After choosing our music to use for our video I had to make a a letter to send to the production company to have permission to use Ed Sheeran's song Grade 8. This would stop us from any copyright issues and would protect us from illegally using the song. Here is my letter:

This photo was taken of me and my group researching what song to choose to do for the final production. My group which is Alex Sodimu on the left, Darren Cousins in the middle and Me on the right were all researching songs seperately for ideas to give to one anohter. The requirements of the music video was that the song was either 10 years old or older, or if the song was new but didnt have a release of a video. This was because its harder to come up with original ideas if the song has a new relevant video.  As we were researching we drew up a shortlist of potential songs we wanted to do regarding our ideas. The songs on this shortlist were: Bruno Mars- The other side, Bruno Mars- Runaway Baby, Labrinth- Sweet Riot and Ed Sheeran- Grade 8. As a group we then decided together which one we wanted to do. We did this by firstly discussing our ideas on each song and removing a song at a time. After looking at the lyrics of the songs and discussing our individual ideas we came up with Ed Sheerans Grade 8 song. This was a hard decision to make because there were so many songs to choose from and we had good ideas for many of them but overall we all had some good relevant points to the wording of the songs, and we all knew the song which is why we picked it as our final music video production piece.

For my final production work I am working in a  group with Darren Cousins and Alex Sodimu.  I am working with these because after our practise go at the production I thought we worked rather well as a group which is why we are working together again. For our final production we had the choice to either do a music video or a movie trailer. We had a little talk to weigh up our options and decided that we were going to do a music video after our recent attempts and because on judgement we had better ideas than a movie trailer.  For the production I have chosen to do a webpage and a digipak rather than an advert for the new song. These ancillery tasks have a final deadline of friday the 7th of december where both have to be completed. On friay the 30th of November the video deadline to be completed is and on the 14th of December everything about the production has to be done as nothing after that date will be accepted.

The last preperation task we completed was the practise task. This task was all about preparing for our final production piece and was a practise/example of what we could choose to do. We had either the choice of doing a music video or a film trailer. Firstly we got into groups and I was with Darren and Alex. We then began to choose what we wanted to do and as a group we decided to do a music video. We had been given a choice of what songs to chosse from, by our teacher and we picked Mariah Carey Without You. After this we had to plan our different shots and scenes and what we wanted to do on our storyboard.

Here is My storyboard: Page 1 and 2

 

This shows the planning we did for our music video. After completing this we began to start filming at our locations we set. We had our plan and was reading off of this and after a couple of days filming we began editing. As we had previous experience now of editing we began to edit at a much quicker pace and we started to look more deeply into the types of editing and effects such as slow motion and fade in and out. We used this is our video to help us bind it together. Overall we completed our video with a good overall product although we could definately have made it better.

Here is the link to our video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4tdADU8zRo&list=UUzCuzU6TJVKZ_Khku1FndtQ&index=5&feature=plcp

In this task I have learnt many things such as the importance of planning properly, covering our shots, using the same song and time keeping. Firstly the planning we had to do was very immense and we needed to plan everything from props we were using to characters and location. Although we did this relatively well, we got stuck in some cases by not being able to do what we originally planned but also with things such as at the beginning of the video having the bag in the middle of the clip which wasnt planned. This shows taht we have to plan every little detail more in depth than before to be really successful. Another thing I have learnt is the covering of the shots just like the one direction video I did. When we was editing, we noticed we needed more shots than we had taken and this made the video a bit out of sorts. This is why there are so many photos. Although we planned the 10 photos in the middle of the song, the rest werent planned as a result of under taking shots. The biggest error in the video we did was the fact that we used one song from the internet to use as the song over the top and lip syncing, and another on our phone which was a different version. This made the song not match with our actor which made it extremely hard to edit although we did a relatively good job on this. Time keeping is another thing to take into consideration just because we left it a bit late to finaly finish the clip. Although we could have done these things better I elieve that the lip syncing went really well and the video and effects was of a good quality which we as a group were very happy about for a practise attempt.

Another one of our preperation tasks was lip syncing. This was a new concept so we began by looking at other videos on youtube to get an idea on what to do and how successful they can look if they are done properly. At first this looked extremely tricky however as the task went on it became apparent later that timing is everything in the task. We began by getting into groups which I was in with Darren, Jack, Ricky and Dan with Maxwell doing the camera and all the shots. We decided to do the song 'thats what makes you beautiful' by one direction. We had to plan the whole process of the video and again as there were 5 of us, gave each other a character each with my character being Louis. Over a few lessons we finished our planing and did our filming. This was the first time we had done filming in sync with music and in the end you could tell that the video wasnt really successful. After we got our filming done we had to begin editing on the imacs. We had never edited before however I believe that I picked it up rather well and we edited through the song rather quickly. There were many concepts to do with the editing and we used some of these in the video however most we didnt really touch. We finally came up with our video and had to upload it onto youtube. The main point was to get the lip syncing correct throughout the video and ours looked really good.

Here is the link to our video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxda7mUI5uI&list=UUzCuzU6TJVKZ_Khku1FndtQ&index=9&feature=plcp

After we uploaded the video we saw that there was a delay in the song. We saw this delay to be of 6 seconds which is why the lip syncing is really poor.

In conclusion to the task I learnt lots of valuable experiences. The main experience was the lip syncing. We could tell that to get it right it was going to be hard and we had good practise on getting it perfect however it turned out unfortunate.  This definately has helped me though to get a decent idea of the good levels we need but also has given me skills that I can use in the future for our final production piece especially with moving and editing of certain different clips that need to be put together as one. I have also learnt from the task that we should take more shots and slower shots instead of it all in one. We in the task didnt give ourselves enough cover or opportunities to make it look better and this could be seen in the end video where some parts we were laughing etc. Overall I believe that this task was very valuable to me especially for my final production as it all has the same principles of what I need to do for my final piece and this gives me previous experience in doing this to a high level.

In order to prepare for this task we have done several previous activities such as friends, lip syncing and our practise task. This blog is about my friends video which I did with Ricky Lawrence, Sophie Harten, Jack Halliday and Darren Cousins. We had to act out a scene from the tv series friends in which we had to follow a script. We began by giving each other a character to follow and gave Jack the role of camera man. We firstly had to learn our words off the script which I believe I did successfully and then began to film. We at first were really bad and had to take a lot more shots than expected to make it look good and cover ourselves for when we edited.  After completing the task we edited as a group to come up with the overall video.

The link to our video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFnETHKDs4Y&list=UUzCuzU6TJVKZ_Khku1FndtQ&index=7&feature=plcp

From this task I have learnt a few very good important aspects that will help me in my final production. Firstly by giving each other a character I have found that we need to stay in the same character all together but also when changing shots we need to be in continuity with our last shot. For example in one of the shots I was facing in one direction which meant that the next shot I would need to be in the same direction to make it similar and look effective. This will help me in my final piece as I would need to think about the positioning of the artist to make it as real as possible. Another thing I found was that we need to learn from the script straight away. In the friends video some people still had their scripts in front of them as they didnt know the words. This would totally ruin our final production if this happened so we would definatly need to make our actor/artist know the words of the song grade 8. This task also allowed me to have more chances with the types of camera shots we need to take and it allowed me to familiarise myself with lots of different camera angles which we could use in our fial production.

This is my blog for my final A2 media production. My name is Bradley Stokes and I will be blogging everything I have done in preperation and in construction for my final piece. We had the opportunity to either create a msuic video or a new film trailer and as a group we first off decided we were going to create a msuic video. The brief for our video is:

- A promotion package for the release of the album, to include a music promotion video with : a cover for its release as part of a digipak (package of the CD) and a webpage containing and prmoting the artist.