Editing Journal - Ongoing

When it comes to music video, editing is one of the most crucial stages of it's creation, if not the most important overall. Editing allows the pace of the song to be captured, the genre and style to be expressed, the jump cuts finally coming together and making sense, and for the meaning being conveyed in an expressive way. Editing a music video is essential for it's style, dependent upon technique and specific features that make it work as a representation of the track it accompanies. Unlike with a film, continuity and chronological order isn't all that's necessary, whic also means that creativity and inspiration come into play a whole lot more. Before we undertook this daunting task, we reaffirmed what we wanted to do and tried to come up with a basic plan for the weeks ahead.

Editing Day One
This day was primarily about importing our first few sets of footage into Final Cut Pro so that we could see what we had to work with and take it from there. All the footage from shooting days one and two took roughly an hour to transfer, and after that we went through a number of the clips to get a sense of what they looked like on screen. This meant that we ended up getting a general idea of what needed to to be reshot and how to better it before even beginning to place anything in the timeline. Once this was done, we started to put in a few shots that matched to those we had in our storyboard and then began to build around those. We realised pretty early on that we would need a lot more footage than originally anticipated and this was one of the big advantages to separating out our shoots, since it gave us time to evaluate our work and better it before reshooting.

Editing Day Two - Six
Using the footge that we had, we began to make a plan for the shots we would need to reshoot and any new ideas we wanted to include. In doing this, it meant that we could pre-empt what we would have work with a week or so later and therefore know what not to waste time on when working with the limited footage we had. Mostly, on this day and the week or so after, we experimented with ideas that might work and found our way around the Final Cut Software again.

Researching Audience

Genre...

When thinking about genre, Amanda Roger's music has many influences. Mostly it can be said that she fits into the indie genre, primarily focusing on piano blues music, or folk music, both of which are generally listened to by late teens up to late twenties. This could suggest that her music should be aimed at these types of audiences, yet that does not specifically mean it is limited to them.

Whilst this is a component of her music, it could also be considered that it has elements of the Pop music style, particularly ballads. This means that, "This Beauty" especially, her music could be used within the mainstream charts that many people watch, therefore making it well known universally.

Her music is also very relatable, especially in the case of This Beauty, as it touches upon very important issues that early teens through to older women can identity with. This further extends her demographic to younger audiences and far older, especially if it were entered into the charts. Having a wide target audience like this means that it could be considerred more poipular than than the genre simply suggests.

Sound...

The music that Amanda writes is musically defined as a subtle mix between Jazz, Blues, Folk, Pop and Indie. She takes influences from whomever and whatever inspires her, helping her to creat a unique genre fusion that gives her a completely unique sound. This covers more than the target audience of her Genre of music, as audiences who are older may have an interest in the wider range of styles she showcases in a variety of her songs.

Appearance...
Amandas style is very distinct and natural, yet from this, is highly different to many mainstream artists. This is not a bad thing, yet it does serve to narrow her audience somewhat, with her strong views on how the world should be treated.

Researching Lighting and Colour

Lighting

Lighting may be an issue for us considering we are shooting in a forest so we will be relying on natural light for all of our shots. This is something that we will find challenging when coming to shoot, keeping the same light and colour to make it flow and look like it was all shot on the same day at the same time. Because of this, we thought that if we shot early in the morning, we would get the hues of the rising sun on our videos. Another thing that we have to worry about is the weather. This will effect us if its all cloudy because the lighting will be darker and as a whole effect will make our video seem very negative and bland. Although in our orginal ideas we wanted bright suns and bright lightings, we thought that knowing our luck we will be stuck with horrible weather and really dark lighting. We thought that this caught work in our favour because its almost like the rain is washing away all the bad stuff and almost purifying her. So either drastic rainy weather or bright sunny weather and we will be fine!

Another thing that we thought we could use if it gets too dark is to use the light box that was provided with the camera to use as extra lighting if we're filming under the heartwood tree and we need that extra little bit we can use it. It is also helpful that this light has filters available to use such as a pink; for a warm feel and yellow; for a bright sunny feel. I think that when coming to close-ups we will find it really useful to use this extra light.

When sketching out our ideas, it was very clear that we wanted sun spots somewhere in our music video to create a natural, 'sun bursting through the trees, natural beauty' look. We thought this would help echo Amandas personality and also the personality of the song. Obviously on the day if its bad weather we won't be able to get this effect, but hopefully if we leave early in the morning, we can catch that first sunrise effect.

Colour

For the colour which was already discussed in the costume research, we were hoping for a pale palette for the costume to connote purity and innocence and being at one with nature.

For the colouring of the video we wanted bright colours because the song brought to mind lots of bright colours. Along with this, because the song is quite pop and fast paced we saw lots of different colours so we decided to replicate this for the video and have a bright colour palette. This will also reflect on the mood that we have to our piece of music and the overall "nature is the centre of everything" ideas. We feel that by having this kind of colour in our music video that we can convey not just a music video, but a postive message out to people who watch it because that was the whole idea we wanted

Production Journal

Compared to our last shooting schedule, I think I can honestly say that everyone in our production group felt a little less prepared than we did last year. This wasn't for lack of planning - we had everything shotlisted and storyboarded up to date like before - but producing this music video, we felt as if we had a lot more to live up to. When making a music video, your narrative, theme and tone are already set for you. What's left to you is the interpretation of those things and their visual recreation. For that reason, we felt that we had to be far more accurate than we ever have and produce the best interpretation of This Beauty as we could.

Shooting Day One

We had planned to begin our shooting on a Sunday mostly because of logistical and timing issues with getting the group together but plenty of things halted the process somewhat. The nights have slowly been drawing in as winter approaches, which means that we now have far less time to get the shots done that we need. Eventually, we left for our location at Langley Park two hours later than intended, which really showed us how rapid we had to be with our preparation for shooting and the actual production itself. After arriving, we dressed our set, decorating the "Heartwood Tree" with red thread for narrative and performance shots and set about obtaining the first shots on our shot list. We had two cameras available to us and  so we used this to our advantage, filming a full runthrough of our Amanda performing the song from the treetops at two angles.

Once this had been done, we set about getting some more dynamic performance shots of our Amanda roaming the area around the tree, which we intend to use in the chorus sections of the song where the music is much livelier.
When we looked at these shots after packing away the equipment due to light constraints, we realised that the shots we had were quiet dark, although this may be possible to correct in post production.

Shooting Day Two

We had one major problem for this days shooting schedule - the weather. Our plan included getting to our next location, Black Park, early in the morning to allow us maximum time for shooting all the scenes we needed to get done in time. However, what we didn't anticipate or plan for was hurricane force winds overnight! We found out early in the morning of our filming day that both locations were closed until they had been deemed safe enough to enter again. This made us unsure whether or not we could actually film and in that respect, whther it was worth our time goingto a closer location to obtain shots that weren't reliant on having the parks as our centre piece. Thankfully, just as we made the decision to film what we could with what we had, we discovered that Black park only had been reopened. After losing a good four hours shooting time, we rushed down to film.

Whilst there, we managed to get a good collection of shots, starting with panoramas of the trees when the sun graced us with it's presence. With the two cameras on hand, we were also able to film our Amanda performing in the tree's whilst getting other, transitional shoots that we thought it best to have incase we needed them. We got the specific lyrical shoots for "and those greens and those blues", perfectly replicated by the green tree ops and then blue sky, as well as the opening shots, and shots containing the thread. Lighting was another key issue here, as well as some costume problems due to the cold, but this were easy to overcome on the day. Both the steady cam and the tripod were used frequently along with the cameras, but this was the first shooting day where it really hit home how much we had to film.

Shooting Day Three

This was not so much of a day, rather than a few short hours. Two members of our production group, including me, went to Langley park to film a series of nature shots needed for the end of our sequence. The sunset was truly spectacular and so we set about taking shots to focus on the specific lines of the song, representing the lyrics. "I will find a silver lining sometime" and "Blur my vision" were the simplest to achive, yet effect all the same. The sunset provided glorious lighting and colour yet at the time, we did not consider how this might imapct us later in post production, as each days filming looked very different because of factors like this. However, we were pleased with what we had, and if nothing else, loved the spontaneous shots.

Shooting Day Four

This was our biggest, most detailed day of shooting out of all our previous attempts. For this day, we planned in depth like we did for our film opening: we wrote a shot list out based on what we needed to film first and last, we planned to meet nice and early and even scheduled to the last minute. We had around 5 hours to complete all the shots we needed and so we had to make sure that we were ready to spend this length of time outdoors. This was paticularly crucial for Lorna, as our Amanda, who would be spending prolonged ammounts of time in the freezing outdoor environments in dresses that were not designed for the temperatures. As we began to shoot, we realised that this would be one of our biggest issues to overcome as it meant that Lorna could only shoot for a short period of time before having to wrap up in coats. Despite this, I did find that it made us a lot more selctive of what we were shooting in each area and made us much more aware of the time we had to spend on getting the shot right.

We began the day focusing our efforts around the heartwood tree once more as we believed that this would be the most pratical place to start. Given that the dressing of the area required a fair amount of time to set up with the red thread, we felt it best to get the shots we needed their first, in case we grew short of time or most importantly light towards the end of the shoot. The warm sunlight that we had at the begnning of the day worked well with shooting under the cover of the trees and I think that having worked with such dark lighting in the same location on our first day of shooting prepared us for working around lighting difficulties outside and knowing how to adjust each shot to make it easier to work with when editing the colour in post. We also decided to film from threee seperate angles once more, allowing us a little more variation to work with later on.



Once we had checked most of the shots from this location of our shot list, including both the ones in the tree and the areas around it, we moved on to the next area, which we nicknamed the photo tree. Here, we planned to string up magazine photographs on the tree and in the areas surrounding it, to get shots of Lorna tearing them down, representing her disregard to the fictional definition of beauty. As it was getting colder, we had to work even faster and allowed our Amanda a while to warm up as the rest of our group climbed the tree to string up the images.

Deciding to use only one camera for this area, we obtained shots from numerous angles, some with performance, others without. We had to plan carefully what we wanted to do for these, as once we had torn down the photos there was no way of getting them back up, especially with continuity in mind. For this reason, we rehersed each tearing down moment to get the one shot as near to perfect as it could be. In retrospect, I think it may have been a better idea to have cut double the amount of photos so that we could repeat the scene, as we weren't fully happy with what we ended up with, yet this was probably best in terms of the time we had left. Light was leaving us swiftly.

By this point, all the batteries on our cameras  were nearly completely drained, even though we had prepared fully before we came out. Our last few shots ended up being a race against time, conserving as much battery life as possible. We filmed on the walkway area, getting most of the shots we needed by running frantically with the two remaining cameras out of the original three, making sure the dress shots were as visually dynamic as possible. We had to call cut when the last of the cameras run out of power.

Overall, I think filming went better than we had hoped, seeing us feel a little more prepared than we had done before the shoot. However, there are many things that could've been done to improve our results and I think most of this was due to having to work in such unpredictable conditions, which tested our ability to adapt and rethink more than ever before. Hopefully, when editing we will to use all the shots we obtained on the day and won't have to reshoot a thing, if all our planning pays off.

Researching Props

Props are one of the smallest yet most important details of any production - they are what makes the environment feel realistic or the things that provide great symbolic or narrative meaning for the audience. Because of this, each of the decisions we make about our key props will effect how the audience percieves our video, given the short ammount of time we have to present our ideas.



Red String



We have decided that we would have some red string in the video that our actress would follow which would slowly lead her to what she thinks is the true beauty. We thought that we should have everything connected by the the red string would be really effective and would help our ideas and locations to link more smoothly. we thought that we could have a shot where it shows all of us in the group even if it's just a snippet of us or just our lips or something, which would work well with our red string idea to show that they are all connected and the beauty is in all of them no matter how different they are, there is beauty in everyone.


Red Heart


We had this idea that the red string would lead to a red heart echoing the Heartwood album and also the 'Heartwood tree' which is where our protagonist would end up in the end. another idea that we had was that the protagonist could be following this red string which leads to the Heartwood tree and she then finds out that the heart is attached to her but she could not see it all this time, linking to the fact she is in fact the true beauty, and she has been searching for the true meaning of beauty and she had found that is is in herself hence the heart.




Photos

We thought that having photos attached to the tree showing what the media thinks is true beauty, so bits from magazines and air-brushed models tied to a brown string because it will look quite natural. This idea was influenced by Taylor Swifts music video 'Mine' where she is in the forest with photos hanging all around her. We thought that we would have a shot of our protagonist ripping the photos off the tree to show that she is angry and doesn't want to believe that this is the true beauty that she is searching for.

Research - Artist Identity

“Forever inspired by the mysteries of the universe, and forever propelled by the laws of Quantum Mechanics, Amanda is on an endless path of creativity so you can always expect to find her up to something new and unusual.”

Amanda Rogers is an American singer/songwriter who writes and records primarily in Vermont, Virginia. Having produced 3 EP's and two full studio albums, Amanda has been recording for a considerable amount of time, yet hasn't enjoyed much wide acclaim. Despite this, those who do know her music find it to be exploratory and poetic, deep it its interpretation of the subject matters she challenges.

Roger's genre is hard to precisely define - you could go as far as saying her music is an interesting mix of pop, folk, blues and country music, with certain songs reflecting more of a certain style. For example, This Beauty, the track we're are using for our music video, is mainly pop with a few acoustic elements thrown in. However, she tends to place a strong emphasis on lyrical meaning and instrumental tones, which often make her songs feel personal and emotionally charged.
Every artist has their own image that is gradually built up over time and marketing and Amanda is no different. Her natural appearance and promotion of things such as animal rights, environmental issues and vegan beliefs all make her appear very naturalistic and stripped back. You could even go as far as saying she evokes a hippy style, with her long hair and flowing outfits.

For her album "Heartwood", from which the song This Beauty originates, she has a fairly distinct style and we looked into this through the promotional photos found on her website at the time of the albums release. All the images feature Amanda in a natural setting, showing her to be at one with nature, blending into her surroundings. In some photos, she almost looks as if she could be part of the the landscape herself. Colouring is an aspect that will play a huge role in our video as it does in nature photography and Amada's appearance in many of these images. There is also a strong sense of connection between artist and audience created through the use of direct eye contact in many photos, something we also need to be aware of. The only time when this does not feature is when the artist is looking at other aspects of the landscape around her, perhaps showing that she finds only nature to be as important as her fans. The whole effect is very personal and unique to each person that sees Amanda - the viewer takes from the image what they want to see or what is more important to them, a strong image that could be used in our video.


 Previous Video Examples

The only music video that Amanda has released is the video for the song The Best Things in Life Aren't Things to a Fugitive and because of this, we've looked at it a great deal whilst trying to develop our own ideas for this beauty. The video shows her picking up debris from the ground and how the time speeds up. She wears a long dress and it is filmed in black and white - these are two aspects that we need to take into account when we are making our music video for her music, our 'Amanda' will need to wear similar long, flowing dresses and will have a focus on colouring. Whether or not this focus will be on lack of colour or abundance of it, we have yet to decide.
Seeing this music video really helped us to get a feel for how we could create a music video. For the majority of the music video, Amanda Rogers is standing in front of a microphone, singing and recording her song, this shows very large part of her representation is in front of a microphone, showing that it is just her performing.

Story Board and Shot List - This Beauty

This Beauty - Lyric Analysis

 



With a song such as This Beauty, the lyrics are crucial to it's meaning and how it should be presented visually. We decided very early on that our understanding of the lyrics would act as our main guide to creating the video and more impostantly to our storyboard. We wanted to have key moments and lyrics pointed out visually in our video, so that the link between music, visuals and the lyrics is strong and quite easy to identify for the audience.

The meaning behind This Beauty is truly a critque of the media and how they define "true beauty", filled with editied images and hiding behind make up. It talks of returning back to natural things and understanding that beauty comes from the person it belongs to, not the outward appearance that everyone else see's. Amanda sings as someone who is regularly crticised for her appearance, something that is especially true for her place in the oublic eye that comes from her profession.

Some of the lines we thought would work well in having a visual guide were those they had strong imagery attatched to the lyrics. "And those greens and those blues / Seem too perfect to be true" is a great example of this. We had the image of a slow panning shot depicting both the green of the treetops against the blue sky for this line, as it represented the idea so well and kept to our theme of nature perfectly whilst also giving the video more richness in colour. Hopefully this will be possible to capture on the day of our shoot.

Another line that we thought would work well was the line "An imperfected me will not be seen". For this, we pictured a static shot that showed our Amanda seamlessly disappearing into her location, either behind the trees or travelling out of shot. We think this could be could at representing the shameful nature of being seen as imperfect and Amanda at first conforming to this. This way, we may also be able to show some character progression throughout the video through other shots.

Analysing the lyrics has provided a good starting point for our ideas and for understanding the deeper message of the song and therefore, its good that we have managed to do this before stoaryboarding. We can now move on to developing some of our ideas.

Location Scouting Part Two

Langley Park
The second of the two main locations we went to visit, Langley Park is only short walk away from our first location, Black Park, making it highly convinent to access. Although it is half the size of the other nature park, this location is steeped in history and filled with a greater variety of forest areas and fields amongst beautifully detailed gardens. A noticable difference we spotted was the variety of trees and layout in this park comaperd to it's neighbour. Whilst most of Black Park was filled with tall pine trees and similar forests, Langley Park contained many of the more traditional areas we imagined in the beginning. For this reason, we believe that using specific areas from both would benfit us the most.
When compared to our lasts projects location of the London Underground, this location should be relatively easy to film in once we've gained the proper permissions, mostly due to the lack of visitors in the area and having time to make our own descisions that will not be dictated by transport and other people.
After sending off our main application to film, we'll need to decide whether these two natural locations will be the only ones used. We had another location in mind for an idea that I, personally have grown rather fond of which would involve a studio or room location. Inspired by an image from Anada's Heartwood era, it would involve newspaper and magazines cover the walls and a shift of colour from those magazines to the main performer in the video. We have yet to decide whether this will be possible to pull off.



We were fortunate enough to stumble upon this beautiful tree which we thought evoked the theme of "Heartwood" perfectly. This will be one of the main locations for our music video.  Heartwood is the centre of the tree which is not living, yet without the support of the heartwood the tree, would cease to exist. As the tree ages the diameter of the heartwood increases. There is a diagram of this on the interior of the album case, explaining that "there is growth in everything, even in death".

 

From a certain angle the interior of the tree resembles the shape of a heart- reflecting the theme of heartwood. We considered having an extra team member taking photos to use as part of our album artwork and magazine advert as the tree will probably be a central location to the music video. As the song is representing the main theme of the album, it would make sense to incorporate the locations and shots used in the video into the advert.



We considered using this structure we found in Langley Park, if it won't be destroyed by our production day. It's style was reminiscent of many of the promotional shots we've seen featuring Amanda Rogers.

 

 

Research - Initial Location Ideas

After researching our chosen songs and listening to them multiple times, we decided to begin brainstorming a few ideas for each. This meant visualisng some basi shot ideas, along with colouring, narrative and of course, locations. As was demonstrated in our AS project, our group cares quite strongly about where our filming is set, believing that wherever we choose will greaty impac the style of the song and how it is viewed by an audience.

Both songs we felt have strong contations towards nature, with themes of new beginnings and natural progressions showing through in the lyrics of each song and also the musicality. This lead us to think of very naturalisitc places to shoot, in high contrast to the busy urban location of last year.
The reason we are thinking about this so soon - without a shot list or even and basic narative or idea - is a matter of practicality. We need to be able to keep to time and money constraits when producing our music video and the with the time frame being very different from what we knew before, we want to be prepared for this. Nearby locations give us the best opportunities for filming at short notice (crucial in the very temperamental weather of the autumn months) and for acessability.

Listed here are a few locations that I myself have been to observe in the context of our music video and a few areas within them that we think could be beneficial to us in the coming months.

• Black Park - Tall trees and dark forests make this very awe inspiring and myseterious, perfect for setting the context of nature within the music video
• Burnham Beeches - Tried and tested, this area will provide us with a picturesque yet natural setting.
• Langley Park - Many old and interesting features and an expansive setting that would give us a lot of perspective.
• Braywick Park - Not as grand as the other ideas, yet it's convinience makes it a good option for quick shots.

Shooting Schedule

After deciding the locations for where our music video was going to be shot, we had to arrange with both Landley Park and Black Park the days that we could film and also (of course) get our filming permit, which thankfully was free. This was particularly crucial for Black Park as there was resticted access to various areas at the time of our shooting, due to the filming of a large scale new film. However, we found out before going that the specific areas we wanted to film in were not greatly effected.

We also had to consider the length of time we could realistically have for filming, which meant we had to research the parks opening and closing times, which were as follows:

Langley Park: 8:15am-4:30pm
Black Park: 8:00am-5:00pm


Shooting Schedule


Location | Day | Date | Time


Langley Park | Sunday | 27th October 2013 | 1:00pm-Closing

Black Park | Monday | 28th October 2013 | 9:30am-3:00pm

Langley Park | Saturday | 2nd November 2013 | 10:am-2:00pm


Despite this detailed schedule and our shot list and preparation, the thrid date was something we hadn't planned for. However, we are certainly that we decided to go back and reshoot, as we now have all the footage we need to complete the video.

Researching Costume

As it can be seen from the image above, we have compiled our ideas on costumes to show what kind of research we've been doing into the types of costume that would merge well with our crucial locations and also reflect Amanda Rogers' style and representation as an artist.

Overall, we've selcted colours that are very neutral, which represents Amanda Rogers' link to nature and the environment in which we are shooting in. The white colours of the dress also represent innocence and could connote to the light in nature, being a blank page that is ready to be written on.

The dresses that she wears are commonly strapless and flowing, something that is seen quite often in music videos of a similar genre. There is the small problem with this however, of the weather being increasingly cold and stormy as the month progresses. Despite this, the style is too iconic to not include and so we will have to work around those small problems.

We also decided to pair the dresses with boots that are well worn and natural in the surroundings we'll be shooting in This keeps the outfits a little more grounded, not too whimsical and could also reflect the setting she will be in - the rough, plain wood of the trees on the forest floor, travelling upwards to something more detailed, elaborate and pretty.

We have one dress which contrasts the others,the blue patchwork effect maxi dress which we thought  would be a typical representation of Rogers', given that we have seen her wearing multiple dresses very similar to the one we have. It could als be used to reflect the skies, or the sea - representing the elements.



Make up and hair was also something we had to take into consideration. We decided to keep the make up very light and natural, just enough to highlight in front of the camera. We went with two different hairstyles, one featuring plaits decorated with miniature roses and another half up, half down with a folwer headband. Both were very simple yet effective, with a focus on nature coming from the additions of the flowers.

Location Scouting Part One

After researching our artists identity and style, we began to think of places that could be used in conjuction with her image in our music video. We started to discuss what we were looking for in the seperate locations needed, which we belived had to be all natural to fit with Amanda Rogers image - naturalistic, free and concerned about more than just superficial appearances.

Black Park
Situated adjecent to Pinewood Studios, Black Park Country Park has been used for numerous film and television productions throughout the years, including James Bond, Superman and Harry Potter. The park is filled with over 535 acres of woodland and heathland, with a large lake and numerous tall tree forests that lend it a very cinematic feel, with lots of scope for innovative ideas and stylistic shooting.

We scoured most of the large park looking for things that could be useful in our video and most especially inspired us when developing ideas. Our track, This Beauty, is very much about nature and staying natural to yourself, protecting the real and the right. We have always felt as group that we would need to set the music video in an open, awe inspiring yet naturalistic environment (at least for part of the video). In Black Park we were able to find places that sparked that feeling and from this, we now have a firmer idea of the specific scenes we want to be included in the video.

We envisioned shots of our performer interweaving through clusters of trees similar to this photo

This was one of the locations in Black Park that we've definitely decided on using. We loved the contrast of the green tops of the trees with the almost misty looking twigs and truncks. These colours would combine beautifully with the bright colours we intend to dress our performer in. It also evokes one of the key messages of the album from which our track is from- that there is beauty in everything, even in death.

We thought long shots would work beautifully in this location as from a distance the greyish/brown colour of the twigs evokes a misty-like atmosphere, which not only is aesthetically appealing but will contrast well with our performer.

We also considered intercutting different colse ups of the surrounding nature in with the perofrming shots.

Finally another idea that we came up with was various shots of our "Amanda" interweaving through some sort of branch structure.