Safety is of the utmost importance whilst filming, so, I have created a risk assessment to deal with most of the potential risks.
What is the risk?
Who/ What is at risk?
What is the risk level?
What am I going to do to prevent the risk?
Dropping or damaging the camera throughout filming
The Camera
Medium
To prevent dropping the camera I will make sure that it is always screwed securely onto the tripod which will be either firmly on the ground or in my hands. When the camera is not in use, it will be placed within a protective case to stop any passive damage. However, because we are filming on relatively soft grass, this will cushion the fall should the camera drop.
Snapping or breaking the tripod during filming
The Tripod
Low
The tripod I am using is lightweight, but it is also sturdy. To prevent breaking it I will make sure that I always close it up correctly and that it is sturdy and upright when it is not in use.
Losing equipment
The equipment
Low
Despite filming in a field with relatively tall grass, it will be impossible to lose anything because the props are so big and they are the only pieces of equipment being used other than the camera and tripod. However, when filming is finished, we will make sure that all the equipment that we had at the start is collected at the end and, since the shoot is only taking place in one location, things should go very smoothly.
Damaging equipment
The equipment, mainly the drum
High
To get to the location, we will need to get the props up a bit of a hill. This might prove slightly difficult with an entire drum kit and this is where the danger is. This will be avoided by taking the instruments and the drum kit up a bit at a time.Thereby not trying to carry too much which would most certainly lead to some instrument damage.
There is some potential danger to the cast and crew, like falling over. However, the locations are both on soft grass and so any injuries will be incredibly minor and there is very little I can do to prepare for them or to stop them.
As can be seen from the animatic, most of the shots will be taken from the front, changing between long shot, mid shot, close up and extreme close up and will therefore require only varying degrees of zoom. However, due to the need for movement within the video, to "create a more dynamic feel to [the] performance" (Pete Fraser, Teaching Music Video, BFI, 2004) I will move around the areas below and stick firmly to those lines unless shots arise that are impossible to achieve in that formation.
In doing this, it encloses the performance and makes it appear more rigid and formal than the floaty, all over the place dream sequence. This makes the performance seem more serious and therefore makes the song's message come across more sternly.
During the dream sequence, there will be more interesting camera angles to "have a significant impact upon meaning" (Pete Fraser, Teaching Music Video, BFI, 2004) like a canted angle during the flower sequence:
This is because the interesting angles will further add to the dream like nature of the sequence due to their odd and seemingly impossible nature. These shot types would include the 360 degree circle in the overhead position which would be filmed by me hold the tripod out and then circling it around to capture the sky in the swoop. These shots will be the most difficult to shoot as they will require lots of takes to get them right, however, the final shots should look highly unique and interesting.
For my music video I will only need four props: The instruments.
The microphone is perhaps the most important of the props as it will be seen in the majority of the shots within the video alongside the lead singer, Stephen. Its main use is to make it fully seem like Stephen is singing the song even thought it would still be obvious without. However, a band without a microphone would look incredibly bizarre as the other band members will have their instruments.
The two guitars will probably be seen equally as much throughout the video but certainly not as much as the microphone. The drums will be seen more due to the constant audible beat and snares that are heard throughout the song.
All of the instruments of highly important as they create authenticity within the video and "emphasise the realness of the performance" (Steve Archer, How To Study Music Video, 2004)."The miming of playing instruments that remains at the heart of music videos, as if to assure us that the band really can kick it” (Steve Archer, 2004)and this is one of the key messages that I wish to get across in my video: that the band are at their best when they're performing.
The only prop I need to get will be the microphone, however, this should not be too difficult considering the number in the School and College.
With indie/alternative rock, authenticity is vastly imporant and to create this, I need to use the members of the band in the music video.
Lead Singer: Stephen Jenkins
As he is the lead singer, Stephen will feature in the majority of the shots in the video because it is his voice on the song so he must be seen singing it.
Also, Stephen is a likable person and so will look like he is sincerely trying to help the female character in the video.
Lead Guitar: Tomas Walker
Tom is a much drier and more serious person in comparison to Stephen, so, his guitar sections will seem like a 'bad cop' approach to changing the female character compared to Stephen's more 'good cop' image.
One of the key points of costume for Tom will be his beanie hat. Tom always wears it and it is part of his visual identity and so, he has to be wearing it in the video.
Bass Guitar: Stephanie Campbell
Steph is the only girl in the band and she has an incredibly bubbly personality. As such, she usually wears quite bright colours and although these will be muted within the video, the brightness of Steph's costume and personality should be plainly obvious.
Drums: Matthew Jenkins
Matt is Stephen's younger brother and band mate. One idea could be to put them in similar costumes so as to show their relation but have the colour difference reflect their personalities.
The Girl: Francesca Burchill
For the character of the girl I needed a great actress and a naturally pretty girl, Frankie fits both of those criteria and was therefore perfect for the role. I have had previous experience working with Frankie as an actress in both the AS and the A2 preliminary tasks and she was excellent in both.
The decided costume for Frankie is a white/summery dress to depict a dream-like purity to the character with the long flowing hair for those interesting and dynamic shots.
While an interesting location is not the most important aspect of the music video, it is incredibly important to get a location that fits the song. One of my key ideas was a field with relatively tall grass and I went to a number of locations to see their suitability.
One was this field of dead pea plants that was behind the Toton Power Grid. The field had a desolate but dynamic feel to it and would have been perfect had I been able to acquire permission to film there. I did phone up the council to find out who owned the land, but, they never got back to me. The field was also harvested and cleared of the tall plants on 14th/15th September and ceased being a feasible option.
While walking around Bramcote Hills Park I found this field which would have been suitable were it not for the mass of incredibly spiky plants and the sheer density of the flora. I was also unsure as to whether the location was publicly or privately owned which was another reason for my search to continue.
After some more searching, I came across this field in King George's Park, Bramcote. The field has the dynamism that I wanted from the main location, but it will also make filming a lot simpler. The grass is soft, unlike the other locations were the plants were spiky or hard and decaying, meaning there will be no risk of scratches on cast, crew or equipment. It also has a slightly romantic edge to it, although I initially wanted a more desolate area, it will make for a wonderful contrast between the muted colours and sound of the song and making a sort of link to the dream sequence. It is also a public location meaning I do not need to request permission to film there, a relief after no replies from the owner of the first field and other avenues (Nottingham University Campus, Chatsworth Arts Centre and Duchess Theatre).
For the dream sequence I needed a different type of field, one that was just green grass and easily accessed. A park nearby to College came to mind, Archer's Field, and it was perfect for the dream sequence.
It also has dandelions which can be used for the flower scenes in the video. It is also relatively quiet and should be perfect for filming as there will be few people using it. It also looks quite picturesque which will most definitely add to the dream nature of the sequence.
The track, 'Free' by Modern Winter, was selected for its highly unique sound and interesting message. While I was perfectly willing to accept whatever song the band wanted me to use, I am glad that they chose 'Free' because it has location hunting marginally simpler but it has also allowed me to use a number of interesting camera angles and has let me use a setting that will set it apart from numerous other videos.
Permission for usage of the song received 13th July 2011.
Due to the track's length, I will cut it down slightly to a more digestible 4:36 so as to keep the video going at a better pace.
The lyrics themselves are quite interesting and although the overall message is slightly ambiguous, the video will hopefully add to the ambiguity but also make the message obvious if it is thought about in conjunction with the lyrics.
"Nothing waits on you to break it through,
Sitting on the back corner making amends,
Nothing rights itself or breaks you down,
Wake up baby smell the fresh air where,
You will fend for yourself
You will fend for yourself
Yeah yeah yeah
Time will tell or it will make it stand,
Buying its way to the promised land,
Sitting all day making others frown,
Wake up baby smell the fresh air where,
You will fend for yourself
You will fend for yourself
Yeah yeah yeah
Sit around
All day long
Wait on me
I’ll set you free
Fight your way
To make the day
Free
Open doors and try to make it sound
Nothing’s coming around to the compound
Pictures showing up everywhere
Wake up baby smell the fresh air where,
You will fend for yourself
You will fend for yourself
Yeah yeah yeah
Nothing waits on you to break it through,
Sitting on the back corner are waiting men,
Nothing rights itself or breaks you down,
Wake up baby smell the fresh air where,
You will fend for yourself
You will fend for yourself
Yeah yeah yeah
Sit around
All day long
Wait on me
I’ll set you free
Fight your way
To make the day
Free
Sit around
All day long
Wait on me
I’ll set you free
Fight your way
To make the day
Free"
Modern Winter is a local band that plays mainly rock music. I approached them on the subject of appearing and performing the song for my music video and they agreed. For this, I allowed them to choose the song that they wanted a music video as I was quite happy to create a music video with whatever song I was given. In the music industry, directors do not ask artists to create a video of a particular song, they get hired by the producers to make a video of the song the producers want making. Using this ideal, the band gave me their song “Free” to use.
The video will attempt to make use of a dynamic camera, even if the speed is slower than expected so that it matches the speed of the song. Pans and tracks will be used alongside static shots like in the Foo Fighters’ ‘The Pretender’ video, even if it is at a much slower pace.
The visuals will be neither black and white nor full colour. They will instead be muted in the band’s segments, like in Air Traffic’s ‘No More Running Away'. This will make these segments seem like a dim look on reality in comparison to the bright and airy narrative scenes (Reminiscent of the first minute of this: Child of Eden Intro).
I may also utilise some intertextuality to reference the 2011 film ‘Sucker Punch’, through using a similar method of scene change between ‘reality’ and the dream world. In ‘Sucker Punch’, the main character is seen in close up, before she closes her eyes and the camera turns around her, swapping one location with the next after the turn. This would be an interesting shot and would make the video memorable even if many do not get the reference.
Still, the key of the video will be memorability. The best videos are the ones that are unique enough to be remembered and that is what I am going to attempt to do. Whether or not it is a success is a different matter, but if I can include numerous unique elements in the video then it will surely be better than if that was never a goal to begin with.
Task Outline
The Preliminary Task for the A2 coursework sounded simple enough at first: Produce a replica of the first one minute and twenty seconds of a music video. This did not sound like a particularly hard task until the music video we were to replicate was revealed. That video was Britney Spears' 'Baby One More Time' video.
The reason that this particular music video is so hard to replicate is because of its ridiculous amount of short, quick shots that appear in the first minute and a half. It also involves a complicated choreographed dance sequence which is most certainly more difficult to reproduce than the video previous years have replicated: Busted's 'What I Go To School For'.
Planning
To reproduce such a complicated video a lot of planning was required. The sequence contains sixty four shots each of which is about one to two seconds long. The first port of call was to create a storyboard of shots which was taken on by me and James Thompstone. However, after finishing the storyboard it was obvious that a screen dump storyboard would be more effective when filming.
Included in the screen dump were rough approximations of who would be in each shot and these were decided by a few of us. The screen dumps also included the length of the shot to make editing so much easier.
One of the reasons this video was selected was because it was set in a school, however, since it is an American school, when location scouting, we were required to find the only place in our college that had lockers. Annoyingly, this corridor is incredibly narrow but it was the only choice.
Finally, costume was simply school uniform, although, for the female members of the group the style was more specific as Britney has a unique look in the video.
Filming
One of the major specifications in the Preliminary Task was that everybody must film, direct and perform within the video. This was something that I tried to strictly adhere to and I made sure that I did all three tasks so that I would have a broader knowledge of music video production by the end of the task.
I filmed all of the shots seen here:
I directed all of the shots seen here:
I performed in all of the shots seen here:
Overall, I believe that the shots I filmed and directed were effective and as efficient as we could get considering the difficulties involved with the room we selected for the class room shots and the overly shy nature of some of the actors. The class room had to be moved around so that the shot was as accurate as possible and this did mean that time was wasted. Also, it took forever to get some people to film their locker section as they constantly squirmed under the camera. This was annoying, but, it was to be expected from people who are not used to performing.
These difficulties are definitely something that I will try to avoid when it comes to the creation of my final music video.
Editing
As with my AS Coursework, I edited my work on Sony Vegas Movie Studio 10 HD Platinum Production Suite as it is the program I am most comfortable with and it is not needlessly complex for simple tasks. As I was already proficient at editing and because I was not informed of the change from editing the entire one minute and twenty seconds to only a short clip of that, I edited the entire segment together myself.
This was simultaneously an easy and complicated task. The cuts were all incredibly simple straight cuts bar one flash which was not all that complicated to implement. However, the sheer amount of short shots forced me to get the original video and then split it into the different shots before then applying the shots we had filmed so that they were the correct length and in the correct place. This piece of ingenuity saved me a lot of time and made the whole editing process so much more simple. However, due to how we had filmed the video, it was not obvious which shots were the desirable ones and this required lengthy trawling to find the correct ones.
Also, it was at this stage that I realised we were missing three shots: The second shot with multiple people at their lockers, the shot of the guy removing his jacket and finally one of the close-up locker shots of Britney. With a little bit of thriftiness I was able to re-use the previous shot of multiple people at their lockers and it did not look like it was repeated and I also used a different part of the close up shot with Francesca Burchill to replace the guy removing his jacket. Finally, for the missing close up I used part of James Thompstone's close up which had not been used for the clip thereby filling in all of the empty space.
Other than that, there were no problems in the editing stage and all that remained was to mute the audio and import an audio only version of the video into my software so that I could make the video and finish this phase of production.
The Final Product
Overall, I feel that I have contributed massively to the production of this video. I was involved in the filming of 23 seconds of the video (Nearly 30% of the video), involved in the direction of 38 seconds (Nearly 50% of the video) and I performed in 7 seconds of the video (Nearly 10% of the video). I was also an integral part of the planning procedure and I also edited the entirety of this version of the video.
Evaluation
The final product of my preliminary task is not something I am particularly proud of. The location was poor but it was the only option, the acting is awful in many parts and the lack of numerous shots made the entire thing more complicated and a much lower quality than I would have liked it to be. It is not a perfect replica, but then again, it was never going to be as we students lack the ability to produce something of such a standard with limited equipment and limited time. It lacks the polish and refinement that I would want to produce, however, much like with the AS Preliminary Task, I decided to expend effort equal to the result of the project. It was merely a learning exercise and was treated as such.
As a learning exercise it was incredibly useful. I now know to avoid choreographed sequences at all costs unless the song demands it, I know that I need to get professionals (Or close to it) to perform in the video to get the polish that I want to achieve and I know that I need to choose my location very carefully so that the lighting and framing is perfect.
One of the major issues that arose in this process was the lack of shots. By missing out those shots I was required to be incredibly thrifty with the other shots to create a full flowing video, however, if I collected all of the shots that I needed then I would have a much easier time at the editing stage and this, if anything, is the major thing that I will take with me into my final project.
