Starting the Final Task

My name is Anjun Wu, and I have been taking AICE Media for about half a year now and through this educational process, I have learned a lot about the filming and post-production of film. I feel that I have numerous ideas on interesting stories and themes that can be incorporated onto the wide screen. From my AICE Media class, I have learned the technicalities of film production, but in reality, this class has allowed me to dig into my creative conscious and output my ideas into a medium. Since completing my commercial and music video project, I feel that I have gained new skills like organization and time management. For our final project we need pitch ideas to start off our film. A pitch is an idea, the plot of a film that can be summed up in one sentence. For example, we have three pitches to choose from. The first one is going to be named Hit(Wo)man, which is basically a vengeful lady tries to prevent a friend from falling into the arms of the wrong guy, by going to the extremes. The second pitch is called 235 and revolves around the aftermath of a nuclear disaster that reveals deeper secrets about the town it took place in. The third and final pitch is a romantic comedy that employs extreme situational irony as road blocks in the two protagonist's lives. 

 Our group consisting of myself, on the right, Nyaria in the middle, Katie on the left and Preace on the left in the bottom picture.

Editing for Music Video

   For editing the music video we used Pinnacle Studios like last time. After we dumped the raw footage to the computer we started to synchronize the video with the audio, 'Thrift Shop' by Macklemore and Ryan Lewis. We wanted to tell the story we imaged in pre-production. To emulate the original Thrift shop video, we made sure to have the right costumes and setting to fit the theme of the video. We took the rough footage and transferred it into the editing software. It took a while to load and process, we thought the program had crashed initially, but eventually, it prevailed. On this shoot we filmed with 1080p quality on my own camcorder instead of the schools since the battery on the school's camera was wonky. Our first scene was the one with Joe, the owner of the Little Thrift Store, pushing my partner Preace on a shopping cart across the establishment; this acted as the establishing shot. We followed up with a cut to the Goodwill where we started the fist verse of the song. I found that syncing up the external audio with the movement of our mouths took a lot of work and attention. I constantly found myself tinkering and slightly adjusting the audio to match the sound in the film. One of the shots that we thought we needed to edit a lot was a transitional shot from me to my partner to display different parts of the lyrics. Instead, on filming day we just decided to use a flash pan as the transition from me to my partner. We then added all the other remaining parts of the video and concluded by adding a fade out and title card at the beginning. We thought about adding extra filters and lenses on the footage but ended up not doing so as we thought it would cheapen the video. the video ended up being a little over a minute and ten seconds. We followed all conventional music video stereotypes and felt that our video conveyed the same feeling as other multi-million dollar music videos. 

Filming of Music Video

   We had already established where we were filming (a local thrift store and a Goodwill) prior and started the day by going to my partner Preace's house. We enlisted his brother to help do some shots that the two us alone couldn't do, like the tracking shot in a part of the video. Our gear consisted of the school's camcorder, a tripod, my own personal camcorder, and two SD cards (one personal and one from the school). Since my friend lives in Miramar, we decided to find a local thrift there and ended up stumbling across The Little Thrift Store. The owner, Joe seemed cool a ecstatic that we were filming a music video, let alone it being the song Thrift Shop, which popularized the notion of thrift stores to kids my age. Joe also helped us in one shot with a shopping cart shown below: 

   A lot of ideas were floating around to how the cinematography would work in this project. Some shot ideas were scrapped and others were improved upon. During a shot at the Little Thrift Store, we planned to shift the camera while it was on me to Preace which ended up looking choppy. Instead, we used a flash pan to create a smooth transition from character A to character B; it ended up pretty nice. I almost forgot to mention that without Preace's brothers help filming that sequence and the project in general, it wouldn't have turned out as well as it did. The next location we filmed at was a Goodwill. The look of a Goodwill is different from the aesthetic of a local, small thrift shop. Racks of clothing lined the store and is useful as the shots that required us to rummage through and examine the clothing required a lot of space and clothes. Not to mention that that particular Goodwill had a giant clock that we could play our pun to. Before I forget, costumes played an important part in our project since we wanted our video to embody the flashy and individualistic nature of thrift store fashion. The chains, the pink hat and robe all echo the confidence attitude shown in the original music video. Overall, our filming was great. It only took us a day to film and in that day we had accomplished a lot and learned a lot about camera and angle composition, whether one scene could gel well with the other and how to tell a story with film.

Us at the Goodwill

"Dressed in pink..."

Storyboard for Music Video

   

 Our storyboard starts off with the introduction of the song with an establishing shot that has the melody play as we walk with swagger. We are all wearing eccentric pieces of clothing to establish the mood and aesthetic of the video. The shot shows the thrift store to set the location. A shot that I had wanted to do was take a tricycle and ride it towards the camera and as the tire eclipsed the shot, that would be our transition. The next shot is of us entering the shop. We then cut to me and my partner in flashy clothing walking down the isles of clothing racks as we mouth the lyrics to the song. We then walk to center hallway as we do our dance number and performance. There's an upcoming scene where we replace an expletive with showing the audience us holding a clock to add comedic effect. A problem I can foresee us having is the write our way around the expletive words in funny and creative ways. The use of props that sound like the expletive is how we are going to attempt this change. The next few shots are of us just rummaging around the thrift store finding pieces we like. Another shot I would like to do is top-down shot where one of us throws a clothing item and the camera is at an above high
angle so that the shirt and fly into the camera; this
could also act as transition. The final scenes are of us
trying on outfits and vibing to the music as the video
fades to black.

Planning & Procedure for Music Video

Theme and organization: Our music video will revolve around the euphoria from shopping at the thrift store. The original music video by Macklemore shows the protagonist wearing eccentric clothes at a local thrift center whilst rapping about the benefits of buying quality goods at a cheap price. Our aim is to replicate the same tone and establish an environment the mimics the original video.

Setting: We plan to film in a local thrift store, with permission of course, and a Goodwill. In the original video, they show two sets, one that is reminiscent of the classic, local thrift. While the other looks like a regular chain thrift store, like Goodwill. I want a certain aesthetic for our first scene. Choosing a  local thrift with a certain retro aesthetic is essential for the tone of the video.


Example of the location aesthetic

Actors and Props: The main characters in this video will be myself and Preace. We will be wearing flashy, eccentric, 80's themed clothing with chains and coats to parallel the look of the original video. Our props will mainly include the different outfits we'll wear throughout the video and the accessories we'll wear. In one part of the song and expletive is used to describe a penis, so we'll replace that with a clock, a play on the rhyme of the two words that add a comedic effect. For background and extras, we'll try to enlist some of our friends to act as extras.

Production and Set: Obviously, to film this project we need some help since we are only a two man team. Preace offered the help of his brother, who is an amateur film maker to help film our in project. We plan the shoot to happen over two days, but if not we an make due with one. I will be directing and choreographing the sequences. Yes, there will be certain, small dance numbers that will have to be reviewed and practices, but we a considerable amount of time to go over it.

Music and Interpretation: As stated before, we will be closely following the themes present in the original music video. Our outfits and cadence will imitate what was shown in the video. We will be playing the music as we go over our shots to keep track and pace and get the cadence of the song. In post is where we'll actually incorporate the music as well as edit down certain parts of the music as we have to meet time constraints. 

PreMusic Video

  Today we are starting our journey of making a music video. We had previously done our Gatorade Commercial and learned a lot about filming and editing of a film project. There were some difficulties with editing but hopefully the new laptops will relieve that struggle. We will be using the song “Thrift Shop” by Macklemore & Ryan Lewis. Obviously, we will be using the PG edited version of the song since the original has profanity in it. The theme of the song is “ball’in on a budget” which is making the most out of a limit amount of money in a thrift store. The premise is quiet entertaining since the mis en scene of the video give off fun and quirky vibes.

Some conventions in the Thrift Store music video is the use of old, flashy clothing styles. Fur coats, button ups, baggy jeans, and assorted shoes are common place in this video. The use of pre owned and somewhat worn out clothing has a certain charm to it. The idea of “retro” clothing is trendy and can give the video a sense of character. The actors in the video will include myself and my partner Preace and maybe some extras. The attitude of the video is one of confidence and self expression. Wearing these clothes requires confidence to pull it off.

Placing the music video in a thrift shop and goodwill will be appropriate since those are classically thrifty places. Filming in a thrift store provides that added realism to the film and give it tone of joy and youthfulness. We will not be exactly copying the video, but we’ll be providing our own twist on the video. Some of the same themes and calling cards will be present in the video, but it will creatively different.

Gatorade Commercial Finale

   Doing this Gatorade commercial, I learned the many intricacies of film making. The process of filming was a long journey. Trial and error was prevalent throughout the process. Me and my partner had no prior experience in film making and it was learning curve to produce and edit the film. We knew that the premise of a Gatorade commercial revolves around the refreshing quality of Gatorade and how it rejuvenates athletes to keep on training. It’s obvious that the aim of a sports drink commercial is to convince the audience to buy the product. In our commercial we attempt to show the effects Gatorade has an how it give athletes an edge and continue their training.
   Filing of the commercial took place over 2 days and consisted of me and my partner, Preace. We had to use school equipment to film, so there were some draw backs in the process of shooting. First of all, the equipment we had was out off date and slightly broken. In fact, on our first day of shooting, our camera had died because it was not fully charged prior to our filming time. We did have access to tools like tripods and an SD card reader to dump our footage into the desktops. Speaking of desktops, the whole rooms' desktops were slow and simply did not work. We literally could not start the editing process until the next class period. The next class period, we had gotten a hold of some laptops to use as our editing device. The laptops were much more usable than the desktops but they still had some issues with processing power.
   Even though we experienced all these pitfalls, I had learned many valuable lessons in the process of film making. I learned that one has to be persistent in getting the right shot and that can mean staying gout in the filed for an extra couple of minutes to make sure the you get the shot you want. This process also drove out the more creative side of myself. Formulating interesting shots and transitions had really open my mind to the numerous possibilities of expression through film.