Audio Editing and Colour Grading

The audio for my TVC was a little more tricky than I first thought it would be, as I wanted to superimpose sounds of race cars over the top of a boy playing with toy cars... this I think is ok but I may try and change the edit slightly so it becomes more apparent. A lot I am going to change the edit slightly to make the title stay for a longer amount of time at the end.

The colour grading I felt to keep it very natural but with strong colours, I also crushed the blacks a tiny bit and crushed the whites so the white mat looked cleaner. I also had to desaturate the colours to make the chroma levels legal.

The one shot vs TV coverage

Ok I learnt a lot about different shooting techniques...

One was about shooting for TV coverage.. this is shooting a scene about three times

First a wide shot covering all the action in the scene...

Then shooting close ups of each character to capture their expressions.

This is boring. and its the same on every show, its a fast way to get the coverage, but not original...

The other way is to plan out a shot and cover all the action so there is no need for any editing.

This really inspired me when watching the end scene of Children of men. that there was no obvious editing, and it made and it made for an amazing immersive experience.

This really inspired me to think differently about shooting and my approach to any specific scene. both in the way to shoot quickly with TV coverage. but also trying to capture the action with one shot in a creative way.

Shooting day debreif

Ok, It's time to do another debrief for me after the shooting day.
On the whole, it went pretty average...

One good thing is that the location was nice with good natural lighting...
But...

I didn't check the equipment before I left for the shoot... and the shoot was a long way away from town... and someone had taken the baseplate off the camera. So the only thing I could do after many failed attempts of resting the camera on toy boxes was to go handheld... so I tried a one-shot which actually worked. ( I think)

The other thing was that the microphone was stuffed... good thing I can do sound in post.

The other thing is that kids are very hard to get to stick to a script... but on the whole, I think the idea was captured in the free playing with the toys. (however the mum was camera shy so that part of the script was left out and replaced by my amazing one-shot!


The most important thing I learnt... check the equipment before leaving. and make scripts very simple if working with inexperienced kids...

Toy commercial preperation

Locations, My ideal location for the Toy Library commercial is in a modern clean living room with a nice white sofa and good light. these are the things I am looking for when location scouting.

Just like the following picture...

BUT!

I need a backup plan because most people with kids under 6 are not going to have a white sofa in their living room... and if they do it probably is not very white anymore...

So my ideas are to take white duvet to cover the sofa (as well as covering the floor) this way if I can't find a nice looking living room I can do a lot of close-up shots to get only the white duvet in frame and use a large aperture to give a very shallow depth of field.

So while location scouting I must keep in mind...

lighting placement,
wallpaper,
windows and color temp,
Framing for d.o.f.
Power points

Music video Self evaluation

Overall I think I was not really satisfied with the music video. There were some good parts but there was a lot I was not happy with.

Things I think I did well...

• I think the Yellow lanterns worked really well and added some visual interest to the video.
•  Some of the shots were interesting and I liked the way that they came out especially the dolly shots around the rose garden. 
• The editing worked well and I found a good way to do it efficiently that didn't take much time.
• For some of the shots, the colour grade worked really well.

Things I think I could have done better...

• Shoot more footage... I think I was worried too much about people helping on set being bored and getting tired that I didn't take the initiative to get the number of shots that I really wanted... or go over shots that were "just ok" and do them again to make then good. I really wish I did this better. This was probably the main problem I had that was in my control.

Things I wish had gone better...

• The biggest problem was that the talent was very uncomfortable in front of the camera... she did after a while loosen up and become less awkward but I think that was the biggest letdown... I wish I did more practice shots first and then more at the end when she was more comfortable.
• I asked the talent to not were black or white just colours or greys... so she came in a black cardigan over a white t-shirt...
• Makeup: I really wanted the talent to wear the bright yellow nail polish I gave her... she left it to the last minute and ended up taking it off before she came to the shoot as she said it was "a disaster". (I also just assumed all girls were good at applying nail polish... this is not the case as I found out.)
• The weather was a big problem for my shoot as I really wanted it to be cloudy... and this is not asking a lot in Invercargill... but the day we were scheduled to shoot it was raining then the next day was sunny... This had a big effect on the colour grade as I needed the high colour temp to oppose the yellow set design.

So I learnt a lot doing this production...

• Learning the Black magic was really good.
• Using the follow focus was a great help.
• Set design and wardrobe is really important but I will make sure I really drill it into the talent what to wear.
• Set a backup day in case of the wrong/bad weather
• Shoot more that needed... and don't be too worried (within reason) about taking too much time to get it right.

The most boring TVC concept

This blog post shows the development of my pitch development. these things I found very helpful for engaging my creativity and focusing on what the client really needs.

Client: Toy Library

Promotional needs:   Attract members, give information

My Clients Problem(s): lack of awareness, lack of knowledge of services.

Target market: Parents 25-35


12 Keywords associated with the toy library:

Creativity

Toys

Family

Community

Kids

Development

Health

Play

Growth

Imagination

Enjoyment

Fun

6 words that are the opposite of what the toy library is about:

Boredom

Loneliness

Black

Dark

Sad

Death

Creation of most boring concept:

Writing this script certainly showed me what not to do... remembering things I learn from Duncan Sarkies about subtext I want to communicate information without causing the audience to cringe at the fake dialogue.

So far my ideas revolve around children's creativity and development... The main thing I want to aim for is to create an image that does not it sound like another dull community project run out of an underused community hall that has no appeal to a child... or parent for that matter.

TV commercials

I have been Introduced to the world of marketing these things so far in preparation for coming up with TVC ideas for the Invercargill Toy Library.

Keep the message simple, straightforward, and don't deviate from the point of the commercial. stick to one thing if it is trying to get memberships, go for that, not memberships and volunteers and funding and this, this, and that.

Believe in the product you are trying to sell. If you are doing a TV commercial and you don't want to buy the product, no-one else will. So I must believe that this toy library is really the place where parents should bring their children. If people can sell water to New Zealanders for more than the price of petrol then a product/service that people actually want should be straight forward.

Sell an experience and identity, not a product... for example Suzuki sell good motorcycles but people tattoo Harley Davidson on their rear. The toy library commercial must sell more than just a membership to get toys, they need to sell healthy development or creativity for children.

Come up with a slogan if the company doesn't have a good usable one. that captures the identity the company is trying to sell. e.g. MacDonalds says "I'm Lovin It" and Nike says "Just do It" these three syllable phrases give a false sense of empowerment that is linked with the identity of the product. Apple says "think different" it captures the identity of the product.

Shooting day

Today I will be shooting...

This post is to update my ideas for the project and help me remember everything I will otherwise forget...

Use warm cards... yes I remembered to hire them out! I just need to remember to take a couple of seconds to shoot them on set.

Currently, I am leaning towards doing all the filming in the park and forgetting the filming in room 211 after seeing the footage from a classmate's, I think it will look too different from the park footage and will look boring.

Use of the sundial... I want to make the sundial a main feature of the music video since the song is entitled "I've Been Waiting For You" the sundial will bee appropriate for the reference to time and light in the lyrics.

My main concern is with the performer's ability to perform... I have seen and it is very evident that she is very stiff while performing and not very animated, I want to try and encourage her to move and articulate the lyrics as she sings.

Things I have learnt about that will help me this week, have been learning more about secondary colour correction, this will help a lot as this will be the main tool I will use in post production. Finding out about the eyedropper + and - tools was a help as some of my yellow props are different shades of yellow.

I will post photos of the shoot as soon as I shoot it.

Apart from the performer's ability to perform, I'm Praying the rain will stop...

Preparing for a music video

So getting everything ready for shooting the music video, Below is a list of things I have done and a list of things I will need to do... I am assuming the second list is longer...

Things I have done...

• Location scouting
• Casting
• Equipment list
• Production design planning

Things I need to do:

• Location permissions and forms
• Talent release forms
• Music rights contract
• Purchase props
• Book equipment
• Organise dolly and long lens from SIT pro

Equipment list:

• Black Magic cinema camera + EF lens kit
• 70-200mm EF Lens
• Mattebox with grad filter
• Memory card x2 and reader
• Battery x3
• Follow Focus kit
• Tripod
• Dolly
• Redhead Kit
• Music player
• Reflector boards

Props, decorations, wardrobe & makeup

• Yellow Scarf
• Yellow shoes
• Yellow nail polish
• Lipgloss
• Mascara
• Eyeliner
• Yellow Umbrella
• Paper umbrella cutouts & Blu-tack

Overall I feel like I am confident to shoot the video I just need to go and do it so my goals for this week are to get all necessary permissions and bookings and then set a date to shoot (hopefully Tuesday next week).

some research I have done into similar styles of music videos have been:

Brook Fraser's Something In The Water. this was good to view as it had a similar style of performance, in terms of movement and facial expression that I wanted to capture.

Another video I was researching was another of Brook Fraser's Betty this was similar in the use of performance as well. I also thought it was one of the best ones that she has done in terms of production design in the use of colour.

Music Video Expereiments

For my music video I have been experimenting with colour correction and learning how to use RAW footage in Premiere. 

Photoshop Experiments

For a start I imported a .jpeg into photoshop to experiment with the colours, this worked well as there is a lot of verticality in photoshop. I used layer masks and and eye dropped the colour to select it. this was relatively easy to do once I figured it out. One thing I noticed I need to be careful to shoot on a cloudy day as some of the sunlight in the background got captured in the mask.

Resolve

Next I Imported the RW files into resolve to try to see what I could do... then I realised I had no idea how to use resolve so I quit, and opened premier.

Adobe Premiere

In premiere it was relatively simple after playing around.

Step one: Put RGB curves onto the clip adjust to try make the yellow stand out most against other colours. I did this by bringing dow a little red channel and a tiny bit if green... this actually made the white balance look natural too.

Next I put the three-way colour corrector on and use the secondary colour correction menu and use the eye dropper to select the yellow subject in the frame. 

 

Then I brought down the saturation levels under the saturation menu.

My first attempt I left the Master saturation at 65% and tried to put a blue grade on just to see how it would look... I don't like it so much.

My second attempt I did all at 0% saturation and no colour grade...

After Effects
Thought It would be ok at first... I was wrong...


I'm really glad I experimented with the footage on location and found what I need to do

Blackmagic Cinema Camera and pitching ideas

The Blackmagic Cinema Camera and music video pitch

The Blackmagic cinema camera is a very interesting camera to use, It can shoot 2.5k RAW footage and comes with many lens mounting systems including EF (cannon) passive MFT mount (has no electronic connection to lens) or the PL mount (professional cinema lens mount) the camera that SIT has has the EF mount so any cannon lens' will fit onto it.

The menus on the Blackmagic are very simple to use as it is all touchscreen and very well laid out in clear sub-menus.

Lend changing is the same as changing on a DSLR... I want to plan the shoot to minimise lens changing. preferably I want to use a Zoom lens that has a nice DOF, a 17-50mm or 24-105mm.

I would very much like to use this camera for my music video and shoot in 2.5k RAW files. I want to do extensive colour grading in post so this is my first choice over the Sony X200. However I need to be very prepared as the 120GB SSD card can only hold 15min of footage... this means I have to work really hard to capture exactly what I need and be extra prepared in pre-production. I may also bring a laptop to ingest the footage midway.so it will give me 30min of shooting time for one day which is plenty of footage about 10:1 ratio of rushes.

hear is my pitch for the music video...

Artist: Joanna

Song: Waiting for you

Song length: 03:35

Concept: Performance based music video with a simple narrative.

Theme: music being a central theme bringing people together. The interaction between musicians while playing a song.

Performance shots: Shots focused around a grand piano musicians interacting happy and having a good time playing. Shots of musicians face’s to display emotion and their love of music. Artistic shots of hammers inside the grand piano.

Narrative story: Band members arriving at the studio one by one and interacting together and eventually play together for the final chorus.

Colour scheme:

When talking about the song ‘Waiting for You’ The artist specifically mentioned yellow as a color that came to mind when thinking of the song. This colour will be present throughout the song by means of a scarf or accessory that is bright yellow. Key Musician/s on screen must have some accessory that is yellow. I.e. an umbrella, tie, shoes, scarf, guitar etc.

Set design: Black sheets with yellow squares of paper displayed in random patterns and bright lights. Make the artist stand out not to draw focus away.

Location ideas:

Queens park rose garden

Queens park band rotunda

SIT sound studio/grand piano

Church

Music Video Pitching

Music Video Pitching

Key things I learnt while doing practice pitches in class...

1. Know what you want to do...
2. Be prepared.
3. Be extra prepared.
4. Pay special attention to wardrobe and set design.
5. Have ideas on colour pallet, shot types.
6. Know if what you want is narrative/performance/concept based or a mixture.
7. be clear and to the point.

My song choices are.

Waiting for you - Joanna

Run - Joanna

What I learnt about Joanna to help me with my pitch:

She has a vague idea about what she wants, but really hasn't formed her identity yet. She loves music and is Christian, and is a casual person.

Her Image is music focused that sort of focus on some issues to make people think.

Brand... doesn't have one but if she did it would revolve around music.

As an initial Idea I would like to do some kind of performance based video, either filmed in a studio there would be some kind of narrative of perhaps the band turning up at another venue and they being to play together.

Location Ideas are to film it at a SITsound studio and/or a local church stage maybe she is involved with.

She mentioned the colour yellow when talking about the song waiting for you. Maybe I could get a yellow scarf that could be a part of the film that is seen throughout the film, other set/wardrobe colors could help make this yellow scarf stand out.

Music video research

Music Video Research

Probably my favorite music video is this demonstration of sound on matter, the shots are incredible the use of slow-motion make this production visually stunning.  

Things I have observed watching music videos that make them stand out from other editing techniques are:

The timing of the cuts within a montage follow the rhythm of the music to make it more effective. This is something I want to include into my music video.

The getting artists to act along with a music that is played at double speed and filming at 50fps on a 25fps time base so the mouth syncs with the lyrics but all other motion is half speed when played back at 25fps.

Location choice, choosing locations to suit the mood of the song.

Mood lighting that matches the emotion of the song.