Planning Music Video

Today we planned out how we will film our music video. We will film the video at our friend's house. We will film indoors.

For safety we will have Luc's father within walking distance of us while we are filming. We will also keep ours phoned charged so that we can call 911 if we get injured. But we will be sure to exercise caution so this doesn't happen.

For props we will use a variety of instruments and other utensils. We will use Luc's keyboard and harmonica for instruments. And we will use cups if we need to have a drinking seen.

Yesterday was an A day so we could not work on our video. Today Tuesday is a B so we are able to work. Today we are planning out how we will film. We are storyboarding our video so we know how each scene will play out. Our video has to be at least one minute and each box is 6 seconds so we are using 12 boxes. Tommorow is a B so we won't be able to work on our video but on Thursday we will look at videos in our song's genre to have a better idea of what to do in our video. Then next week during our thanksgiving break which will be from the 27th to the 29th we will film our video. Then when we come back to school on monday we will edit our video. We will add a title screen and will cut out any unnecessary footage. Then on December 6th we will submit our video after adding all our final touches and rendering our video. 

To recap this process we will first plan out our video. It will be filmed at our friend's house. We will have our phones fully charged as a safety precaution. We will use cups for drinking scenes. And for instruments we will use a keyboard and harmonica. We will look at music videos of this genre to know how to format our video. We will then make a storyboard. We will film the video during thanksgiving break. We will edit our video when we get back to school. We will cut out unnecessary footage and a title screen when we edit. We will submit our video on December 6th. I look forward to filming our video. 

Editing The Music Video

In AICE Media Studies this week we worked on editing our video. As of right now we are not actually done with our editing, but we are very close to being complete. It's just me and Andrew right now and I have better knowledge of how to work the software. While I work on the video itself, Andrew interjects every now and then with his own ideas. My job was mainly doing the editing itself. First thing that I did was have Luc send me the videos from his phone to my phone. I then saved the videos into my camera roll and made sure they were kept in there. The reason we have it being sent from a phone is because, as I mentioned in our first blog, we forgot to bring a memory card to our recording session. Instead of using the camera, me, Andrew, and Luc decided to use Luc's IPhone 10 which has very good quality and sound. After I saved the takes into my phone, I then emailed them to myself. I did this so I had an easy and re-accessible way to get to the videos incase I needed them again. After emailing the footage to myself, I made the folder on our desktop and transported the footage from my email to the folder by downloading it to the computer. Then we finally began using the Pinnacle Studios software. Once I opened it, I imported all of my footage into the program, let it load, and began editing. I moved the first scene into AV Track 1 and then realized that I needed to find the mp3. file for Piano Man and move it also into Pinnacle Studios. I looked for it on Google by searching "Piano Man Free Download." I clicked on the first link that was displayed and clicked download on that page. I downloaded it right into the "Music Video" folder and worked from there. We imported the mp3 file and added it into AV Track 2 and muted the vision on the video. We then worked on the video by adding transitions. I feel like the only thing we really needed were transitions because we didn't really want anything extra in our video. We added scene by scene into the AV Track 1 and timed it well with the music. We put each scene where we felt it fit with the music. For example, in the beginning when Billy Joel is playing the introduction with the piano and harmonica, we used a scene that fit that music. The scene we used was a shot of Luc's hand playing the piano. We followed that up with a shot of Andrew blowing into the harmonica. The transition we used was cross dissolve. We put it in every scene by right clicking on the scene that was already in the AV Track 1 and clicking Add Transition. After that we clicked Transition In and chose cross dissolve, because, in my opinion it is the best transition and the cleanest.

Actually Filming Music Video

On the Friday after Thanksgiving we finally filmed our video. The whole process was really smooth and went well. We didnt experience any problems or obstacles. We found time for everything that had to be done. We first started by all meeting up at Luc's house. Once again Luc is one of or actors. He also helped provide the props for the video as well as the location that we shot the music video. There wasn't a problem with the location at all because we didnt us any of the sound. The only sound that we wanted to come through was the music so we muted the raw footage when putting it into the software. We first filmed the portion that included the musicians. This included the person playing the harmonica, Andrew Cambron and the pianist, Luc Poakeart.  Although I myself wasn't included in the video I still played a big role. I directed the scenes and told everyone where to stand and what to do. I also recorded everything. One small difficulty that we overcame was the camera. We forgot to bring an SD card for the camera so we ended up using Luc's IPhone 10 which has a famously good camera. We recorded the whole thing on the phone and then I had Luc's send the videos to me the morning after. During the recording of the musicians we zoomed in on where they were playing their instrument and some other parts. For example, on the piano we had a view of the entire keyboard and just his hands playing. For the harmonica I zoomed in on the area where Andrew's lips make contct with the harmonica. I followed examples of camera angles in the video. In the original music video they show angles of Billy Joel playing the piano. That's something that we tried to reserve from the original music video. The angles and the cinematography of their hands handling their instruments. Then we moved onto the bar-goers. They were shown at a table with a drink. During the filming nothing illegal was done. No kid drank alcohol and we all had nothing but tap water in our cups. After filming the bar-goers we all went over the footage we had. We came to the conclusion that we were happy with out result and headed out to our own homes.