Diary Entry: Wednesday 9th November

Today we are beginning to edit our video. Today I have attempted to add the homeless man’s narrative into our work, but I have been hindered by the editing program not functioning properly, I do plan to see the IT department about the problem. Katie and I have also been filming today. We filmed the business woman’s introduction from a variety of angles, and plan to edit it as soon as possible. We do not have a lesson on Wednesdays, so I have not been able to talk through what we plan to do in the final week , but we will finalise our plans in tomorrow’s lesson.

Diary Entry: Tuesday 8th November

Today is the day of our performance re-shoot because as highlighted in the rough cut we didn't have enough angles and we didn't make our performance look different enough to other groups. This time we have borrowed a projector which we are using to project the sunset footage, which Me and Laura made stronger this morning by altering the brightness and the contrast, behind the band on a white sheet.

Throughout the afternoon Me and Alfie completed and then exported the sunset footage which we will be using to project whilst Laura gathered leaves and all four of us gathered props and equipment for tonight. I made sure that the new band who don't all go to our school were still ok to film tonight, had remembered their guitars and where wearing the right thing. During period 5 I went home to pick up my laptop from my house to use with the projector. As I was leaving my house to head back to school we got a message through from our second guitarist saying that he could no longer make tonight so I rang our backup guitarist, Matthew Fairrie, to check that he was still up for stepping in. When I got into School I consulted the rest of the group with the problem and we decided on ringing other band members, Drummer Matt Harris and Basist Sam Taylor, if they could bring in an extra top so that we could make Fairrie look more Indie. Matt Harris replied saying he would bring a shirt for Fairrie to wear and The Guitar problem was sorted by my sister bringing her electric in for Fairrie to use in whilst filming. 

We got the Drama Hall at 5 o'clock and everyone was there on time we used the help of two lighting experts in the form of Dan Shaw and David J. Robinson as well as our Media technician Mr Convrey helping us set up.  We filmed using multiple angles including various close ups of Jonny singing, the whole band and individual close ups of each band members instrument.  When filming we had three cameras so we could film multiple angles at the same time, therefore three of us were stationed at a camera each time and the person who wasnt was then in charge of starting the sunset projection. After each take we swapped around to make sure that everyone had an input into the actual filming. Me and Laura also used a trolley thing which was in the drama hall to use like the dolly to get smooth movement shots of the whole band.
As a whole I think that everything went well today because of the band members knowing what they were doing, all looking the part and fitting in with the indie/alternative genre. The most obvious improvements that we have made this time are having the lead singer singing the right words at the right time and having an increased amount of angles, as well as making it tie in with the narrative by using the leaves.

Our video and narrative theory

Todorov once claimed that a compelling story should fit this template;

Our video is the correct formula for a Todorov style narrative. We begin with an equilibrium of our three main characters being bored with their lives, this is shown through their pose, and facial expressions. The video then includes a disruption; the characters believe they are late, and then rush off. The chain of events that are caused by this are our characters picking up their clothes on their way to the tea party. Our characters reach their goal, and arrive at the party in time, they then proceed to enjoy the tea party to the full. The video does end ambiguously, without making it clear what kind of equilibrium has been established, but this was a deliberate decision to let the viewer decide the characters fates for themselves, and it was fortunate, but it was also a production decision as well because, the songs rhythm would have made it very difficult to restore a boring theme.

Narrative theory- Daniel Floyd

Many people have tried to decipher the perfect story; one of these people is Daniel Floyd.
Daniel Floyd is an highly regarded animator who believes that there is no perfect template for events in a story, but that any story, no matter what happens in it should follow this graph that charts time, and how engaged the viewers is.


This theory states that a story must slowly become more engaging, drawing the audience in, until they are emotionally invested, then have a climactic point that everything led up to, and lastly have a final scene to allow the calm down. The dips in the graph are rest points for the audience, these allow the viewers to become gradually more engaged, but not over whelmed by the story.

This theory of a story map is questionable, but never the less our video’s narrative does follow this guide line. We begin and become more interesting by use of colours and a faster editing pace, until we have our climax, and then have a slower calmer scene to finish, just as the graph recommends.

Diary Entry: Thursday 3rd November

We now have new footage of our narrative. We have re-filmed the travelling part for the homeless man; it now looks far more colourful, and is from more interesting angles. The editing speed has increased, through different angles of the same shot being interwoven together. A faster editing pace was one of the improvements that we wanted from our rough cut video. Whilst Iona and I edit, Katie and Laura are planning future filming and finishing the audience research. We took into acount all of the points that were suggested to us after our orignal rough cut of the video, and hopefully will not make the same mistakes in filming this time around.

Narrative Theory

The second theorist we have been introduced to is Claude Levi-Strauss.

Strauss thought that to create a successful film or music video, you would have to have narrative that shows binary opposites such as good and evil, human and alien, and life and death.

We have looked at multiple videos, and a lot of them do follow the ideas of binary opposites and luckily this transferred over to our own music video as we have quite a few binary opposites as motifs. For example, we have sunrise and sunset, dark and light, time manipulation, locations, rich and poor, and work and play. We hope to expand more on these in our video to make them clearer.

Diary Entry: Wednesday 2nd November

Today we don't have any lessons so we used one of our frees that we have together, period 4, to get on top of filming. We filmed the running shots of the Homeless man in full Tea Party costume aswell as well as him finding his hat and tighing his shoe laces. For each scene we shot we used a variety of angles and ways of doing it so we would have enough footage to use for the final music video's fast pace editing. The location choices this time were more in fitting with our music video and the specific character as we chose a small field close by to school because of it's golden fallen leaves, and the wagonways pathway/backtrack due to its link to roughness and nature linking to the character. Both locations add to the video's unique and quirky vintage vibe of the video which act as like a build up to the extravagent tea party at the end of the narrative.   

At the end of the day I returned the camera but not before I retreived the footage from the camera and put it onto our hardrive.