Filming blog

Friday marked to first day of filming for my group and I. To recap, my group and I are doing a music video for Hollaback by Gwen Stefani. We have a total of three locations for our music video. Our school, a grocery store and a park. My group and I figured that we could get some of the filming out of the way by staying after school on friday to film. I felt a little nervous to film after school. This is because we needed to have the track field in the back of the shots that we needed. Usually this is ok but this time in the season there are a lot of sports on the field. We have track practice, wrestling, and soccer practice all out on the same field. Nevertheless we were still able to film most of what we needed.
When we first of to the field there was only the wrestling team on the field. Since they were the only ones there my group and I asked their coach if we could film on the field. To our surprise the coach said that we could. We proceed to film but very fast so we weren't in anyone's way. Our shots that we need to film were the opening shots and a shot of all of us dancing forthe compilation that we want to make for the end of the music video. The shots might sound easy but it turns out we had to take a lot of time on just the first opening shot. For the first shot we wanted to film the main protagonist getting back at the bully  then walking away with the music playing in the background. The difficult part was trying not to laugh. Whenever anyone films with friends there are bound to be a couple of laughs. We had a lot more laughs than we wanted.
The other difficulty we came across was all of the sports that were happening around us. Since  we were on the track, the track team was practicing. Every time we were filming a part of the music video the track team would run in between us and we would have to reshot the scene. Instead of stopping we decided to time the runners so when ever they would go past us we could go back to filming. We are still amateurs at film. We can see this because we needed to film a clip of all of our group dancing for our music video. We were so rushed to go that we totally forgot to film that scene. Now we have to go back to the same spot to film that scene on Tuesday. Nevertheless we got what we mainly needed to do done. Not only that but the video that we got was really good. I'm really excited to see the end result of our project.

Story board Music Video

Hello! Today my group and I’s next step into making our music video was to create our storyboard. We utilized the storyboards in our last project and it ended up being extremely helpful. With a clear and percise storyboard to reference when we film it tell us exactly how we want our vision to be brought to life. In the first box which represents about 4 seconds of the song we will be shooting on a soccer feild and we will use a tracking shot to film the main girl (Ava) walking up to the villain (Alex) bad talking her. Then the next box is the next 4 seconds and Ava goes to slap Alex and the beat drops and the beginning of the lyrics begin. Then the next box is representing when the chorus starts which is 9 seconds long and it’s a tracking two shot. Then the next 9 seconds is the chorus again and it will be Ava still walking on the track lip syncing to the chorus. Then as you can see in the 5th box it jumps to a grocery store where we will film us dancing in the aisle for 17 seconds. The next box jumps to us in bayview park where we will continue to use a tracking shot while the next verse plays. Box 7 will be a flashback to show how the problem/ fight in the video had begun. Then the next box is back in bayview. We will continue to sing the next part of the song before it jumps back to the chorus. So far we had filmed in 3 different locations the feild, the grocery store, and the park and for our last two boxes we decided it would be cool if we shot us dancing in a combination of all locations. We will sing to the chorus again until the end finish time switching back and forth between all locations. And that is our set storyboard plan for filming our music video of Hollaback girl by Gwen Stefani. I am so excited to begin filming especially with such a detailed storyboard to help guide our vision.

Music Video Plan

Hello ! My team and I are in the beginning process of planning for our music video project which is for the song Hollaback Girl by Gwen Stefani. We were all estastic when we realized we were going to be able to create or own style video for this song. We got into class and sat together we had a little bit of a vision of what we wanted the project to look like we didn’t have it scene by scene played out. We were excited to sit down and put our ideas together and on paper to bring our video to life. We all individually brainstormed for a few minutes thinking of just where to start. We knew that the planning stage was very vital to creating a successful end product. With being very organized we knew it would make the whole filming process much easier. It for sure did with our commercial project. So then we began.
  The first thing that we did was watch the music video and pick which minute and 15 seconds we wanted to use for our video. We all agreed to use the first minute and 15 seconds which we thought was a good idea becuase the beginning sets the tone and includes the chorus twice. Then we googled the lyrics to section them off in different parts for how we wanted to film for each lyric line. So on a paper we wrote down each line and figured out how much time it took up. It ended up being a total of one minute and 13 seconds. As we went through we shared some good ideas of what we can act out for the lyrics. In the beginning we decided that we wanted to start off with a fight type scene becuase we felt as though the song was about a fight so we thought it was appropriate. During that time we also thought it would be a good idea to insert a flashback of why a fight was breaking out. And then it was time to think about our Mis en scene.
 We needed to pick our locations next. So we thought it would be a good idea to shoot the first shot on our school’s soccer feild and then the next couple of ones of on our track. Then we came up with shooting in a grocery store as well to add some diversity and also in a park and then for the last 17 seconds which is the chorus to shoot a combination of us in all of our locations. Then we were expressed the importance of health and safety, so we will be having a first aid kit with us at all times and whenever we are driving to any location all of us will be wearing a seat belt. Our lighting will be bright. We will have props such as grocery carts, a ball, backpacks, and food. Our costumes will be as close to the original video as possible to give off the same vibes and follow that convention such as straight hair, chains, hoops, crop tank tops, jeans, and beanies. Overall we are very excited to start filming becuase our planning makes it seem like it’s going to be very fun to film.
 

Intro to music video

  Hello! My group has finally finished our Mcdoanlds commercial project. Overall I think it went very successfully and we ended up with a great finished project. Now our new project that was introduced to my group and I is for a music video. I am super excited to begin this project I think it’s going to be very fun and exciting to film. We were allowed to choose whichever song we wanted as long as it was a clean version becuase it still needs to be school appropriate. My group is the same as my group from the commercial project. In the previous project using storyboarding was such a helpful tool for us while filming, it made it so that we knew exactly what to do and how to shoot the scene which greatly helped with time efficiency. We work very well together and I’m excited to see our ideas come together for this piece.
  My group and I chose the song Hollaback Girl by Gwen Stefani which was released in 2005. My whole group agrees that we love this song, it’s a song that we all grew up listening and jamming out to. It was a very popular song for the time that it came out and was very successful on the charts.  I was the one who came up with the idea to use this song. I thought it would be extremely fun to use this one and would make for a fun filming day. As soon as I mentioned the song we all had a brainstorm of ideas of different editing techniques we could use during the production of the music video. We also watched the original music video to draw ideas from for when we shoot our own.
  The conventions of this particular music video can be broken down in the abbreviation C.L.A.M.P.S. C would be for costumes. The costumes used in the Hollaback Girl music video was a lot of 2000s California street style clothes like tank tops, beanies, and low rise jeans. Also later on there were band and cheerleader outfits. L is for lighting. The lighting used was lots of bright lighting no gloomy lighting or lots of shadows. A is for actors. There was a whole lot of people and crowds used for the production of this music video, and Gwen Stefani did star in it. M is for makeup. The makeup that was used was very intense 2000s vibes like red lipstick, dark eyes, and thin eyebrows. P is for props. The props that were used were lots of Pom poms, band equipment, signs, and a car. Some of the shots that were inputted was of Stefani singing and dancing in the front of a car. S if for setting. There were multiple settings used in the Hollaback girl music video. It was shot in the street, on a school campus, and in a grocery store. The camera angles and shots that were used were lots of low angles, eye level shots, medium shots, medium close ups, and tracking shots. The sound is obviously upbeat music. The editing that was used isn’t very extravagant there aren’t any transitions one scene just cuts to the next.

Editing Day

  Hello! Today it was my group and I’s first full official day of editing. Last class period our teachers let us start up with our editing but my group had a late start. Our computers weren’t working. We didn’t have all of our footage on the right computer. Everything was lagging, it was pretty stressful. But eventually we were able to transfer all of our footage on to the lap top we were working on. We selected the clips that we knew we wanted and put them in order on our track. We knew some specific ideas of what we wanted to incorporate such as a bell sound at the beginning. I found out to inset this effect we needed to use a YouTube to MP3 converter so we went online to search for one. We had the link of the sound we wanted but unfortunately none of the converters were working so we just saved what we had so we saved it on our flash drive and knew it was ok becuase we still had time and didn’t have much left to do.
  As soon as we walked into class today we got our laptop and signed in and opened up Pinnacle Studios. There was a whole bunch of other peoples mixed up footage and it was super messy so to start fresh I just opened up a new folder for a new movie. My footage was already imported so I dragged them down again and watched it all the way through. I thought it was good but it needed some adjustments in terms of timing. Our endings of each clip ran a little long in the same pose which made the commercial go into over time. So what I did was take them each individually and trim them a bit to where it needed to be. Then I put them back together to watch it through. I have never edited on Pinnacle Studios before so it was definitely a learning experience to figure out how to use all of the applications. When I put them all in one I was relieved that it came out to 30 seconds just as our teacher wanted. Our timing was perfect. Now that that portion was done we decided to move on to effects we wanted to added and remembered about the bell we were thinking about. We looked in the provided sound effects but unfortunately couldn’t find what we needed so we decided to download it ourselves.
  We went to YouTube and searched up school bell ringing to use in the first five seconds so it didn’t look or sound awkward. Then we kept trying to find a website that would allow us to convert it to an MP3. Finally we did and were able to download it. Then I imported and it attached it to the track below the first 5 second clip. It fit perfectly and looked exactly how we wanted. We all watched it back once more and decided that we liked the way it flowed and looked. I made sure we were all happy with how it looked. Then I clicked to start the export. I exported and saved it onto our flash drive and double checked to make sure it was there. Then we were finally able to send it to our class email. My group and I were very satisfied with how ours turned it. Our costumes looked good and the  Mcdoanlds logo was present the whole time and over all when edited looked pretty professional.