"Sorry" Moodboard

I have used Pinterest to create a moodboard for the our music video, to demonstrate the overall aesthetic that we want to achieve in our final video. Creating a moodboard has allowed me to clearly identify the image we are trying to create, and it provides inspiration for when we are filming for our video. We wanted to use rainbow colours/imagery to be representative of the LGBT+ theme, and we wanted to use dark imagery to be representative of our protagonists inner conflict, and the subsequent misery this creates. Additionally, we wanted our characters to wear clothes similar to those we have included in the moodboard, as these are stereotypical 'edgy' clothing, and outfita auch as these are often worn in indie/alternative music videos.

"Sorry": The Meaning of the Song

One of the reasons that we chose to change our song to 'Sorry' by Nothing But Thieves was because we felt that the lyrics were really fitting in order for us to be able to portray the narrative of our piece effectively. We felt it was important that we developed a knowledge of the purpose of the original music video, and gain an understanding of the meaning of the song to the artists.

Using the 'Songfacts' website, we were able to gain the following information:

Point 1 - Conor Mason (lead singer) sings of causing heartbreak now he's moved on from being a carefree teenager. Joe Langridge-Brown (guitarist), who co-wrote the track with Mason, explained: "'Sorry' is about getting older and the difficulties associated with it. It's about looking inwards and facing your demons. The song hinges around a flawed individual who can't hold down a relationship, both to the detriment of themselves and their partner" 

Point 2 - Conor Mason told 'Kerrang' (Rock music magazine): "We made the setting feel dark, desolate and hopeless, which reflects the song. It's about looking forward, facing your demons and having a moment of clarity. The video is representative of that moment, where you have no choice but to face your true self. It's your last two hours on Earth, so, what do you do?"

Point 3 - Conor Mason told 'The Sun' (Newspaper): "It's a song about dealing with growing up, the problems you come across and the flaws you can't seem to escape"

How does this information relate to our music video and its narrative?

In regards to point 1, our narrative is about finding yourself as you grow up, and not being afraid to embrace who you truly are. In our piece, Hannah begins to succumb to her inner demons, and turns to drinking and smoking to help her cope with her questioning of her sexuality. However, as the piece progresses, she faces those inner demons and chooses to embrace her sexuality. In terms of a 'flawed individual', this relates to how Hannah views herself at the beginning of her piece. She doesn't accept her sexuality, and sees herself as being abnormal for it. This inner conflict driving her to drinking and smoking, as previously mentioned. Not being able to hold down a relationship could be compared to the relationship of Hannah and Josh, though Hannah does not end this relationship without a justified reason, so it does not compare exactly. Alternatively to the point made by Langridge-Brown, it was actually holding down the relationship with Josh that was detrimental to Hannah, not ending it. Though, fitting with his point, ending the relationship was detrimental to Josh's happiness.

In reference to point 2, we used a black and white effect at the beginning of our video in order to reflect the misery and isolation Hannah feels, and the darkness in her life. Hannah looks to her future, and her moment of clarity comes after her inner battle with her sexuality, where she decides to not try to suppress her feelings any longer. I think it is true that the narrative of our video is fitting with Mason's statement: "The video is representative of that moment, where you have no choice but to face your true self". Hannah reaches the point in her life, where she is unable to hide away from her sexuality due to how unhappy she is feeling, and her bad habitats she has developed as coping mechanisms. She feels as though she can no longer waste her life in attempting to live in denial, and can no longer live in the gloom and misery that this comes with.

Finally, point 3 relates to our video in ways similar to those that I have previously mentioned. It is Hannah, confused about her sexuality, and turning to alcohol and smoking to try to cope. She views her sexuality as a flaw, until she overcomes her fear and embraces who she is, though she faces the problem of breaking up with her boyfriend, Josh.

Contacting the Artist & Copyright

The song that chose to create our music video for was not our original piece, and we had no input in its creation process. This meant that it was essential for us to attempt to gain permission from the artist to use the track to avoid any copyright issues.

I took to Twitter to attempt to contact Nothing But Thieves, to ask for their permission for us to use their song "Sorry" in our production. Unfortunately, I was unable to gain a response, though we are hoping that we may hear back at some point. In order for us to avoid copyright issues, when uploading our piece to YouTube, we will state in the description that all rights of the song go to the artists, Nothing But Thieves, and we will specify that we are not attempting to take any credit for the track that we have created our video for.

From my production of the thriller opening sequence for my AS Level production last year, I learnt that YouTube have a copyright bank, which your uploads are checked against to look for any potential copyright issues. I knew this year that our upload would be marked that it included copyrighted content, and that this would mean the video would not able to be monetised. It is illegal to take credit for other peoples' work, and to earn money for this content, which is why YouTube have developed this very useful tool. Instead, the copyright claimants will be able to place adverts in front of our video, in which they will gain revenue from. They will then be able to earn money from the song being featured in our video, which means that we can continue to have the video posted in the site without having to acquire and pay for the rights to the track. This also minimises the risk that our video will be removed from YouTube.

Pictured above is a screenshot I have taken from the copyright page of our AS Level thriller opening sequence on YouTube. It details the content of the piece that YouTube has found in its copyright bank, which was 'The Abduction - Gennessee". It shows that the the copyright claimant 'The Orchard Music' on behalf of 'Noble House Records', and that the copyright policy that had been applied was that the video could be monetised by the copyright owner. The disclaimer towards the top of this page states that Ads may appear on our video, which is because the copyright claimant is consenting for us to use the track, as long as they can gain revenue from the views that this video obtains.

When we upload our piece to YouTube, the track will be identified by YouTube's copyright bank. It is likely that the copyright claimant for the track "Sorry" by Nothing But Thieves will lay out conditions that are the same as those that can be seen on our AS Level piece. This means that despite the fact that our video will include copyrighted content, it should be protected from YouTube removing it from the sight, as we are not claiming any revenue, or any credit for the track.

Filming Day: Party Scene

Location: Hannah's house

Date: 15th of December

Group members present: Hannah Martin, Jade Dibble and Jasmine Greene. Josh East was also present.

On this day, we wanted to achieve the 'party scene' shots for our video. We needed Josh, Hannah and Jade for this scene, and this was the only date at this time that we could co-ordinate us all to be at location to film. We wanted these shots to not only to demonstrate Hannah and Josh's characters relationship. We wanted them to show how Hannah was trying to pull away towards Jade's character, and to also use them to demonstrate the downward spiral of the emotions of the protagonist.

Much like what we found when filming inside using artificial lighting when we were filming the bathroom scenes, we had difficulties with the lighting of this scene. We managed to eliminate the severe grainy effect by swapping from using the main room light, to using a stage light lamp, as we found this was better, and created a darker scene, which was more party-esque.

Here is a video in which you can hear my direction of the shots:

Changing Our Song

Shortly after beginning the editing process, our group noticed that the footage that we had was not very fitting to our original song of choice. We had encountered struggles when filming in terms of being able to fulfil the grunge aesthetic that we wanted for our piece, which meant that the visuals were not suiting to the song. We did not realise that creating such looks for our piece would require the ability to hunt extensively for dingy locations, and a budget for obtaining the correct clothing and props. No members of the group have passed their driving tests, which means we were limited to what local locations we could use, and none of them seemed particularly fitting for the aesthetic we were aiming to achieve. We did not have a budget to acquire extra clothing, props and equipment, which meant that the overall look of the piece did not have the 'edgy' mise-en-scene that we desired.

We liked the footage that we had already filmed though, and we wanted to keep the same narrative for our music video. So, the search began for a new song. We needed to find a song that was from the alternative music genre, of which the lyrics could be interpreted to fit the narrative of our piece. As we are all frequent listeners to the alternative music genre, we took to listening to some of our favourites bands to search for a song. Eventually, we found what we thought would be the perfect song for us, which was "Sorry" by Nothing But Thieves.

The song tackles the themes of relationships and self-conflict. It describes an individual that is unhappy in their relationship, and as a result, this relationship is breaking down. It talks about overcoming your demons by learning to accept yourself. The lyrics of the song, however, are not restrictive, as there are no mentions of pronouns, and there are no specific details mentioned. This meant that the song was open to interpretation, which was exactly what we needed it to be. The song was more upbeat than our previous choice, which was much more suited to the footage we had accumulated, such as the shots that we took in Winter Wonderland.

Lyric Breakdown:

Editing: Adobe Premier Pro

Editing Day 1





Location: Bridgend College
Date: 12/01/2018
Group members present: Hannah Martin, Jade Dibble and Caitlin Elward







Unfortunately, I was unable to attend the first editing day with my group due to commitments for one of my other A Level subjects. However, I was briefed by my group on their return to school about what they had done, and they had shown me a clip of what they had put together.

The software that we will be using to edit our music video is 'Adobe Premier Pro' which, as a group, we have previous experience using. We used this software to edit our AS thriller opening sequence, and therefore, we could work this software to use very basic editing techniques. We employed the help of one of the editing experts at the college to instruct us on how to use some of the more complicated editing features, and we hope to be able to use them in our piece. For example, we were instructed on how to isolate a single colour in a shot, which we thought could effective in terms of highlighting our protagonist's emotional struggle.

The first editing session primarily involved creating a basic foundation of the video, by ordering the shots in the timeline of the programme. They used this session to cut down footage, so that only the shots that we needed were selected. This was a time consuming job, due to having ample footage, and multiple takes of some shots, to ensure we had choice when it came to editing. Due to the amount of footage we had acquired at this point, they found that it took quite a while to import it all onto the mac that they were using to edit on.

The basic outline of the order of shots that was created acted as a guide for us to evaluate what footage we needed to obtain in future filming sessions if it was necessary. It also provided a template that we could experiment with, and if we were not happy with the changes we made, we could revert back to this to reconsider how we would work to alter and improve it.


Further Editing on Adobe Premier Pro...

We visited the college on one further occasion after our first trip, in order to make more progress in the editing of our piece. However, we were told shortly after our second visit that we would no longer be able to visit the college to use their facilities due to health and safety issues, and lack of completed risk assessments. This proved to be a challenge for our group, as none of us owned the 'Adobe Premier Pro' software, so we could not carry on editing using this. We were forced to find different editing software that we had access to, in order to complete the edit of our music video, so we decided we would transition to iMovie. The need for transition prompted another issue for ur group, which was that we were unable to convert our current draft of the video from a Premier Pro file to one that could be edited on iMovie. This meant that we had to start our edit from scratch again, which was a set back to us. Thankfully, we had exported our draft as an MP4, so we could view what we had edited so far, and we were then able to follow this as a template to recreate it on iMovie.

Filming Day: Bathroom Shots

Location: Hannah's house

Date: 8th of December

Members of the group present: Hannah Martin and Jasmine Greene

Our aim for this filming session was to capture some shots of Hannah appearing to have a breakdown in the bathroom. We chose this location as we wanted to use the mirror in order to create some interesting shots, with dimension and depth to them.

Only Hannah and I were able to film on this occasion, as we decided to do it very last minute. It was not an issue to us, as it was only a very short filming session, as Hannah and I were scheduled to spend the evening studying prior to arranging to do this.

We encountered an issue with showing Hannah's emotion effectively on the camera. We attempted to create the effect that Hannah was crying, by her administering eye drops. We found that you could not see the fake tears on camera, so we had to brainstorm a way to demonstrate the emotion more clearly. As a result, we then applied heavy coats of mascara to her eyelashes that Hannah attempted to smudge with the liquid from the eye drops, to give the effect that her make-up was running. However, we found this to be ineffective, too. The make-up smudged too much and did not give the desired effect. Hannah and I decided that we would not focus on showing emotion through tears, and she removed the make-up. We decided that she would solely use her body language and facial expressions to portray her emotional breakdown. Our attempts can be seen in the video below:

In the bathroom location, we did encounter another problem; the lighting. Though the lighting appeared to be ok, the nature of the colour of the lighting meant that it was difficult for the camera to focus correctly. You can hear me telling Hannah about the difficulties that I was having focusing the camera, and trying to make sure the footage was not grainy:

Filming Day: Scenes with Josh

Location(s): Josh's house (Pencoed), Woodland's field (Pencoed) and the common (Pencoed).

Date: 2nd of December

Group members present: Hannah Martin and Jasmine Greene. Josh East is also present.

We wanted to use this day to film the majority of the shots in our piece that would be representative of the relationship between Josh and Hannah's characters. Josh had very little availability at this time, so we dedicated the entire day to filming all of the shots that we would need to be filmed in these locations. Unfortunately, there was very little availability with the members of our group on this day. However, as we had to work around Josh's availability in this instance, we decided that we must film despite only having two group members present. I was responsible for direction and camera work, as I had done on previous occasions, which mean that the footage did not suffer in terms of its quality and content, because I had experience in doing this. 

As we were attempting to display the relationship between the characters, we made sure to include shots that connoted a normal relationship. However, we chose to dress Hannah and Josh in dark clothing, as we thought this would be symbolic of the misery that surrounds Hannah's character in this relationship, despite it appearing to be a very stereotypical relationship. Of course, it was necessary for us to capture shots that displayed a time when Hannah did feel at least some happiness in the relationship, which we made sure to film with good lighting. These were often filmed outside, as the natural light was bright and the denoted a content mood. We believed that including shots that showed a decline in the happiness within the relationship would help to anchor the narrative, as the audience would be able to compare the shots in which the couple were happy, to those when they are not, providing an explicit demonstration of the fact their relationship was disintegrating.

Happy:

We used this shot to be demonstrative of the happy part of their relationship. We did this by having Josh show Hannah physical affection, and by having the lighting quite bright. However, we still wanted to show that Hannah was not entirely comfortable in the relationship, which we attempted to do by having her not react to the affection. Her body language allows the audience to perceive that she is uncomfortable with it.

Miserable: 

We used this shot to highlight part of the decline in their relationship. In this two shot, Hannah is positioned with her back to Josh. This suggests that she wants to put their relationship behind her and move on from this, and also, that she does not wish to focus on him as it would make her feel even worse. The contrast to Hannah acting unhappy, is provided by Josh sleeping in the background. This is reflective of how Josh's character is blissfully unaware of Hannah's character feels, and he feels very content in the relationship.

One difficulty we encountered whilst filming was attempting to achieve the birds eye shot that we wanted of Hannah and Josh lying in bed together. We only wanted to see their head and shoulders in the shot, meaning we wanted to achieve a close up, birds eye, two shot. Josh's ceiling is slanted above his bed, due to the nature of his house, which meant there was not a lot of room to achieve the shot. Additionally, I had initially planned to stand on a stool to film above them, but having the stool at the end of the bed meant the shot was not centred where we wanted it to be. Therefore, I had to get up onto the bed and stand between Hannah and Josh, in which I leaned over them to obtain the shot. This was safe, but as the bed is soft underfoot, it meant that it was difficult to maintain a shot that was not shaky.

Here are two clips that demonstrate my directing on set: