Problems with sound

When filming we used 2 seperate sim cards at different points as we lent one out and never got it back, but I made sure we had already uploaded the content. We had learnt from our Preliminary Task and did not make the same mistake. There were problems with bits of the sound and the slow Macs did not help and the macs kept freezing. We called for professional help from Michael Casson and an I.T technician but unfortunately they could not do anything about it as the sim card was not being accepted by the macs. This therefore meant we had to film the same footage again the next today but we quickly re-filmed it as we knew what we were doing and we were fully prepared.
I watched a few videos on YouTube on how to fix sound problems when using Final Cut Pro. I looked at these so we wouldn’t have to re-film another time and so if any problems did occur, we would be able to deal with them ourselves. Here is one of the videos that helped us out:

http://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTBLdU7ZPek

Digipack

To go along with our music video and blogging, we had to complete the coursework by also making a CD cover and advert. For our digipack we had to think carefully on making it look professional and relevant. To work with our hip hop music genre me and Josh wanted to match our music video. So doing this, we  had to edit our 4 images for our digipack into black and white to keep consistency throughout the project as our video is in black and white also. For our digipack we had to make it on photoshop editing each image so it was the right size. We decided our order of images and then worked on photoshop.

Once editing all images and making them fit into our templates size, we put them onto the adobe fireworks format and fit within the digipack template. The template was a specific size and we did have trouble making the image the exact size as it had to be exactly on the lines and no bigger or smaller.

After confusion of how to correct the size on either photoshop or fireworks I then figure it out and inserted the pcitures how it was needed. I then saved it onto a pdf file for it to be printed out, before it was printed here is how the final product turned out :

When looking at my final product of my cd cover, I feel that me and Josh kept a professional look to the project whilst making it slick and original. Our pictures sets a nice tone to our video whilst it is still relevant. Overall i feel like this part of my coursework is a success. Even though we had problems throughout such as fixing the size of the file, getting the black and white shade the right colour and trying to make the colours of the text contrast whilst not make it look cheap, we overcame this to bring our digipack to a great standard and will fit well with our music video. I feel like this cd cover could sell alot if advertised well and this lead to another piece of our coursework where we have to make a advert for our music video promoting it to make sales.

Digipack research

Looking through the more successful rapppers in last 20 years we have found huge variety’s of CD covers where some are concept based like their video’s, performance based or narrative based. Here are some examples of a big range of CD covers from the genre of Hip Hop/Rap.







So as you can see there are very few boundary’s in the hip hop genre and even the easiest idea of a chain can be portrayed as a creative album cover. We both decided though that we would use a performance based idea for our album cover that relates to our music video.

Editing – jump cuts

A common effective use of editing in hip hop videos is jump cuts. Jump cuts happen throughout many videos and we planned to use our jump cuts throughout also but especially at the beginning, we got the inspiration of this from Jay-Z’s video of ‘Empire State of Mind’. The difference is our jump cuts will include video aswell as pictures whereas Jay-Z’s are still images.

We have also edited ours so our music video is black and white. Jump cuts we have in the beginnning will include, a train, a graveyard and ourselves. This jump cuts only last about a couple of seconds each at maximum, because the quicker they are, the quicker it catches the audiences attention and makes them want to see more. Using jump cuts for the chorus was our idea as a chrous can make or break a song so with lots of jump cuts keeping their attention it will attract the audience more than us miming the chorus and using jump cuts for the verses. We have also used jump cuts showing us lip syncing the song in  different scenarios too which can be difficult to edit as you have to crop both clips perfectly so the video flows smoothly.

Planning editing

When firstly collecting all our footage and storing it on the Mac, I drew a storyboard in the order of the footage i wanted it to be in from working out what we had lip synced in time with the sound track.

When looking at the verse i was lip syncing i also tried to order chronologically how i would piece together my section.

This simply just helped with the organisation and structure of the project.

what to consider when editing

When filming everything for our music video there were many things we had to discuss:

• which angles of shots to use
• which order everything needs to be placed
• text
• where text goes
• colour and font of text
• size of text
• transitions to use
• sound effects
• background music
• what to crop out
• what clips to trim
• what clips to distort
• duration of clips

Although I have now had experience editing from last years AS media course, we experimented on techniques to prepare for our real footage. The program we used is used by actual low budget film companys and the biggest hit made using this was the film “Monsters” which was made by Gareth Edwards. This meant that there lots of options available and many different effects we could put into our film, obviously we could only use a few as not all were suitable for our genre as hip hop uses certain props, locations, filming techniques etc.

filming day 3

Our 3rd day of filming was scheduled to be our last so we could focus on the editing side of the project aswell as other parts of the coursework because the video alone would not get a good grade as my blog, digipack and advert adds marks. We needed something different from the location of the house and as we could not get a car, we thought we’d rap against a graffitied wall. This relates to alot of rappers as the graffitied wall represents crime and possibly a poor upbringing because doing graffiti is a punishable offence. The video “slight work” by rappers Wale and Big sean show a strong representation of graffiti making them look cool. They also use typical conventions such as women and gold chains which you can see below.

Lewis Jackson helped with the filming of these shots and we also got footage of ourselves walking around, dancing and me waving around money as well as ourselves lip syncing.

When lip syncing I found it quite simple as I got into it well like real rappers and each different angle we took only took 1 take as we filmed my verse as T.I and Josh’s as Jay-Z. I rehearsed my verse thoroughly and even annotated the lyrics page on which bits i want to happen for editing which was basically my planning towards my editing.

It was very windy and me and Josh planned a shot where we both tried to stand on the thin wall and rap with a low angle shot pointing up at us as it looks like we have power looking down on the audience just like I did with the footage in the assmebly hall when i was on the podium.

But it was too hazardous as we could have fell so instead we sat on the wall. The filming went overall great and the lip syncing was on target but it was a little shame it was so windy as it was hard for lewis to keep the camera perfectly still, even with a tripod. When looking at how much footage we had on the camera we had just over 10 minutes but as we decided to do just a verse each and the choruses the songs duration is around 2 and a half minutes.

filming day 2

For our second day of film our main objective was to get some lip syncing done in a location that was relevant towards our genre. This means the location should be recognised for a specific category. As i have said that alot of recent hip hop is basically about rappers throwing away money, so we felt like a big house was required for good representation. We did actually contact some of our friends that could drive such as David Piper and Lewis Jackson to see if it was possible that we could use their cars in our shots but it was not great timing for them and that probably helped us as their cars would not have helped as their cars aren’t very “gangster”. As you can see below i have tried to contact David, also below is a picture of his car, a volkswagen lupo.

When actually filming we needed an assistant to help film with the camera and the tripod when necessary, for this we got melissa priddy.
We filmed by rapping our verses in front of the house doing one of my verses and 2 of joshs as we filmed my first verse on day 1 of filming. The setting was great as it was very big and to make sure we could not get sued i politely knocked on the owners door and asked if we could film for around half an hour and he was very understanding when i explained it was for educational purposes, this worked well on our behalf. Actually filming took us longer than expected as we wanted to get it just right so we did not have to return to recorrect any errors. The owner gave us extra time and we thanked him when we were finished.

After experimenting with props such as a bandanna and our caps, we got some great footage that was filmed well and i instinctly felt as if it would be simple to sync to the soundtrack when editing. The filming was fun and it did take a few takes but we filmed it professional whilst having fun because we couldnt take it too serious as most rappers look happy when they are rapping so we gave a smile and even stuck out a tongue to act rebellious like many other rappers such as meek mill below.

filming day 1

After researching and plotting the way our video would turn out, we first went to our school’s main assembly hall to film my verse which we have now decided not to use. Our footage included a stage with a podium and me then lip synicng to what looked like a crowd and the camera. This footage we filmed actually made me develop my media skills in general and not just the filming side, this was because we had problems with the room either being too dark, or so bright that the footage didn’t look effective enough. We then set up the lighting system so that the main beam light was placed in front and shining at me which gave us a better quality picture. I wanted the light to be positioned how it is in the image below but the problem was that it would increase the likelihood of my shadow hitting the scenery and being too big which doesn’t look like much thought had been going into the filming.

So we decided to have a fairly bright light which also helped make my lip syncing look more exaggerated in some of the many different angles we shot the verse in. We also took advantage of the lighting facilities we had by switching on the blue ceiling lights which looked slick and quite professional.
The pictures below shoes these blue lights and the headlights that we got to shine on me when filming.

Equipment

This is the camera I have been using to film, we have been having trouble filming our project because the footage will not save directly on the camera or the sd memory card. We have still tried to film quite a lot and are still currently in the process of uploading more footage. We have already edited and got around 30 seconds of footage so we are getting our heads down and finding time to film whilst solving the issues of the camera. The other piece of equipment I’ve used is a tripod to add stability and make it look more proffesional.