Copyright

Chick Habit by April March is owned by a foreign record label, called Sympathy For The Record Industry. They where hard to track down and although we sent mulitple email we were unable to aquire a response. So we went ahead and used the song.
We do not think there will be any problems as we stated that it was a non-profit educational project. We have sent Youtube an email explaining this so that when it goes up it will not get flagged for copyright.

Myspace and Album cover progress...

I have set up an email and the artist myspace. I have emailed you all the information necessary to get started.

ARTIST NAME

So we realised that 'Sparky' sounds like childrens TV character or a dog. Sooo we brainstormed some others names, the final two are:
* Skye
* Sapphire (Saffy for short)

Ms Blakcborow really liked both of them, though i think she was leaning slightly more towards Sapphire. But we really really like both and cannot decide so we will undergo some audience feedback to see which comes out on top.

Ok our deadlines Friday 27th November,
we have made a start on our Myspace page and have filled in any gaps on our video sequence.

Myspace:
It has the basics of a good myspace page, however we need to add in our photos of the shoot and write up somemore interesting information about Sian.
Majorly we need to think of a name for her, as this will need to be changed asap.
We've uploaded photos of Sian from everyday activities.

Video:
thankfully now all the spaces are filled which is great cos it means we can focus on putting in effects and trying to make it look good.
We need to get feedback from miss before we are complete, hopefully get this by wenesday so we have enough time to alter anything and also have our screening on the Thurs.

Shoot:
Today was meant to be the shoot but unfortunately due to washing the dress, it was dripping wet today which meant we were unable to do it.
Which is why we have now made sure our myspace is getting done, therefore we are technically ahead of schedule as the album cover shouldn't take as long.

Miss.B feedback

Yesterday miss gave us our first proper feedback on our footage. She said...

*Our "camera movement was the best out of all the groups"! (OO YEAH)

*  Some shots she felt were too long, and we agree. We need to cut them up and put other shots inbetween to keep it interesting.

* She thought we got a great performance out of Sian, but that her lipsyncing wasn't always perfect so we need to play around with the editing to get it as good as we can. Or we can just make it so amazing that no one notices.

Quick Update...

So far we have done the majority of our sequence, although there are a few blank spaces that need doing. Because of our performance shots turning out rather poor we've decided to put them in for now. So we're either going to re-shoot them or use some of the masses of footage we already have.

We have successfully completed the lamppost shot, revolving door shot, changing clothes down the street.
We are really happy so far with the project however know we need to put in the time in order for it to be finished and look its best :)

shoot

We need a photoshoot of Sian for our album cover, the next possible time we could do would probably be Monday. It shouldn't take long because its only a few snaps we have in mind for her. However because our performance shots didn't look good when we captured them, we may need to re-take them just so we have a couple that we can cut away to.
    We are going for a black&white album cover, with Sian posing in the middle of the cover. As shown below our inspiration is the twiggy photo of her on the tv.

Black and White effect in Videos

We really liked the idea of having some shots of our video in black and white. I saw this video on MTV the other day, and thought the quick flashes of black and white that it has look really cool and effective. The black and white shots tend to be the same as the colour shots, maybe just slightly closer or from a slightly different angle, quickly inter cut with colour shots. I think we should try this out, as it could be really great.

NAME FOR OUR ARTIST

Ok so we were thinking we need to come up with an artist name very soon. We were asking around for some suggestions, and when speaking to our actress she came up with a name we rather like which is 'Sparky' and it links to her name Sian Parkinson so has a relevence to our artist, but also is catchy and sounds modern and cool. So that is what we've got for now, unless we can think of anything better.

shoot 3- 10/11/09

Yesterday we finished our final shoot of Sian's performance. We set up the green screen in misses room and took MCU, CU, ECU shots of Sian.
We had her in a sequined sparkly boob-tube dress which looked amazing with the white background, however something Tom pointed out was that the sequins were reflecting some of the green from the light, therefore when we go to take all the green out of the shot it may leave the dress with holes in it.
Today we will have to try it out and see whether or not it worked. If it does we will be happy because it means we have more to put into our sequence, however if it turns out that it didn't work, it wouldn't be such a big deal as we do have a great amount of footage already and it was the beauty shots which we wanted in the first place.

Now all filming has finished, we can focus on editing for the rest of the week.
After having a prep talk with Miss too, we are going to start focusing on setting up our myspace soon and then while someones editing someone can be focusing on the website. Once these two things are pratically completed we can do our album cover.
And hopefully will be finished in time for the deadline:)

Shoot 2- 8/11/09

Yesterday we did our Bricklane shoot which due to poor weather, were unable to do 2 weeks ago.
The weather was good, it wasn't raining and looking back on footage the shots thankfully don't look gloomy. Other than being very very cold, the day was an overall success.

We managed to get every shot we planned which was great, and if anything we took more than one take of each. Which means when editing we have a variety of takes to choose from.
We started off filming Sian around Liverpool st. but unfortunately after being told off for filming there we moved onto Bricklane.
We tried to experiment with different shots such as a contra zoom and walking backwards in a crowd of people.

Today Hannah and I captured all the footage and have started on editing some of the transition shots. We have completed a revolving door transition, which looks rather good but we will need to get Tom's feedback before putting it into our video.

Now we are trying out a lampost change of clothes shot.
The whole day was a success, we got everything we needed and seemed to have a good day of filming. Some passers by had some really good reactions to Sians performance and so we are also going to try and incorporate some of that.

Performance

This is a video I thought we should show sian before the shoot, in terms of performance I think she should study how some other artists interact with their surroundings and with the camera.
This is a good example I found to show sian...
Lily Allen

Inspiration

Today Miss.B showed us a music video made by a group years ago.
Miss thought it would help us understand what she was trying to portray in her feedback.
It was a music video set in london, with a sepia effect.
The girl acting in it was running through london, moving her head in a lot of shots and making interactions with the public.
The even had shots of the market traders shouting and lots of shots of the stalls themselves.

Because this was shot so long ago the quality wasn't too good and they obviously didn't have the techonology that we do know.
So we intend to include much more interaction, with her blowing kisses into the camera and constantly smiling.

Additionally, when Jake Wynne gave us his feedback on our initial idea he mentioned that we need to have a narrative to end our video with. As our initial idea was to just have Sian running off into the distance, starting off with a CU and going into a LS.

His feedback then made us think we really needed an ending, he said she needs to end up somewhere, a shop or even to meet someone. However, now after viewing this other video, where they have their actress running off into the distance with her hair waving around, we have decided to stick with our initial idea and have her running blowing kisses.

Prop List

Prop list for Sunday 8/11/09

On Sunday we need to take the majority of things we took the the previous shot, if anything we should have less things to take down because we wont be reusing outfits.

• camera
• tripod
• clipboard
• still camera
• umbrella
• make-up: eye glitter, coloured shadows, red lipstick, powder (hannah&dan)
• skirts x3
• tops: vest tops, t-shirts
• dresses x2
• jumpers x2
• tights: coloured and black (don't forget the spares)
• shoes: petite heels (ankle black heels) & plimsoles
• speakers (Danni's)
• Mp3 (Danni's)
• compact mirror

That's all i can think of right now.

Artist Name

We started thinking about the name of our artist in the lesson yesturday. As we have a solo female it would be obvious to just choose a real name like Lily Allen, Cheryl Cole or Katy Perry. However we were thinking we wanted to make our artist more induvidual with a stage name, we've seen this with artists such as Pink and Little Boots. I think a 'real' name could work but i would like something really unique and memorable like Beyonce or of course our vidoe's fashion inspiration Twiggy!

Album Cover ideas

Above is an image of what we think would look very good for our album cover, seeing as our is 60's themed and this image could really look good with Sian.

This is only a initial idea, we have not thought much about it but today during our editing session we started talking about it.

We would like it to be simple but yet really connote what we portray with our video.

To be continued....

Shot List- 8/11/09

SHOT LIST

• Lamppost change outfit shot
• Person walking past change outfit shot
• Walking towards camera change outfit shot
• Contra Zoom
• Graffiti Alley Shot
• Revolving Door
• Route master bus
• Line 8!
• Walking backwards
• Cutesy Natural shots ( winks, blowing kisses, smiling, laughing etc.)
• LS walking wipe shots
• LS, ELS, CU, ECU
• Shoes, legs Voyeurism
• Reaction shots
• Spinning hair shots
• running away from camera, spinning, laughing, smiling

Feedback- BLK

Seeing as we have our shoot on sunday we thought it would be best to ask Miss Blackborow for her feedback on our footage already.
Miss Blackborow thought our location, costume and mise-en-scene were all really good and she really liked the chereographed moves down Little Marlbourough street.
She really seemed to like the split screen we have been working on too.

Here's her advice:

• We need really tight shots cutting into her face; CU on eyes
• More cutesy type shots on her legs
• She needs to exaggerate more when she dances around; facial expressions, winking to the camera, blowing kisses, flirting, head movements.
• Tight close shots of her spinning round towards the camera
• Shots of her turning into the camera frame; so that she's doing all the work
• She would like more choreographed moves
• More movement of arms, legs, body genstures
• Head moving, sitting down
• Coming up to the camera very close
• Be more voyeuristic- use it to our advantage and play on it
• Use the public interest more; film their reactions more and have sian interacting with them more. Film the market traders reactions to sian down Bricklane.
• Changes of pace; running, skipping
• crazy movements
• wides/cut-aways for reactions mise-en-scenes
• Should film the red bus in brick lane and have sian running up stairs. Get customers reactions.

We are happy with our feedback, and glad that miss likes our footage so far. We think our camera work was good but definitely do need more moving shots which will alter the pace of the video.

The Shoot!

So over half term we had our shoots! On wednesday 28th Ot me and danni and tom went by ourselves to our location and shot some scenery shots so that we didn't have to waste Sian's time. Then on Saturday 31st Oct we did our first shoot with Sian. We shot in our Carnaby and Soho locations and i think this actually went really well. We realised that when having moving camera-work, it looked much better if we carried the camera on a tripod to steady it, so i think that those shots look much better. However although we were planning on shooting on Sunday 1st Nov there was torrential rain. Shooting outside in October and November we knew that we may come up against weather issues, and so we planned for this by having many colourful umbrellas on stand-by, that we could work into our shoot. However, this was just too heavy and we didn't want to risk the equipment in such heavy rain. Consequently we are now shooting next sunday 8th Nov - this is when we will do our shots in Brick lane and Spitalfields. Having looked at our footage from last sunday, we have realised that it is quite good to have a weeks gap between the shoots as we can really see what we need to do. Therefore we were able to come up with another shooting list for this weekend, meaning we won't miss anything. So here is our rough shooting list for 8th Nov:
* Lamppost change outfit shot
* Person walking past change outfit shot
* Walking towards camera change outfit shot
* Contra Zoom
* Graffiti Alley Shots
* Revolving door change out fit shots
* Routemaster bus shots

So hopefully this weekend the weather won't be as bad!
Also we need to arrange a date for the green screen, perofrmance shots, and that really needs to be done this week but we will arrange that in our group meeting today at 10am! ok.