Filming at the O2

When we went to film at the O2, arguably I had the most fun that we have had during this whole process. Maybe it is because I got to feature in the film on this part (Acting debut). We did though have our problems, as I clearly documented in this short clip. 

We however dealt with this problem by going to film indoors, this made for a better outcome as there were more people coming from the tube station heading towards the exit. This made for a better scene as you can see in the video. In the shot where Lisa is sat by herself... soon after her relationship with Raja is over. We wanted to have this scene because the scene portrays her isolation, and loneliness to the audience. We got the idea to use this shot from the A team video by Ed Sheeran http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAWcs5H-qgQ&ob=av3n.

Filming at hall place.

i have just got home from filming at Hall place (Bexley). Today we went to film some external shots for our video in the park. We were hoping to film Lisa running back to Peter (Daniel Merriweather) but unfortunately, this did not go according to plan as this location had changed from the time Lisa and Raja had previously been there, and to make it worse it was raining so we could not experiment too much (for health and safety reasons). We did how ever manager to film the opening sequence because we found a street light that looked perfect and the lighting that evening was looking perfect for the shot that we had in mind. We also managed to film the end scene although this was done as an experiment. Me and Raja just thought that I should hold up the camera above my head and follow the Lisa and Peter without them noticing. Everything went better than planned because the body language and actions of both Lisa and Peter portrayed them as a happy couple. This aerial shot allowed us to have a varied range of shots in our production work. We also filmed some solo shots of Peter singing to different parts of the song, we thought we would use these shots to show a variety of shots.

Editing Time

Today was the first time me, Raja and Lisa all got time to sit round the editing machine to edit some footage. The software we are going to be using to edit our work is Adobe Premier Pro CS4. This is an industry standard bit of software. On the left is an image of us editing the footage. #TeamRaTaSA.

First filming session - Erith Bakery Bakery

Raja and Lisa behind preparing the equipment.

Director Tatenda. Lets GO!!!! 

Again me not doing any work apart from being
 annoying with my behind the scenes. #DirectorShonhiwa 

Well from this first filming session we managed to gather some understanding of our skills, when it comes to filming, but the most important lesson of today was  that WE NEED TO CHECK THE EQUIPMENT before we leave to film off site. The equipment we had was not suitable for use and for all our future filming sessions I will make sure I check the equipment works before we leave. We had to use our own initiative to film some of our shots otherwise we would have wasted  a day out for filming. We used panning shots rather than tracking shots. 


Insert behind the scenes video.

Discussion - Group meeting.

We have had several group discussions about where we are with the production and what we have done. As I volunteered myself as group leader I have to always make sure that I know where everyone is with work that implicates directly with the group and that everyone knows when we are filming.

I have created a production schedule for the project. This is JUST for guidance and will not be the final schedule. Various factors might affect this. 

Daniel Merriweather Existing CD cases

As part of the project I am required to create Digipak for the album's release. So individually I have decided to look at some existing by work that Daniel Merriweather.

These are some of the front covers I have found. 

From these covers I can denote that these digipaks use very minimal colours and lighting is very important convention of his works. 

The common conventions (mise en scene) carried out in most of these digipaks are: 

• The use of primary colors 
• Above the waste images... Usually focusing on above the waste. 
• One background
• No more than 3 colors 
• Lighting used on the face of the artist (Daniel Merriweather)
• Same/similar hair style

Following these common conventions means that the products have a similar house style. 

Taking lead.

Right its been a month or so since we started this project and we have not started filming but we have finished the planing. I am slightly worried that we have not made any progress as this will ruin the brilliant start to the project that we had made.
So today I have asked my group to be the team leader.. not manager but just a leader to make sure that we carry on the good work we had at the beginning.
As a team leader my role would be to:

• Make sure that everyone knows when and when we are filming  
• That the equipment is booked before hand (Camera, tripod, etc) 
• To over see and deal with any problems should they arise. 
• To make sure we don't fall behind on our planned days. 

I ran my idea past my group and they all thought it would be a good idea. 

Story boards - Bakery

These are the story boards for the Bakery shots. 

Planning process.

 So today we had started our planning process. We have decided to start thinking of people that will be suitable to use in our production. The leading people we have thought to use are Lisa and her boy friend Kyle Legg and Raja. Kyle will be Daniel Merriweather (the character that's heart broken) and Raja the abusive boy friend. Lisa the abused girl friend.

Everyone in the group is particular happy with this idea as can exploit the relationship between Kyle and Lisa (in a positive way).

We also started typing up a shot list so that Raja (the artistic one from the group) can use when he is drawing the storyboards.
Creating a shot list and drawing storyboards is something that is carried in any industry.

Daniel Merriweather Music Video Pitch

As part of the planning process my media teachers thought it would be a good idea if as a group we made a pitch as a group, the pitch had to include the following:

• Preliminary research into the genre and type of project chosen 
• Identification of the target audience 
• Storyboard ideas 
• Location ideas with scouting images 
• Casting 
• Mood boards 
• Ancillary tasks for each candidate 
• Production schedule 
• Allocation of roles

As we had done most of the planning during the brainstorming part of the project we found this was quite easy to do. All we had to do was create a PowerPoint presentation which Lisa kindly agreed to do. 

As group we liked the ed Sheeran video because it shows the young lady sat by herself in the middle of a busy road at night on a gloomy evening. Because she is sat by herself on a busy road with everyone passing this shows how isolated, and vulnerable she is to the public. We thought to use this shot for our product to show the young female, when she is getting abused from her boy friend. 

We also liked Stay by Jay Sean. This video gave us the idea of having the lead singer in our music video sing in a studio but then a narrative story following in line with it. We would then be able to use jump cuts in this which was follow a common convention of the sort of music video that we are making. We also liked the idea of using a projector in a music video as this creates a variety which will keep our target audience interested.  

Our hard work and preparation coming into this presentation, we were one of only two groups to pass first time (the first) without corrections. This was a major motivational boost as it showed us that we were doing everything right. 

Release Pack and CD's - Ancillary Tasks

After deciding the song we wanted to do myself and my other group members decided to research into existing release packasge and CD cases that have been published. The attached file shows some of the images of profesionally produced release covers and CD cases.

From this research we have found that the all the profesionally produced work all include a LARGE image of the artist or band, the name of the artist of the band clearly labled on the product. We also found that the font styles used for the each of the work is all different. This gave all the products an unique selling point (USP) and made it different to all the other singers.

Continued brainstorming

The Vlog I have posted is a summer/overview of everything we have discussed today.

Brainstorming ideas

Now that we have made our song choice, we have moved on to the brainstorming of ideas. We have been looking at videos from similar genres for ideas that we like and that we can adapt into our music video.


An idea had for the video that Raja liked was the beginning sequence (the man on the bench) and the end (when the audience see the man sat on a bench again). Its a loop, this video shows the man starting his day by the pier and and again finishing by the pier alone, a idea that we can use for our video as the narrative for our song is being heart broken and love.

As the song is called Red we decided to use Red lighting for shots of the lead character singing as we also thought it would go with the narrative of the song. We also chose to include A LOT of lighting for the shots. We also thought to have someone painting a beautiful picture/mirror red as this goes with the lyrics. 

We used the lyrics to create a narrative of the video as we found that this is a common convention for most music videos an example being Lil Wayne - How to Love music video, its just a story being told and the story  goes with the lyrics.


Some ideas we had for the lyrics are:
"You took something perfect and painted it red" if she likes someone else, he could be referring to him and her being the perfect couple. "I cant be somebody else you took something perfect and painted it red" a guy really liking a girl and he thinks she likes him but really she likes someone else.

Red Daniel Merriweather

Please take a look at the OFFICIAL Red music video by Daniel Merriweather. 

My group and I decided to just listen to the lyrics of the video as we want to show our creativity for the music video. 

Learning filming techniques

Background of Red

Daniel Merriweather was born on the 17th of February 1982, he's an Australian R&B singer/songwriter. His debut album, Love & War, was released in June 2009 which consists of the song, Red, that me and my group are using as our song choice for this project. 'Red' and 'Change' from this album made it to the top 10 in the singles chart which shows that Daniel Merriweather has a strong audience and that the song we are using was successful.

Here is the track list from Daniel Merriweather's debut album

1- For Your Money

2- Impossible

3- Change (feat. Wale)

4- Chainsaw

5- Cigarettes

6- Red


7- Could You

8- Not Giving Up

9- Getting Out

10- Water and a Flame

11- Live by Night

12- Giving Everything Away for Free

Identifying the target audience

Daniel Merriweather Red


Genre: R&B and Pop
A target audience, is a specific group of people within the target market at which a product or the marketing message of a product is aimed at.
From looking at the video and from primary we research we undertook we found that our target audience would be females usually14 - 30years. This is just the approximate target audience, as other people from older generations may relate to the video as they may have gone through this at an earlier age. 

Music production

Right so to kick off the project, as a group we had to chose a song that we can all agree on and something we all like. As our tastes in music differ, we decided to look for a song that is common, a song that we could all stomach working with for the next 7months.

Me and Lisa brain stormed a few ideas on to a piece a paper and Lisa kindly agreed to type up neatly the list of songs. I volunteered to be the impartial judge as we looked find the perfect song for us to create a music video for. Initially, our list had 43 songs, so me and Lisa (biased opinion) decided to reduce the list down to 27 cutting out all the commercial songs that were out at the time examples of these are:
David Guetta ft Kelly Rowland - Love takes over
Example - Changed the way you kissed me
Wretch 32 - Tracktor
Wretch 32 ft Josh Kamura - Don't Go
As these songs were being played everywhere we went, whether on the radio, shopping centers or in restaurants, we decided that this was likely to get boring very quickly.

So we agreed to remove the more recent music and keep older 'classic' music. When we minimised it down and kept music from genres that we all liked, so on this list we had tracks like:

Red - Daniel Merriweather
R Kelly - The World Champion
Muse - Feeling Good
Mariah Carey - We belong together
50 Cent - Candy Shop
To decide on the song, we used a democratic system and got everyone to vote for 4 (is this supposed to be like that?) tracks they wanted and the majority would win. As it was my decision to use a democratic voting system, when I lost (because I didn't select Red by Daniel Merriweather) I was happy to continue

My Team

Raja Purewal

Lisa Rabe

For this project to create a promo musical video, I will be working with Raja Purewal and Lisa Rabe. They're both Media and Drama studies. Having two group members that specialize in Drama and Media will be a benefit to the completion of this task because they have a background in theatrical studies, meaning we already have two members we can have in the video as characters. Lisa and I we study ICT, this will be a benefit in particular when we are creating the ancillary tasks as well as other promotional work. Raja's other subjects are Fine Art and Photography. His vision will be very beneficial to the project.

Another reason I chose to work with Lisa and Raja is because at the beginning of the project we all made a pact to each other and most importantly to ourselves that we all need to do well.

Quote a message from Lisa Rabe on Facebook"Im only happy if everyone is commited and willing to actually do well " another quote from Raja Singh Purewal "Lol true, gotta do well. I'm going all out for this project boooy".

These messages are from a group chat that I set up as a way of keeping in touch as a group. I found that using Facebook ( A new media platform) was an easy and conventional way of communicating as a group.

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An Introduction to the blog.

Media Studies - G324 Advanced Portfolio

A promotion package for the release of an album, to include a music promo video, together with: 

A digipak for the album’s release

A digipak for the album’s release