Music Video Filming Failed

     During the past weekend, my group members and I were supposed to get together and film our Music Video. I proposed the idea of filming on 11/23/19, which was Saturday. The time agreed upon was to start filming at 11:00 A.M. The location where we were supposed to film was Chic-Fil-A. So on Saturday morning, I woke up at 8:30 A.M. Once I was awake, I proceeded to get ready.  Once I was completely ready, it appeared that I had an enormous amount of spare time until I had to leave. I decided to make breakfast and text in our filming group chat to see if all of the group members were ready to film today. When I was done making breakfast and I was about to start eating, my group members responded to my message in the group chat. At that moment, My group members informed me they weren't going to be able to film. 

     Once I was informed that my group mates weren't able to film, I immediately texted back to see when they were available. I asked if they were available to film later on in the day. My group members responded that they weren't able to film later on in the day. After, I asked them if they were available to film on Sunday morning. They asked if the same time was okay. I responded and said that it was fine with me. After an hour of no response from anyone, someone responded with another problem. The problem was that Chic-Fil-A doesn't open on Sundays. At first, I didn't realize the issue, so I asked my groupmate why that was a problem. After a while, they explained that the issue with Chic-Fil-A not being open was that we needed to film the inside of the restaurant along with the outside of it. Along with filming the inside, we need to get bags with there logos on it and maybe cups for the music video. Not only was that required, but we were going to ask them if they could change the letters on there sign to say " Closed on Sunday". We were going to ask them, to do this because the name of the song we are doing is, "Closed on Sunday" by Kanye West.

     Today in class, we came to a decision that we need to film soon. So, I proposed the idea of filming during the Thanksgiving Break. They found the idea very appealing but the only issue is that if we don't film before the 27th, we are going to be missing a member of the group because he is out of town for the break. We told him that there's no problem because we could film most of the scenes of the Music Video without him. Once, he gets back from his vacation we can film the rest of the scenes where the whole group is needed. Therefore, we are planning to film most of the Music Video 11/27/19, which is the upcoming Wednesday before Thanksgiving. Once we have most of the footage needed, we can start editing and we should be done with the majority of the editing by the end of the break. 

Music Video Story Boarding

Making the story board was a daunting task. We wanted to integrate the lyrics literally instead of metaphorically. This would add a little bit of fun to our project and keep the viewers involved. Our first 30 seconds of the song would be easy because there was no words. For the first couple seconds, we would have a moving shot of a Chic-Fil-A drive by to show our location. Then, we would have a close up of the Chic-Fil-A Sign. From here, getting closer to the words, we would take a pan of the inside of the restaurant. Then, we would transition to a pan of the inside to really characterize the restaurant. We also plan to give effects on these transitions and add flare to the shot. Also, we also need to add a fade in to start off the music video. 

For the second half of the video, there is words so things are more tricky. We start to incorporate people and the use of fire. We start by showing a Chic-Fil-A burning to show it being closed on Sunday. From here, we cut to showing a church to show what is open on Sunday. Our next shot was tricky because we did not know what we wanted people to wear. We went back and forth between people wearing all black and white to show uniformity. We have them taking a selfie and putting their phone in their back pocket. We toyed with the idea of using a gram cracker as an phone for the lyrics "put the gram away." We decided this was not a good idea as some people may not get the hidden reference. We wanted to leave this shot for a few extra seconds to really drive the point home of people not being on their phones on Sundays.

The last 15 seconds were the hardest. We started by having our whole group members praying to follow the lyrics. We still are undecided as to what we are going to wear. In the middle of our circle, the Chic-Fil-A bag will be burning to show the closed on Sunday aspect. Next, the song talks about a serpent, so we are going to have a Chic-Fil-A bag, then we will open it, and the snake will be inside. This is going to be a hard thing to do because incorporation of a live animal is always hard to do. We want to do a close up of this snake to show its detail and really sell the scene to the viewer. Next, we want the final ashes of the bag burning to show the end of the Chic-Fil-A. This would be a good way to close as we started with the bag fresh on fire. Then, we will fade out to complete the video.

Music Video Planning

Location- Our location plans are very easy. We planned on taking shots of the beach, and local waterways for our first 30 seconds because there is no sound. Once the song starts talking about Chic-Fil-A, we will cut to a real Chic-Fil-A and film that part. Our backup plan if something goes wrong would be to film outside of the Chick-Fil-A to still get the same shot.

Health and Safety- At the beach, we would never go when it is raining to avoid lighting. Also, we would only go during the day to avoid running into bad people. When at Chic-Fil-A, we would make sure to be safe and film away from moving cars. Inside, we would be safe by asking to film before hand so we cant get into trouble.

Props- We would have little to no props. Maybe only a phone. There is not a lot of objects in the music video, so we may just have nothing in our hands.

Costumes- In many of Kanye West's Music Videos, he's wearing primarily casual clothing. So, our idea for costumes is to have the actors dressed up casual in accordance with the weather. For example, actors will wear T-shirts, short/pants, and sneakers.

Schedule-
11/19/19: Plan Music Video and Finish Planning Music Video Blog
11/21/19: Plan Music Video by Story boarding
11/23/19: Film Music Video
11/27/19: Finish filming by the 27th because one of our group member leaves town
11/28/19: Start to work on the editing
11/25/19: Finish Music Video Blog
12/2/19: Finish Music Video blog #2
12/6/19: Final Music Video needs to be turned into the teacher by this day

Music Video Research

      After finalizing our previous project, which was our commercial. I learned how complex the whole process of filming and editing really was.  During the process of filming the commercial i learned many things that will help when it comes to our next project.  For example, when it came to filming and editing, I wasn't very familiar with how to use the camera and editing software provided by the school. Once, it came time to execute these things in the last project, I familiarized myself with the camera and editing software. This will be really helpful, when its time to start filming and editing our current project, which is a music video. This project will have to be filmed and edited with a clean song.

     At first, we were having major issues with our groups. Another pair kept trying to steal our group members, and there was a whole argument over who got who. Eventually, I ended up with who I wanted, Alex and Jorge. We ran through several songs like "Start With Me" and "90210," but these songs were ruled out because they cursed and we wanted to stay away from this in our projects. We ended up picking "Closed on Sunday" by Kanye West, this song fits into the rap genre but it isn't typical, it is very slow and doesn't really embody that classical rap sound. We liked this song because we thought it would be slow enough to add all the effects we wanted, but fast enough to not bore the audience and lose their interest. 

      With the song "Closed on Sunday", the first 40 seconds of the song is a instrumental. Our group got the idea to shoot B-roll for this section of the song. The B-roll will contain: Low angles, High angles, Tracking shot, Pans, and Tilts. We were also thinking about having the Chic-Fil-A write"Closed on Sunday's" on their big sign. After the instrumental is done playing, Kayne West starts to sing about how Chic-Fil-A is closed on Sunday's. For this we thought it would be best to, have the actors in the music video, dress up casually. Kanye usually wear jeans, shorts, and T-shirts in his music videos, which gives him the simple sense of style. The actors will look depressed, once arriving at Chic-Fil-A and noticing that it's closed. This scene will be a tracking shot of the actors and close-ups of their facial expressions. For the editing portion of our Music video, we will align our transitions in footage, with the lyrics and beats of the song. We shall add effects to make the music video visuals more appealing. 

Finally Edited

After struggling for a couple of days to edit our commercial, we finally got the opportunity to start editing. To start of the editing process, I took my USB drive with all of our footage and inserted it into the computer. Once I was able to access the footage, I moved it to the desktop. Once I had all my footage on my desktop, I began to watch the clips of film. After watching all of the footage, I picked out which ones were going to make the final commercial. Once I picked out all of our footage, I inserted it into pinnacle studios. Once all the footage was in pinnacle studios, I looked for the background music that we were going to use. My group member suggested the instrumental of a song. I listened to the instrumental thoroughly to make sure it was a perfect fit. It turned out that it was a perfect song to use! I downloaded the song, and saved it to my desktop.  Once I had the song on my desktop, I imported the song onto Pinnacle Studios. Once I had everything I needed imported onto Pinnacle Studios, I put all of the footage into order. I inserted the footage on to track 2. I inserted the song onto track 3. Before starting to mess with the clips I learned where each button is. After knowing where the buttons are, I learned what the buttons do. After I learned all of the buttons. I started editing my footage. I started cropping and moving the clips around. And I also cropped the song to fit the necessary part of the commercial. After, I cropped and edited the footage I rewatched it. My commercial was a little choppy, so I had to fix that. After rewatching it a couple of times, I didn’t like one of the clips in our commercial. I took those clips out, and added in the other clips. I rewatched the commercial to make sure the commercial looks good. With the new clips the commercial looked fantastic. The best drops matched with the transitions in the commercial. After I saved the movie to my desktop. Once the movie was on my desktop, I emailed it and turned it in.