Props

When filming the video we didn't actually need many props at all. All acoustic music videos are different with the props they use, as the props normally match strongly with the narrative of the story. However one thing we did use (which a lot of videos use) is an acoustic guitar. In most videos either the character or the artist themselves will play along with the actual song, often cutting from narrative to the guitar playing.

 

The use of acoustic guitars is common in many acoustic/folk/country videos from Ed Sheeran to Bob Dylan.
  

Colour correction research

Over the course of the filming process we have been looking into colour correction, since we want to have half of the video in black and white to show a more depressive tone after the couples break up. We discovered that if you go into Adobe premier pro (which we use for all video editing purposes) there is an effects bar. Then under "effect controls" which allows us to change colour contrasts and filter levels. We can create black and white film by removing all colour from the clip and then moving the black and white contrast up.

As well as black and white filters, the colour wheel allows us to change the "warmth" of a picture, by turning the warmth up you can create a brighter image, something which we may do create the impression of summer if the footage does look darker than we would like when it comes to editing.

Costumes

For costumes we tried to get a more average look on the characters. We wanted the audience to be able to relate to the characters, and be able to understand the story and put their own situations to that of the video. We tried to dress Jordon in just jeans and a hoodie, and he also wore a cap. It was just easier for him to look like an average guy, going through relationship problems. We tried to dress Lauren to match Jordon  so just jeans and a plain purple top.

For us it was key that the characters looked similar to show they were equal in the relationship, and not one was better/more attractive than the other. We used fairly plain clothing instead of branded items, the last thing we wanted was big brand names to detract from the actual video itself.

Above is a shot of the two characters walking side by side (taken from the video, hence the bad quality). Since we set the video in two different time frames (before and after the couple have broken up) we had to dress Jordon twice, once for when they were together, and once after they had broken up. We wanted to have two separate outfits to distinguish the time difference. 

Above is a shot of Jordon dressed for after the break up has happened. We kept it fairly similar, jeans and hoodie being a standard theme. Its a different hoodie, with no logo at all. We also added a cap, just to make it clear that the two time frames were totally different. 

Filming!

When filming began I made sure I took photos as proof. Also you can see in these shots that we are using our own camera (which Lauren from our group owns). We decided that we wanted the best quality video so we decided to use her Fuji film camera as the quality of image was much clearer. Luckily the weather on this day was good, and no rain. There were a few occasions that we began to film, it started raining so we had to stop and go back on another day. We managed to get most of the work done on this day though, which gave us a lot of time to go and edit the piece together. 

Permission for song use

We got Dom to email the record label that defeater are signed to, and make sure we could use the song for our media piece. Above is the screen grab of that email and the reply. In some cases for bands they wont actually reply to emails (possibly because they get so many) so it was good that we were given permission for the track.  

Website codes and conventions

I decided to do some research into website layouts before we constructed our own. I went to band websites and tried to find common themes, and some codes and conventions that we could use on our own website. We found that most band websites had a photo of the band or the band logo on the home page. We then looked at the tabs the band had included on the website. we found most sites included:

Home
Ask
Gig/Tours
Videos
Music
Merch
Blog

we didn't have to include so many tabs in our site, so we decided to pick the ones we found most commonly, Gigs/Tours, merch, Home and music were tabs we managed t find on the majority of band websites we looked at. Also a common theme seemed to be promoting the bands new single (or album) on the homepage of the website. We decided that our music video would be the main focal point on the website and be large on the home screen. There are also links to the bands twitter and Facebook page on many home pages, which is something we considered to include.

Below is a screen grab of Bring me the horizons website. You can see all the tab links in the bottom left corner, and all the social networking links in the bottom right.
   

Recce shots

We went out and took some shots of our location for filming. We tried to photograph all the key areas we would be filming in, to try and get the best idea of how it would look on camera. This was the second location we selected, after the weather made it impossible to use the other (original location). We decided that this location would be best as it is incredibly open, giving us more scope for creativity.