Shooting Diary

Here is the shooting diary we devised for the weeks after shooting


7th September - 11th September:In this week we looked at what type of music video we wanted, pop, rock, indie, electro, metal etc. Alot of ideas we had circulated the rock genre but we felt too many other groups were doing this so we've decided to do a dance or electro video. Want the story to be quite spooky and haunting, maybe with an old boyfriend/dead coming back for the girl or a memory. I think if it's going to be an electro/pop video we should make everything really fast and quick. Lots of close-ups but lots of shots at different angles too. Scenes should be shot in an old type house and then in a forest.

14th September - 18th September:Look into the general meaning of the song we've chosen called 'Little Soul' by a relatively unknown band called H2SO4. The lyrics are very simple, they only sing on small parts. I think we're going to use the 'Little Soul' title as indicating of the characters as being pathetic, like the singer is patronising them calling them a little soul. There are alot music videos with lots of good editing techniques and storylines i.e; Blink 182 - All The Small Things and Paramore - Decode.We've decided that myself and Hannah Yarde will be the main 2 characters and our 3rd member of the group Matthew Steven has chosen to remain more behind the scenes and work on editing and camera techniques. We have started to prepare a pitch on powerpoint showing the ideas that we have come up with for our video.

21st September - 25th September:We have wrote the storyboard out in 4 pages, this being the main outline:Girl is having nightmares but she doesn't know why. She can hear this music but it's completely torturing her. She then starts to feel this demon like presence, the one who's singing this song and she can see the demons reflection everywhere where she is laughing and singing to her, trying to draw her in. The girl gets up to get a drink but drops the bottle on the floor and it rolls under her bed, where she finds a box addressed to her. She opens it and finds a vintage dress but has no idea why and who gave it to her. Along with the music that she cannot escape from and this newly found gift, she thinks she is going crazy so she runs to the bathroom to wake herself up. She calms herself down by running the tap to fill up the sink to splash her face, hoping for a bit of normality. When she turns back around the freshen herself up the water has turned black which just adds to her being more frightened. She looks up at the mirror and sees the demon standing behind her, well and truly petrified at this point she runs out the bathroom but trips up and falls on the floor hitting her head and passing out. When she wakes up she is in a forest wearing the vintage dress that she found in her room earlier before. Shes totally baffled at this point so starts to run away from the demon who has put her in this position. She keeps seeing her appearing everywhere, laughing and singing to her. The girl then realises that shes getting no where and begins to ponder the thought of asking the demon why she is here. On doing so, she sees the demons reflection staring back at her. It then reaches her hand out of the mirror to the girl, inviting her in which the girl accepts. Quickly, you see the hand pulling her in and straightaway a shot of the girl falling on top of her bad - as if she had just fallen out of the entire scene. She then wakes up glad it appears to have been a nightmare, but she flips back her quilt and sees she wearing the dress in her nightmare. Terror quickly sinks in where we then see the demon walking towards her bedroom slowly, then we cut to the girls face looking up in shock and then cut to the demon standing at the door.We have wrote this in cartoon form in images so it is easy to see the video will be produced.

28th September - 2nd October:Sorted out the animatic using scenes from storyboard, and then uploaded to blog. We then prepare to film by booking out the equipment we need from media and then we schedualed a plan in which we film according to. We've made a list of shots needed in the house, such as nightmares in bed, walking shots, falling on the bed and such. Then forest scenes are set to be done shortly afterwards, make sure we have proper costume and lighting needed for the day.

5th October - 16th October:Filming of all the footage in progress, all of the scenes are day scenes so we've had to film over a period of a few days as being the time of the year, nightime sets in pretty soon! Weve also had to reshoot a couple of scenes just to recapture some of the spooky elements that we initally wanted for the video. In this period, we managed to get over 240 pieces of footage to choose from and then we began to edit the video as much as possible. The blog we updated as much as we could in these weeks, updating it everytime we finished our rough cuts and what not.

19th October - 25th November:In this month long period, we edited nearly everyday for as long as possible. We have edited the blog too with out animatic, rough cut video, final dvd covers and such. We decided against using photogrpahs on the dvd cover and inlay as we wanted to see if we could achieve a successful cover without the need to photography.

Rough Cut & Feedback

Here is the rough cut to our music video for 'Little Soul' by H2SO4. As you can tell, the video is very far from being finished, with very minimal footage and editing. However, in comparasin to our finalaized version of the video, a lot has been improved. A lot of editing ranging from jump cuts and flashes to ghosting, has improved the overall look, feel and quality of the video, and it generally look professional and effective. Below is the feedback we recived during viewing viewing of the rough cuts.

- Add fast paced editing

- Add good Nebula effects.

- Even out the contrast.

- finish cutting and editing.

Similar Band Research

Pet Shop Boys

"Pet Shop Boys are a British electronic dance music duo, consisting of Neil Tennant, who provides main vocals, keyboards and occasionally guitar and Chris Lowe on keyboards and occasionally on vocals.
Pet Shop Boys have sold about 100 million records worldwide. Since 1986, they have had 42 Top 30 singles and 22 Top 10 hits in the UK, including four Number Ones: "West End Girls," "It's a Sin," "Always on My Mind," and "Heart."
At the 2009 BRIT Awards, Pet Shop Boys received an award for Outstanding Contribution to Music. The duo's latest album, entitled Yes, was released on 23 March 2009."

I decided to research the Pet Shop Boys, as they are also and electro-pop band who have an inpact on the same age of the public that H2SO4 do now.

Magazine Advert & Rough Cut

Here is our magazine advert which, as you can see, also matches formal codes and conventions. You can also see that our album is featured on here. we all feel as a group that this is a successful magazine advert which features sponsers and adopts a good colour scheme, which is good to attract attention of the viewer. All of the colours and layouts match with each other, and we feel that this is together, a good collective. We also have a good variation in fonts and sizes, this will overall attract the viewer. We also decided to included the original album artwork as we felt it would encourages readers to buy the album, knowing what they are buying and how it would look.

Here is our original design and rough cut for the magazine advert;

Below is some of the refined feedback we recieved from our original rough cuts;

- Add more colour.

- Refine original images.

- Include album artwork.

- Make it more visually advertising.

As you can see we have vastly improved and revamped our final design of the magazine advert. We have changed most of the design according to the feedback we recieved.

DVD Cover And Inlay

Here you will find our DVD front cover, reverse and spine. You will also find our inlay to go with the DVD and the tickets which you win with the DVD. As you can see the DVD matches the formal codes and conventions used, not only with our CD and Magazine advert, but with other music DVDs. Both the DVD cover and the DVD inlay tie in codes and conventions and as you can see link in very well. The colour schemes, fonts and layouts compliment each other, and as you can see, have a strong visual link. We decided to have a competition with tickets as the inlay, simply beacuse this is something different to feature. We also thought that including the tickets would be an extra bonus to feature within our project.

Below is the original rough cuts for both the DVD and the insert;

Here is the feedback we recieved from the original rough cuts we recieved;

- Include more editin

- link design and layout to the magazine cover and disk sticker

- Include more reviews

- Make the design interesting.

As you can see we have vastly improved our final design of the DVD and the inset as you can see. We have changed most of the design according to the feedback we recieved.

DVD Stickers

We also decided to create stickers to go on both disks for the album and the tour DVD. As you can see, they fit formal codes and conventions and also link nicely with the album.

Research on the band.

The band we chose to use for our music promo video is H2SO4. Below is a little bit of background information about the band

Songwriting is what H2S04 used to create its version of blending pop, rock, and technology into a sound that wails with raw energy. The band formed 30 miles outside of London in Kent when Graham Cupples (lead keyboardist and programmer), Darren Till (another keyboardist and programmer), and James Butler (vocals and bass) were experimenting with some remixes. At that time Cupples was leading Mortal and Code, both techno in style. Till played with Code and Butler was doing the vocals and bass for Lobster, which was previously known as Sulpher and expressed a more traditional style of rock. Mixing the three talents together created a reaction like H2SO4, the chemical symbol for originality, the chemical compound that burns you so smoothly you may not be aware its happening. The trio found they had created an area between electronica/techno and rock that was powerful and fluid.

We chose the song 'Little Soul' as this was a very popular club song used in gay bars and clubs across northern america. Also featured on the populary American hit TV series, Queer and Folk, this is a great 80's disco tune loved by almost everyone who heard it.

Album Cover Planning

This is our original inspiration for our album cover. We decided to take a photo of both Hannah and Kirsty and have them split down the centre to form one face made with the two photos. We decided to encorperate a lot of Photoshop editing and we would be creating a 'Deluxe Edition' of the CD with two unreleased bonus tracks. The CD would also come with a limited edition visual artwork book. However if this will take too much time, we will not incorperate the visual artwork, however we feel that it would be an effective extra touch. We also plan on having the cover either very vibrant and colourful or very dull and monochrome, yet effective. Both styles can suit the genre of the music to some extent. We will start off by taking both photos and overlaying them with each other on Photoshop, this will give us a good transisition between both photos and transmitting some sort of image. It will also intertextualise with the music video quite well, as both of the models will be wearing the same costume as they did in the music video itself. We aim for the photo to represent insomnia of the mind and confusion, with both photos linking in and giving reference to one another. I feel that a heavy use of photo manipulation and editing will help me give a more bold and impact effect on the viewer as it will highlight the issue of the video.

Magazine Advert Planning

This is our original inspiration for our magazine advert poster. We decided to keep formal codes and conventions from the album cover, and have both Hannah and Kirsty, who are feature din the music video, have their faces on the split screen idea you can see above. The elements of electronica and disco ties in well with the genre of our song. I believe that this can also tie in with the album cover, as the distortion of the main image again represents insomia of the mind, or can to some extent. both of the fonts and styles will fit formal conventions which will match the video, as the main image selected on this advert will be from the same photo shoot, and will represent features from the music video, with elements such as the costume and make up. A good idea from my point of view, would be in include visuals from the limited edition visual artwork book, which would also be an extra attraction to the CD. Below you can see our initial ideas sketch and first draft for the magazine cover.