Music Video Editing Blog

This week, we had two days to edit. The first day however, I forgot to bring a cable to hook my phone up to the computer. Therefore we couldn't dump our footage onto the computer because I filmed on my iPhone. We had to film on my iPhone because our group member who had the camera was on vacation. We also realized that my phone had good resolution so we thought it would be easier to just use my phone. We also thought it would be better to dump with my phone because of iCloud and a cable which I forgot at home. I even tested it at home to see if it worked. It worked perfectly fine, however i forgot the cable in my computer. There wasn’t too much editing anyway in our video though. All we had to do was add the shots together and put music over it.The second day of editing however went a lot better. I brought the wire and a teammate dumped our footage. When we dumped, we saw that the video was too long so we cut some stuff. We cut each shot individually to make it a bit shorter. We also cut an entire shot out of it. It was a shot that was panning over the ocean. It didn’t really work with the video because there was no room for it. It was at the beginning but we already had a time lapse of the ocean and it made it look over used. After that it was the right time but then we realized that it was missing a scene because our teammate was going film their own clip at home. So we trimmed some other stuff leaving room for it. Finally we were done and all we needed to do was add the music.
Unfortunately, the class was over and we didn’t have time to finish. One of my teammates volunteered to edit over the weekend. He said he could do it all by himself but we offered to come over and help. So during the weekend we will add music over the video. We decided to put the music over the lobster when it’s first introduced. The music will be quiet at first and then be the normal volume music when it gets closer. Then we were going to make the music lower when the lobster is in the pot. The music will be completely off when the pot closes over it. After that we won’t need to put anything else in our video. The editing will be over and we will have our final product.

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Music Video Filming Blog: Filming Day

At the time of writing this blog, December 2, our group has completed most of our filming. It was a rough time to figure it all out, but we eventually got it. Our group had lots of trouble figuring out when we were going to film due to our very busy and conflicting schedules and our lack of organization. The original plan, as discussed in the first filming blog, was to film at the beach on the Sunday before Thanksgiving break, and this did not work out. We tried to film again last Wednesday, the first day of break, but ultimately called it off because we didn't have our prepared props and costumes for the music video. We then tried to film on the Sunday after Thanksgiving, which was yesterday. This fell through because again we didn't have our stuff. So we decided that we had to get this filming done before class on Tuesday. We agreed to film on Monday, which is today, regardless whether or not we were prepared for it props and costume wise. So today, after school, we all met at 3:45 at Fort Lauderdale beach, lifeguard tower 1 and filmed.

Only three (including me) of our four group members were able to make it to filming. This was because one of our members was still on a trip in Rhode Island. This fourth group member also had the camera, which it might not have been the smartest idea to give him the camera, but remember our original plan was to film on Wednesday when he was still in town. We also didn't really have our props and costumes together. The toy lobster that a group member was supposed to bring actually ended up being a toy crab. The lobster costume we were supposed to get was not bought so that was not good either, because they were two crucial parts to our music video. At this point it seemed as if filming today was just gonna be pointless. Then I had an idea: we could tape the word lobster to the toy crab and the word lobster on to me (I was supposed to play the lobster). We figured this was a good improvise and could also potentially be a funny aspect of our video. On the bright side however, we had all our other props such as a beach towel and water bottle with the words "Rock Lobster" on it. 

At 4 we started filming, and since we didn't have our camera, we filmed on my iPhone 8, which I then changed its camera settings to film in 4k at 60 fps. This would have to make do, and the camera quality was actually pretty good. We had to film quick because the sunset was supposed to be at 5:28. I filmed all of the scenes on my before my appearance as a lobster. I made sure to get different types of angle and shots. These included a low angle, a POV shot, a tracking, and many more shots and angles that we learned about in our AICE Media Studies class. Halfway through the video, I would appear as a lobster, and therefore one of our other group members took on the duty of filming. Most of our scenes were filmed on the beach by the water. We also filmed at the play ground nearby as well. I felt a little bad because there were a lot of small children nearby and I thought we would be bothering them but some of them actually came up to us to talk. At the playground we filmed at the slide and my group got a take of me doing the "lobster dance" for our music video. Overall, it seemed as if this was going to be stressful, but it was actually very fun to film our video. Hopefully we edit this all together in class and make a well crafted amateur music video. 

Music Video Film Blog

On Friday in AICE Media Studies, we received our supplies to film. This included a camera, tri-pod, and SD card. The plan was to film on Sunday at the beach. We wanted to film at the beach because our video was focused around a lobster, which are found in the ocean. We were all busy on Saturday so we knew if we filmed it had to be on Sunday. We checked the weather app in class for what the day was going to look like on Sunday. According to the app, it was gonna be a great, sunny day. This is the perfect weather to film at the beach. We also had to decide what beach we would meet at. Quickly, we agreed on Fort Lauderdale beach it is the closest to all of our houses.
However we were all still unsure about whether we would be able to film or not. In my case, on Friday and Saturday I was going on a band field trip. This was an overnight field trip in Orlando. We were going to go watch the Florida Classic football game and battle of the bands between Florida A & M University and Bethune-Cookman University. This is why Sunday would have been a good day for filming for me. I was not even going to be in town on Saturday. Still, I was unsure about filming on Sunday. I still had tons of homework to do when I got back from the trip. I had to do chemistry and AICE European History homework. In fact, I even had to do one of my AICE Media Studies blogs on the bus ride to Orlando.
Ultimately, our group did not film on Sunday. As I just stated, I was out of town on Saturday and on Sunday I was too occupied with homework. I still thought my group could do a little filming without me. However, I was going to be the lobster and that was the biggest part of the music video. My video partners were also too busy to film though. One of them already had plans with their family. One also had a mountain of homework to do. The last member of my group was extremely busy playing video games at home. We also failed to communicate any real plans to go meet up at the beach. Overall, due to how busy all of us were and our lack of communication, we were unable to film over the weekend.

Music Video Storyboard Blog

A couple days ago in class, we made our storyboard for our music video. We had all previously agreed on the song (Rock Lobster by the B-52's) and had come up with a story for it we all liked. Jimmy was in charge of drawing the storyboard because he is the best artist in the group. Each box on the story board represents about 6 seconds. We ended up using two storyboard papers, or 12 of the 6 second boxes. Our music video is going to take place at the beach. Therefore, all the scenes we drew on the storyboard depict a beach setting. We will also have somebody in a lobster costume, which is why we chose the beach. The person in the lobster costume will most likely be me. This is because I am the only person actually willing to wear it.

Our story begins with a man sitting on a beach relaxing. He sees a toy lobster by his radio, and the radio is playing the song "Rock Lobster". The man moves away to another spot because he does not like the toy lobster. But when he moves, he sees an actual lobster. This lobster will be played by a group member in a costume. The man thinks he's imagining things now so he then reaches into the cooler and pulls out some water. The man splashes the water on face, but it stings! He then looks at the bottle and it says "Rock Lobster." When the audience sees what the bottle says, the song will be at a part where the lyrics are "Rock Lobster". The man then runs away while the lobster dances. Then, a group of lobsters show up and start dancing too. The man finds a chef and tells him about the lobsters. The music video ends with the lobsters being cooked by the chef.

When it comes to using techniques that we learned in our AICE Media Studies class we will attempt to use as many as possible in our video. We will try to use camera movements such as pans or tilts. We will use high angle and low angles as well as different kinds of shots. During editing we will use some visual effects on the lobsters. For sound, the only sound we will have is the song “Rock Lobster”. This is because it is a music video and therefore we wouldn’t want to distract from the song.

Planning Blog: Basics to our Music Video

In AICE Media Studies, we are beginning our music video projects. Last class we chose what song we were going to use for our video, and after some arguing, we decided on Rock Lobster by the B-52’s because we could take a comedic approach to it. Last class we also made a blog about our song choice. This class we are story-boarding and doing some basic planning and we have to complete two blogs on this that are both due on Thursday. In the last project, our planning process wasn’t very enjoyable and by the time we got to filming, we had to change most of what we originally thought we were going to do.

For location, we are planning to film at the beach for the whole video. We chose the beach as our primary location because it’s public, easily accessible, and most importantly, it is perfect for our plot, which is about a lobster, which are found in the ocean. We don’t currently plan on using any other location to film, but due to any unforeseen circumstances, we may have to shoot elsewhere if we cannot film on the beach or have a new idea for our video.

For health and safety, we have several things. While going to the filming locations, we will make sure to wear our seat belts, because we will not be able to act and film if we are dead. It is also required by law. On the beach, we will make sure we are not there too long in the sun to reduce the amount of sun we get.

Props are the element that really brings life to our video. For props we are going to need beach props. This includes a beach umbrella, towels, drinks, and sunglasses. These will all help bring out the beach scene. We will also need a plush lobster. We have all of these except for the plush lobster, which costs about $8 .

For costumes, we will need a normal beach goer outfit. This would just be a tank top, beach shorts, and sunglasses. All of the other outfits are just going to be ordinary outfits. The outfits will help bring out the theme of the video.

 We plan to film next week. We want to do it in a timely fashion, so we do not have to worry about filming at the end of our Thanksgiving break. The original plan was to film on this Sunday before the break. However, this is not likely to happen because all of us have homework to do.

Overall, we hope to stay on task and complete everything without too much problems. We wish to execute the music video efficiently and make it very enjoyable and fun to watch while still making all the marks for our class.

Intro to New Project

Now that we have finished our commercial, which we made on Wendy’s spicy chicken nuggets, it’s time to move on to the next project. Now we are going to be working on making a music video. I am still going to be working with the exact same group I worked with for the commercial. Now that we have some experience in making a short film, hopefully we can take more time to truly master this music video. In the last project we learned and had hands-on experience with filming, acting, and editing. We also learned the many intricacies of creating a short film and what type of problems you could run into while filming. For the music video, we will attempt to take a humorous approach just like we did for our commercial. Hopefully we will be able to execute this better than the commercial. I say this because for the commercial we had way too much footage and had to cut most of it out. This time around, we have 1 minute and 15 seconds as a time limit and we will plan it out so we don’t have to cut that much out.

The song we have decided to use is Rock Lobster. It is a song released in 1978 by the band the B-52’s. This song is very energetic and is an iconic song. We chose this song because my group and I like to be funny, and this song is definitely a little wacky. It took us a while to agree on a song. We all had very different ideas of what kind of music video we wanted to create. Eventually we did agree on this song, though some in the group were reluctant to approve of this song. However, there are many possibilities with this song and it is very repetitive so it wouldn’t be too complicated to make changes to it during editing or cut some of it out.

Our group chose the song Rock Lobster by B-52. We got the idea when I just listed out funny songs. We thought that this song could be funny, unique, and have a story that plays along with it. We are planning on having a beach theme which means that we are going to have to plan our mis en scene to fit this theme. There are 6 parts of mis en scene that we are going to use:

C- Costumes. Like I said before, we are going to have beach themed costumes, and maybe a lobster. However this seems very expensive so we may rethink that.

L- lighting. We are going to use natural lighting, because we do not have any of the materials to have professional lighting. It would also fit with our beach theme.

A- Actors. We plan on having most of our group doing the acting. We may also ask some friends on my swim team if they want to participate. Many of them have fun personality that we think would fit  well in our funny video. 

M- Makeup. We probably will not be using makeup for our project, unless we want to dress someone up as a lobster.

P- Props. We will use beach props like beach umbrellas, beach towels, sunglasses, hats, a rock, and a toy lobster to make our scene come to life. 

S- Setting. We will have a beach setting, and maybe another place. The setting will bring out the elements of our film.

The camera angles that we will use will be simplistic and can easily follow the story, such as medium shots, close ups, and establishing shots.

We will use mostly digetic sound, sound effects, and score. The digetic sound will fit the beach theme. We can use sound effects throughout the film to make the film pop out more. Obviously, we will use the music that plays over the other sounds.

To edit, we will be using the same editing software, Pinnacle studios.

C- Costumes. Like I said before, we are going to have beach themed costumes, and maybe a lobster. However this seems very expensive so we may rethink that.

L- lighting. We are going to use natural lighting, because we do not have any of the materials to have professional lighting. It would also fit with our beach theme.

A- Actors. We plan on having most of our group doing the acting. We may also ask some friends on my swim team if they want to participate. Many of them have fun personality that we think would fit  well in our funny video. 

M- Makeup. We probably will not be using makeup for our project, unless we want to dress someone up as a lobster.

P- Props. We will use beach props like beach umbrellas, beach towels, sunglasses, hats, a rock, and a toy lobster to make our scene come to life. 

S- Setting. We will have a beach setting, and maybe another place. The setting will bring out the elements of our film.

The camera angles that we will use will be simplistic and can easily follow the story, such as medium shots, close ups, and establishing shots.

We will use mostly digetic sound, sound effects, and score. The digetic sound will fit the beach theme. We can use sound effects throughout the film to make the film pop out more. Obviously, we will use the music that plays over the other sounds.

To edit, we will be using the same editing software, Pinnacle studios.

Editing Blog: Finishing it up

On Tuesday, November 5, our class edited our commercials again. The first time we attempted to edit, many computers were slow, crashed, or couldn't handle the software. The software that we use is pinnacle studios. Thankfully, my group's computer worked perfectly fine on the first day of editing, so we were able to piece together our commercial and cut for time. On this day however, to avoid computer problems, we received laptops with the software (pinnacle studios) already downloaded on it. However, there wan't enough laptops for everyone, so for the first half of class, one side of the class used the laptops and for the second half, the other side used the laptops. My group was on the second, so we used a laptop during the second half of class. During the first half of the class, we discussed as a group what we were going to do during editing. Eventually, we got a laptop to use. It took some time to log into it because the laptop was being very slow. Once we were logged in, we plugged the USB in and dumped our footage onto the laptop.
Once our footage was on to the laptop, we went in to pinnacle studios. We were planning on just adding some finishing touches to our commercial, but quickly ran into a problem. Our commercial was not pieced together and cut. All the work we had done editing was now wasted. However, it wasn't as bad as we thought because this time we had already done it and knew exactly what we wanted. During this time, I was in charge of piecing our commercial together, so I started to drag our clips into the bar to put it all together. This is when I noticed yet another problem. The laptop was being super slow. The audio would play back just fine, but the video itself was lagging a lot. This made extremely difficult to cut out parts. It was very crucial to cut out parts because our commercial was about 50 seconds long.
Eventually and fortunately, the computer finally started to work properly and the clips were playing normally without much problem. I could now accurately finishing cutting the commercial to the allotted run time of 30 seconds. This did not take very long because I already knew what to cut from our first day of editing. Once I finished this, my group wanted to takeover and add some finishing touches. These included transitions, music, and such. For the music, we used music from dirt bike film already on pinnacle studios. We thought it was funny to play the music when we introduced the "cool" character in our commercial. Next, we added some transitions. At this point, the other three members in my group took over and I couldn't really tell exactly what transitions they were adding. All I know is that they were adding some pretty wacky looking transitions. Overall, filming and editing our commercial was a very fun experience for me, and I think for the rest of my group as well. I am excited to work on our music video for our next film project.