Editing so far

Okay, so we've managed to collect a decent amount of footage from our various shooting sessions over the past few weeks, and so we've got to the point of editing and the video really appears to be coming together. We still need more footage, however, we've realised, to make up the time of the song, and we're also figuring that we're probably going to have to edit the song down lengthwise in order to suit the appropriate length of a music video, which happens in real life, so we feel there's no reason why it shouldn't happen here. Plus it'll give us the oppurtunity to include the original as a 'full version' on the digipack.

We're shooting again on Tuesday, since that's been the only day in the past week we could manage it (Due to jobs and Ben, our actor, being on holiday and such), and hopefully, in fact definitely, we'll be able to totally finish the video with a worthy amount of footage.

Website

Ok, so in terms of researching for our ancillary tasks, myself and Will have decided to split off and spread the work load, with my focus on the website and his on the digipak. Having ploughed through site after site, I feel that the 'Arctic Monkeys' and 'Oasis' sites were coordinated in a way that, as a consumer, was simple to use, and replicating it should be quite managable. As opposed to sites such as the 'Coldplay' site that aimed to limit the amount of information on the main page and lead consumers to corresponding links; it seemed difficult and confusing to find the relevant information. The templates for the 'Oasis' and 'Arctic Monkeys' sites however, proved simpler to navigate through with information displayed almost like a blog, and with any relevant links clearly sign-posted.

http://www.arcticmonkeys.com/

This site seems a solid template for our site, with the band logo and links situated at the top of the page, and with news and gig information streaming down the page in columns.

On HD

We've decided to try doing our next shoot with a HD camera, mainly because, while our last footage wasn't bad, it wasn't the greatest quality either in terms of its graininess and lighting. Lighting, especially naturalistic lighting, has become an important element of our music video, and therefore we think it's worth using a better quality camera to really capture the lighting correctly, since the general aesthetics of our video remains of high importance. We'll see how this works out...

First Shoot

So we've obtained our first wave of footage that we shot at our first location in Bury last Thursday. The stills posted below are two examples of the footage taken, highlighting our desire to capture urban and natural usage of artificial lighting. Emphasising the contrast between light and dark is a prominent theme throughout the video and we're encouraged with the way in which this concept was realised in the first shoot.

In the next stage of shooting, we aim to concentrate on the narrative aspect of the video, and collect close-ups and reactions shots of our main character. We then hope to see our video really begin to take shape. With the foundations of the video in place we can then experiment in post-production with some conceptual elements we had planned to incorporate such as time-lapse and layering.

Shooting Tonight

So we've selected tonight as the first day of shooting, since this is the perfect day for everyone involved to be able to do it (Me, George and our 'cast'). Tonight won't be the most technically difficult shots - that'll come later after we've got some preliminary footage, as well as the chance to get some on-location test shots, maybe to try some more editing techniques in preparation for what we can get done in the future.