Development: Editing The Video

We are now running up to the last few days of final editing. The editing process should be changing minor details and making it looks as professional as possible. The attractiveness of the video needs to be outstanding, so in order to conquer this we started watching them on higher definition screens so that we can pick out any other elements which we thought needed chaining or editing a bit more. We showed our peers and other groups our video today and held feedback from them, or in other terms constructive criticism. We took on board every aspect which was addressed during the viewings and noted them down so that next time we come to editing, probably tomorrow, we shall make those changes to suit these needs. Also in order to get the best feedback out of the first cut, we decided to show not only our class, but another non-media based audience and who better to show this to than our Target audience. We Target a wide range of audience to see and make clear who our target audience were and held feedback from them to. Feedback will be noted down in the next blog to come.

Planning: Storyboard

Above are images of our storyboard which was drawn up before the production process. We sat down as a group and each took time to discuss any ideas we had for the project and any ideas for the premise of the music video. Our first initial idea was to base the music video upon a band, but had trouble working around the idea. We then found that basing the music video on a man who had dreams of forming a band and his thoughts upon this was a good starting point a good concept to work from. We then had a story board drawn up and had our main idea. The main storyline for the video was going to be a man who wants to start a bad and looks around the streets for any signs of help forming the band or any musicians. He then comes across musicians and hands them leaflets. They then start joining the band and at the end we find out that his dreams of having a band are all in his head; from the title of the song 'Over my Head'.

Development: Final Rough Edit

Our music video has just gone through the stages of its final rough edit. We spent a few hours looking through the video and making notes on what we thought cold be better or could change. We then gathered the notes, went through again and changed them and made the final rough edit of the video. We found that our main problem was transaction between the live band shots and the narrative shots. They didn't have the best transition and didn't look as attractive as they could have been. We tried a few different transactions such as gradient dissolve, which worked at first but we had to incorporate this style into a number of shots throughout the video to keep it consistent. Our plan was to incorporate a different transition apart from cross-dissolve because it had been used before, but we ended up adding some more because of it looking consistent throughout and having the greater impact on the video. The deadline for the video is the end of this week and throughout the week we will keep looking over the video as well as the marking criteria and see whether it fits the specifications and needs and see whether we can change the video to fit these needs.

Planning: House Style & Design

The initial colours chosen at first were going to be Black, White and Gold. these three colours contrasted very well together and fitted in with other similar products. the graphic was created in Photoshop by using a downloaded graphic brush and pasted one design over another and editing the stroke on the graphic and making it gold. the font used throughout the whole project was 'Copperplate-Gothic-Black' we chose this because it stands out, its a big bold title in itself, before editing and it looks appealing to its audience.

Research: The Song Itself...

"Over My Head (Cable Car)" (originally performed as "Cable Car") is a song by American rock band, The Fray. It is included on their on their debut album, How to Save a Life (2005) and was the debut single from the album and hit the top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. The single helped propel their album from the Top Heatseekers chart to the top 20 of The Billboard 200 chart. The single is available exclusively as a digital download. Some CD singles of the song were given out to attendees of a concert on December 17, 2005. The CD single was backed with "Heaven Forbid" and a live version of "Hundred". In the UK, "Over My Head (Cable Car)" was released as the second single from the album, following "How to Save a Life".
The song sold over 2 million digital downloads in the United States and was certified double platinum by the RIAA in May 2006. The song was the fifth most-downloaded single of 2006 and was ranked #13 on the Hot 100 singles of 2006 by Billboard. It was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals in 2007. It lost to My Humps by Black Eyed Peas.
The song was ranked #43 on Billboard's Best Adult Pop Songs of the Decade listand #100 on Billboard's Top 100 Digital Tracks of the Decade list.

Research: Simular bands

All of the above bands are in the same genre of music as 'The Fray'. They're pop-rock sensibilities have brought them fame and fortune and has proven that they can deliver great hits. Some have even played alongside 'The Fray' on certain bills. 'The Fray' even stated themselves that they are heavily influenced by U2.

Rsearch: 'The Fray'

The Fray is an American rock band from Denver, Colorado. Formed in 2002 by schoolmates Isaac Slade and Joe King, they achieved mainstream success with the release of their debut album, How to Save a Life in 2005, which was certified double platinum by the RIAA and platinum in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the UK. The Fray achieved national success with their first single, "Over My Head (Cable Car)", which became a top ten hit in the United States. The release of their second single, "How to Save a Life", brought the band worldwide fame. The song charted in the top three of the Billboard Hot 100 and was a top 5 single in Australia, Canada, Ireland, Italy, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.The group's second self-titled album, released in 2009, debuted at number-one on the Billboard charts and was certified gold in the United States, Australia and Canada. It was also nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Pop Vocal Album in 2010. While both the albums were commercially successful, critical reception was mixed. The Fray was ranked #84 on Billboard's "Artists of the Decade" list.
The Fray's use of the piano as the lead instrument in their music has led critics to compare the band with English piano-driven bands like Coldplay and Keane.However, the band lists its influences as Counting Crows, Better Than Ezra and U2.

Planning: Narritive and casting

Here is our first document of our casting and narritive for our production. This was drawn up the day the task was set to get s started into what direction to head.

Planning: Anicllary Product (Photogrpahs)

These images are our originally used photos for our ancillary products. We hired out the Green screen to take the photos upon, so that when it comes to editing them they are easy to work around and edit. We took turns to get our own individual shots for each of our ancillary products. Because of my role in the video being the guitarist i needed to get some ancillary shots of myself, so in result of this i showed my peer the shot i needed and he then took upon the role of shooting my shots of me. Theses photo shots were one of the first tasks we got done because we thought that with the images shot and out of the way it will be easy to the get on with our ancillary products and not have any problems to worry about. Later on, we then found out that we needed a few more shots for the website so we called an emergency photo shoot to get the shots we needed.

Planning: Live Band Photographs

These are some of our initial band photography shots from our location shoot. They were only a rough estimate to where we was going to shoot and what apparatus to set up. After choosing the location we chose to shoot only the band shots here and the narrative elsewhere.

Planning: Pitch

This is our group 'pitch' video. The video contains a presentation of us demonstrating our ideas and concepts we wish to introduce to our project. Our main aim was to carry out research into the band and other similar bands within that genre of music (pop rock). With results found of this, we made a mood board with images of these bands. Also inserted into the mood board was location shot ideas; ideas where we wished to shoot our video. These ideas were then put to paper and made official. We also discussed our ideas for ancillary products and which tasks where going to be set to whom. A time-line was also added to this presentation to give us an idea of how/when we will be doing each element, e.g. filming, photo's, casting, ancillary products, and so on. This time line was estimated before the due-date so therefore if any problems occurred we had time to deal with the problems.

Research: Design Process

 During the design process we created a mood board to help with our knowledge and research of the band. We developed our knowledge in their genre, The mood board had 3 sections: Instruments, Bands and Locations. These three, each had relevance to 'The Fray', in terms of research. Research was carried out into what instruments they use, what locations are used in previous videos and also similar bands in comparisons to their unique genre of music.

 I also helped my partner create a basic layout of his ancillary product on Adobe Dreamweaver, for the band website. This was then later, left for him to create and finish independently.