Green Screen Experiment

When planning our production work, we discussed using greenscreen for the first chorus of the song. However, we realised that none of us knew how to use greenscreen properly and efficiently. Therefore, we decided that we would use our Thursday lesson to practice and develop some new skills needed to perform greenscreen and decide whether we should use it or not for our final production. This is the video that we managed to create, however we had to use clips that other groups had created for their pieces, therefore there is no particular plot but just Jacob walking around in the shot. We didn't take away the sound as we didn't think it was necessary to as we already know how to remove sounds from the clips therefore there is nonsense talking for example at the start some girls shout "1, 2, 3 - GO!".

We now understand how to use the greenscreen application on the Mac and we understand that we need to try not to get the lighting hitting the greenscreen background otherwise much like the top left corner of our short piece in which it is clear that Jacob is not in the same shot as the background. We also understand that we need to make sure the cloth is not creating any shadows otherwise it is also clear that the clips are not from the same shots.

Planning

Here is a spider diagram of our first ideas for our production work. We originally decided that the establishing shot would be of the couple in a shop laughing, holding hands etc. Then they were going to start shopping and he would realise he has no money. For the choruses we were going to have many shots of people lip syncing, the first chorus being the male lip syncing in different settings for example in a street, in a field, in a car etc. For the second chorus we were going to have it similar to the first chorus, but have the girl green screened into the background with another boy - perhaps giving him her number or flirting with him. The final chorus (which is a much longer chorus than the others) we were going to have various faces lip syncing, such as the male, the female, the other male and many several random people. Whilst there is a guitar solo we were going to have him asleep or thinking about them and when they used to have a fun time together without them arguing. We were going to have shots such as them walking into a cinema, and then walking back out laughing with popcorn (to give the effect that it looks as though they have been in to watch a film). For the final shot we were going to have the male lying in bed and he wakes up from this 'dream' and finds that the girl is lying in bed with him and that they are okay and happy. We then decided that for a narrative it could be very confusing, as the spending money scene is irrelevant to her being with another boy, and them being happy. Therefore we spent another lesson planning it again which will be on here shortly.

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Research - audience

Audience conclusion:

From our research, we decided that because the younger generations such as our age watch music videos more often that we will aim our video at our own age group. We also decided that because there was only one person that we asked who preferred dancing in a music video that we would stick to a narrative storyline to give the audience "something to latch on to" (Mike Kelly). Unfortunately, the main genre of music which was preferred was R'n'B, however when we were conducting this survey many people asked if they could choose more than one as many of them enjoyed Indie and R'n'B, therefore there would have been more people choosing Indie if they were not limited to one genre. This is very beneficial as we have already gained permission from our preferred band who are an Indie band.

Audience research results

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Research - audience (survey)

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This is our survey that we gave out to 8 different people, girls and boys and we also gave it out to various age groups to try and get a representative sample. From this we decided to create a small video showing some people (who gave consent) to be videoed whilst answering some of the questions on this survey. (Look at the above post to see the video).

gaining permission from a band

As a group we listened to some songs by our three choices, and we have decided that we would like to make the music video and ancillary texts for "The 99s - Oh Me, Oh My" as we believe it is a fun song with a nice, steady beat. We believe that this would be a successful video if we did it to this song, however we must get permission to use the song from The 99s, therefore we sent them an email hoping that they will reply giving us permission. However, if not then we will have to get in contact with "The Painted Lilies" and ask for permission from them.






Thankfully, later that day they replied giving us permission to use their song, and also asking us not to make it too tacky. Here is the email that we got in response to ours.


This means that we can now start to plan our production work, and ancillary texts aswell, meaning that at the moment we are on schedule and are well on our way to creating our music video.

finding a band

We spent a whole lesson searching on www.unsigned.com and wrote down all of the bands which we liked, or that we thought we would be able to do a music video to. We have concluded with three choices:

• The 99s
• PK
• The Painted Lilies

We have decided that we will discuss which band we will choose from these three when we have all of the group in school as today it was difficult because we were missing one person from the group, making it difficult to choose a group between us.