Production Diary 8: BFI Academy/Half Term

In the half term, I have unfortunately not been able to do as much work as I had planned as I have been extremely busy, however since today is Thursday, I would have liked to completed the Channels/Festivals and Research into Equipment tasks by the time I get back to school.
The primary reason for my being busy this week is actually very media related, hence the reason I thought I would mention it on my blog, plus the experience it is giving is significantly helping me in creating not only my music video but also my short film for my Film Studies.
A while ago, my teacher approached me and few others with an application for the Eastside Educational course, run and supported by the BFI (British Film Institute). It's a 10 week course which allows around 25 16-19 year olds aspiring to be film-makers to get together and complete workshops in all aspects of film making, as well as meeting industry professional and visiting places of interest e.g. 3 Mills Studios, London School of Sound. I was fortunate enough to be accepted onto this course, and without sounding cheesy, it is definitely one of the best experiences of my life.
As well as meeting professionals and visiting studios, the main goal of the course is to, within a group of 5, produce a short film, which will then submitted and showcased, and we will be awarded the Silver Arts Award. In the group there is a director, producer, cinematography, screen writer and an editor. I have been chosen to be the cinematographer, which is both a exciting and terrifying role as ultimately it is up to me to shoot the whole thing, and to hopefully bring to life my director and producer's vision on the screen.
This course runs every Saturday but in the half term it was on both Monday and Tuesday, and as it is an all day thing it limits my time to complete coursework, however it is 100% worth it. As the cinematographer, it is my job to not only press the record button, but I will need to have figured out in advance the camera angles, shot types and composition - as well as the lighting - is it going to be natural or artificial? Which side of the protagonist's face does the director want to be lit up? Luckily for me, I have a fantastic and cooperative group and there have been no arguments - yet! The skills that I learn from this role are going to help me so much with the development of my music video (and short film) as I am all 5 roles for that!
Here are some photos from the BFI experience so far:

Production Diary 7: Music Companies, Lyrics Analysis, Contact with artist, what next

This week has been very busy again. I have been mainly focusing my efforts on the research tasks, as ideally I would like to finish them all over the next couple of weeks so I can concentrate on the planning tasks and of course the actual filming of my footage.
As you can see from my tasks posted below this production diary, I have complete more tasks including the lyrical analysis of my song 'The Power of Love' - I found when analysing them there was actually a lot more religious overtones that I noticed more than when I was just listening to it, so maybe I could incorporate this into my video somehow?
Also I have made contact with Gabrielle Aplin's management and have asked them for permission to use the song. Though it is unlikely I will get a reply, it will be my 'safety net' if copyright is breached.
Also this week I have completed more tasks which I have added elsewhere on my blog e.g. initial planning ideas, which I did complete as I went along the research tasks because those tasks were helping me form initial planning ideas. As well as this, I have furthered my research into the genre of my music track - Indie - because I feel this will help in making final decisions in costumes, settings, makeup, camera angles etc. Over the next week or so I hope to make more progress in the research tasks and continue to venture into the planning tasks.

Script

Script for Music Video

Audience Research

I created as survey using the program Survey Monkey to collect data from my audience and find out a bit more about them. Please click the link to view the questions. After I have collected enough answers I will create some result graphs.

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/S8RJNRK

Here are the results analysed:

Contact with artist

In order to get complete consent from Gabrielle Aplin to use her song, 'The Power of Love' I wrote this email to her management James Barnes Music asking for permission. I told him why I needed the song and assured them that all credit will still go to them and that I would take none of it.

Lyrical Analysis of 'The Power of Love'

Research into my artist: Gabrielle Aplin

Vanishing from image effect

This is the opening scene from the film Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallow Part 1. I included this video onto my blog to show what I mean when I say I want to try and get the male actor appear to disappear from the image - just as Hermione does in this scene. I think I will probably use Adobe After Effects to do this.

Research into Music Companies