I decided to film at Hessle Foreshore, next to the Humber bridge, as I thought this would have the leafy, outdoor effect that I wanted to create in my shots. I began filming during the half term and the weekend after; filming 3/5 characters during the half term and the remaining 2 characters the weekend after. The difficulty of filming in this location is that it would not be possible to film on week nights due to early sunset times; the lighting would be poor and there wouldn't be time to film in good daylight. This means that all of my filming has to be done on weekends, making it difficult to ensure the availability of characters as with the location, large amounts of film has to be undertaken at once, meaning it can take the entire day to finish. After uploading all of the shots on the editing suite and viewing them to label, I have already established large parts of the filming that I will need to re-shoot due to various reasons (bad lighting, poor quality, un-steady camera). I plan to do these in the upcoming weeks in order to reach a first edit as soon as possible.
After uploading the material I filmed during the half term, I have already established some parts of it that will need re-shooting. This is mainly due to poor lighting and the shakiness of the camera in some shots. This weekend, I am shooting the rest of my video and I plan to do re-shoot some of the shots that didn't turn out the way I would have liked them to. After I have all of my material on the editing suite, I will make the final notes about re-shooting and continue shooting and editing until I am happy with all of my material.
I sketched the highlighted lyrics from my planning onto A3 white card in pencil, and then boldened them with black permanent marker. This ensured the writing was clear to the audience when filming. I didn't want the illustrations to look too neat, as I thought it was important to get an element of 'scruffiness' or evidence that the boards had been hand writtin. This gives the video a slight personal touch, and also corresponds with the theme of carelessness/teenage freedom in my song and the video I plan to create.
-My initial
ideas displayed in the animatic can be supported by theorist Rick Altman who stated that
genre offers a 'set of pleasures' to the audience. In particular, emotional
pleasures which occur when the text creates a strong audience response. In my
opinion, I feel my piece may strongly connect with its teenage target audience
as it illustrates the typicality of teenage life; signifying a 'teen spirit'
and carefree nature. Therefore, I feel the piece may trigger a strong audience
response from the target audience as they may feel connected with the action.
-This coincides with the Frankfurt
School's Hypodermic Theory which suggests that media texts
'inject' views and ideas directly into the audience's brains of the audience
like a hypodermic needle, therefore controlling the way the audience think and
behave. Consequently, it can be argued that the creation of my text may
influence the audience to believe certain things; for example influencing them
to believe the video represents their carefree nature and therefore connecting
them with its content.
-However, Stuart Hall also
suggests that texts have a preferred meaning from the audience, and this may
not be what the text intended to mean but will be read due to the audience's
cultural and social influences. This suggests that although I intend my text to
connect with the audience by displaying their intentional teenage/carefree
nature in a positive light, the teenage audience may individually take this
differently depending on individual circumstances. However, this was expected
with the creation of my text as with all media texts, so by ensuring my text
isn't specified for a particular set of teenagers with a certain cultural
background, this shouldn't be a problem for my video. Therefore, according to Umberto Eco my video could be
considered an open text that is deliberately ambiguous and can be read in a
number of ways by the audience. Although it has a preferred reading (one which
is pinned down with the process of anchorage with the theory by Roland Barthes) as displaying
teenagers to be free-spirited in a positive way, some may perceive the video to
portray teenagers in a negative light as reckless as my animatic displays an array
of different shots and styles; appearing disorganised and effectively
representing this reckless nature. Consequently, according to Roland my text can be considered
polysemic; it can be portrayed to have more than one meaning depending on how
the individual views it and what connotations arise etc.
-My text also disputes John
Berger's idea of the 1970's where he believed 'men act and
women appear' as if males are the more superior sex and therefore women are
considered less important. This is because both male and females are portrayed
equally in my video; none viewed less capable than another. This then ables my
video to be aimed at teenagers of both sexes equally without bias toward one
sex.
-My video can also be seen to coincide with the narrative theory of the 'Art
Clip' where the main difference between an Art Clip and a pure Performance Clip
is the music; Art Clip's tend to be consisting of more modern, experimental
music such as electro-acoustic music. Therefore, this greatly represents the
creation of my music video as the music falls within the indie/rock genre with
a concept of psychedelic rock and therefore can be considered an 'Art Clip'
with abstract qualities. However, my video also contains parts of performance
with the idea of written boards to display featuring lyrics as seen in Bob Dylan's music video, Subterranean Homesick
Blues where some lyrics are displayed on boards so that the
audience can view the lyrics visually and therefore interpret possibly further
meaning, or connect greater with the song.
I then decided to summarise each character's action on separate pieces of paper to ensure the action was split equally. Also, this made it easier to organise the filming of each character as I could easily organise where I wanted them to be and what I wanted them to do etc.
The colour coding beside each illustration matches the colour coding I have used in my original ideas. Now the colours signify the 5 characters as A, B, C, D and E. This is so that when it comes to filming, I can easily organise the actions that each character should perform in front of the camera.
