for ourselves, and to make an even bigger impact once we're given the chance to excel again. This project has taught us all quite a bit about not only music videos and what they are (that'd be far too surface level of a lesson), but also about thinking outside of the box, learning how to take initiative, and developing a greater appreciation for the great amount of work that goes into making a video that may be just over a minute long.

    Enough of this sappy, introspective talk (I need to save some things for my creative critical reflection, you know?), below you'll find our attached music video. I hope you enjoy it as much as we did when looking back on all our hard work! 

(Apologies in advance for the lowered quality, we tried our best to keep the video as clear as possible, but after having sent it across several platforms and applications to create our final product, an inevitable downgrade in quality is to be expected.)

To end off today's blog, I'd love nothing more than to hand the "microphone" off to Rihanna for some parting words. And so I say that we've had our share of fun, "But it's over now...", so we'll "Go on and take a bow..." (Rihanna 2007).

It's Been a Marathon, But We Made It!

 Today, Friday in class, was our last day working on this project, We made finishing touches and had a lot we had to sort out, but everything worked out so well in the end. As stated in the last editing blog, everything was done on Jordyn's laptop using the ClipChamp program. It made everything easier to keep track of. We followed a pattern of filming, cleaning up our clips, scheduling another day for filming, then finalizing our product. This method worked well for me and my team. Something to be touched up was the audio, I clipped the audio and helped my team line up our clips. The first draft of the final product had many scenes that ran long, so trimming everything first made the most sense. We continuously adjusted clips and replayed, each of us giving our ow critique as to what should be done, and example was the scene where I walked in as a waitress. It's tedious to do, but getting things on-beat leaves for a better viewing experience for us and the audience in the end. I noticed a lot of our transitions were off, so I assisted my teammate in which clips we should shorten. The action match cuts had to be perfect, and doing things this way assured we would have just that! Additionally, we added diegetic sound to enhance some of the sound in our video, including text tone sounds and ringing diner bells, we also muted all of our clips. These sound effects were added using youtube to mp3 websites. I helped my teammate figure out the program, as I had done a job similar to this for our first AICE Media project. A problem we had was some scenes moving far too quickly, we weren't in for a easy fix for this one though. Whenever we slowed things down, the clips looked silly and didn't match the momentum of the rest of the video. Furthermore, increasing the speed did not improve the clips, it did the exact opposite, making the text messages more difficult to read. Some scenes in our video could be reshot or replaced easily because we did so many takes, so we redid them throughout our product as needed. A scene of texting was replaced for sure. The clips with the phone screen shown are not as easy to read as I would have liked. We fixed this by adding closeup screenshots to the side of the screen so the viewer could easily read any and all messages. The issue was adjusted, however, to make it appear as appealing as possible. We also made things easier to read in some places by selectively blurring some parts with the DaVinci Resolve 17 program. I found it to be tedious at times, but my group pushed us all to do our best, and we definitely did. In fact, I adjusted lighting and exposure for the entirety of the video to make it flow smoother and look more pleasing to the eye. Surprisingly, the title intro is my favorite part of the music video. I think the font we chose is the perfect choice for Saturday Nights, and it makes me even more proud of our product when I think about the dedicated collaboration that went into it. Rewatching it, I'm very much excited to present this to others, I hope to do more in the future with this type of software.

And That's a Wrap!

Yesterday, Tuesday, was our second and final filming day for our Saturday Nights music video. We filmed on a school day, which wasn't ideal, but all our scenes needed to be filmed at night anyways, so the timing worked out! I got a ride to Nico's house and by 7 we were off the Moonlite Diner to film. Before we went, we made sure to ask for permission, once it was granted we were all good to go!. We checked in at the front and got to work.  The first scene shot was the foot stepping into the diner environment. At the front desk, I checked us in and we got to work. Our first scene shot was the foot-stepping sequence into the diner. The scenes in order were first going into the car at Nico's house, then the foot coming out of the car door while at the diner, and finally, when the foot hit the ground, we were inside. I held my phone with the "stepping into car" scene next to my teammate as they filmed the third scene in the previously stated sequence so we could line up the subject's foot and have a smooth transition between our clips. We repeatedly checked and refilmed to get the best shot, then we were off to our next scene. We went inside and I ordered the burger, fries, and chocolate milkshake needed for our scene. After all this work, we too deserved milkshakes, so we each got one to have after we finished. The next film section depicted our subject sitting down, eating a bit of food, and then leaving a tip on the table. A bit of foreshadowing was done here, our subject left a top of $4.44, which reads as 444, an angel number. As a symbol of a deceased loved one watching over him, and making sure that he is safe, the angel number may imply that Eve (the subject's "girlfriend") has passed.  Either way, my job this couple of scenes was to play as our waitress. I painted my nails red and wore a server type uniform with an apron, having a notepad and pens in my pocket. I handed off the drink and walked off frame, only having the corner of my shoulder showing anyways. By the end of these shots, we wanted to really sell the look that the milkshake was untouched, so i held the milkshake in my hands to warm it up and make it melt faster. This made a lot of condensation and left it looking a little foul, but it was perfect for what we needed. We made the move outside for our next few scenes, these being our subject pulling his hoodie strings closed and the nice couple walking by him. One of my group partners filmed this shot against the wall as I and another member held flashlights behind the camera with our phones because it was a little dark for filming. I also made sure to keep the area we were filming in clear of people and distractions. As people walked by, I kindly asked them to keep out of our set. After these scenes, we shot our final scene of our subject texting, this is where we find out the plot twist, the girlfriend really is deceased. During this shot I helped another member with the music timing. 

*NOTE: We were originally going to film at Denny's, but after many of our calls going unanswered, we decided to make a location change. In the future, this will all be sorted out in oru planning blog. This is the email we sent Moonlite diner to grant permission to film there!

Editing! WOO!

 Yesterday marked our jump onto the editing process for this project, just our first day, but a good start nonetheless. The editing was done with ClipChamp and on Jordyn's computer for convenience. I don't think there is anything better than that, it kept us on track and enabled us to better work together. On Saturday we filmed just about half of our clips, so we wanted to clean those up to be prepared for the next filming day. The first thing done was cutting down the music to the original length of our clips. I helped with the timing, as we all did. The clips were played a few times at varying lengths by Jordyn, and we picked out which ones matched up the best for our music and were most appropriate. After cutting down clips, we worked on making smooth transitions between each video. The program was kind of hard to work because it didn't have as many features as we would have liked, but we worked out the occasional glitching and clips lagging.  In terms of the scenes themselves, we had a couple of problems we attempted to fix, but we will have to continue working on them tomorrow. During our first transition scene with the Brandon walking out of the door, the background seen in the doorway wasn't messy enough for us. Our original concept was to recreate the look of a depressed teen's bedroom, to convey how upset our actor Brandon is, so we wanted the room to look unkept. To try and do this, we decided to attempt to refilm it during our diner run today for the rest of our shots. We may not switch out any clips, but it's good to have options so everyone is happy with the finished product. Another problem was not being able to see the profile pictures and missed texts on our actor's screen. I gave the suggestion of lowering the exposure, and we're going to try to execute this in class. There were some issues with the clip with the front door of the house closing and then the car door closing, it took a fair amount of trial and error to get it lined up properly. Jordyn added sound effects after we achieved the perfect closing. The overall quality of our product so far makes me happy. During the filming of clips, we unintentionally incorporated purple coloring throughout the video, but once edited, it looks beautiful and perfectly complements the overall vibe.

Bringing Vlog Squad Energy to The Table

    Our filming began on Saturday, December 4. Everything was done at Nicole's house, they had the perfect set for the job and a good location relative to where we needed to be in our storyboard. I arrived to Nico's house as the clock approached 4:30pm, just in time. Jordyn, Nico, and our star actor Brandon were already there, hanging out and planning where to do things while we awaited Yaneli's arrival. While we got Yaneli dressed for the faux couple photos after she had turned up, I suggested different looks we could give to the pictures. After the pictures were sent to Jordyn, I helped her fix the lighting and editing using the app Adobe Lightroom and the general apple camera settings. I often suggested adjusting the exposure in our camera before shooting our clips or taking pictures of our actors, which really helped to fix the minor lighting problems in our shots. We adjusted our approach when things were too dark, or when things needed to be more vibrant; these key changes made us successful. After waiting until it got dark enough outside to shoot the scenes, the team was on a roll. I next helped my group envision our set in a professional sense. The goal was to have no light beams coming from any of the windows and no casts from the lamps on either side of the bed. I gave pointers on how to set up our lights in our bedroom scenes and confirmed when Nico made good adjustments, Jordyn furthered this task by checking our tripod consistently. Yaneli brought a lamp to use when the light in the room was too low. After we turned it up, we set it to purple, which seemed like a recurring hue in our video. As we filmed, I kept the outside environment quite and helped to move objects in the way of our shots. Eventually getting to the part of our storyboard where Brandon is first filmed walking out of the door after the bed transition, it was my job to help with the music. Essentially, I had to put the music to the correct time and play it for 3 seconds, maybe more, it varied on each shot.  I was happy to help the team time everything correctly by adding the background music of this part of the video. I also helped fix a problem with shadows being in the shot, when the shadow of our actor should only be visible. I suggested using our phones' flashlights behind us, and we adopted this plan and tried following Nico with the camera. In the end, it was just a matter of using a higher angle and putting the light in the middle of the room instead of the side. While I wasn't our main director or filmer, I did the little things that helped to push the bigger things. I made sure the actors were comfortable, helped position items in the frame, talked about transitions with the people filming, gave my unbiased advice, and always maintained a stellar level of professionalism.