Group Meetings

Meeting 1
09/09/09
The first stage we had to do was to pick our own song as a group. We all had different ideas for different songs, We all had decided on 3 idea's each. We presented these ideas within our group and discussed possible ideas for each. A variety of idea's were included, and it was hard talking through them and deciding on the best song.
Our 9 songs were discussed were,
Lady Hawke- Crazy World
St Tinian’s- theme song
Taylor Swift - A place in this world
Britannia high - Picking up the pieces
Demi Lovato - This is Me
Girls Aloud - We Wanna Party
Katy Perry - One of the boys

Meeting 2
10/09/09
Song choice Meeting.
The first stage we had to do was to pick our own song as a group. We all had different idea's for different songs, We began the meeting each with a specific song choice and idea. These choices were:
-Ladyhawke - Crazy World
-Katy Perry - One of the Boys
-Girls Aloud - We Wanna Party
The Ladyhawke idea would be to have the three of us in a performance based video with lots of different costumes and locations. The costumes would reflect the different decades all the way from 1920's and old fashioned up to futuristic. This would reflect the songs lyrical content of living in a crazy world and the genre of pop would be good with all the different costumes.
The Katy Perry Idea was to have three different tomboys who fancy the same guy, as the video progresses the viewer notices that a boy fancies each of the girls for who they are. The tomboys all transform into girly girls in order to win over the jock before realizing the other boys who loved them as tomboys. This is however a very complicated idea.
The Girls Aloud idea would be very simple, just having three of us in the video wearing very glamorous outfits and in posh settings i.e. up market bars or clubs or shopping centers etc. This would fit the genre well and the lyrics would match in but it could prove to be slightly boring.
After presenting our ideas to the rest of our group we decided that Katy Perry - One of the Boys would be the ideal song choice just with a simpler narrative and a better song choice.

Meeting 3
11/09/09
Now that we have decided our song, we printed of copies of the lyrics. This was our first starting point at the ideas in which we would use for the video. We read the lyrics as a group and discussed possible ideas we could use at which points. We annotated the lyrics to help us plan all of our ideas and options that we had. This was a good brainstorming session and we developed a wide variety of ideas which we could choose from. However, working through the song did take slightly longer than we planned so will need to be continued in our next session. We also discussed the idea of who to use for characters. We decided on our cast, with the two main lead roles going to people in our group. We thought this would be the most reliable way of doing it, and also as we know exactly what we want done it would also be easier. We choose Charlotte to play the main artist, and Becci to play the bitchy girl. We also made a list of possible other cast members who we will look into using.

Meeting 4
14/09/09
We continued to discuss our ideas as a group working through each part of the song and the different lyrics. We finalized some choices and carried on discussing the ideas and what could be included in some shots. In the second half of this session, we thought it would be worthwhile to spend a little time creating some mood boards. We made two boards, on for a stereotypical 'bitchy' girl and another for the 'tomboy. We thought this would give us some more inspiration for developing a story and some strong characters to include.

Meeting 5
16/09/09
During this session, we worked on the final lyric sheet annotated with all our final and decided ideas. When this was complete and we were happy with the ideas, we started developing this into a storyboard to start to visualize it. While one person was drawing some pictures, the other two were working on the timing sheet. The timing sheet is very important, so we played the song and timed how long we would have for each shot. This was to help our storyboard and was to see how long we would have for each shot and part of the scene. Seeing as our video is narrative and parallel to the lyrics, this timing sheet would be very important to use. We are going to complete the timing sheet for homework so that we can use it next lesson when completing the story board.

Meeting 6
18/09/09
We carried on with the story board and finished the timing sheet in this session as it took time allot of time to complete.

Meeting 7
21/09/09
We discussed in more detail the settings and camera shots/movements and started to include this in our storyboard. I think the this session has allowed us to think very in depth about how we are actually going to do what we want and developing our plans in depth. This session went well and made us all feel allot more prepared and in control of the story.

Meeting 8
23/09/09
We put our song up on our editing suit and started to prepare a visual storyboard. This is to help bring it more to life and see how it all fits together and is the timings work etc. We drew the pictures and scanned them in and then imported and edited. This was really effective as it really brought the story board to life and allowed us to have an idea about how it all fits to the music and if it is effective etc. However we did not complete it in the session, so we are going to complete for our next session.

Meeting 9
29/09/09
We have started work on the shooting schedule and organizing our filming arrangements. We are discussing plans and keeping track of everything that we will need, and we have started to decide what shots we will do when and making a timetable about how to start filming. We have also encounter a problem with a member of our group and main singer having have broken her arm and her arm in a cast. This may is going to cause problems, so we started to discuss our options and discussing arrangements and plans about to overcome it.

Meeting 10
30/09/09
We are continuing our shooting schedules and discussing arrangements for filming. We are arranging times and everything we will need for the first shooting day which we are planning on being this Saturday for some of the smaller shots. We also spent a lot of time considering what to do about charlottes broken arm. We first thought that we could film all close ups right now, and then when her arm is out of cast then to film the long shots where her arm would be seen. However it now appears that she may be in cast for longer than expected and therefore this plan wouldn’t work.
Charlotte was a very good choice as our main singer and suits the role very well, so we are considering everything possible to see if we can overcome this problem.

Meeting 11
1/10/09
We are completing arrangements on the shooting schedule and preparing ourselves for filming on Saturdays. We are also starting a risk assessment for Saturday.
We have strong doubts about our original idea of characters. We were going to have charlotte as the lead singer, and we are concerned about how her broken arm may affect the video. Now she is going to stay in cast for longer than thought, it is unlikely our original plan of hiding the arm and saving the shots where you would see her arm until the cast was removed. We have to rethink how to overcome this. As charlotte is not available today, we are arranging a group meeting urgently for tomorrow as we still hope to get arrangements sorted and for filming still to go ahead on Saturday.

Meeting 12
2/10/09
We had our meeting and had to rethink alot of things. We decided that charlotte could not play the lead as it would effect the quality of the music video and would also ristrict how much movement she could do. We had two other people to choose from, Becci, within our group, or Elenenor. We didn't know who to use for the main singer and couldn't decide betweeen us, so we decided to do a short test shot. This was also usefull as a test for the lighting and as a practice. This was only a short shoot, and after watching the footage back and discussing as a group, we decided that Eleenor would play the lead singer.

Meeting 13
6/10/09
Now we have our main singer for certain, we can start to plan out filiming. We compared our timetables with her to decide when we could film and what spare lessons within school we had together. We also discussed with her about our music video and explained to her all our idea's and what we would need for her to do.
We decided that we would film on friday 9th october during two frees that our group had. This would be very convient as all members of our music video could particpate in this shoot.
Also, a second filiming date being monday 12th, as we could all leave at the the start of lunch and have the whole afternoon for filming. We would only need our group and Eleonar for theese shoots.
During this meeting, we planned a shooting schedule and risk assement and finalised the arrangements for friday and also started planning for monday.

Meeting 14
9/10/09
We started filming today. This was a very sucessfull shoot, and we got all our shots quite quickly. We filmed the classroom scenes within school and it was a succesfull shoot. We had no problems at all today. When we finished filiming today, we spent 10 minutes finalising arrangements for monday 12th so everyone knew what we needed and what we were doing.

Meeting 15
13/10/09
In todays lesson we caught up with all our blog work. We wanted to capture the filming we got yesterday, however the computer systems were not working so we couldnt do this. So we did some blog work and also collected all our work together on the same computors and made sure we were all up to date.

Meeting 16
16/10/09
During this meeting we continued with blog work, which included uploading the storyboard via youtube and shooting schedules, which had to be saved as images in paint before they could be uploaded. We are next planning to film on Monday 19th October and so another shooting schedule will be completed before hand. We have realised that we are slightly behind with our filming due to the problems with character choices at the start, however, we will just plan our filming more efficiently so everybody knows where to be and when and what to be wearing or taking with them to the shoot.

Meeting 17
16/10/09
During this meeting we continued with blog work, which included uploading the storyboard via youtube and shooting schedules, which had to be saved as images in paint before they could be uploaded. We are next planning to film on Monday 19th October and so another shooting schedule will be completed before hand. We have realised that we are slightly behind with our filming due to the problems with character choices at the start, however, we will just plan our filming more efficiently so everybody knows where to be and when and what to be wearing or taking with them to the shoot.

Meeting 18
19/10/09
We tried to set up our myspace page. There was alot of problems with this and we were unsucuessfull. Firstly there was technical problems with computers and internet. When we finally found a computer to use, we then had validation problems with setting up a new account. To overcome this we made a new email and account for our artist however there was still validation problems.
We carried on trying, and eventually Myspace allowed us to make a new page. So now we can also start work on this alongside the direct work for the music video.

Meeting 19
21/10/09
There is problems with the computers and the softeware we need to use, so we were unable to capture in this lesson which we wanted to do.
Instead, we discussed about our star. We talked about her image and representation, and we then focused on her name.
We want a star name which stands out and is very quirky to suit her image, however when it came to picking one it was alot harder than we thought. We had alot of difficulty with this, as we couldnt find an approiate name. We used the internet to look for unique names, and we also made lists of possible names and stage titles.
At this point we have come up with many potential names, however none that we think are perfect for what we want.

Meeting 20
22/10/09
Now the new programs have been installed on the computers, we started capturing all our footage we have so far. One mistake we made was not blacking out the first tape beforehand, so the timecodes kept resetting. This made capturing take longer and also a little fiddly. This also gave us another chance to view all of footage so far. We are happy with everything that we have however are aware we still have more to do. We want to focus on uploading and editing what we have, and then filming the remaining scenes whenever possible in order to use our time wisley.
This also enables us to get a accurate outlook on what needs to be filmed to complete the video to as high quality as possible.
We are aso starting to discuss ideas for the CD cover and Myspace by researching futher into this and creating a deeper understanding towards the conventions needed to successfully represent our artist.

Meeting 21
23/10/09
We continued to capture our footage, and while charlotte was doing this, Becci and Me looked at trying to set up the myspace again. We were succesfull this time after making a secound band email but this time using Google mail.
We also continued discussing our band name, and after a long time and going through alot of choices and names, we decided to use Poppy Hale.
We choose Poppy becuase we thought it was postive happy name which stands out, but also is realistic and not to fake. It also suits perfectly the genre and type of artist she is, a young modern solo artist.
Even though she will be known as mainly just Poppy, we decided on her last name being Hale. This is becuase it suits Poppy, but also is a simple and realistic last name which shows she is a real person.

Meeting 22
2/11/09
During this lesson we wanted to prepeare to do some filming later in the day as we still haven't got all our footage. However, due to circumstances the camera was not avaible for today and filming couldnt happen.
So, we focused on starting to edit. As none of us had used this program before, all 3of us worked on editing together as we were learning the basics together and could show each other what we knew ect. We found this program farily easy to use, and when we knew the basicd of what we were doing and how to do it, we started to feel fairly confident. One thing we did relise was how long that this will take. It took us all lesson, so a hour to edit and get only a little bit completed. So we decided that we would have to organise ourselves. We all want to edit, so we will each edit when we can. But within the lessons, instead of all 3 of us sitting around the computer editing together, we will find it more productive and get on with other work.

Meeting 23
04/11/09
As there was only 2 of us in for this lesson, we both worked on editing. Editing is going well, and we are progressing well through the video. We enjoy editing and putting the video all together, and finally seeing our footage being put together. One thing that takes a while to get perfect is lip syncing and getting it to match up with the speed of the song. It has been fiddly getting it perfect and at the right time, however we think it is going well and we have no main problems with this. We got alot acheived through this lesson and are pleased with how the video is looking. We did the spagetti words which was fun putting together and think it works really well for this video. We also have now completed the beging on the verse before the main crucial chorus. We are really happy with this, and is it the part before the big impact chorus of her transforming. This section is important for the storyline, becuase it is showing her main reson for changing and it was important to represent this right for the audince to follow the storyline.

Meeting 24
06/11/09
This lesson was focused on editing again. As we are putting it all together, we are noticing a few small gaps and shots that we want to improve and refilm. However we still have to complete the ential filming intop of this. We don't want to fall behind on the filming becuase of the editing, so we are trying to find appriate times to film with everyone availble. This is hard because our actors all have thier own studys and commitments so we have to find a time that everyone can film. This is made harder by the fact that it is now getting dark much earlier, so the best times to film is during daytime however our actors can't do weekends so we will have to do free's at school and lunchtimes. Also, we have changed the location of our final shots. As we are looking at the footage, we have decided that it is probaly better to move away from school for some scenes. Even though it is set in school and is relvent, we think we can choose some very good and powerfull locations which will be effective for the ending.

Meeting 25
10/10/09
There was only 2 members of our group availble today, so we foused on editing again. This is coming along well the video is looking good. There was no problems, only the hard sections of cutting up each shot and then spending time getting the lip sync right which is time consuming. We are very impressed with our footage we have of the shoes walking along. This didn't take as long as we thought it would, however it was a little time consuming working on the speed and trying to get it run into one continous walk instead of shot by shot. We also changed where we put this in the video, as we thought the line 'over summer something changed' is more relvenet to shoes as it showing her change into a girly girl and experimenting with differnt shoes etc. We are very happy with how this looks

Meeting 26
13/10/09
Again with the lesson we are editing. While one member of the group is doing this, the other 2 also helped but discussed and made some idea's and sketches about the Myspace and CD cover. We know we want it to be fun and quirky, appealing to our target audince and also selling our new artist.
We also decided on a genre each to go and analyse a myspace each so we can see how other sucessfull people have done it and what it includes.

Meeting 27
17/11/09
Today we decided that Charlotte was to continuing editing the video, Lauren updated blog work and made sure that we was all up to date and Becci completed her MySpace analysis. We also made a decision that Becci is now in charge of the CD cover, Charlotte will continue with the editing and Lauren is going to start the MySpace page. We will obviously still need to communicate as a group and keep each other up to date with what we are doing and to share ideas.

Meeting 28
18/11/09
Today Charlotte and Lauren went through the footage that we have already edited and made a list of all of the shots that we have not yet filmed and extra shots that are required so that we can create another shooting schedule for Friday 21st. This therefore gives us a lot of time to get the characters together and to give them warning of the costumes and times that are required.
Becci continued with sketches for the CD cover and researching into what would work for the cover of our single.

Meeting 29
19/11/09
This lesson we continued editing and Becci focused on doing some plans and drawings for the CD cover.With editing, We focused on the secound chrous and also the use of transactions. We think the transactions between the scenes added more varitey and stopped the scene from looking boring. The transactions we worked on today was with the beads shot, we explored the differnt types of transactions to use and eventually we found one which we thought was effective as it overlapped and made the shot intreasting. We also had a discussion about what shots we could film when and also discussed filler shots that we need. We were planning to film this friday, however it is children in need and all our actors will be dressed up with make up etc so it wouldn't be worth our time becuase when we have them all prepeared and ready then half our time would be used up, so we will be unable to film on friday.

Meeting 30
20/11/09
In this lesson Becci was ill, so charlotte and lauren worked on editing. We touched up what we already had, so focusing on the lip syncronisation and shot transistions. We also had a little rearrange, just shortening some shots we thought were a bit long and etc. We now can see that our video is comming along well, however we still do have more shots to film. We have the ending shots, and even though we know excatly what we want to do and where and the plans, we can't find an approiate day to this with enough time.
Instead, we are planning to use a hour in monday that we have a free lesson to go up the highstreet and film. We are filming a new idea that we had, this will act as an insert for the begging of the song. We didn't expect to have this gap at the beggining, so to overcome it we have the idea of our main chacrater sitting still reading a book as a tomboy, and then having people walking past and being busy. We will then speed it up making it much faster so have lots of people walking around while she is still. We like for this idea as a basic establishing shot of the singer at the start and think it will be effective and intresting with the fast speed.

Meeting 31
23/11/09
Today we went up the highstreet to film for a hour. This went very well and smoothly with no problems. We are happy with the footage we gained and think it will look effective. We then used an extra hour at lunch to upload this footage and start cutting up the relevant peices we will need.

Meeting 32
24/11/09
Charlotte was not in today, however as Becci and Lauren had 2 frees in the mourning aswell as Elenor and Oli S we decided to film. We filmed the ending, which even though was time consuming there was no problems during this shoot. We filmed within school, at the link.
We also filmed another shot becuase we had time, of Oli and Lauren's reaction at seeing Poppy transformed. This was succesfull first shot and was a very sucessfull shot that we can insert.

Meeting 33
25/11/09
During the leson we all had differnt things to focus on. Charlottee captured all our footage we had,and started editing it and picking the relevant bits. Becci planned the photoshoot which we will be having tommorow, and lauren worked on the Myspace finding a background and starting the pressrealse. This was a sucessfull session in which we progressed in our work.

Meeting 34
26/11/09
During the mourning we had free's, so we did our photoshoot. This was very sucessfull. As we had two hours we had time to prepeare elenor and do her makeup and hair etc. We were all very happy with her apperance and the photos that we got. We got a variety of images which we could use any of them for the cover. We thought about props that we could use, as the photo is her as a girl, so for a few pictures we used the basball cap to add the boy image into it, becuase that is what the song is about. And we also used bubbles for a few images, thinking it would highlight her indivuality and stand out to the audince. However when we uploaded the images we decided our final image becuase we thought it was the best. It was a simple pose and think it had a big impact. During the lesson we had in the afternoon, we were still editing the footage we got. We had a problem becuase the footage of the ending, we wasn't sure if the footage was good enough for our video. We are not sure if it looks right in the video, but we have come to the decision to work on the editing of it and see if improvements can be made that way.
Becci started work on the CD cover, picking fonts and background etc, now we have the main image work can start moving with this.
Lauren updated meetings and also helped with the CD cover choices we were being given. Each of us during this week in our own time at home have looked at Myspace's and done analysis of them, this was too help in the making of the myspace. We also refresehed our minds of some sucessfull CD covers as we would be working on our one of this.

Meeting 35
27/11/09
In the mourning we had a shoot which went very well. We filmed the ending and it went very well.
becci worked on the CD cover whlist Lauren and charlotte finished editing all the footage we had and capturing the shots we got today. We also decided to reshoot the ending scenes because we thought there was room for alot of improvment, so we planned filming for monday. We rethought the scene and have changed the setting, to move away from school. We also plan to film some inserts of close ups for the start of the video and the little sections where we have a small gap, for example we need her singing 'make out' in a differnt outfit. Theese filming sessions shouldn't take long and should be the last main lot of filming we have to do.
Becuase we are going to be filming and editing during the start of next week, at home, Becci will be making the finishing touches to the CD cover whlist lauren works on the myspace. During this lesson we also discovered a problem. We made a normal myspace instead of a music myspace.We think this was a a mistake made becuase of the trouble we had with the emails and g up the orginal myspace, so therefore we will make the correct one which lauren will spend time working on at home and then Charlotte will be filming close up's of the tomboy getting ready. This work will be done over the weekend.

Meeting 36
30/11/09
We filmed during the morning of today as we had frees. Filming went very well, it was quiet dark outside however our filming was taking place in a wooded area so didn't effect the scene that much. We also filmed the inserts for some gaps we had unexpecedly come across.
During lunch and the afternoon, we captured and edited all the footage we had and our music video is almost complete. We have one more line to fill in, and then it will be finished. We are very happy at how the music video is looking at this point.
Becci has completed the CD cover which we all agree is also looking very good and what we wanted it too look like.
Lauren is working on the myspace, however because we started it again the myspace website is different and we are struggling to get the layouts and information we want in there.

Meeting 37
01/12/09
Today we made a few editing adjustments to the ending sequence to improve it. Lauren also worked on the myspace and writing up the pressrelease. On thursday we have are attending a music video conferance which we hope will give us some background into making music videos and what improvements we can make.

Meeting 38
4/12/09
The music video conferance we attended yesterday did insight us with alot of information concerning what makes a good video ect.
We also filmed at lunch our last shot we needed. It was of the diamond ring, and we had been unable to do it at previous shoots becuase we didn't have the ring, however this was a very quick shot and was easily done.

Meeting 39
7/12/09
Today we focused on finishing the editing and inserting that last shot. We now have a completed version of our video which we are all happy with. One very obvious improvment we are keeen to do is a close up. This is off the bitchy girl (lauren) giving an evil look. This will only be very quick shot, but will be a improvement from the one we have which we feel doesn't fit in. We feel the rest of our music video is sucessfull and we are very happy with it.
Lauren worked on the myspace and updating new information on the blogs, while charlotte and Becci were in charge on finishing touches.

Meeting 40
8/12/09
We filmed the reshot however was still unsucessfull. This was becuase the clothes lauren were wearing did not completely match and you could still see this even though it was a closeup. Also because of the time when we were filming, the excat location was not availble becuase there were of been lots of students on the break whcih would interupt the shot.
So we are planning fully to do it as soon as possible in the same location with lauren's presented as the same and also with the black jumper. Hopefully next time this shot will be sucessfull and then we can fit it in as the final part of our video.

Meeting 41
9/12/09
Today we worked on the blogs and Myspace. We are also starting to consider our evaulation. We will be doing this indivually, however had a brief conversation about how each of us are going to do it. We all want to do it as visally as we can.

Meeting 42
11/12/09
Today Lauren and charlotte were in the lesson and we worked on the myspace. We wanted to put a picture at the top of the myspace page, and we know we can do this using a html code. However all the ones we could find were incorrect sizes, so we spend this session trying to find one that would work. We have also been discussing the approachs that we can take the the evaulation. We are doing our own evulations, but we brainstormed together all the differnt approaches we can take for each question. We are all going to consider our own indivual appraoches over the weekend that we can use for each question.

Meeting 43
15/12/09
This lesson we tryed to encode our video as it is all complete. This will allow us to hold a audince viewing and put it on the projector screen for a bigger viewing. Whlist the computer system was doing this, we all started to plan how we will do our Evaluations. We are doing indivual evaulations however sharing ideas as a group and sharing some resources, such as question 2. We have decided to do this a voiceover, and will each indivually have things to say but to combine it as a group so we can talk about everything together as we did it.

Meeting 44
16/12/09
Today at lunch we did a viewing. We were very suprised with the turn out, as many more people turned up than anticpaited. The viewing went well, and we handed out questionaires which we had already prepeared for this. This will give us a wide insight into what people think of our video.

Meeting 45
04/01/2010
We have all returned from the school hoildays now. We are all still inviduvially working on our evaluations, in which we did through christmas hoildays as well. We want to do a voiceover as a group for question 2 which we will plan to do this week. We are hoping to complete our evalations soon.

Meeting 46
11/01/2010
During the last week there has been alot of snow and school has been shut etc. Becuase of this there hasn't been an oppertunity for us to get togeteher to record question 2. Instead we have been working indivually on our other parts of the evaluation and hopefully this week we will be able to do question 2, when school is back to normal and we will be together.

Meeting 47
13/01/10
Today we all had a free lesson, and as we were all planned and ready, then we recorded our question 2. This went well, but did take longer than we thought. We will now edit it together and also whenever any of us our free.

Meeting 48
Since the last meeting, we have all beeen finishing our indivual evaulations and working on editing question 2 together. The project is coming to a close, with the final deadline for everything and the whole evalation by friday. We are confident we will be completed by then becuase the only thing we need to finish now is question 2 editing together and then upload. I am very happy with my evalation.