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.