Stop motion/Intertextuality

Throughout all 4 days of filming, we decided that we need to include intertexuality and stop motion of some sort to up our grade to the highest we can. We came up with to ideas of a stop motion video of both an animation of a heart and its arrow and with the heart eventually breaking. We had 6 images of the same thing, but in each image, the arrow moved slightly further across the paper until it eventually reached the other side and has broken in half. This is iconography for our song as the title is "Broken Arrow" and so by having a narrative and performance plot of Elle and Alex breaking up, we wanted an actual animation of the title of the song.

Here are images of how the animation started off, and how it ended. Hopefully if we edit each image smoothly, the stop motion will look fantastic and will look exactly how we want it to!

Also, when filming this stop animation at Elle's house, I noticed that on her mantle piece she had the four letter "L" "O" "V" and "E" and then I came up with an idea mixing the letters up, and then filming it frame by frame of the letters moving back together correctly to spell "LOVE". It took around half an hour to film as we wanted to get it just right and it was vital that the camera didn't move whilst filming it. When we upload it, we again will speed and edit the clips correctly and it will hopefully look like the stop-motion used within Kate Nash foundations video.

Timelapse video

Whilst on Youtube searching for the "airplanes" video for my intertexuality research, I came across this video by chance. I love the way in which u can see the sky and clouds moving. We could possibly film something similar to this to show how over a period of time, that Elle and Alex's relationship was beginning to show "cracks" over time.

I thought we could show this with Elle being presented with a bunch of red roses from Alex when the relationship is going well and then setting the camera up and filming then for say half an hour a day until they are eventually dead and then when editing it, speed it up so it looks like they die out fast, like their relationship. However, we already have over an hour's worth of footage which we need to cut down to just the 3 and a half minutes to the length of our song. But who knows, if we get time, it may be worth the time.

filming day 4 - final day

It's the final day of filming and time for our final location, Alexandra Palace for it's beautiful views and scenery of London such as Canary Wharf and the Gherkin buildings. We arrived at around 4pm and it was rather dusky and so we began filmign striaght away. We brought a big tourch with us so that when it did get dark, we shine this upon Elle's face and create a "spot light" effect.


This image was once I took on my phone and uploaded to my laptop. as you can see, the lights on the scenery look very picturesque! We wanted to get going straight away and so we set up the tripod to begin filming some scenery shots with Elle standing in front, but slightly to the side of the shot to remember the importance of rule of thirds when filming. just as we were setting up, a security guard came out and asked if we had permission to film. We explained that we were media A2 students at a local school and were filming the horizon for out music video. However, much to our surprise, the problem got sorted within 5 minutes as all we had to do was sign a form with a prove of student I.d.





So, after that little mis-hap, we began filming. we included several different panning shots of the scenery with Elle in front with the torch to make sure her face was lit up. After this we set it up along a walkway and had her singing and walking towards us. Seeing as it was 5 o clock at night and was dark we had a big light that was quite bright and shone it on her. This looked a bit weird in some shots as you could see a big circle where the light was but in other shots, such as when Elle was standing by an arch way singing, it looked good.

After all shots at Alexandra Palace were complete, we went back to Elle's house to do the filming of the photograph's as part of "Elle's memories" of the good times her and Alex had together before they split up. As a group we made the photos by cutting out pictures of them and sticking them on card backgrounds to make them look like the typical Polaroid picture. We also did some green screen's of this to see if it will work on iMovie. This inspiration and use of intertextuality has come from the music video "Airplanes - BoB" when the camera pans across all the Polaroid pictures and then one of them starts moving. We would like to try and incorporate this into our music video, but if it doesn't work, as we weren't too sure, we filmed it with the park bench shot as well so we can zoom into it and the next scene will happen.

The way in which the photos's move in this video is what we woul dlike to achieve as a group when and if the green screen tool works on imovie.

filming day 3

With the weather looking appealingly bright, we decided to film the footage of Elle and Alex in our local park in which they meet on a park bench and realise they are reading the same novel. We walked around the park in order to find a correct bench for how we wanted our material to look. After 20 minutes of walking through muddy grass and leaves, we found a bench at the far end of the park where not many people were walking past and we thought this was perfect.

We started off with all the "novel" scenes where they first meet and then Alex starts talking to Elle and that's how there romance begins. We filmed it in front as a two shot, behind to get an over the shoulder shot and also panned around them and up to the sky as we remembered this was what we had planned to do on our animated storyboard. We also took a photo of Elle and Alex in this position (as imaged above) in order for our green screen idea. This was to get the camera over a montage of photos of them and the zoom in to this photo and make it turn to "real life". If this doesn't work, we shall just use the still image instead and use a transition from the MAC'S to take it in to real life.

Whilst we were still on the bench, we then filmed the "break up" shots of Elle. This included a close up of her with a clear umbrella over her head. It wasn't raining however so one of us had a bottle of water with us on set and we poured this over the umbrella and got shots of it "trickling down" the sides to appear like it was raining. This was one of the main reasons as to why we used a clear umbrella too. We also filmed a shot of Elle's face from outside the umbrella to make the rain appear like it was her tears and this will hopefully really capture her being upset from the break up.

Finally, as we thought we had achieved all the shots we needed, we then filmed some "muck around" shots of Elle and Alex together in their good times, just in case we didn't already have enough from IKEA on day 2 of filming. We also remembered that we wanted some shots of the pair of them to make it look like it was a "home video" effect. So, we achieved this by Elle getting on Alex's back and Elle pointing the camera at them laughing, joking, running around and just having fun as a couple.

So, with 3 out of our 4 locations filmed, I can't to get all the filming completed and begin editing our music video into what we hope will be a great success!

Filming day 2

With all the studio clips out the way, we now were well on our way to producing our music video. Our second chosen location is the famous home ware shop "IKEA" in which we wanted to use for clips of Elle with her boyfriend Alex to see them having a good time, but also we would use this material for flashbacks on their bad times as well.

Based on our background research from the film "500 days of summer", the clips of the main male and female characters running around and looking at the kitchens, bathrooms and bedroom etc, this is what we wanted to achieve, but by making the shots more original and unique.

Furthermore, we filmed several clips of Elle and Alex running around, holding hands, sitting in the kitchens pretending to have meals, jumping on beds, sitting on different types of sofa's/chairs etc and just making it look like her and her boyfriend are having a lot of fun together. Once all the 'happy' shots had been completed, we then had to film the 'bad times' of Elle and Alex and so we filmed pan shots of Elle almost "pulling" Alex along and it looked as if he wasn't interested in what was going on at all and that he just wanted to be at home.

Once we thought we had finished filming and completed at least 5 circuits of IKEA, we ended up in the Warehouse section were everybody goes to collect their order. Whilst walking through, Elle and Alex placed themselves in a trolley and were pushing each other around. To their shock, they didn't know that myself and Emma were secretly filming them as we thought this shot could also be included in the 'happy times'. However, they eventually caught us in the act and said that we should film a few dolly shot as we hadn't got many steady ones, as all the once we had completed weren't that smooth.

So, Emma and myself took ourselves a trolley and whilst Emma sat in it with the camera, I controlled the trolley. We positioned our trolley slightly further in front then Elle and Alex and we managed to achieve some excellent dolly shots that could be used in our music video.

Overall, it we spent around 3 hours in IKEA filming (a lot longer then we thought) and had over an hour of footage. I can't wait to upload it all and see how it looks like on the MAC'S!

upload from day 1

From the footage we filmed on day 1 of filming, we made a montage of clips from both of our camera's. Some of the shots we won't use at all, but some, when edited with the contrast and lighting etc we will hopefully use in our final production. The song we have chosen to accompany this montage of clips is "The time (dirty bit) - Black eyed Peas", we thought this just fitted the clips well. Enjoy!

Filming - Day 1

Finally, the filming has begun! The first day filming session was to complete all the "studio" type shots we wanted of Elle, to look it like she was rehearsing the song for her performance. We had spoken to the Photography teacher at our school if we could borrow the studio to film in and to our delight he said we could. It wasn't exactly to how we wanted it to look,but we though with only between 2 and 3 weeks to film, we needed to get as much as done as possible so we had a lot of material to look at when it came to uploading our footage and editing.

This image is similar to the white background that we had, but obviously, Elle was in place where the car was. We played the song over and over several times and and filmed several different camera angles from canted, to aerial (this was completed by standing on top of a chair and having Elle look up towards the camera), close up and also wide shots, to make sure we got the majority of the backdrop in.

We only had the studio fro an hour, but fingers crossed we filmed enough footage on both our digital camera and flip camera in order to produce the shots we originally put on our storyboard that we would like to have in our final video. Overall, the filming went ok, not brilliant as the space we had to move around in was limited, but fingers cross we have achieved the shots we wanted and that we can carry on to this high standard when it comes to filming the rest of our music video.