Deadline email to Mrs Allison

This is the email my team member Laura Pinkney wrote to send to our media studies teacher Mrs Allison to ask for a deadline on our first cut:

She hasn't replied yet as she is on holiday.

Plans for upcoming week (Monday 1st November)

Today didn't go as planned and we didn't manage to fully edit our first cut together as we thought we would have more time but it turned out we had to leave at 2.30 therefore we have been left with more things to do and finish then originally planned.

Here is a list of things we need to get completed for our rough cut:

1. Complete the bridge section of the song, we also need to get feedback from others to figure out how to overcome the problems we had and the shots we didn't think worked. (This may mean we could have to re-shoot which we really don't want to so late in the process.)
2. Add the sound effect of the heartbeat to the flashbacks.
3. Edit together the last chorus (us lip-syncing and flashbacks of Emily packing her bags and leaving.)

A problem we may face is that a few things from our list will be very time consuming. For example editing the last chorus and completing the bridge will mean we will need at least another 2 hours editing time which we don't have before we need to present our first cut (Wednesday 3-11-10). The adding of the heartbeat sound effect wont take long and we will be able to quickly do this at the beginning of the lesson. We have emailed Mrs Allison to ask for an extended deadline (Friday 5-11-10) which would mean we could hopefully finish the first cut on the Wednesdays lesson. She has not replied yet and if she does say no, it wont be a major problem as we got a lot of editing done today. Although this will mean that we will probably get a lot of feedback and wont be able to get feedback for the last chorus as it will not be done.

Sound for flashbacks

We needed a sound effect to play over the top of our flashbacks (Joe & girls). Our teacher Mrs Allison thought she had one we could use but when we put it on our reel, it was too quiet and didn't work. So one of my team members Laura Pinkney did a google search of 'heartbeat sound effect' and she found this link:

http://www.royaltyfreemusic.com/sound-effects.html

From this she choose 2 sound effects she thought were the best and saved them to her desktop. Laura will put the sound effects on a memory stick and bring them to Wednesdays lesson where we will be able to decide which one works best and add it to our first cut.

Editing 27-10-10

Today Sophie, Laura and myself arrived at school around 10.30am to begin editing our remaining footage. We had until 2.30pm although we did think we would have more time than this!

What was achieved today:

• The first and second verse and the first and second chorus. We edited them to a standard we thought was good for our first cut, but we know that there are things that need adjusting/changing.
• We created a rough version of what we want for the anti-climax part of the song. This will most definitely be changed.
• We came up with a list of things that we need to do in terms of completing the first cut.

The first verse

There wasn't much to do for this chorus because in a previous editing session it had been nearly completed. The only thing left to do was add in a reaction shot of Joe before the chorus started. We pulled the footage onto the left-hand editing screen then pulled onto the editing reel what we wanted by pin-pointing the start of the reaction shot and the end. This makes editing a lot easier and quicker. We pulled the shot straight into the video as we had already prepared a space for it. We were trying to find a transition to put in between the reaction shot and start of the chorus so the first transition we tried was a zoom. This worked really well so we decided to keep it as it linked the story to us singing.

First Chorus

Our idea for the chorus was to have the editing quick paced and flow well. We thought a series of shorter shots would create this effect nicely. We made sure each girl was shown lip-syncing individually along with the 2 group performances.

Problems we faced - lip-syncing:

Editing this section was particularly time-consuming although it was relatively simple. It took a long time to cut the footage down and put it in the right places. A problem found was that we couldn't seem to go my lip-syncing right. Some of the lip-syncing looked right then the rest didn't, I think it was due to me lip-syncing too fast rather than the editing. We came up with the idea to reduce the speed only slightly to 97% and this worked as the lip-syncing then looked perfect.

Second verse

The flashbacks are introduced in the second verse which makes editing a lot harder and timely! We thought to make it easier, we should edit the verse together first using only the shots of us lip-syncing (without the flashbacks) then once that was done, decide where we wanted to flashbacks and simply place them where we want them.

How we inserted the flashbacks

We put the flashbacks in between Laura's 2 shots and Sophie's 2 shots to break them up a bit and make the verse look even without having shots longer than others. We had the flashbacks on the left-hand side screen so we could see them all. For the first flashback we choose the one where Emily pushes Joe as he tries to start an argument with her. We dragged this onto the reel then used the razor tool to cut it down. We dragged the black and white effect on top which automatically makes it black and white then after a lot of adjustments we positioned it in between Laura's shots. We then did the same for the next flashback which was the one where Joe is sitting on the floor, this was placed in between Sophie's 2 shots. The next one used was the one of Emily looking longingly out the window, this shot isn't particularly interesting so we didn't want to have it for too long therefore it is shorter than the others. At the end of the verse the words 'passion to hate' are sung dramatically so we decided to have a strong intimidating flashback to represent the words. We chose the one where Joe punch's part of the wall, it also finishes the verse off nicely.

This verse is very well edited as we really wanted each shot to change when the beat hits. By being this particular I think it has made the verse look very professional.

Second chorus

In the second chorus we decided to include the choreography scenes, flashbacks and each of the girls lip-syncing individually.

Because the beginning of the chorus starts with Joe still punching the wall (carried on for the second verse) it meant we had to use the razor tool to cut into the first bit of singing. This wasn't a problem as we easily able to put the shot of Sophie lip-syncing afterwards. Using the razor tool we then cut out sections in the chorus where we wanted the flashbacks to be - we decided on 3.

The first flashback we decided to use was the one of Emily sitting by the fireplace on the phone crying. This was an effective flashback as it is quite dramatic and comes onto screen as the the lyrics 'I get high when you're making me weak' are sung. For the next flashback section we decided to use the ariel shot of Emily and Joe fighting down below. This shot was very long so we thought that cutting into 3 sections and putting them together as jump cuts (we had used this technique through-out from the beginning) would look very effective. We also slowed them down to 50%. This sequence of shots are my favourite as they are interesting to watch and shows a passing off time making it seem like they have been arguing for a long time.

The anti-climax

This part of the song was very problematic for us in terms of what footage we have and editing it together! Here are the problems we faced:

1. The main shot which we initially wanted to be continuous was not and had to be edited together - which longed the sequence out.
2. A lot of the walking shots had no meaning and didn't represent anything. They were also not framed well and the lighting was poor.
3. When we reversed played the copied sequence - it looked very slow even though we had sped it up. To correct it it needed to be sped up to 200% which meant it finished way too early and we had no other footage to use to finish the anti-climax part.

Time was up after editing for over 5 hours and the school was closing. This left us with a sticky situation but we decided to just leave it how it was and return editing it when term began next week.

Plan for half term!

Half term week is the week commencing the 25th October and me, Sophie and Laura have decided to come in on the Thursday (28-10-10) to edit as Charlotte will be on holiday.

Our main aim of the session will be to complete our first cut, although things might not go to plan on the day and we may not complete it. Here are a number of things we are aiming to get done by the end of the day:

1. Make sure all the lip-syncing parts of the songs are on the right place on the editing reel, even though we might have to add more flashbacks of Emily and Joe in between at a later date.
2. Have all the flashbacks cut down to the right lengths we need them, and have them edited to black and white.

Although this doesn't look like much, it will actually take a lot of time. We know this as it took us a whole 2 hour media lesson to edit together 30 seconds of footage.

Hopefully after the editing session we will have a clear idea of how our video will turn out. We will also discuss as a group if there are any more shots we need to obtain and if there is anything else we can do to our video to make it look more effective.

Editing 22-10-10

During today's lesson, Sophie, Laura and I decided to continue editing our footage.

We edited up the to first chorus which means we spent a lot of time editing the pre-music footage and flashbacks of Joe and the girls. We also cut down and selected the footage of Joe and Emily that we wanted to put into the first verse where Laura and Charlotte are performing.

Although most of our time was spent editing the pre-song footage we felt that the overall result was good! We did come across a few problems and difficulties, these were:

1. The shots were too long. A lot of the shots of Emily were too lengthy and long.The tone of the song is slow and sad but we felt that this bit needed to be sharp and edgy to make it more dramatic.We got around this problem by using jump cuts instead of continuous shots. Normally we wouldn't use this type of editing but we found it looked more effective as it flowed and moved quicker. It doesn't look odd because they have been put together very well and makes her exit from the house more dramatic.
2. Making good use of the 2 corresponding cameras. The footage we edited today was shot from two separate cameras, this was mainly done to make the shot-reverse-shot look smoother as we didn't need the actors to repeat their lines more than once. We at first found it hard to work with the two reels of footage on the editing line, but I suggested that instead we should drag the footage from camera 2 to the split screen and simply pull the footage down from there. This made editing the 2 cameras together much easier as it allowed us to work with camera 1 on the main line and just add the additional footage as and when we needed it.

3. Deciding the lengths of the flashbacks. In the first verse we decided to use the shots of Emily putting the case into her car and driving off. At first we were unsure whether to try a continuous flow like originally planned or stick to the jump cuts. After talking and thinking about it we felt that due to the fact we only wanted short shots it would look most effective to do the jump cuts. It took us a quite a while to edit the footage to the perfect length, we then asked our teacher once or twice on her opinion as to whether certain shots (the one of Emily from inside the car) was too long. She said she thought it was too long and we should go for the quick-cut editing therefore we adjusted it to shorter lengths.

Effects we used today:

Zoom: The transition from the reaction shot of Emily to the start of the song needed some sort of transition to link the 2 together better. We didn't really want to use white dip, black dip and cross dissolve as we already have them in our production. We looked through the effects list and decided to just try some random ones out. The first one we tried was zoom, we dragged it from the effects list to in between the middle of the 2 shots we wanted to link, we then dragged it in to reduce the length. The effect this gave us was then a quick zoom into Emily's face that then zoomed out to Charlotte's extreme close up. We luckily really liked this and decided it was a good way to establish the pre-song footage ending and the actual song starting.

Reduced speed: We wanted the emotion of the actors to come across strongly therefore we decided to reduce the speed on the close up reaction shot of Emily's face. There was only 1 decent shot of Emily and it was very short, so we tried reducing the speed to make it last longer and portray her sadness more effectively. We did this by right clicking the footage box and clicking the speed/duration option, we then reduced the speed number to 50%. This worked quite well, as it made the shot the length we wanted to it to be.

Increased speed:We decided to increase the speed of the shots of Emily reversing in her car and leaving the drive. We did this because we found that although we did reduce the shot lengths, the movement was still too slow for what we wanted. We tried increasing the first shot to 150% and the rest 125% and found this worked really well. It didn't look as if we had deliberately sped it up but looked as if Emily had reversed quickly.

Permission letter

We had to write a permission letter to the copywrite holder of the song 'Missing You' to ask for permission to use the song. Here is a copy of the letter that one of my team members, Laura Pinkney, wrote.

Dear Copyright Holder,

For our current A-Level Media Studies Advanced Portfolio we are producing our own music videos; this will consist of us performing the song, and editing it on a software programme that our school provides us with. As a group, we decided on a girl-group theme and the song we decided to chose was ‘Missing You’ (The Saturdays). We are writing to seek your permission to use this song in our video.

To briefly explain a little bit more about our production, we would be creating a video which is then supported with a digipak and a magazine advertisement. We hope to demonstrate our skills of storyboarding, camera-work and editing. Also, we would just like to make very clear that the use of this song is only for educational purposes, and would not be exploited in any other way (such as to a large audience or websites).

Throughout the whole process of this task, the artist that originally sung the track will be recognised and we would not try to pass off the product as our own in any way. Our examining body is OCR, and they will be more than happy to clarify that this is a legitimate educational task. If you would like to send us a copyright notice to feature in our coursework, we would happily oblige with your requirements; if this is the case, please send the information to the address listed above.

We’d like to thank you for taking the time to read this, and look forward to hearing from you.

Your Sincerely,

Laura Pinkney, Charlotte Andreas, Sophie Legge and Jodie Butcher.

As of yet we have not recieved a reply and do not expect to. As we have not had any objections we have decided to continue using the song for our production.