The new idea

I've got two potential ideas to replace the one I've been working from for the whole of the last 3 months. Neither will fit the ancillary tasks as ideally as the original idea, but with the short notice I have, they're my only options.


Option 1: A slower song, with much more of an emotional connection. I'm not 100% on the narrative for it yet, but it would keep with the metal/rock ideas of the album cover, maybe with some of the war connotations, but the narrative will take a long time to come up with, and quite a while to shoot effectively.

Option 2: A faster, heavier song. This would be half and half between band shots and a narrative of some sort of chase scene, possibly between suited and armed men and a normally dressed person, perhaps in similar clothing to a metal music fan. There would be less of a structured narrative here, but it would keep more with the heavy metal ancillary tasks, although dropping the war connotations. I'll be spending this evening deciding, and sorting a storyboard.

EDIT: I have a finished storyboard, but for some unknown reason Blogger refuses to let me upload any images, and so for now I have no way of uploading them, I'll pass them on to Mr Dowson in the hope thta he can do something with them.

And then everything went wrong

As the title might suggest, thing aren't in the best spots right now. I found out today, roughly 10 days before the first draft hand-in, that the footage i have is unusable because it was shot on my iPhone due to camera difficulties. This leaves me in what you might call a difficult position. I can't get locations, actors or some of the props again, so I need a new idea.

This week

This week was spent on analysing footage, getting some more, and ancillary tasks. I've now basically finished both ancillaries, I just need to add one more photograph to one of them and they're done. Filming is almost done, but I need to re-shoot due to light quality in some shots. I wanted to do that this weekend, but one of my actors is away in the UK, so I couldn't do that. I got some of the band shots, mainly the drumming ones, this week, and I'll get the guitarist ones next weekend when I do the rest of the shooting. This coming week i'll do the uploading run which I've sorely needed to do, and start with the post-production of what footage I have. So hopefully by this time next week I'll have all the uploading done, both ancillaries finished and be some way on the road of post-production, I hope.....

Filming and the next step

I managed to film over the weekend, despite a whole host of issues. Firstly, there was no camera when I went to pick one up. I then got word that there was one i could collect from Mr Dowson, but he wasn't able to meet me until almost dark on Saturday. We tried again to film on Sunday, but got there to realise the camera battery had run out. We ended up having to film the entire thing on my iPhone, which isn't particularly bad quality, but will mean the output format looks odd.

Elsewise, I'm working on photography for my ancillary tasks, I need an image of a rusty metal background texture. I have an idea of where to get the photo from, but can't get up there until the weekend so I'll work around that, doing everything else for the magazine advert until then. The album cover is completely done now, just needing the texture I'll get over the weekend. I'm getting some more footage this week, mostly green screen stuff for band shots, so guitarists and a drummer. It also looks like I may have to re-film a couple of shots due to poor lighting, but that's no big issue. I'll start the editing together of what I have tomorrow.

This week

This week I finalised all of my cast, crew and props for the second attempt at filming, and have been working on my ancillary tasks. I have now finished the album cover and am working on the magazine advert. The After Effects work is also finished and I'll be doing a massive upload run some time next week, because the scanner is finally fixed. FIlming is Saturday and then I can start the editing and everything next week

After Effects tutorials

I spent Fridays lesson, and some more time this weekend, familiarising myself with After Effects, with the overarching end product being an effect I want to use in my finished video. The tutorial which I'm following comes from www.videocopilot.net. I will leave the specific link below. This effect is not identical to the one I want to use, but it is very similar. It should be done by midweek if I have no more software hitches


http://www.videocopilot.net/tutorials/disintegration/

Re-organising filming

I have foudn an alternative location for filming my project, and have arranged another date for shooting the project, next Saturday the 13th November. I have lost a couple of my actors, but may be able to recruit more. For now I am continuing with software training, currently After Effects. I am trying to complete a tutorial from Video Copilot which uses an effect similar to one I want to use for my video. The tutorial is proving very difficult though, and software compatibility and similarity issues are making the job more dificult. I will be getting help from Mr Dowson with this tutorial over coming lessons so that it is complete. Screengrabs and the finished product to follow

Learning about software: Final Cut Pro

As part of the construction and until I can film the video, I will learn some of the software I'll need to use. The first issue will be getting footage off the cameras. The easiest solution for this will be Final Cut Pro, which we will also use for soundtracking. I shot some footage with friends to test both these functions and familiarise myself with then. I didn't finish the project, but i managed to get the sountrack file in, and import all the footage. Screengrabs are shown below.

The issue with shooting

Having just spoken to Mr Dowson I found out I could not get cameras to film my video because Mr Dowson was not in school at the pre-arranged times so I could not get cameras to film with. I'm working on re-scheduling shooting, with actors, props and locations.