Equipment Testing

Today I had a go at using the equipment that is available for the filming of my music video. It was a valuable experience as it enabled me to become familiarised with the cameras, especially using the 7D for Depth-of-Field shots. This was done by placing 3 objects, at different distances apart, on a table and using the 7D to film one object whilst leaving the other two out of focus. This was very useful as I am thinking of using Depth-of-Field shots in the opening of my music video. This shot will be on the beach and I would have the actor looking out to sea whilst the waves crash against the shoreline. During this scene, the actor and the waves would be out of focus and as the music fades in, the actor and beach would become focused.


These are some examples of Depth-of-Field shots:

 In this picture, the first car is in focus, whilst the other two are not. However, by easily adjusting the camera focus, the user can change what colour car is in focus.

In this picture, Gromit is in the foreground and is in focus and the car is not. By changing the camera focus, the user can put the red car, in the background, in focus and have Gromit, in the foreground, out of focus.



Effects

In my music video, I think it would be suitable if I used colour correction to darken the footage as this would suit the style and genre of the song, which are both quite somber and sad. I would import the footage into Adobe After Effects and use colour correction to change the footage from normal colour to a darker shade.

For example, in the editing of my AS film opening, I used colour correction, in Adobe After Effects to change the colour of the footage from a bright colour, which is how it looked when I filmed it, to a dark blue colour, as this helped to show the audience that the scene was quite somber.

Instead of changing the colour to a dark blue, I could shoot the music video in monochrome, which is back and white, as this would also fit the style and genre of the song. I could either shoot the whole video in black and white or I could highlight certain colours in the footage, for example, everything could be in black and white, but the colour of the actor's guitar could be brown.

These are examples of using black and white with certain objects in colour:

Music Video Ancillary Task

This is another music video that I created/directed/starred in/edited. It is badly made and the music is not the best quality but I made this one to get used to the different shots and camera angles that are used when creating and filming a music video.

This is another music video that we created using "Tribute" by Tenacious D.

Possible Locations for Music Video

I am thinking of using the song "The Wrestler" by Bruce Springsteen for my music video as I really like the song and believe that I can make a very good music video to accompany it. The song is quite slow and I feel that it goes well with a bleak winter's day, which is good as winter is coming up. Also, I feel that the actor in the video could wear a big thick jacket as he walks along a desolate/bleak beach on a cold and windy morning. It is an acoustic song, which means that the locations must not be big urban areas as this would be unsuitable, but it should include shots of the beach and countryside as these go with the feel and style of the song.

Possible Locations

• Beach (on a winters day when the sea is really rough and crashing against the shore)
• Countryside/country lanes (maybe with damp roads running through them)
• Cliff (with camera looking out to a rough sea)
• Places with street lamps

This is a short film I made using the images that I took whilst trying to find suitable locations:

Photoshop 2

This is the finished picture. I opened an image of a paratrooper in Photoshop and then used the Quick Selection tool to highlight the areas of the paratrooper and copied and pasted it onto the green field. I then resized the copied paratrooper and positioned it in another part of the screen. I did the same thing for the two C-47 aircraft as well as the paratrooper on the ground. 

This is how the picture looked in the design stage of Photoshop. 

Photoshop 2

This is another image that I played around with in Photoshop. I started out with an image of a book and used the Quick Selection Tool to select the book and delete the background. I then pasted in a wooden fence and a picture of the sky.

Photoshop

This is a weird landscape that I created in Photoshop. I started off with a bare landscape and then found other images to add on to it. Once I had chose an image, I then used the Quick Selection Tool to select the part of the image that I wanted to use and then copied and pasted it into the landscape. I then used the scale tool to adjust the size of the image so I could place it where I wanted on the landscape.

This is the landscape that I started off with.