Whoops.

Okay, so we've been a bit bad about this blog thing.

To catch up:

Since the last post, we've filmed a dance routine, which was actually pretty much made up on the spot. The shots themselves were inspired by a video I've seen. From 1.45 in the video, we see two characters dancing, with a mirror between them.



We have used this idea, but instead using a brick wall just off Oxford Road and instead of using two actors, we have used Fatima, who plays the girl in our video. First, she dressed like a boy and did a slightly more male routine and we filmed her from her right and then she dressed like a girl and did a different routine and we filmed her from her left.

On Monday, we captured the footage and we used a split screen to make it appear as two characters dancing with a wall between them. Towards the end of the routine and the song, we see female dancer Fatima sink to the floor. The idea here, is to have images of Asaad flash in and to end the split screen. This is to show that by losing Asaad, she feels as if she's losing a part of herself, capturing the essence of the song and also I think, adding a bit more depth to it.

Since we have captured all the footage so far, we know which bits need to be redone and we also have a rough idea of how much footage we may need more of. We missed Thursday's lesson due to college activities, but we plan to continue filming during half term next week.

0.00 - 0.12: Establishing shots of Salford
0.13 - 0.22: Asaad crying on balcony
0.23 - 0.26: Transition to lipsync
0.27 - 0.51: Lipsync
0.52 - 1.43: Journey to Fatima's
1.44 - 2.10: Asaad knocks
2.11 - 2.14: Walks to window
2.15 - 2.22: Sees Fatima and Lamia
2.23 - 2.47: Talks at Fatima
2.48 - 3.02: Argument
3.03 - 3.25: Asaad and Syed Timbaland
3.26 - 4.06: Asaad and Fatima dance
4.07 - 4.50: Asaad fade out with Fatima

A Summary of the Last Few Weeks

In our group of four, the guys knew eachother and the girls (myself and Amal), knew eachother. This of course complicated the song choosing process, as we didn't know eachother too well and it was quite obvious that we had our differences. By the end of the lesson, we'd managed to narrow it to a few songs that we all liked, but weren't particularly excited by.
Finally, we decided on "Cry Me A River" by Justin Timberlake. Our teacher's love of the song had no effect on our choice whatsoever. Haha.

Justin Timberlake - Cry Me A River Official Video

However, just because we'd agreed on a song, it didn't mean it'd be smooth sailing from then on. Quite the opposite really. We'd drawn out a rough storyboard, which we didn't end up using at all, as we'd changed our minds about what we wanted to do as soon as we had a camera in our hands. The storyboard was a good place to start however, because it helped us organise ourselves slightly better.

For Asaad's place, Amal's sister allowed us to use her Salford Quays flat. We also got hold of two extra actors, to play "Justin's" (Asaad) girlfriend Fatima and her girlfriend Lamia. Fatima's house was also used, and we will be filming a dance routine at Parrswood Sixth Form's dance studio.

Where the original video shows Justin's revenge on his ex-girlfriend after he discovers she is cheated (this is only shown in the song lyrics), our video not only shows Asaad discovering his girlfriend with another girl, but also how he handles the situation. Where some aspects of the video are going to be performance (lipsyncing and dancing), the main of it is amplification.

Essentially, there are 5 main parts to the video. There is Asaad lipsyncing, his journey to his girlfriends house, catching the girls together, confrontation and also a short dance scene.

So far, save the odd days we've taken longer shooting than we expected and a small scare we had when we thought we'd recorded over some of our main footage, things have been working out okay. Today we captured all our footage so far, so we know which bits need to be redone and what is left to be done. For example, in one scene, it's supposed to look as if a door slides open when Asaad taps it, but when we captured the footage on Final Cut today, we realised that you could see my outline and my hand moving the door, which we didn't notice when filming.

Thursday we are going to shoot the dance and possibly reshoot the scenes in Fatima's driveway.