Production Diary

Production Diary

Date	Activity
7/9/13	Study into Laura Mulveys male gaze theory, began research into videos that feature the male gaze theory including She’s So Lovely by Scouting for Girls, from this we learned a basic video theory and some conventions that could apply to our video, however given the genre of music me and my work partner listen to the theory tends to appear much less
10/9/13	Completed Mulvey theory work and began research into music video conventions especially within the rock and metal genre, this gives us a better idea of the direction we want to go in with our music video and we know how to make a rock/metal video
13-14/9/13	Coming up with music video ideas inspired by reoccurring themes and ideas within rock and metal videos from this we narrowed our ideas and began initial song selection picking about 10 songs we both know and enjoy, we quickly narrowed these to 5
19/9/13	Finalization of conventions work, this gave me a much more detailed insight into what was needed within our video and was a big help in planning the sections of our video that we already had ideas for
22/9/13	We’ve planned our ‘cast’ for our band out of our friends who’re in bands and play instruments, we have all the components we could need to film a video
25/9/13	Final song choice was made today, ‘You Be Tails I’ll Be Sonic’ by A Day To Remember we decided upon this for the changing levels of tempo in the song giving us different chances to show what we can do in the video
29/9/13	We finalised our band line up (this has since been changed due to unreliable people who have since let us down) and began work on Goodwin’s theory
4/10/13	Today we annotated our lyric sheets and decided on what sections would work better as performance and what as narrative
8/10/13	Today I worked on my ‘What Music Means To Me’ Presentation, after that I moved on to music video analysis within the genre of music that our song will be
16/10/13	Today I uploaded my preliminary task and the relative evaluation to go with the preliminary task. I also recorded and uploaded my lip-syncing practice for both You Be Tails I’ll Be Sonic and Gandhi Mate, Gandhi. From this I could analyse the areas that would be more difficult to sync and plan around the problem sections with instrument shots.
18/10/13	Work was started on our treatment narrowing down our target audience further analyzing similar bands, this also helped to arrange casting for the band as we had a better idea for the style.
22/10/13	Today I finished the treatment sheet which consisted of our influences, artist’s style and form location, target audience, technology and logistics. From doing this we had a plan to work to regarding what we wanted to do and how we would achieve what we wanted.
1/11/13	Today we discussed shooting ideas and what would work and what wouldn't with our style and song and the way we wanted the video to look. Whilst doing this we came up with the idea of having our main character in the narrative confronting himself, we would do this by filming two clips and over lapping them. We also eliminated some of our earlier ideas due to the difficulty of the locations we would need as after lengthy planning we decided we couldn’t control the environment around the shot and the general public could ruin our filming if we didn’t have a closed and controlled set
11/11/13	I completed my star profile based on Linkin Park a band whos origins were similar to our own band this helped educate me in the styles of the bands that I would be basing my project on, this also helped in the creation of the website and digipack as it gave me some initial ideas of style an characteristics prior to in-depth research
15/11/13	We collected our first bases of feedback based on our initial pitch with our preliminary ideas, this gave us an indication as to what people thought of our ideas and how they went with the song and let us know we was heading in the right direction
16/11/13	This was our first day of filming, over the day we filmed most of our narrative sections however the day wasn’t a complete success we didn’t finish everything we had planned and some of what we filmed wasn’t usable, the sections that we wanted to overlap ended up being done under different lighting and we will have to re-film them later.   Also before our main shoot I filmed a practice run of our overlap section and I then edited them together before our crew arrived from this I had a chance to decide if this technique could be made to work, it was successful
21/11/13	We began storyboarding our performance sections now that we had our narrative in place, this meant that we could pick and choose from a full narrative story board and a full performance story board, it will give us much greater options later on.
23/11/13	We filled out risk assessment forms for the days filming that would be the 25th, this allowed us to see what filming ideas would be too risky and we eliminated the smashing of the guitar due to the risk of the shot and it being a public area
25/11/13	Today was our second day of filming, we learnt from our mistakes from last week’s filming by starting earlier and making sure we had all of the outside shots filmed, we also filmed more of each shot to ensure that we could find two decent shots that we could slice together in editing to eliminate any lighting changes.
3/12/13	Today I compared my blog to previous year 13 blogs to see what I could add to mine and to find out what is better about mine, from this I decided to change my labels on my blog to make it easier to find my work. I also found out what I could add to my blog to help with my understanding of how to prepare, film and create a music video and the band in our music video. I also decided to do some work on intertextual videos as it seemed to be a recurring theme in the rock video world, from this I also learnt what our video could do to hat tip or mimic real videos
5/12/13	I finished my intertextual work and received peer feedback on several posts, from this I managed to massively improve areas of my work considering there was certain areas I’d forgot to include in parts of my work such as my treatment that was bare in certain areas.
10/12/13	I added some evaluation to my own work regarding what I had learnt after doing each task. This helped me see where I could improve or add to my work but did mean that I had to completely redo some pieces of my coursework.
19/12/13	While Toby looked into the conventions of a rock website I began construction on our website, we later regrouped to make changes to the site
20/12/13	I edited together all the narrative filming which was now complete ready for our next section of filming to be placed around the narrative, from this I could also see areas that would have to be performance as the narrative filming for them was weak and areas that would have to be narrative as it was a vital section of narrative.
29/12/13	While Toby contacted the venues we wanted to use for our performance filming I carried on with website construction filling in the tour page with a live functioning map, creating merch for the merch page, putting the HBH logo on various merchandise and filling out new articles on the first page
7/1/14	We decided to divide our time and while Toby worked on research into the digipack and conventions of digipacks I continued creating the website while constantly comparing it to other rock and metal websites for good referencing, I also continued editing as a section of our narrative wasn’t flowing as well and I needed to fix that.
13/1/14	Completed work on the website all but photographs that we would take on our filming day
20/1/14	I did some more in depth research into our target audience and how we can use our target audience to promote the band. This helped to expand how we could promote our band but would be a difficult process.
4/2/14	Today we filmed all of our performance pieces at Brentwood’s Hermit
12-14/2/14	Three days of intensive editing, first draft uploaded on the 13th and feedback received, changes made and video coming together nicely
1/3/14	We completed and uploaded the website for our band. form this i learnt how to create a website and how to present a website to be able to show a specific theme and how to make it fit with the genre of music that the band is in.
4/3/14	We went and got audience feedback for our first draft this helped us with knowing what aspects of our video were good and which parts need improvement regarding the pace and the length of shots.  Second draft of video posted to youtube and comments also made on this. Back to editing reflecting upon the comments made throughout the feedback and adjusting for what people liked and didn’t like.
5/3/14	Finalization of website after receiving feedback upon it
13/3/14	Editing the final parts of the video down bases on peer and teacher feedback especially in the blended screen section working to remove the colour divide
18/3/14	Final video uploaded along with last piece of work
20/3/14	Finalization of blogs, tags, posts and tying up of loose ends ready for marking