first day of shooting

Tom and I started shooting during fifth period today. We started off our shooting with the shots we needed inside the centre. We did two shots in the hallway on the third floor starting from the history classroom. Tom shot a test shot of the empty hallway and said we could probably use it for one of the transition or jump shots we had planned for our matches on action which signaled a change of location. Then I shot Tom walking down the hall away from the camera, and peeking into classrooms looking for the hider.

We then decided to go to the churchyard, and get close-ups of some of the trees to replace any shots we lost filming in the actual park. It was sunny when we went out and we got some great shots with the camera angle at a steep upward slope. We plan to use these shots to signal transitions between scenes or changes in locations.

Some problems we had during shooting were that our camera picked up sound from one of the classrooms when we were shooting on the third floor, and it also picked up my voice while we were shooting in the churchyard. We also almost ran out of battery in the camera during shooting in the churchyard which meant we had to rush a little to get our final shot before the camera shut itself down.

Tom and I also discussed the costume we plan to have our actor in two roles is going to wear while we were shooting our scenes. We decided on having our actor wear a red hoodie when playing "the seeker" to symbolize or represent relentlessly looking for oneself, and having him wear a grey hoodie when playing "the hider" to represent seemlessly blending in with their surroundings or being completely lost in oneself.

gorillaz music video analysis

Gorillaz- Feel good inc.

This music video is a performance video showing the members of the band playing the song while going through an almost fantasy like location in the form of a floating island with a windmill or lighthouse in the middle which has possible connotations of freedom, imagination, and possibly light.

The performance is shown mostly through a montage of closeups of the lead singer and individual band members sort of going through daily life or playing the song which has connotations of being up close and personal with the band members which if we use the male gaze theory of media is exactly what we the audience want to happen when we buy a cd or watch a music video. It is also shown through a few mid-shots of the lead singer walking through the windmill/apartment, dancing, or looking out the window of it at a kid version of himself or someone similar playing a guitar.

what adds more of an eyecatching effect to the video is the fact that all of the band members are dressed in black which is typical of the genre of music they are playing which is the punk rock genre, and are cartoons which seems to be the bands symbol of sorts. Another eye catching effect in this video is the shot of another music video in the background of the scene where the lead singer of the band is dancing.

This can be compared to another cartooned video by a one off band called simon and milo which is called get a clue. Though that video is a narrative instead of a performance, and that band plays an almost pop like version of rock and roll or something similar in a hybrid style. Also the video by Simon and Milo seems less realistic than the cartoon video by the Gorillaz. Which has some representations of probably childishness on the part of the video producers. That or we can take into account that the video by Simon and Milo is from the nineties which means that animation technology was not as advanced as it is now.

If I had to really think about a theory to apply to this video it would have to be the feminist marxism theory which would say that this video shows women as either good for nothing but sex or seducers. As shown by the fact that throughout the video the shots of the guitarist also show him being stroked or tickled by two girls lying by his side while he plays the guitar. Though this is something that is typical of this genre of music in that women serve no important role in the video or are portrayed this way.

weather reports for shoot day on thursday

What you see to the left is the weather report for Thursday which as I said in a previous post is when Tom and I plan to shoot on location in the centre. The sunny weather should make for good natural lighting though we won't see this since we are shooting in the hallways. The addition of the hall lighting might make the lighting on our main character too harsh or something like that.

questionnaire response

To the left you see just one of the responses Tom and I got from putting our target audience questionnaire up on facebook.com. The person in this case who answered our questionnaire is male and just above our target audience age range of 16-19. This is only one of the people who answered our questionnaire. I will upload more answers to our questionnaire soon as well as a graph to show you the percentages or numbers of people who said what about cd covers, magazine ads, and music videos.

ideas for the cd cover

Inbetween discussing the shoot schedule and the evaluation questions for our music video we also started discussing ideas for the music video and cd cover. One of my ideas for the cd cover that I came up with that couples with Tom's idea of having a picture of all three of our shoot locations melded together side by side is that we should have a picture of one of the doors in the sixth form centre in the middle of the three pictures or something like that because a door can symbolise opening, barriers, or just be an atmosphere maker. I was inspire for this idea by one of the shots we plan on shooting of our main character at the beginning. In this shot we plan to start with a midshot of our main character sitting hunched up with his knees drawn to his chest and go to an extreme close-up using zoom of the pupil of our characters eyes to symbolise that we are going into their mind. This is when we get to the hide and seek game.

shoot schedule so far

So today apart from anything else Tom and I worked out the shooting schedule for our music video; well part of it anyway. There are three days we thought that we would shoot on.

Thursday the seventh of October because we thought that we should get started shooting our music video this week because we were really supposed to have started this last week. We are planning to shoot after our lessons are finished for the day. Well when Toms' lessons are finished for the day which would be after lunch. I might be in a meeting with my LSA then which I don't know about because she has been sick the last couple of weeks, and I'm not sure when she'll be back. If she isn't at the main site I will join Tom for shooting if she is there I'll ask her if I can skip our meeting to work on a piece of coursework.

Saturday the ninth of October because on weekends the centre of town will be crowded enough that we can get some decent crowd shots for our music video. This is necessary because we may have our main character in the music video hiding in the crowd. We checked the weather for this day using the BBC weather site and found out that it would be cloudy with spots of sunlight that day. Though of course this might change.

The final day that we worked out would probably work was Tuesday the twelfth most likely during lesson time. This is the day when we plan to shoot at the park because at this time the park will most likely have less people in it and will make a more atmospheric place to shoot than the park after school.

These dates are subject to changes when Tom and I start shooting. There may also be problems with scheduling. As such Tom and I will have to add more shoot dates once we find out how much footage you can shoot during a lessons worth of time.

storyboard images and explaination

Finally I have the complete storyboard to show you. All in all it is four pages of pictures and descriptions to go along with the pictures. The concept of the video as I have previously stated in this blog is basically man on a mission which Tom Coleman and myself have interpreted as trying to find oneself in a game of hide and seek and tag combined. We came up with the idea after listening to our track round about two or three times. Our shots can be interpreted as such. An example is the last three shots on the fourth page of our storyboard which show our main character the seeker chasing the hider across the three locations we are using for the game of hide and seek back towards the beginning scene of our music video which can be interpreted as a sort of mission accomplished. Though from the looks of it the computer might have screwed up the image order and put our first and second pages on the bottom and our third and fourth pages on the top.

Another example of our concept of a man on a mission interpreted as a game is the shot where we have our seeker tapping the hider on the shoulder which is obviously I found you. We did our concept this way because we believe it will be more interesting and give our audience less boredom than if we did something conventional like a sort of spy narrative video, or army mission video.