Final Preparations for our shoot

Today is the final day of preparations that we are doing before our music video shoot tomorrow. In the lesson, we wrote a props and costume list for our band performance scene and our security guard scene. This list will let us be more organised when we are loading up the truck, and to triple check that we have everything. 

Timings and Actor availabilty

We are scheduled to shoot our video in the Guildford car park from 2pm - 8pm. This gives us 6 hours to shoot our entire video. 

One issue that has come up is that we need to teachers to play our security guards, however they have lessons and do not finish teaching until 6pm. As a result, we will ned to keep reminding and asking our actors to check their availability, as they may not be able to do it. 

Mike one actor has emailed me the possibility that he may be able to do it, but has not been able to give us a 100% thumbs up that he can. This means we will have to organise a couple of back-up actors, just in case he won't be able to do it. We will not know for sure until Tuesday, the day before our shoot. 

Additionally, if they're do end up being available, they won't reach our car park until around 6:30 - 6:45, which means we will only have about an hour and a quarter to film what we need with them. This means we will have to be very organised and mack sure we are ready to film them as soon as they arrive. 

Organising some props

Today, I rang up my father in order to enquire about some coloured smoke grenades in which we can use for our shoot. I asked for 20 red smoke grenades, which we are planning to set off during the filming in the car park on our shoot. After a couple of hours, he rang back and confirmed that we could use these.

We want red smoke grenades as we think that it will add a very cool image to our band, and we believe that it links in with their rebellious and indie rock-band image that we want to portray. We are planning to get close-ups of each band member whilst engulfed in the smoke, and possibly some slow-mo too. This will provide a very cool image. 

Example image:

Additionally, Alex ordered a torch for the security guard to use on set, as we are still planning to use the security guard narrative.

 However, Perry enquired about using high-visibilty jackets, but the theatre department did not have any that we could use. As a result, we may have to not have them, and use grey jumpers, as it still fits in with the security guard image that we need. Unfortunately, the theatre department only had a bus driver high visibility jacket and a London underground one, which unfortunately we cannot use as it doesn't fit with the security guard look required. 

However, we still need to organise how we are going to get 3 amps to take with us to the car park. We need these as we will have 1 amp for each member, to make it more realistic. 

More Rehearsals

This week we had more rehearsals with our band. Here is a short clip I recorded, which shows a snippet on how they performed. the clip briefly but extensively shows our bands progress, as it shows that they have successfully learnt the song, which is very pleasing for us.

The guitarist Giorgio is incredibly talented and we consider ourselves very lucky to have him, and the drummer Thomas is exceptionally skilled as well. These two link up very well and seem to have good chemistry. Max, our singer, suits the role perfectly and his enthusiasm whilst singing is exactly what we wanted and he is performing very well. 

We will have more rehearsals next week, to improve the final touches of the band and to double check that they execute the song on the day. 

However, one issue we had whilst rehearsing is that is what quite difficult to hear the song play in the background for the band to follow. This made it hard for them to be in sync with each other. However, this will not be an issue on the day if the shoot as the playback will be more than loud enough. 

Band Image and Costumes

Here is the final image of the band together, which was taken during one rehearsal we had this week. We are very happy with our band; they have mastered playing the song, look good while performing and are very excited to take part on the day. 

Regarding the costumes, we have told the band members to bring in their own clothes to wear and we have specified what we want. We our focusing on mainly all-black outfits - black shirts/t shirts, black jeans and black, smart shoes. This is because this fits in with the band image and fits in with the genre and the tone of the song, and overall this is similar to what modern rock bands wear. 

Example of outfits we are looking for: 

Shot List

Here is the shot list that we have come up with. 

Security Guard Confirmed

After talking to Mike, he has confirmed his availability for the shoot and he is very excited to take part in it. 

We are yet to hear from Jason about his availability. 

Security Guard possible Cast

We are yet to organise the cast for our security guards. We were thinking of using another media teacher, called Jason, and another media teacher called Mike. 

Both of these teachers would be well suited to fit a security guard, as Mike has long hair and is very tall, and Jason has a very professional look about him and it would suit the role very well. 

Drone!

Today, we discussed the prospect of using a drone to help film our shoot. Alex has a drone, and has offered to let us use it to capture some cool footage, which we could end up using in the final edit. 

Here is an example of a drone:

The use of a drone would be especially cool, as we are organised to shoot on top of a car park. We could use the drone and fly over the edge of the roof, while filming the band performing yet also capturing the scenic background of Guildford. We could zoom in and out really far, go really high yet also face-to-face. This will give us an incredibly cool and unique element to our video.

Testing an Effect Idea

Here is an effect Alex made trying out an idea we had. The idea is that one of the security guards can see the band playing in the car park, but the other one cannot. This gives the band the image that they are not real and are a pigment in the imagination of one of the guards. This is quite a cool idea and would be interesting in testing this out in seeing that it works. 

How does it work?

This was made by recording 2 separate clips, one with the guy on the Segway then one without. Then all you need to is edit the two clips together. 

Props I'm Getting

I am in charge of a few props, including smoke grenades for the performance on the roof and a security guard like torch for the security guards. 

Here is an example of a possible torch:

Here is an example of use of smoke grenades to create quite a cool affect:

Using Prezi for Similar Bands

Today, we were researching into digipaks and websites for bands of similar genres of that of our band. As a group of 4, we all sat down and worked on Prezi, the presentation software online, and we all added to and edited our work about these similar bands. 

List of things to do

We are getting ever closer to the day of our shoot, and we still have lots of things to do. Today, we constructed a list as a group of all the things we need to do. Here is the list:

We all gave each other specific jobs to do. I am in charge of the rehearsals and getting a few props for the shoot. I am currently organising rehearsals for next week. 

Possible New Idea

Coming back to school from the weekend, we have spoken to Luke and he has suggested a possible new idea to use instead of our security guard.

He had the idea of instead of the band being 'shutdown', we would instead use a time-lapse of the location instead, as he feels it would be cooler and look visually unique to our video.

Here is an example of a time-lapse. Of course this is over a longer period of time, but ours would be similar in that we would use the surrounding area of our unique location to go in tangent with our performance in the car park. 

More Rehearsals

We have organised more rehearsals. I have spoken to our head of Music Tech teacher, Dave Parsons, to organise the place where we will rehearse with our band, We have organised one for Thursday at 3 15. 

This rehearsal will provide us will the opportunity for the band to perform as a group for the first time, which is vitally needed as we are running out of time.