Filming Music Video

During this weekend I did not film anything for my music video. I didn't film because we didn't want to film this weekend. We decided that the best time to film would be over Thanksgiving Break. We chose the Friday of this week to film. The reason I chose this date was because it was the most convenient for our location. We decided to film at Luc Poakeart's House. We chose this because we needed a third person in our video and he was a viable option. We asked him if he was interested and he said he was so we decided to stick with him through this filming process. We was providing most of our props like the guitar and the piano and all we had to do was set a date that was best for him, Andrew, and myself. We all decided that Wednesday would be best, but then Luc said he would rather film on the Friday after Thanksgiving. This is a good date because all of us will be available to film then. We got the camera and the tri-pod today. Getting it today is best because we were all available and ready to film for that day. Our main plan for filming is to record over the thanksgiving break. Then when we return to school on the following Monday, that's when we will begin the editing process. This is how I plan on our filming process to go. First me and Andrew Cambron will arrive at Luc's house. Then we'll set up everything we need to have set up. Things like guitars and making sure everyone has the right costume for the video. It has to e something simple and sleek. Like a button-up shirt and a blazer for the piano man and just a button-up for the bar-goers. Once we set up the props and move around a few things to make his house look like a bar as much as we can, we then go to the positioning. We want to have all the bar-goers look like they're having a good time near a table. They'll be holding a glass of soda while pretending to sing along to the music. Then we need to have the piano man positioned not only on the piano but also facing the bar-goers. We don't expect Luc to perfectly match Billy Joel in Piano Man. Some of his keys will be off when we record him playing the piano but that's because we can't get him to learn such a song in such little time. Me and Andrew are really looking forward to recording this weekend. If everything goes to plan then this video will be great. It'll be a good mixture of keeping the original and showing something new.

Storyboarding Music Video

Our story board take place in a bar where the painoist is our friend Luc Poakeart and harmonica player Andrew Cambron. They both play the song Piano Man and the people of the bar get into the song and start singing along while drinking their drinks.

C- Costumes are going to be a button up and a tie with a blazer for the people on stage (Luc and Andrew) and something more casual for the people at the bar. Their costume isn't going to be very prominent but it can still be seen.

L- The lighting is relatively dark but with lighting on whats important. The lighting focuses on Luc and Andrew and when the bar-goers are in the scene the light focuses on them as well, so the background isn't very bright.

A- The only acting is coming from the people from the bar who have to act like their into the song and really enjoying it. Things like nodding their heads and body movement can give that feeling.

M- There isn't going to be any make-up in our video because there isn't really a need for it. We might change the peoples hair and add gel but besides that there won't be much makeup.

P- The props will be cups on the table and the piano and the harmonica. The people in our video will be in constant contact with these items. They'll be using them throughout the entire video.

S- The literal setting is going to be Luc's house in the living room; however, the setting we are trying to create is a loud bar setting where there's a lot of people and it's really upbeat and lively.

Sound- The sounds are going to include not only the song but clanking of cups and plates. There will also be a quiet murmur of the people in the bar. This sound is going to come with the sound. The actual music video already includes these background noises. All we have to do is match it up.

Editing- Editing won't be as prominent in the video as it was in the Gatorade commercial. All we are going to add are transitions and the sound of the music. The transitions are going to be fade ins and fade outs to make the transition between every scene smoother.

Angles, Movement, and Shots- There are going to be lots of all of these. The main one is going to be a close up shot catching the torso and head of the subject. Things like the bar-goers and Luc when he's sitting at the piano are things that are going to be caught by the close-up shot. Also panning the camera around the table and the piano so that the camera doesn't miss anything and makes the table and piano bigger than it is. There will also be long shots to catch the entire piano and Andrew all in the same frame to show who exactly is on the stage.

In conclusion, our video is going to be similar to the original music video, but were going to have our own twist to it. This is going to be one of my favorite projects. Im really looking forward to it.

Something With Research

Previously, we worked on our Gatorade commercial and I think it went well and I've learned a lot during the process. I've learned how to work productively and where to work when I needed certain things done like voice-recordings or actual footage. I've learned many different features on the editing software like split-screen and inserting videos in places where you want them. I know the things in that I learned in the commercial project are going to help me in this upcoming project, a music video. This music video is going to be fun and I'm really looking forward to doing it. Me and my partner Andrew Cambron are going to try to get other people on board to help us record. These people are going to be our actors and are going to help us create the video that we want.

Our song is going to be Piano Man by Billy Joel. This song falls into the pop category and rightfully so. It's really upbeat and lively and a really feel-good song. The process of choosing this song wasn't as hard as I thought it was going to be. We started off with Don't Stop Me Now by Queen but came to the conclusion that we'd rather prefer Piano Man, after going through many different music videos and seeing all the things that would be necessary for each one. Neither me or Andrew really minded the song that we chose it was just the matter of choosing it. There was no argument or serious discussion about the song we wanted. We just kept listening to song that sounded like our original one by Queens. Soon as we were scrolling past, Andrew recommended Piano Man and once we saw the music video we knew that was the song we wanted to do.

This song is full of close ups and medium shots to capture not only Billy Joel but also the piano. They used close ups to capture certain scenes in the video that are mentioned in the song. For example, Billy Joel mentioned a man in love with his Tonic and Gin and then the camera zoomed in and had a focus shot on the glass of alcohol. There aren't any establishing shots and hardly any long shots. There also isn't a lot of camera movement. They usually hold the camera still to stay focused on what on the scene. The lighting is bright but at the same time not. What I mean by that is you see the singers or actors wearing black or dark clothing and have relatively dark backgrounds but they have lots of lights and make the scene brighter. The costumes as I mentioned are usually black clothing or really plain clothing or dull clothing. In this music in particular the props aren't anything special, they usually match the song, like I mentioned earlier about the Tonic and Gin. They don't usually have much makeup,it's just the usual stuff to make their face look brighter. One thing that's really important to realize is that pop from a time period like Billy Joel is different from say newer artists like Ariana Grande. The acting also isn't as prominent as it is in other genres. They do simple things like drinking something our pretending to be talking but nothing extra-ordinary.

Actually Editing

On November 6, 2019 in Media Studies we finally began editing our Gatorade commercial. The reason we began late was two reasons. The first reason was because of the technical difficulty we were having in the school with the regular desktop computers. The second reason is because we didn't have our voice-overs recorded by then because it had slipped everyone's mind, so we also recorded our voice over on November 6, as well. We began the editing process by making sure we transferred all of our raw footage from the unusable computer to the new laptops that we got as a replacement. We used small laptops but they still worked really well and processed everything relatively quickly.
We each broke up the work as much as we could but one of the main editors was Katherine Murillas. We tried something that not many other groups tried which was making a split screen into three pieces. Katherine had a lot to do with that including actually doing it herself. I mainly helped with the transferring of footage from computer to laptop and laptop to the actual program. I first but all the footage we had on the desktop and but it back on to the SD card and SD card reader that we had available to us. Next, I plugged the SD card and SD card reader into the laptop and dumped everything onto the laptop. Then from the laptop I dumped everything into a pre-made folder labeled commercial for the project.

After I transferred everything to a folder I then opened the Pinnacle Studios 17 program on the laptop. I then pressed import and brought all the the raw footage onto the Pinnacle program. I let it render and then from there Katherine led most of the editing but I interjected every once in a while to make sure everything was going to plan. I am also going to be in charge of exporting the video once we are done. We are adding finishing touches on Friday, November 8, 2019. These finishing touches will make sure that the video appears the way we'd like it and everything runs smoothly. To export I just need to press the export button next to the import button and then render the video so that it can then be transferred onto the laptop itself. After we transfer it, we will then put it on a USB drive. We are going to put it on a USB to make it easy to transfer to the teacher's computer for a presentation to the class. This whole editing process was a group effort and we took a while trying to match up exactly what we said we were going to do in our previous blog. We set our expectations pretty high in our blog and I hope that with everything that we did it matches up to everything we described. We included our split screen sequence. In my opinion this split sequence is the most unique thing that we have compared to everyone else's commericial. In regular Gatorade commercials, its not rare to see the screen get split up into three different athletes. We wanted to be different but also stay traditional. That's why we took up the challenge of the split screen editing. Once again, it was a group effort that wouldn't have been possible with everyone's contributions. One more time, I helped with the importing, exporting, and helping direct the editing.

Editing

Today in Media studies I wasn't there. As mentiomed in my first blog I am part of the swimming team for my high school and today there was a competition at the high school pool. We werr having districts that day and was told by my coach to be there to help withthe technical things of the event. I was a time keeper. A time keeper takes the the time for every athletes lap and gives it to the event officials. I got there at 6:45 am and stayed there until 2:00 pm, which is the whole school day. My media studies class is from 9:20-10:50 and so I missed the entire class that day. After the event I found time to call Amy Suarez, on of my teammates for this project. She told me that when they got there the computers could not be edited on amd didnt work when they tried to use it. And I wasnt sure what to do. 

The next time I had Media Studies I asked our teacher Ms. Marchiollne what to do. She told me the same thing Amy did. That the co puters werent working that day and no one could edit. She then added that we had to write a blog about how we couldnt edit, which is this blog. Im looking forward to finally being able to edit in the following days. Its unfortunate that the computers werent working that day because I feel like we couldve done a lot of work and gotten ahead. Luckily, our teacher is worming to get the school to provide us with better and more reliable technology so something like this doesnt happen again.