Departure by

Artistic concept and ideas

efarrington2 — 2024-01-23 11:27:24 UTC

Our video captures the journey of travelling through the city of London and how we channel out the chaos with music. When discussing ideas, we observed people on different forms of transport and almost everyone was listening to music. To elaborate on this idea, we looked into what genres of music we all listen to and how it makes us feel. This is what helped us come to our final music choice.

Although this is our main idea, we also dived into some expanding ideas, one being ‘escaping reality’. We felt this could be a promising idea making the journey more unique and individual to our audience.

Song Choice

efarrington2 — 2024-01-25 14:19:39 UTC

We selected ‘Back on 74’ by Jungle. To select the song, we agreed that our dancer, Ebony, should choose a song they felt they could improvise and choreograph to best. Ebony picked an excellent song choice as it’s a feel-good song making us all want to get up and dance. The song was

also in the top of the charts at the time, therefore confirming to us that people enjoyed listening to

it.

Jungle4eva. “Jungle - Back on 74 (Official Video).” Www.youtube.com, 11 Aug. 2023, www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3lX2p_Uy9I. Accessed 8 Jan. 2024.

Costume

efarrington2 — 2024-01-25 14:47:12 UTC

When choosing costumes, we wanted to keep it to a simple street style, representing a ‘normal’ teenager. We had to think about how certain colours looked in black and white. Colours similar to purples, blues and red looked muddy with a black and white filter over the top of, so wearing a lot of

these types of colours would look to harsh against her skin and hair colouring. However, using these darker colours against a white piece of clothing is effective. Headphones were also needed as part of Ebony’s costume, representing their ‘escape’.

Colour Wheel

efarrington2 — 2024-01-25 14:51:54 UTC

Wickell, Janet. “Try a Few Color Wheel Basics When You Aren’t Sure Which Fabrics to Choose.” The Spruce Crafts, 6 Oct. 2021, www.thesprucecrafts.com/how-to-use-a-color-wheel-2821255. Accessed 8 Jan. 2024.

Our Story Board

efarrington2 — 2024-01-27 18:03:34 UTC

This is a story board we created as part of our planning process. As a group we all agreed to pick four key moments to appear in our video, which created a structure for us to work around. You can see that there are also symbols within the pictures that represent our decision to insert certain clips in black and white or colour, and if there is music or not.

The majority of our pictures are an accurate representation of our video, there being only one location change. In picture four we stated we were going to go into Central London, however, due to our tight schedules this was not possible.

efarrington2 — 2024-01-27 18:47:59 UTC

When researching, we came across this YouTube video that displays the realities of travelling through London. What drew us to this video the most was the creator’s choice to use ‘natural’ sounds such as the noises of crowds, birds, taxis. Although the idea of using ‘natural’ sounds crossed our minds, there was hesitance as to whether you would be able to pick up the sounds clearly enough over the wind.

Analysing our inspiration video it appeared to us that the editor had layered over the sound effects and being in the perspective of an audience member watching a video, it drew our attention and focus to these sounds and therefore we decided we definitely wanted to carry this idea into our

video.

Parker, Ethan . “LONDON - a Cinematic Travel Film | Sony A6300 | 4K.” Www.youtube.com, 6 Jan. 2019, www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eznsu308OGQ. Accessed 8 Jan. 2024.

Challenges along the way

efarrington2 — 2024-01-27 19:46:58 UTC

Although our process of making our video was relatively smooth, there were still challenges along the way. The weather was a huge part as was our busy schedules. We had dedicated Monday mornings to film however, as a result of the weather conditions we only ended up with approximately five usable Mondays. It was not ideal to film if it was too windy or rainy but due to forecasted storms, we needed to find a way to work with these conditions. To do this we avoided large areas of greenery as you would have seen the grass and leaves on the bushes moving too much and this could have looked a little aggressive. We did end up overlapping sounds over the top of the image shots to cancel out the noise of the wind. Frost was also a challenge that we had to be mindful of, temperature levels were cold, and we needed to ensure that there was not too much frost on the pavements and roads for two different reasons. Firstly, you would have seen in certain angles there was no frost, but in other angles there was, showing that we had filmed over multiple days. Health and safety would have been the second reason, we did not want Ebony, or anyone else to injure themselves on a slippery surface.

Choosing Locations

efarrington2 — 2024-01-29 18:12:46 UTC

Since our film represents a journey, part of our planning process was to solidify distinct locations to film in. We filmed Ebony’s flat door as our starting position and then decided to use this as the end shot as well, this would give us the feeling of a complete full circle. West Finchley was the closest tube station to all of us, so that was an easy decision to make it our main tube station. Originally, we had planned for Ebony to travel into Leicester Square for the dancing section of the video however, when we realised how time consuming this would we then chose diverse backgrounds some being a

blank wall, small grassy areas and an elevator. Looking over our video, the different scenery changes kept our audience engaged throughout.

Individual Roles

efarrington2 — 2024-01-30 11:57:18 UTC

It can take a various amount of crew to create a short film, and only having four of us we decided to

stick to what we thought were the main roles as follows:

- Karly Pirrie as Producer and Director

- Lily Stockley as Editor

- Eboney Schofield as Featured Dancer and Choreographer

- Myself as the Videographer

We did cross over rolls at various times to ensure cover if others were absent on a filming day or we

needed an Extra to play a member of the public. Deciding upon using a point of view camera angle,

it meant that sometimes other members of our project would also step in and film, which not only

saved us time but helped link different shots together.

Creative Process

efarrington2 — 2024-01-31 12:18:19 UTC

In our first filming session we walked to West Finchley and recorded Ebony, focusing on using the

environment around us, for example fences and leaves, to emphasis our concept of ‘natural’ sounds.

Reviewing this recording, we decided to rerecord most of the clips as we felt the footage did not flow together. Within my role of Videographer, I needed to think of an alternative approach to the filming. At this point we decided to cross roles over allowing us to have two people filming at once

enabling us to merge different angles knowing that Ebony was still doing the exact same choreography in the same location. Doing this technique did mean that we had to pay close attention to details such as the settings on our phone cameras and ensuring everything was filmed in

landscape.

In our video you will see that there is a shot of Ebony getting off a tube, this was filmed over two different time periods. This involved me remaining on the tube whilst filming Ebony getting off. Then, I got off the tube at the next stop, ensuring I aligned up with the doors that Ebony would get off from, so that I could also film from outside the tube. Referring to tube angles making sure we always filmed on the same set of seats was also important to give the illusion that we were on the same tube for the whole journey.

Looking back over the weeks, our group was particularly good in communication, organisation and creative skills, creating what we believe is an engaging short film.

Targeted Audience

efarrington2 — 2024-02-01 14:30:35 UTC

Originally, we did not want to have a targeted audience, we wanted people to relate to it in their own individual ways, whether that was a child travelling to school or and adult going to work. However, reviewing our concept we discovered that not everyone would choose dance to escape

reality, therefore we decided not to have a target age, but to relate more to performers and creatives.

Lessons Learnt

efarrington2 — 2024-02-08 21:12:57 UTC

Over the weeks of creating our video, there has been skills and techniques that worked well to produce our work, however there are things we could have done differently.

As a group, we were successful with communication, time management and problem solving. I had a responsibility within my roll to provide creative input and leadership to decide what camera angles and transitions were going to be used.

Reviewing over our finished product, there is a moment where Ebony is humming to foreshadow the song that will play later on. Watching the video you can’t clearly hear the tune of the song, this is due to the clip being cut too early we should resolved this if our editor extended the clip by a few seconds so the audience can focus on the tune.

efarrington2 — 2024-02-08 21:21:11 UTC