Green screen

Green screen is an example of chroma key compositing, which is a way of layering two images together. Blue screens are also used, but green is popular as it requires less light and image sensors in digital cameras are more sensitive to green, creating a clearer image with less 'noise'.

None of us have ever used green screen before so we have had to research the technique. 

The following are examples of music videos that use green screen:

Tony Christie ft. Peter Kay- Is This The Way To Amarillo

After some discussion, we decided that instead of using green screen, we will try to re-create a fridge as it should make the shot look more realistic.

Our Ghost Costume!!!

Ghost sheet before we have cut out the eyes - Annaliese

Ghost sheet before we have cut out the eyes - Matt

First problem we encountered - when drawing the outline of the eyes it left a stain on the back of the sheet...

After learning from our mistake the second sheet was done better, with no stains on the other side

Zara cutting out the holes

Teamwork of cutting the holes to finish quicker!

One eye successfully done!

The finished sheets! Matt and Annaliese

Close up of Annaliese's ghost costume



Close up of Matt's costume!

 To create the ghost costumes, we firstly put the sheet over the person who was playing the ghost and we leveled the sheet out so that it looked as good as we could get it. We then put a purple dot where the persons eyes were. After this, we laid the sheet down and put a bottle of water over the dot and drew a circle around the bottle. We then cut out the circles to have our eye holes and our final ghost costumes.
We encountered a couple of problems when creating our ghost costumes. The first problem was the purple stain which was left on the back of Matt's ghost costume, in the shape of circles. This is because the sheet was folded over when we started drawing the holes. It will cause problems in our music video because there would be some over the shoulder shots of the ghost, in which case the marks would be visible. To sort out this problem we are going to try bleaching the stain, or washing the sheet, if this doesn't work, we will just have to change and play around with some of the angles that were supposed to be in the video so that the mark isn't visible.
Secondly as you can tell from the pictures, the eye holes of the ghosts are a little too big. There is a lot more of the persons face visible than we had hoped. It isn't a major problem as there aren't too many close ups of the ghost so we can hide the fact that the holes are big when shooting the video. We also thought that we should colour in our eyes black so that the circles look dark and the skin and the eyes are not as visible. We will use face paint, and paint around our eyes black to give the ghost costume a better effect. We will test this out in test shot week, next week.

Our Target Audience

Our target audience is an audience who listens to 'Indie' music. 'Indie' music is mainly followed by teens, and it is very popular amongst them. This means our target audience is boys and girls aged thirteen upwards. Obviously there is no age limit on the people that enjoy the 'indie' genre but it is mainly enjoyed by the younger generation of males and females.
The characteristics of the 'indie' genre are quirky ideas, bright colours, funny concepts, and a retro feel. We feel we can live up to these characteristics in our video. This is why the music is mainly targeted at the younger generation. They enjoy the unique ways in which 'indie' bands work, with their 'strange' videos that don't always make sense.

What we have done:
To appeal to the target audience, we have tried to include as many of the characteristics as possible. Firstly we have the quirky idea of the lead singer being chased by lots of masked people, including a ghost dressed in a bed sheet. Secondly, we have tried to tackle the bright colours characteristic by filming in the sun light, so the whole video will be bright and sunny, even though the lyrics of the song are horror related. This gives a contrast which also adds to the quirkiness of the video. We have a funny/strange concept through the idea of the ghost and the fact that they will appear in everyday places e.g. the supermarket. Finally, we have a retro feel through that of the ghost who will be dressed in a very retro costume, where we'll just be using a bed-sheet, it is the old style view of a ghost costume.
As well as these characteristics, 'indie' fans do enjoy the performance aspect of the music. Many fans enjoy seeing their favorite bands playing live so we are going to capture this in the video by having some performance based shots.

Skateboarding shots.

Skateboarding video
For our music video we want to have a scene in a skatepark where there are some people skating and the ghosts and masked people take over and convert them. We want to add lots of interesting shots of the wheels and movement to add an abstract effect to the video and to make it more of an interesting piece to watch. In this skateboarding video there are lots of interesting shots such as a low angle shot watching the skaters coming over the camera and then a match on action cut to the skaters landing on the ground from the view of a camera placed on the round.
Following that there is a shot that we are definitely going to use in our video which is a POV from the skater which sees him picking up the camera, mounting the skateboard and then skating off after the other skaters. There is then a cut with the continuation of the POV of him skating after the others; the handheld shot giving the shot a sense of movement.
Another good shot in this video is later on when the camera is again placed on the floor but this time at the side of a half pipe and you get to see the skater riding past it with a good close up on the wheels.

The lighting in this video is also good as there is some glare from the sun but it is slightly overcast and cloudy like it usually is in Britain. I think the glare would be good on the camera as it can make a shot better by blocking parts out, highlighting some things and adding movement when moving the camera from the glare to normal lighting.

Test shot ideas

There are a few shots that we would like to practice shooting before we shoot the real video, as we need to practice the techniques in order to make them look effective.

We will do test shots for the following shots:

P.O.V from the eyes of the ghost as we need to make sure that we can see the outline of the eyes as well as what the ghost is looking at: we will need to make sure that Matt can be seen in the frame.

The 4-way split screen of the lead singer walking in various locations as although we have already practiced this technique, we need to make each frame equal in size and time the shots in sequence.

Green screen of the masked head in the fridge as we have never used a green screen before. We need to make sure that it looks realistic.

P.O.V from the skateboarder as we need to get the masked person in the frame, and also try to keep it as steady as possible so that it does not look amateur.

Dropping the orange juice as we want to be able to time the spilling of the juice with the shot of Matt's feet running away in the background, whilst making sure it is an artistically effective shot.

Supermarket Inspiration

This is the video that we got our inspiration from for the supermarket scene. The difference will be that the person who is being chased (in this video pac man) will be the lead singer of the video. Similar to pac man, he will be chased by a ghost, however the ghost will be dressed up in a white sheet. We want the people in the super market to have genuine confused and possibly scared reactions to what is going on around them. We will have to inform the authorities at the supermarket just to check that they are alright with it and that we wont get arrested like Remi Gaillard does in this video.
This video uses amateur handheld shots so obviously doesn't look as professional, we wouldn't want to have this style as our video wouldn't look the best quality it could. We plan to have a rapid succession of different angles and still shots of us running through the supermarket. We feel this would look better and more professional, and fit well in our video.
We want this scene to convey the quirky aspect of our music video. The reaction of the teen audience should be laughter.
We are going to use the ghost costume and someone will also be dressed up in a parrot costume as those two are full body costumes and we feel they will get the best reaction. We may use other masked people but we don't want to push our luck at the supermarket.

Location list

This is a list of all the places we will be filming our music video at.

Matt's house- the kitchen scene

Matt's Kitchen

The fridge where the head will appear which we will use green screens for.

Matt's garage- the band performance scene



This is where the performance scenes will be held. We will decorate this area to make it fit the video a bit more, maybe have it darker with candles, we are also ceating a back drop to go over the curtains or plain wall.



Oxleas woods- the wood scene

Dartford skate park- the skate park scene

Dartford Sainsbury's- the supermarket scene