Thankfully we managed to upload our video as a private link to youtube which has enabled us to show it to audiences to get some feedback without breaching the copyright terms. Although this is a rough cut so there is much more editing we need to do, it has allowed us to get a feel for the audience reactions and responses to the video.
Overall, they have been pretty positive. Everyone who saw the video understood the general gist of the narrative, reporting back their understanding that James had managed to turn his life around from homelessness. This is very reassuring as this is the main purpose of the video - to show that homelessness is a recoverable issue. They also said that it looked very professional and that the narrative was easy to follow despite being interspersed with the 'live performance'.
However, what was commonly not picked up on was the idea of the circular narrative, the fact that the story repeated itself. Although people understood that Jame's circumstances had changed due to him being given money to buy a train ticket, they didn't pick up on the idea that this happened in an alternative version of the same reality. A potential issue is the fact that several viewers picked up on the repeated shots but didn't understand what they meant, resulting in us looking like we didn't have enough footage to fill the video so had to re-use the same shots. This is definitely not the effect we wanted it to have and could make our video appear amateurish. To combat this I am going to show the video to more people asking them to take specific notice of the narrative and question them on whether they think the repeated shots were intentional or a mistake. This way we can determine our audience's interpretation of these shots instead of presuming they thought it was an accident.
Upon further questioning, the problematic shot appears to be the repetition of the bus pulling out of Leeds station. People are unsure of why this is being repeated as it isn't a shot of much significance (like the ones on the train or with the cup which are used for direct comparison). Therefore, I think we should either completely scrap the repetition of this shot and use footage of the band or add in more of the original establishing shots so we can demonstrate how we're back at the start again, rather than it appearing as a one off bus repetition which our audiences clearly don't understand.
Unfortunately, the feedback I received was very complementary of the colour change from black and white to colour. They said it reflected the improving storyline which was exactly what we wanted it to do and added another dynamic to the video. They also raised the idea of it representing new life, like springtime emerging from winter, which I thought was a really nice interpretation of the video that we hadn't actually considered. Therefore we now need to consider keeping this colour change in the video rather than it remaining in black and white. We have a little footage left to film in Leeds and we could focus this on getting some really interesting colours in the shots, possibly of James in front of lights and billboards so when the colour is introduced it is more striking and interesting rather than just being a bit bland.
I asked my audience if they thought the video matched the song and they were very complementary about this. They really picked up on the 'turn the tides' lyrics and linked these to James' life turning around. This improved their understanding of the narrative so our decision to begin the second storyline at these lyrics was definitely beneficial.
We were complemented on the 'smoothness' of our shots and the overall look of the video which we were told was professional and clean. I even asked my audiences what they thought of the differences between the footage of the band and the narrative and they didn't pick up on anything, suggesting that we don't actually need to re-shoot this section which is a big bonus for us.
We have been complemented on our editing too, they liked the way we accented beats and said it fit nicely to the pace of the song. We are really happy about this because we put a lot of effort into working out our pacing and deciding on the bars of music where we wanted to have certain events taking place. We are really glad this has come through in the overall editing of our video.
Audiences also enjoyed the jump-cutting effect repeated throughout the video to show the passing of time and create a motif through the video. They thought this made the video distinctive and gave it a point of differences to other narrative music videos, making it more memorable. This is really positive feedback and we're so happy that our audiences have picked up on the smaller details which we put into our editing process.
Overall, this rough cut has been given quite positive feedback. The majority of our decisions have been recognised and complemented, specifically our editing techniques and storyline, however, there's some pretty significant aspects we need to reconsider such as the presentation of the repeating narrative and the decision as to whether we remain in black and white or shift to colour.
Monday, 12 March 2018
Rough Cut 2
This is the 2nd rough cut of the video. We've started to put the narrative footage in and have managed to edit everything except the final scenes. However, there are still a few points we're not happy with:
1. We need to colour correct some of the most recent footage we added as it is still in colour when it should be in black and white.
2. There are a couple of things that need re-editing as I'm not happy with the pacing, specifically the scene when James walks behind the bench needs re-jump-cutting because the cuts don't go in time with the music and one of the shots is held too long.
3. The fireworks need cutting out because they don't add anything to the storyline and are just a bit random
4. We want to add a few more things to the montage because it's the most upbeat part of the song and it has the least going on in the video. We're filming the final scenes this week so we're going to find some more things we can have James doing that are more cinematic and will better complement the dramatic instrumental
1. We need to colour correct some of the most recent footage we added as it is still in colour when it should be in black and white.
2. There are a couple of things that need re-editing as I'm not happy with the pacing, specifically the scene when James walks behind the bench needs re-jump-cutting because the cuts don't go in time with the music and one of the shots is held too long.
3. The fireworks need cutting out because they don't add anything to the storyline and are just a bit random
4. We want to add a few more things to the montage because it's the most upbeat part of the song and it has the least going on in the video. We're filming the final scenes this week so we're going to find some more things we can have James doing that are more cinematic and will better complement the dramatic instrumental
The Editing Process
This has been a relatively smooth editing process because our footage was filmed over several days. This meant we never came up against a wall of footage that was overwhelming to edit.
We began with the footage me and Ed collected of the band in our very first filming session. This was probably the most difficult thing we had to edit of the whole process because we had almost 5 minutes worth of footage 5 times over from 5 different angles. This was a lot to get through and made for more layers on Final Cut than I ever got near in my project last year. We decided to start by just putting the footage into the programme and layering it up so the lead singer was the top layer, this meant it always defaulted to him which we liked because he was the one we focussed on the most. From there we switched through the lead guitarist, drummer, bassist and master shot (as well as the singer) depending on what they were doing at each time and how recently we'd last seen them e.g. for the big drum beats we focussed on the drummer and for the guitar solo we focussed on the lead guitarist. It was a matter of common sense as well as making sure we had enough cuts to fit with the fast pace of the music without it becoming too busy and overly jumpy.
We also had to make sure that our lip-syncing was always matching up - this was a big struggle because any time you wanted to change who was onscreen you had to change the length of the video rather than just dragging it around to ensure the instruments and singers were always in time with the track. When we filmed it we asked them to play alongside the iTunes song we had plugged into a speaker to ensure their timing was bang on as we were filming it. We decided to mute the sound on the footage and overlay the original track because the quality of the sound is so much better. However, that did make it a bit of a pain to edit because we had to ensure all the timing of the instruments was correct in every clip we moved.
After we'd filmed the band, Ed and I had gone to the Christmas light switch on in Leeds to film it. This footage was a nightmare to sift through as I had just left the camera running all the time so we had chunks of 15 minute footage to watch and pick the best bits out of. It took ages and, although I did achieve my aim of getting loads of footage and some really good bits by accident, I think, for future reference, only filming what you need is the way forward in efficient filmmaking.
Once we had this complete (which did take us a good few weeks) we went on to film the main body of the video at Christmas in Leeds. When it came to editing this we did pretty well; it was all filmed on one camera so the footage was in the order we filmed it in, making it easy for us to identify where certain parts would be (so we didn't have to wade through hours of footage to find them). The hardest bit of this part of the process was condensing what we had filmed into a clear storyline that fit within the beats of the song. For example, the scene where Rob kicks/puts money in James' cup was filmed several times from a range of different angles. Therefore the challenge was choosing what angles to use at what times to effectively tell the story of what's happening in the scene in as little time as possible. We did manage to do this and I'm so happy with how it looks, it makes it understandable as well as looking really nice because the shots turned out very well.
A technique we did find we liked was jump-cutting James' actions. It originally started because we have a shot of James walking in front of the first direct arena and this is a wide, open space and it took James a while to get across. Therefore Ed suggested that we jump-cut his progress across the screen just to speed up the pace of the video. However, we loved the effect this gave the section; it made it slightly more gritty and not so clean cut, reflecting the genre of the music and the content of the narrative. It also highlighted the passing of time which we really liked because we had been playing with the presentation of James' life as long and repetitive through our use of the repeated storyline in order to give the video an initial sense of hopelessness and the feel of the never-ending suffering of the character. We decided to use this throughout the video as it became a very effective technique for condensing the action but still portraying the whole story. We also like the mood it gives the video and the slightly grittier edge it provides.
This section of the video did take us a considerable amount of time to edit as it was where the majority of the footage was but it was relatively easy to put together, especially compared to the Christmas light section. What was nice was that we had all been filming bits independently of one another - at each point in the day a different person would be carrying the camera, just for ease, and, unbeknown to each other, we had all filmed random bits of the day that caught our eye when we were holding the camera. Therefore, the editing process became like opening a treasure chest full of loads of footage we hadn't expected to find e.g. there was loads of footage of James walking around from different angles that hadn't been planned but are really nice and natural. I was so happy when I saw it all and we've put loads of it into the video because the mood is just what we were going for and could never have been captured in a choreographed shot.
We then added the footage from our third day of filming. This was the section we filmed at my house of James going to his friend for help and being allowed to stay in their spare room. This was very quick to edit - it was a very small section and consequently there wasn't much footage to tame. Therefore we finished this in the space of a lesson and just interspersed these shots with the original band footage so it all tied together cohesively.
The most recent bit we've edited has been the montage. This was a challenge because, as the name suggests, there is a lot of different footage that needs to be put together, including time lapses as well as regular cuts to the band. This section takes place during a powerful instrumental where the band were really performing well on their instruments so we didn't want to lose that performance element by focussing too much on the storyline. Therefore it was a challenge to strike a good balance and get the pacing of the video right. We did manage to do this and I am really happy with the editing of this section and proud of how I managed to condense it down however, we feel the content of the montage doesn't reflect the increased energy of the song as, when the song is at it's most dramatic, our character is brushing his teeth. Therefore we are going to do some more filming at Victoria Gate in Leeds for the last section of the video but, while we're there, we're going to see if we can get some more dramatic, cinematic shots of James which we can put into this montage to make it match the mood of the song more.
The other drastic idea which raised itself today was the questioning of our colour. The video looks really nice in black and white and, although we originally thought it would gradually change into colour, it actually looks better left in black and white. Therefore we are seriously considering leaving the whole video like that and leaving the storytelling to the narrative, rather than the colouring of the video.
We began with the footage me and Ed collected of the band in our very first filming session. This was probably the most difficult thing we had to edit of the whole process because we had almost 5 minutes worth of footage 5 times over from 5 different angles. This was a lot to get through and made for more layers on Final Cut than I ever got near in my project last year. We decided to start by just putting the footage into the programme and layering it up so the lead singer was the top layer, this meant it always defaulted to him which we liked because he was the one we focussed on the most. From there we switched through the lead guitarist, drummer, bassist and master shot (as well as the singer) depending on what they were doing at each time and how recently we'd last seen them e.g. for the big drum beats we focussed on the drummer and for the guitar solo we focussed on the lead guitarist. It was a matter of common sense as well as making sure we had enough cuts to fit with the fast pace of the music without it becoming too busy and overly jumpy.
We also had to make sure that our lip-syncing was always matching up - this was a big struggle because any time you wanted to change who was onscreen you had to change the length of the video rather than just dragging it around to ensure the instruments and singers were always in time with the track. When we filmed it we asked them to play alongside the iTunes song we had plugged into a speaker to ensure their timing was bang on as we were filming it. We decided to mute the sound on the footage and overlay the original track because the quality of the sound is so much better. However, that did make it a bit of a pain to edit because we had to ensure all the timing of the instruments was correct in every clip we moved.
After we'd filmed the band, Ed and I had gone to the Christmas light switch on in Leeds to film it. This footage was a nightmare to sift through as I had just left the camera running all the time so we had chunks of 15 minute footage to watch and pick the best bits out of. It took ages and, although I did achieve my aim of getting loads of footage and some really good bits by accident, I think, for future reference, only filming what you need is the way forward in efficient filmmaking.
Once we had this complete (which did take us a good few weeks) we went on to film the main body of the video at Christmas in Leeds. When it came to editing this we did pretty well; it was all filmed on one camera so the footage was in the order we filmed it in, making it easy for us to identify where certain parts would be (so we didn't have to wade through hours of footage to find them). The hardest bit of this part of the process was condensing what we had filmed into a clear storyline that fit within the beats of the song. For example, the scene where Rob kicks/puts money in James' cup was filmed several times from a range of different angles. Therefore the challenge was choosing what angles to use at what times to effectively tell the story of what's happening in the scene in as little time as possible. We did manage to do this and I'm so happy with how it looks, it makes it understandable as well as looking really nice because the shots turned out very well.
A technique we did find we liked was jump-cutting James' actions. It originally started because we have a shot of James walking in front of the first direct arena and this is a wide, open space and it took James a while to get across. Therefore Ed suggested that we jump-cut his progress across the screen just to speed up the pace of the video. However, we loved the effect this gave the section; it made it slightly more gritty and not so clean cut, reflecting the genre of the music and the content of the narrative. It also highlighted the passing of time which we really liked because we had been playing with the presentation of James' life as long and repetitive through our use of the repeated storyline in order to give the video an initial sense of hopelessness and the feel of the never-ending suffering of the character. We decided to use this throughout the video as it became a very effective technique for condensing the action but still portraying the whole story. We also like the mood it gives the video and the slightly grittier edge it provides.
This section of the video did take us a considerable amount of time to edit as it was where the majority of the footage was but it was relatively easy to put together, especially compared to the Christmas light section. What was nice was that we had all been filming bits independently of one another - at each point in the day a different person would be carrying the camera, just for ease, and, unbeknown to each other, we had all filmed random bits of the day that caught our eye when we were holding the camera. Therefore, the editing process became like opening a treasure chest full of loads of footage we hadn't expected to find e.g. there was loads of footage of James walking around from different angles that hadn't been planned but are really nice and natural. I was so happy when I saw it all and we've put loads of it into the video because the mood is just what we were going for and could never have been captured in a choreographed shot.
We then added the footage from our third day of filming. This was the section we filmed at my house of James going to his friend for help and being allowed to stay in their spare room. This was very quick to edit - it was a very small section and consequently there wasn't much footage to tame. Therefore we finished this in the space of a lesson and just interspersed these shots with the original band footage so it all tied together cohesively.
The most recent bit we've edited has been the montage. This was a challenge because, as the name suggests, there is a lot of different footage that needs to be put together, including time lapses as well as regular cuts to the band. This section takes place during a powerful instrumental where the band were really performing well on their instruments so we didn't want to lose that performance element by focussing too much on the storyline. Therefore it was a challenge to strike a good balance and get the pacing of the video right. We did manage to do this and I am really happy with the editing of this section and proud of how I managed to condense it down however, we feel the content of the montage doesn't reflect the increased energy of the song as, when the song is at it's most dramatic, our character is brushing his teeth. Therefore we are going to do some more filming at Victoria Gate in Leeds for the last section of the video but, while we're there, we're going to see if we can get some more dramatic, cinematic shots of James which we can put into this montage to make it match the mood of the song more.
The other drastic idea which raised itself today was the questioning of our colour. The video looks really nice in black and white and, although we originally thought it would gradually change into colour, it actually looks better left in black and white. Therefore we are seriously considering leaving the whole video like that and leaving the storytelling to the narrative, rather than the colouring of the video.
Band Issues
We have encountered quite a significant issue with our chosen band concerning their copyright agreement. Unfortunately, they are not allowed to have their song on public platforms such as youtube which is a massive problem for us as this is where we upload all our work in order to get it onto blogger and show it to audiences to get feedback. They threatened legal action if we upload it so we are now going to have to find another way to share the video which won't cause a legal backlash. This is very inconvenient but we will just have to find away around it.
Animatic Storyboard
We scanned in our storyboard and edited it in FinalCut in time to the music enable us to visualise what the video would look like and the timings we had to complete the narrative.
We had some issues when we first tried to make it as the scans were dreadful quality and weren't being picked up by the scanner, therefore we had to go over all our illustrations in pen and re-scan them all. What we have now isn't ideal as the quality is still quite low in the second half of the video but it was much better than our initial attempt. It has been very helpful in giving us an idea of the editing process of our final video as we know which beats we want to cut on and how long each section of the video is going to last. It also helped us better explain our idea to our actor and allowed them to get a feel for the video as it helped bring the story alive a little more than just seeing a succession of drawings.
Overall, although it's not the best quality, it has served an important purpose in our project, helping us with initial editing, and theorising the timing of the narrative as well as providing a tone for our actor could understand so we could match the narrative to the song and intention we set out to achieve.
We had some issues when we first tried to make it as the scans were dreadful quality and weren't being picked up by the scanner, therefore we had to go over all our illustrations in pen and re-scan them all. What we have now isn't ideal as the quality is still quite low in the second half of the video but it was much better than our initial attempt. It has been very helpful in giving us an idea of the editing process of our final video as we know which beats we want to cut on and how long each section of the video is going to last. It also helped us better explain our idea to our actor and allowed them to get a feel for the video as it helped bring the story alive a little more than just seeing a succession of drawings.
Overall, although it's not the best quality, it has served an important purpose in our project, helping us with initial editing, and theorising the timing of the narrative as well as providing a tone for our actor could understand so we could match the narrative to the song and intention we set out to achieve.
Monday, 26 February 2018
Magazine Adverts
To inform our groups' creation of an advertisement for the Tempered Tides EP, we looked at existing adverts for music albums that have appeared in magazines within the industry to identify the features and points of interest and significance:
Biffy Clyro - Mountains
This advert is fairly minimalistic as the vast majority of the advert is taken up by a slightly cropped replication of the cover art image from the actual "Mountains" album. The purpose of this, whilst also being bold and eye catching, is to instil the iconography of the album and make the product and album as much as a brand as the band. The band name is displayed large and centrally, in a clearly visible white font (contrasting the blue palette of the rest of the poster). The album name is the other large piece of information displayed prominently just beneath the band name.
The release date is then the third most prominent piece of text, important in informing the audience and building anticipation for the release. The other information displayed beneath in increasing small and dark, thus subtle, text is the following:
- The formats in which the song will be available (includes CD, Picture Disc and Download)
- A link to Biffy Clyro's website to presumably further information on the product
- The record label's logo ("14th Floor")
Oasis - Roll With It
A similarly minimalist approach to the Biffy Clyro advert, the advert for this Oasis single is even more stripped down and to-the-point, seemingly a convention of indie music advertising.
The band and its iconic logo are placed very large at the top centre of the poster. It also banks upon the appeal of the band's members by including an image featuring the band within the central image. The image again is a near copy of the actual EP cover art and the palette is brash and makes use of complimentary colours.
The information below is more limited: the title appears also large as a key piece of information to communicate to audiences. The words "New Single" also appear small above the title to clarify what is being advertised. The release date is the third and final piece of information displayed. Granted this advert is from the '90's when online marketing wasn't as crucial as it is today and formats such as iTunes and Amazon Music didn't exist.
Oasis were an extremely well known band at the EP's release so the unapologetically simple approach to advertising is likely as the marketing team know Oasis are a famous and popular enough band and brand that they can reveal very little and still pique lots of interest from an audience. It connects to the band's humble brand identity and in this way is a well designed insight into the band and their music.
Ed Sheeran - +
Instead of promoting existing artists like the first two examples, this advert differs by being an advert introducing the artist Ed Sheeran to a wide audience from a position of relative anonymity. In this way it has more information to provide in order to either make him identifiable to those who have heard his songs or convince people who haven't to listen.
The poster places the artist himself as its central focus, in an image where he's coyly smiling away from the camera, a representation of Sheeran's down-to-earth everyman brand identity. The main two pieces of critical information (artist name and album name) are again placed as the two largest pieces of text on the poster. They are central and contrast the black background. As "+" isn't obviously an album title, a subtitle is added noting it is "The No.1 Album", which also references the acclaim the album has to its name.
Beneath this is a line of text reading 'Featuring the singles The A Team and Lego House', drawing attention to tracks audiences are likely to be aware of and consequently be persuaded to buy the album. There's also a small inserted picture of the album cover.
Friday, 2 February 2018
Fourth Day Filming
On Saturday the 20th of January we completed our 4th day of filming in Shipley and Ilkley. Early in the morning we caught a train to Shipley where we were going to be filming. We only needed a few shots from Shipley as Ed found a really good location for the end of the first part of the narrative. The scene takes place seconds after James has been kicked off the train for not having a ticket. He then walks onto the bridge which goes above the train. It's on this bridge that he collapses and seems to give up on his life, therefore concluding the first narrative of our video.
Once we arrived at the location we firstly began by setting the camera up at one side of the bridge. When we started filming James would walk into shot, walk along the bridge and then drop his bag on the bridge and then collapses next to it. It is a simple shot however we tried a few different places for James to collapse in. This just gives us options for whether we want a long shot or a mid-shot and we wanted to have plenty of footage to work with because the symmetry of the bridge was lovely and we wanted to make the most of it. After completing this shot we changed to camera position so we could do an extreme close up on James. We decided on this as we wanted to show the emotion his character was feeling after the realisation that he had lost everything. We want this to be a very powerful moment in our video. Again, this close up was very simple but we took a few takes just so we had a variety of emotions portrayed by James. The final shot we tried to film in Shipley was James walking up the stairs towards the bridge. We decided to do this last minute because we were worried we didn't have enough footage to fill the allocated time we gave ourselves due to the pace of the music. So we added an extra shot just to be safe. This was a tricky shot as the train line itself couldn't be in shot as we were using a different location to the one he got kicked off at. So we didn't want to risk a continuity error. Taking this into consideration took time as we had to find a good camera angle which focused on James but without showing the railway. Once we found this we also had a focusing issue as the handrail was right in the foreground of the shot. This meant we would have to adjust the focus as James walked up the stairs and doing this while he is always moving was challenging. After a few test shots we finally got a shot in which James was in focus. However, we decided to make it so he was out of focus at the start of the shot and as he walked we performed a focus pull which put him into focus once he reached the top of the stairs.
Originally the plan for this scene was to have a time lapse shot of people walking past James as they got off their trains and tried to get on with their day. However, this didn't work because the station was very quiet therefore the time lapse effect wouldn't have worked at all therefore we changed our plan and just used the normal DLSR rather than moving to the GoPro camera. This is the reason we needed to add shots as we had planned the time lapse shot to last for a whole instrumental section and one long shot wouldn't look good if we left it for that entire period of time. The pace of the song requires us to use quicker cuts in order to fit to the tone of the song.
Once we got the train back to Ilkley we had to re-film James sleeping on the bench. We tried to film this the night before however the location we chose wasn't as well lit as we hoped therefore the camera quality wasn't what we wanted. Therefore we just shot a single take in which James sat on the bench, got his sleeping bag out and then tries to go to sleep. It was very simple as we had done it before so everything was done very quickly as we could move onto the next shot.
After this shot we stayed in Ilkley to film both versions of the coffee scene. To begin with we filmed the happy version which shows James drinking a coffee on a bench. This was an easy shot as it was static and therefore only needed one take. After this Melissa's mum came into Ilkley to film the next scene as we required an added extra. In this version we see two extras happy and drinking coffee on the same bench James was on whilst James walks in the background looking sad. He then continues to walk off until he is out of shot. This shot will hopefully clearly show the audience that our narrative is the same story twice as the shots will look identical as we didn't move the camera at all in between recording the two sections.
The final thing we had to film on this day was the final montage that shows James rebuilding his life. This montage included: him shaving, him looking in the mirror, making his bed, a money jar filling up and him talking with his friend. All of these scenes were easy to film as they are all very short clips. However, we needed to film it in the correct order because once James shaved off his beard he wouldn't have the homeless look anymore so we can't film anything from the previous parts of the video. Therefore we had to make sure everything else was filmed before this moment. After this all we have to film is the final scene which shows James walking back through Leeds however he is now wearing a suit and looking much more successful. This final shot will show the full contrast between how James is at the start of the video and his final transformation at the end.
Once we arrived at the location we firstly began by setting the camera up at one side of the bridge. When we started filming James would walk into shot, walk along the bridge and then drop his bag on the bridge and then collapses next to it. It is a simple shot however we tried a few different places for James to collapse in. This just gives us options for whether we want a long shot or a mid-shot and we wanted to have plenty of footage to work with because the symmetry of the bridge was lovely and we wanted to make the most of it. After completing this shot we changed to camera position so we could do an extreme close up on James. We decided on this as we wanted to show the emotion his character was feeling after the realisation that he had lost everything. We want this to be a very powerful moment in our video. Again, this close up was very simple but we took a few takes just so we had a variety of emotions portrayed by James. The final shot we tried to film in Shipley was James walking up the stairs towards the bridge. We decided to do this last minute because we were worried we didn't have enough footage to fill the allocated time we gave ourselves due to the pace of the music. So we added an extra shot just to be safe. This was a tricky shot as the train line itself couldn't be in shot as we were using a different location to the one he got kicked off at. So we didn't want to risk a continuity error. Taking this into consideration took time as we had to find a good camera angle which focused on James but without showing the railway. Once we found this we also had a focusing issue as the handrail was right in the foreground of the shot. This meant we would have to adjust the focus as James walked up the stairs and doing this while he is always moving was challenging. After a few test shots we finally got a shot in which James was in focus. However, we decided to make it so he was out of focus at the start of the shot and as he walked we performed a focus pull which put him into focus once he reached the top of the stairs.
Originally the plan for this scene was to have a time lapse shot of people walking past James as they got off their trains and tried to get on with their day. However, this didn't work because the station was very quiet therefore the time lapse effect wouldn't have worked at all therefore we changed our plan and just used the normal DLSR rather than moving to the GoPro camera. This is the reason we needed to add shots as we had planned the time lapse shot to last for a whole instrumental section and one long shot wouldn't look good if we left it for that entire period of time. The pace of the song requires us to use quicker cuts in order to fit to the tone of the song.
Once we got the train back to Ilkley we had to re-film James sleeping on the bench. We tried to film this the night before however the location we chose wasn't as well lit as we hoped therefore the camera quality wasn't what we wanted. Therefore we just shot a single take in which James sat on the bench, got his sleeping bag out and then tries to go to sleep. It was very simple as we had done it before so everything was done very quickly as we could move onto the next shot.
After this shot we stayed in Ilkley to film both versions of the coffee scene. To begin with we filmed the happy version which shows James drinking a coffee on a bench. This was an easy shot as it was static and therefore only needed one take. After this Melissa's mum came into Ilkley to film the next scene as we required an added extra. In this version we see two extras happy and drinking coffee on the same bench James was on whilst James walks in the background looking sad. He then continues to walk off until he is out of shot. This shot will hopefully clearly show the audience that our narrative is the same story twice as the shots will look identical as we didn't move the camera at all in between recording the two sections.
The final thing we had to film on this day was the final montage that shows James rebuilding his life. This montage included: him shaving, him looking in the mirror, making his bed, a money jar filling up and him talking with his friend. All of these scenes were easy to film as they are all very short clips. However, we needed to film it in the correct order because once James shaved off his beard he wouldn't have the homeless look anymore so we can't film anything from the previous parts of the video. Therefore we had to make sure everything else was filmed before this moment. After this all we have to film is the final scene which shows James walking back through Leeds however he is now wearing a suit and looking much more successful. This final shot will show the full contrast between how James is at the start of the video and his final transformation at the end.
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