Written introduction & My reflection of its form and content

This music video gives an eye feast of The Brighton Fringe Festival in May. You will see street artists busking against the traditional English narrow paths and the well known seafront site where tourists gathered to enjoy the sunshine. It presented a beautiful natural environment in which tourists are able to enjoy one event after another provided by The fringe festival.

it adopts the colourful footage and fast motion editing approach.

research about the music video form and content

'sound usually accompanies movements and often continues over cuts. sound may motivate figures or camera movement.'                        --- bordwell & thompson

'possibly the most common tendency is for the filmmaker to match visual and sonic rhythms to each other. an obvious example is the typical dance sequence in a musical; here the figures move about at a rhythm determined by the music.'

in the post production process the music video characterised the consistency between video and audio. for example,as a seagull flies in the sky (visual information) there is the rhythmic support from the music. our only participant walked upstairs in the quadrant pub and her body movement matched with the music in that part.

visualized music
'the term ''visualized music'' applies to films in which the music, commentative or actual, determines the selection and the rhythmic configuration of visuals that are intended to reflect the music's moods and meanings in one way or another.'         ---Kracauer

alexandrov eiscnstein <romance sentimentale>

Call Sheet and Correspondence

Marina (an officer working in Komedia Theatre who helped me contact performers performing in Komedia Theatre for fringe festival)

Number: 01273 647111

and my contact details with her ( i also visited her and she would like me to email her, though it finally wasn't so helpful)

Below are the contact record with Rosie who is the client from fringe festival. 

rosie: 01273764903

Below are the contact record i had with other artists.

there are other artists who actually contributed (above are those who haven't replied) to my footage.

Megan (University of Brighton ) for art fare

number: 07896051956

Ade Foiadellio (the comedian)

number: 07757760682

Lauren Heckler (University of Brighton) for art fare

number: 07429097442

NOTES FOR THE DISC

the file ' all the raw footage i filmed' contains everything i filmed in the production process.





the file ' all the establishing shots' contains the establishing shots i did.





the file ' audio files i recorded' contains the audio files i recorded with a fringe artist and it was prepared for soundtrack use in editing but it was not finally used.

a reflective statement

In the group project--short advertising film for Brighton Fringe Festival, I performed as a camera man after analyzing my personal abilities (the relevant courses I had taken so far in University). I had accomplished a few projects for photography, videography so I was experienced. It was more about the reason that I needed more practice opportunities of camera use. I visited a group of fringe artists in Brighton University from an art society. After conducting some short interviews with my interviewees I found it difficult to communicate efficiently as a camera man. Technically I was still weak in managing the focus as the interviewee looks at times blurry finally in Premier. It was difficult to decide what room to be used as interviewee's background as some thought my footage looks messy in the background. Lighting was hard to control as I had no idea in what location the artists would let us film. From my tutorial I leant some camera techniques such as how to professionally take a shot (to consider more for editing it is better to keep the shot static for a few seconds before moving) and how to switch shutter speed to a appropriate number while filming in the artificial lighting environment to fit in with electrical system. I picked up a editing music video's core technique that rhythm of the music should better synchronise or correpond with either the camera movement or movement of figures in the image, concretely or abstractly. Compared with other group members, I was not brilliant in public speaking so in the pitch session I only raised a few questions concerning contact issues. We had one group member specify in animation and the rest of us in charge of research, camera, editing. However there was no clarified roles distribution in my group, which caused finally the imbalance work load between members. We had no clear idea who is doing what even till the pitch time. I should have communicated more with them about the roles as it was critical for completing the project in the most efficient way. I remember discussing with them but some thought we didn't need any clear cut roles division and we should collaborate with each other in everything. I could not persuade them the specification was important but I also believed it would provide more chances for each of us to participate in different fields. Looking back I do not think it was the best approach as we ended up having one person edit the whole video and most of his footage used, which was unfair.
We proposed that we would have three visiting representatives from three age groups and follow them with camera filming them join local fringe events. We did not plan realistically and thought about if we were able to find these representatives and there would not be any events actually about fringe. We should have had an alternative plan always ready. My personal alternative approach was to make the most of artists list given by fringe office. The challenge was then to find the appropriate fringe artists who would actually do some rehearsals and preparation in March or April (The festival was always held in May). Despite we were given the contact details, it took those real artists a long time to reply to emails so we finally had to ring them individually. Some of them would not move to Brighton until they were about to perform in May so if we wished to find them we had to have budget to travel to cities like London and Manchester. Some do not usually do rehearsals. Rarely there were artists who would do much before the first delivery date. I finally only managed to contact two artists while the rest of the group seemed not to have made much effort to contact people. I was always unsure if it was only my responsibility to do networking( as it was not clarified in roles). I filmed with the Brighton uni students and a local comedian but not much of my footage were used (I will submit all my preliminary footage in the journal). We had a conflicting idea about if we should use my footage from actual artists as there would be only two of them so it can look abrupt inserted in the middle (including interviews and some of artists' producing process on a bus). They would rather use some random but vibrant footage of street artists in Brighton to meet the brief of a colorful, exciting, edgy and wacky music video (my interview clips look too formal). The reason they gave was that it was firstly only a draft and secondly audiences would not care if people in the video were artists from fringe or not. There was only need of giving a vibe about the city in May. We ended up producing a decent music video of living in Brighton but it lacks concrete content about actual fringe festival (its artists, events coverage, three visiting representatives which we promised in the pitch). My footage about the two artists were not entirely used and we only had another member's footage as he invited his friend to be in the video and filmed her wandering in the town. None of us actually participated in his filming process and I did my own filming too. We are a big group and sometimes not everyone can make it for a filming simultaneously.


The client seems to be satisfied with our final product.

I always struggled in teamwork and I had two group projects this term so I visited my tutor for Creative Documentary and she suggested that I always actively do some research, plans and present my group members with them whenever a project was started. The secret to persuade others successfully is to show others you are organized and always possess evidence to show about your proposal so you can transform the group work into personal effort. In the industry after receiving project brief it is critical to raise as many questions about its form and content and do more research about the topic. It proves that we could have tried some other approaches such as animation-based video with which we do not have to worry about artists availability while providing the festival's vibe.

Production Timeline (Facebook Reference)

we started with Nessim's idea as he recommended a vibrant and exciting short advertising video but we seriously doubted if we are going to be able to capture so many moments in the actual fringe festival.

and then dan introduced two music pieces we could use for the background music.

Pitch:

General vibe:

-       Fast paced

-       Up beat music

-       DSLR filmed

-       Colourful vibrant

Target:

-       middle aged women

-       Their families

-       youth

How:

-       DSLR to shoot

-       Multitude of shots that capture Brighton’s vibe

-       Live performance, interviews

-       Landscape

Example: show clip – link to ours

http://vimeo.com/83989346

Technical: sound

This is the vibe for our video in preparation for our pitch.

and then karla briefly said her animation ideas.

and then we had a discussion

and then dan gives more examples about music and added some content in the vibe notes.

and this is the minutes and agenda for a meeting.

above is Karla's test animation work.

After the pitch

although we had nice fantasy about how the video is finally going to be, we actually didn't think realistically about the availabilities of people to be filmed. we didn't do anything for a few weeks in mid-term assessment while the other modules were taking much time as well but then i couldn't wait and started to contact people.

these are me keeping posting details about contacts.

and i finally found two artists.

and holly also got one but we didn't film her finally as it would just be a presentation.

this is how me and holly were contacting people and the other group members either focusing on the own work or doing nothing.

and this is the disagreement my group members had about the people i contacted as they didn't want to film them but obviously their initial idea is way too hard to be realised and they were still in the fantasy that we could do something amazing while not practically doing anything.

i emailed my client many times by myself and i got the artists list and i contacted people. but my group didn't really wish to use my footage.

this is the contact list:

and i filmed people i had contacted myself and informed the other group members as well. 

i contacted the comedian artists but it seems my group members didn't really care about my effort. and they posted this.

i contacted my client again for an extension of our first delivery date. i thought we could get maybe more fringe artists. but it seems my group didn't want the extension and they just wanted to get things done as soon as possible.

and then there was this friday when Nessim showed up and used most of his footage (for which none of us participated filming) to make the video we finally produced. they refused to use a lot of my footage which i thought was fine but i totally thought our video lacked any concrete content about fringe festival. those footage from Nessim are actually not about the festival at all but just some random street artists. the excuse they gave was that viewers won't know and they will imagine it is all about the festival. that's why my tutor finally said 'this is a good video about brighton but not the fringe festival'. but it won't be about fringe festival at all if they are not even using the footage of available artists whom i contacted for a long time, will it?

karla finally finished the animation part.

i contacted the client about the submission manner.

above is the post karla did after only me and her went to see the client again after our submission. the skate clip was taken by me and they thought it was problematic. we tried to get as much feedback as possible because we have done work but the client seemed to be satisfied and opinionless. 

Shooting Schedule (my own) +Equipment List

24/3/2014 I started doing some establishing shots. (equipment list: D7000 camera, and tripod)

26/3/2014 I visited the art fare group artist in a society of Brighton University for the first time. I did some interviews with them. (equipment list: D7000 camera, and Zoom 1 MIC, tripod)

31/3/2014 I filmed with Lauren as she had a group of photographers taking pictures of students acrobats performing on Brighton&hHove buses. (equipment list: D7000 camera, and tripod)

3/4/2014 I visited the art fare group again to shoot them in the middle of a meeting. I got some footage of them discussing.

In the evening I visited a local fringe comedian Ade Foiadellio who did a comedy show that night in Quadrant  (a local pub near the clock tower) and filmed he while he and a few other comedians were performing on the stage. (equipment list: D7000 camera, and Zoom 1 MIC, tripod)

9/4/2014 I did some establishing shoots on Brighton beach. (equipment list: D7000 camera, and tripod)