Storyboard Blog

11/22 For the past two class periods we have been going over and discussing our storyboard and planning. We have thought about most of the props we will include like money, make-up and food. We know where most of our settings are like the beach, our teammates home, and Las Olas. We have talked about the costumes and how we will be wearing it. Our group is still figuring out the types of lighting we will include in our video but we know for sure there will be LED and natural sunlight. We want to include natural makeup but a little extra for the end of the film when we are out on the town. Another thing that is important to our music video is camera angles, movements, and shots. For example for our first scene we will be in our group mates parent’s car and our mate’s mother will record a pan of all of us in the car including the background of the beach. We want to include high and low angles of all of us to show where we are and what we’re doing. We also want wide angles of all of us on the beach and couch hanging out and having fun. We want our video to mostly contain hand held instead of using a tripod because we want it to seem like normal teens are recording a young and fun video. For our editing we want to include jump cuts, fade in and out, dissolving to create a nice vibe throughout the video since our song is a fun summer vibe. Our sound is just the song we chose for our music video which is Slide by Frank Ocean and Calvin Harris.

Planning Blog

For our music video, my teammates and I will have three listed locations for filming. Our group mate’s house will be used to film calmer scenes of our video. The second location, Fort Lauderdale beach, will be used to film exciting, lively scenes. These will include our group dancing and even going inside of the water. Finally, we will be filming inside of our group mate’s car. In the car we will film lively scenes, as well. The scenes will feature our group dancing and listening to music, particularly this song. We will be filmed inside the car, however, there may be some moments filmed of the outside of the car.

Health and safety will always be number one on our priorities. We will be taking precautions to ensure our health and safety. This includes making sure we are all strong swimmers for the beach. Each of us have taken swimming lessons in the past and intend to use what we learned. We will also check the weather before arriving at the beach to make sure the weather is appropriate. If the weather is threatening, we will choose a different place to film. To protect us from strangers, rapists, kidnappers, etc. we will be carrying pepper spray with us. Our group mate’s legal guardian will also be joining us. 

Because we will be at the beach, we will be wearing beachwear such as sweatpants and sunglasses. We will be wearing sweatpants because, although we do live in Florida, it has been cold lately, and we are all anemic. Our props will include pretend cash, which we will be throwing around to demonstrate our wealth, despite the fact that we are not wealthy. We will lay blankets down on the beach for the video. We will also we be using our cell phones. In addition, in the house, we will use colored lights to create a “club” effect. 

Intro to Music Video

In our last project, we used Pinnacle Studios. Pinnacle Studios was the software we used for our commercial. We were not very compatible with this program as it would lag, would delete our saved editing, and overall was not a good program to work with, especially on our first project. This project we have decided to use iMovie as opposed to Pinnacle Studios. This is because we all have much more experience with iMovie and overall iMovie works much smoother. We decided to use this software after another group showed us that they used it for their commercial. We will also be using our phone camera as opposed to a school camera that is also available to us. The video cameras that were issued to us in the last project did not have good quality, and were very difficult to dump onto our computers. We will also be filming off-campus for this project, but this was a decision our teachers made.
  For our music video, we are doing the song Slide by Frank Ocean and Calvin Harris. It is an upbeat and happy song. We are planning to make the music video very outdoorsy and fun. We chose this song because we like that it is a happy song with a good beat. We also chose it because we believe it will be a good song to make a music video for. The genre of this song is Pop.
   For costumes, we are going to be wearing basic, every-day clothing. We want the music video to look modern, so we are going to be wearing normal, modern clothing. For lighting, we are going to be using natural lighting. We are also going to be using color changing LED lights to add a good vibe to the music video. For actors, it is going to be me and my other two group mates. We may include a few friends from outside our group to use as background characters. We will be wearing natural makeup. The natural makeup look adds to the laid back feel of the song. For props, we will be using a car, beach supplies, and blankets. We will also use phones as props and a skateboard. For setting, we will be going to use the beach, a bedroom, and a car. We may also use other locations that we find while editing. We will be doing pan camera movements, medium close up, and tracking shots. There will be no sound because the music will be the sound for the video. We will use jump cuts to show the transition between different settings and scenes.

Editing Blog (the Sequel)

After not being able to edit before due to technical difficulties, we finally were able to begin editing. Because there were only 14 computers to use, we had to wait about fifteen minutes. However, this was nothing compared to other groups who were not even able to edit that day. While we were waiting, we drew up a game plan. We chose which scenes we needed to edit and how to edit them. Our commercial was generally simple, as Nike commercials usually are. This means that we had to edit only a few scenes to make sure our timings lined up. This was also the result of our amazingly planned filming. The only other things we had to edit in were music and transitions. Also the result of fantastic filming, was our need to only edit in our transitions slightly. In light of the fact that we did not know how to edit it very well, we also filmed some of our transitions.
Once we were handed a computer, I logged into my school account. As we waited for the computer to start up, some of us started browsing songs to edit into our video. However, once the screen lit up, we immediately opened Pinnacle Studios and retrieved our footage from one of our group member's Google Drive account. After we dragged our footage onto the desktop, we noticed the folder would not budge. We called one of our teachers over to give us advice. She made it clear that the folder we were attempting to move into Pinnacle Studios was a "zip folder." None of us had heard the term "zip folder" before. She pointed out that a zip folder had a digital zipper in the front of it. She told us that that was how to recognize one. She then explained to us that we needed to covert it into a normal folder if we wanted the files to move.
We had no idea how to convert the folder, but knew our teacher was busy. After she had left to help another group, one of our teammates looked up a Youtube video on how to convert the folder. This was very helpful. We learned to convert our folder in a bit less than five minutes. We then got all the footage into the editing program and finally began. It took about ten minutes to finish editing the timing. At this time, we were to move onto editing the transitions. We only needed one transition for our whole project: the notorious Fade In. As we browsed the transitions, we became more and more frustrated over time. There must have been hundreds of transitions to browse through, though we only needed one. Finally, our group member exclaimed that she had realized that we could search through the transitions using a toolbar, and our transitions were done in less than three minutes. Finally, the music was to be put in. This took a very long time as our group was stuck between a few different songs, but finally settled on Human by Rags-n-Bone Man.