Weekend Recording

      This weekend me and my group mate Kyle recorded our music video. Our video is to Gary Come Home, from Spongebob Squarepants. Our video revolved around me losing my dog. We wanted to begin filming, but we realized that our camera was dead. We plugged in our camera and begun planning our shots. We determined what rooms we would record them in and how we would work with the dog. it took a while for our camera to get charged enough to use it. After about an hour and a half we had about 25 minutes of charge time. It was a t this time that we got the dog and her treats so we could begin. We started by filming me playing with her.
      We did a few takes of this, experimenting with different angles and movements. After about three tries we decided we had enough of that shot. We moved to the shot of me chasing her around the backyard. This scene is supposed to be taking place after she ran away. We also did a few takes of this scene. It was around this time that the camera died again. We waited for another 30 minutes until we started filming again. After the camera charged again we started filming in my room. These would be the scenes that show the reason for the dog to run away. These scenes showed her being ignored.
      They also showed an empty dog bowl. We took a lot of takes of these types of scenes. We were almost done filming, but we needed to charge the camera more. After it charged we needed to get my sister to help us with a scene. She needed to play a person who had found my dig, and brought her back. For the whole filming process I was the actor, and Kyle was the cameraman. We worked well to decide how to film the shots.

Story boarding

Today in Mediastudies we did the storyboards for our music video. Our video will focus on a narrative of the main character losing his pet dog. The first scene will be a flash back to a high angle of him playing with his dog. This scene will also be grayscaled.  The next scene will still be a flash back with him chasing his dog playfully . It will still be in black and white and will probably be an over the shoulder shot. Then after that we will show the man petting the dog but he gets distracted because he is handed a video game controller. He neglects the dog, wide angle. The next two scenes show the man playing video games and the dog looking into an empty dog bowl. They will both be low angles and will keep the black and white from earlier. The next scene finally brings it back to present. The black and white goes away and we see the dog running away from home from a wide angle we will also either do a pan or track for this shot depending on how it comes out. The next few scenes show the main character responding to his dogs running away. They will be is low angles to show a sad mood. We will show him finding the empty dog bowl, putting up posters, and him waiting  for the dog, this one will be a long shot. The main character also puts out a bowl of food for the dog incase he comes back. The final scene will show the boy getting a knock on the door. This will be a wide shot. As he opens the door it cuts to a close up of his hand opening the handle. And finally there is an eye-line match showing the dog waiting in the doorway. This will take place in and around a house. And the costumes and props are casual and realistic.

Music Video Planning

      My group for the music video will be filming soon. We will be recording our video to the song “Gary Come Home.” We will be recording this at my house. I asked my mom if it was ok and she gave us permission. We don’t really have very many safety concerns. However we need to make sure the dog behaves. I don’t think there will be an issue with the dogs harming anybody, but they could disrupt the shots. We won’t need any props, besides clothes, and possibly a missing dog sign. These are to advance the narrative of a missing dog. We don’t have any specific costumes. We will just use formal clothing. The story is of a normal man whose dog runs away. We plan on recording over the weekend of the 23rd and 24th and probably on the 23rd. This is the best day for the team as a whole, however Carter may not be able to make it. We are going to choose shots and edit during the following week.

Music Video Introduction

     In AICE Mediastudies we have started a new project. I am going to be working in a group with my classmates, Timothy, Carter, and Kyle. Before we start this project we created our own commercial, my group chose Gatorade. The process of creating that commercial helped us advance our film making ability. We will be more efficient in planning, filming, and editing after our past experience. I am confident about this groups ability to make a good, compelling video, even though Sean from the last project decided to work with a different group. We will start story boarding soon. I'm very excited to begin.
      We will record a music video to popular song from SpongeBob SquarePants, Gary Come Home. It is a slow, heart wrenching, ballad about SpongeBob losing his beloved pet snail Gary. However in the specific episode of the show, he was ignoring Gary, causing him to leave, the song takes the perspective of a heart broken SpongeBob after his pet fled. We will have one of my dogs take the role of Gary in the video, and one of the group members will take the place of SpongeBob. The video will be different than the portion of the show however, because the scene with the song only shows the protagonist searching for his pet. Our video will show the whole story between the main charter and his dog. For a sad ballad, the video is usually very serious, with minimal editing, and camera angles that provoke sympathy in the main charter. The Mis en Scene for a sad song like this usually are:

1. Costumes- Very realistic costumes for the setting that the song takes place. For us we will be wearing casual, normal clothing, however if the song took place in a war zone for example we would wear a military uniform.
2. Lighting- The lighting usually uses a lot of shadows, this creates a gloomy mood. This is to establish the mood the director wants to put across, so the audience feels sympathy for the protagonist.
3. Acting- The actors need to act as normal as possible to bring the audience into the video, make them emotionally invested. However they still need to be dramatic to get the feelings across.
4. Makeup- The makeup needs to be realistic, to one again make the video feel authentic and drag the viewer into the scenes. This will make them emotionally invested as well.
5. Props- We will have only props that add to the narrative. They also need to keep the scenes looking realistic.
6. Scenes- They will be following the protagonist. They also need to look realistic so the audience believes the story.

Editing Blog 2

      Today in Mediastudies we begun the actual editing process for our commercial. We started by getting a computer, we ended up with computer number 2. It took a few minutes for us to download all of our videos and open Pinnacle Studios. Once we downloaded everything and opened the editing software, we started to import our footage. We initially imported all of our footage so we could choose which shots we wanted. Kyle was the main member in charge of editing as he had the most experience in editing before this. We started with the first scene. We filmed 2 versions of this shot and we eventually decided on one after a short discussion. We dragged the footage onto AV track 2 and cut it down to what we wanted. We were very happy with how this scene ended up.
      After finishing the first scene we moved on to the next one. This was the scene where they start running. We were surprised with how much we ended up liking our shot for the scene. We also cut this one down a bit and moved on. As we reached the third scene we had a longer debate about which version of the shot we would choose. Though I eventually decided that my group mates were correct and we went with their preference. This scene was rough at first, however Kyle found some cool effects to put on the shot to make it look significantly better. The effects made it look like Sean was running faster than he actually was. However it still looked realistic. This was great as I was concerned this scene would end up being kind of bad.
      We moved on to the last half of the commercial. The other scenes were easy to decide on as we had less takes for them. We were still pretty happy with them however. We looked into changing the color scheme of the scenes, but we decided against it except for the first scene. We also looked into more effects, but ultimately didn’t. We added to Gatorade slogan to the end of the final scene also. It was at this time that we realized that we were at 33 seconds and we needed to get down to 30. We made some small cuts and got down to the correct length without worsening the quality, luckily. It was time to add music to the commercial now. Kyle quickly found a good song that fit perfectly, however Sean wanted a different song, we eventually overruled Sean and kept the other song though.