Day 11

          Tonight, I tried one of our props that's just arrived; the neon lights. They are 5 metres long, which I thought will be more than enough to do the writing "Chasing Highs". We are still not sure how big we want the writing to be, although we can adjust the size as we like.

          The lights are powered by 2 AA batteries, and it lights up pretty well. I really like how it looks. They also have different flashing mode which is interesting. The combination of the colour pink and green would definitely work well together.

Day 10

          This evening, I have arranged to film the performance scene with our actor. I have all of the equipment, although, there are a couple of props that we would like to use that are still not available. Despite that, we carry on filming and the clips turn out to be a success.

          At first, after reviewing the first clips, I noticed that the UV paint didn't come out as bright as I expected.

         With that, I thought I'd move the light closer to the actor and see if the UV paint gives out more. It turns out that it works better with the light being closer to the actor, so I decided to move the light. However, because the cable was a little short, it can only reach to the camera but it still works.

         Something I noticed when I placed the light near the camera facing upwards is it gives out a washed out effect which I don't like. So I placed it near the camera but facing toward the actor. When doing a close up shot, I can also spot dots or specs of dust on the actor's face which is quite annoying.

          Throughout the filming process, it was quite hard to keep the UV light close to the camera since my setup wasn't very good. This was my setup:

          In the end, I managed to get enough footage using different shots and different angles and we were quite pleased by the result.

Day 9

          Today, in class, I received some feedbacks for my poster.

          After receiving these feedbacks, it helped me to improve my poster as I realised a couple of things that is not quite right. I have agreed to do some small changes and keep the one that I like.

Day 8

          In this afternoon, we thought about another location for our filming around Cribbs Causeway. We were looking for a place that has bright lights and we came up with Hollywood Bowl to be the best one. They have an arcade area with lots of flashy lights, as well as laser and UV lighting around the bowling lane. They also have a VIP lane, which provides private lane and fancy seats and bowling pins. During that afternoon, we decided to email them and wait for their response. The estimated time for the reply would be 3 days.

Day 7

          As I need to do another photo shoot for the digipak covers, and I am slightly running out of ideas, I decided to do the poster since it has similar elements as the front digipak cover. This poster took quite a while to produce, especially when deciding what text to include.

         At first, I followed the same layout as the front digipak cover. However, as I gradually put some more work into it, I started to add more things which, in my opinion, made the presentation of the poster a lot more exciting. During arrangements, I thought of trying and adding a couple of things, such as the yellow boxes under the texts for the digipak cover. This might not be necessary since my idea is to keep the digipak covers looking simple, and by adding these it may result in the digipak covers to look a little 'too much'.

          After a couple attempts to shoot around Clifton Suspension Bridge, we realised that the locations we've planned are quite difficult to get to, especially to film in such a limited time. This requires a thorough planning beforehand. Not only that, transport and everyone's availability becomes an issue as well, because to get there, we'll need to catch the bus as I don't drive. Despite that, my partner offered to drive all of us to the location to film, but filming were mostly scheduled during the weekends which doesn't match my partner's available schedule. Moreover, we couldn't do film during weekdays as our actor has their own schedule and is focusing more on school. With that, we thought of re-planning the film location where all of us could access easily.

          In this evening, I had a spare time to go down to Cribbs Causeway, checking if we can use that location instead of Bristol Harbour Side and Clifton Suspension Bridge.

Day 6

          Today, I started on my digipak covers. I have planned the layout, with all the colours and rough idea of the images I'd like to put on the digipak cover.

          I already done a shoot for the outside covers for the digipak, so I decided to finish those covers first and come back to it later since I need to do another shoot for the inside cover.

          During the editing process for the front cover, I experimented with the tools in Photoshop and I made a lucky mistake. I used the Magic Wand Tool, erased some parts of the image of the artist's accidentally, and it turns out to be a cool edit. It creates a unique outline which doesn't make the picture look simple and sort of boring in a way because of the simple plain background. This is the front cover:

          I moved on to the second cover, which is the track list cover. I thought this would be easier to do, however, after putting everything together according to the plan, the cover looks boring and I don't like how it turns out. I tried to keep the simple theme, but it didn't quite work for this cover. 

          With that, I gradually add more things that would make it look a little more interesting. I added yellow highlight boxes on the track names; I also add another stripe of hologram on the other side which doesn't make it look empty.

          I really liked how it the outcome turns out. It just looks more interesting even if it is looks too simple.

Day 5

      Today, after school, I did a shoot for my digipak covers with our actor. It was a successful simple photo-shoot. I only brought a green bomber jacket and jeans for the outfit - the actor was already wearing a white school uniform.

          At first, I found that the outfit looked a little boring, until I directed the actor to do the poses I wanted and the shoot turns out quite nice. It was quite hard to get the picture of what I've imagined, or I was just not satisfied with the picture I took. Luckily, after a while, I'm starting to like the pictures and decided to end it.

           Here are some of the pictures I've taken:

Day 4

          On our music video planning, the whole performance scene would have UV light and the actors are going to be painted with UV paint. We were thinking to buy a small party UV light, a UV torch or UV bulb for the lighting, however, they don't give out enough light to light up a dark room.

          With that, I came to the photography teacher, ask if there is any available UV light, and the teacher lend me this UV light which could light up a room since it is quite large and more powerful. I also borrowed the UV paint that is used in this video, from the Photography class as they have a range of props available.

                    Good For You by THBD: https://soundcloud.com/thbdsultan

                    Creative Commons - attribution 3.0 Unported - CC BY                                                                               3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

                   Music promoted by Audio Library: https://youtu.be/-K_YSjqKgvQ

       Since we are unable to use the sixth form drama studio after school without supervision from the school staff, we were thinking of using the photography studio. However, I had a chat with the photography teacher, and he said the room is not dark enough. He proved it by creating a dark environment in the class and tried turning on the UV light. Therefore, he suggested to taking it home and trying it.

           I took the UV light and practice filming with it at home. I thought this practice would be a fail, however, it turned out to be a success. The only problem was there were so many objects in the room visible in the background as I tried the UV light. For the music video, we wanted the room to be plain without any object being visible in the background. Therefore, this could lead to another location planning, although we don't have as much time to do that. We might have to still do it somewhere around the house.

Day 3

          On Monday morning, I decided to go to Bristol to take pictures of our planned filming locations. I went to the Harbour side and to Clifton Suspension Bridge. The purpose of this is to get the idea of how we are going to film and which location or background we want to include. However, since I went there during the morning, we can't really see how dark it will be during the evening because we are planning on shooting around that time to include the lights.

          Here are some of the pictures I've taken:

Day 2

          I ordered a video light that could be mounted on a DSLR camera. This is for the night scene that we planned to film around Bristol area. It was interesting to play around with the light as it comes with 3 different filters that would change the colour of the lighting. The light can be tilted down and up, and it also has different level of light power, which means that it could be brightened or dimmed. I found this to be really handy since we don't know how the lighting outside is going to be.

                                Walk by ikson: http://www.soundcloud.com/ikson

                                Music promoted by Audio Library: https://youtu.be/szEfp07r5Cg

          This practice was a success as now we can see, roughly, on how the light is going to light up the actor's face. This was filmed in a room, and the light has not yet been tried outside. I think it could have a different affect when it's used outside.

Day 1

          Knowing that the firework display event is happening very soon, we decided to plan out the location we are going to film and get in touch with the actors to make sure that they are available.

          There were two venues that we were looking at as they are close by to where we live. Since they are held in different days, we were planning on shooting twice for the firework display scene to make sure that we get all the footage we needed, and in case we need to re-shoot. Unfortunately, the actor couldn't do it on the 3rd of November, which leaves us to shoot on the 4th.

         On the day, 4th Nov, I came down to Thornbury Mundy Playing Fields as the event was held there. We filmed during the bonfire and firework display. We were planning on having a dark black background when shooting the actor's face from the front. However, the lighting was not very good as there was a huge white light at the back to light up the place.

Much footage of the bonfire and firework were taken as we are going to use it as a transition clip.

       I did an experiment on a couple of things whilst filming, which includes me playing around with the zoom and the focus point. It was interesting to see the footage and we liked it so much.

We also liked the shot of the actor's face during bonfire since the fire gives out a really nice warm lighting to her face.

          Unfortunately, I didn't do a lip sync scene in that location and when we edit it, we realised that we need some. Since we can't do a re-shot, we thought through it and came up with another idea which will be the actor singing in a dark room with spotlight in black clothing and simple make-up. This clip would be useful to fill in the gaps that we have on our editing.

The sketch of how the scene is going to look: