Filming 25/02/12

We did some more filming today on location at Rachel's house. Here, we filmed most of the 'break up' scenes which we will edit with blue tones to reflect the sadness. We also re-filmed the bedroom scenes (the lighting was too dark last time) which introduce the female protagonist trying on dresses in front of the mirror.

We included a close up of the necklace in her hand after she's taken it off to connote that the love is over. 

Over the shoulder shot of the female protagonist trying on dresses.

Two shot of the couple having an argument.

Mid shot of male protagonist with a photograph of the couple in the foreground, connoting that he's thinking about the relationship.

Rough Cut

Film editing is part of the creative post-production process of filmmaking, involving the selection and combining of shots into sequences, and ultimately creating a finished motion picture.

Here's our first rough cut of our video. We watched all of our footage back so far and decided on the best shots to use, and then edited them together roughly, experimenting with different editing techniques such as jump-cuts, fades and montage. We will continue to refine the cut while shooting continues and get audience feedback so we know what to improve on.

Filming 15/02/12 - Cafe

Today we re-visited the cafe we found in Exeter to finish filming the 'meeting' scene, which is a crucial part of our narrative. We used various props as signs for the audience to decode and interpret:


Diary: The female protagonist is writing in her diary, drawing hearts around the date "14th February" - the preferred reading is that she is a romantic girl, who is longing for love. A negotiated reading could be that she is already in love and is perhaps waiting for her boyfriend as it's Valentines Day.

'Birdsong' Novel: The female protagonist also reads her book whilst in the cafe, connoting that she is intelligent and again, romantic, as it's a romantic novel. This foreshadows the romance that will blossom throughout the video. 

This POV shot captures a close up of the page in the novel (we purposely focused on this page because the words reflect the narrative in our video) whilst showing the male protagonist's entering in the background. We practiced this shot in our pre-lim filming which paid off because we were able to film the shot quickly and to the standard we wanted.

iPod: The male protagonist is listening to his iPod making the film relevant to a modern audience and connoting that he likes music - this also acts as an engima code because it makes the audience question what he's listening to/ what sort of music he likes.

Ancillary: Poster

We decided to take a different route with our ancillary poster, after looking at the film poster for the 'One Day'. We thought that by using a photo of the main protagonists in the video, the audience immediately understand that the music video fits in with the romance genre. 

Here's a screen shot of the 'One Day' poster alongside our chosen photo. We've edited the photo using the same blue/ sepia tones from the poster, giving it a cinematic feel. This also reflects the blue tones in our video towards the end when the couple break up, thus the poster holds hidden meaning and foreshadows the events that take place in the video.

 

We added some text, giving information such as the name of the song and artist, the release date and a four star review from 'Rolling Stone' magazine (The Beach Boys were once featured in this magazine so we thought it would be a realistic choice). After showing our audience the poster at this stage, they told us that they couldn't read the text "Wouldn't it be nice", so we added a soft glow around the edge to make it stand out more.

 

Here is our final ancillary poster. We decided to put "re-release" on it to make the audience aware that this is an old song made relevant to a modern audience. Using house style, we added the Capitol Records logo in the bottom left-hand corner, as we did on our album cover.

Ancillary: Album Cover

Below is the draft of our album cover. We followed this when creating our album cover on Photoshop, allowing us to create our product quickly and easily.

Screenshot showing us editing our first 'mock-up' album cover in Photoshop.

Our final album cover.

We took some time experimenting with different fonts for the title. After asking members of our target audience, we came to the decision to have 'Wouldn't it be nice' typed in a handwritten font, and 'The Beach Boys' typed in a more formal font to stand out. We also added a drop shadow on the motif in the middle to give it more definition, which both us and our audience really liked. Finally, we added the logo for 'Capitol Records', the record label that The Beach Boys are signed with.

More Photos

We have collected some photos of our male and female protagonists to use in the scene towards the end of the video where the girl takes the photos of them together off her mirror and sticks them in a scrapbook.These photos are personal to our actors and convey good times shared by the couple.

Birdsong

When filming on loaction in Exeter we accidentally captured a great shot of two birds flying over Hannah and Steve, which was reminiscent of the book we're using as a prop, Birdsong. The book is a romantic war novel, however it relates to our music videos narrative well as it too focuses on the beginning of love/infatuation, happiness of love, and loss of love. 

There is also a BBC adaptation of the book that we have been watching too. It has given us great inspiration for some shots and editing techniques that we may explore with our music video. Above the BBC trailer is some art work and a theatre poster. This has given us some ideas for our poster and album cover.