Story Boarding Blog

Making the story board was a daunting task. We wanted to integrate the lyrics literally instead of metaphorically. This would add a little bit of fun to our project and keep the viewers involved. Our first 30 seconds of the song would be easy because there was no words. For the first couple seconds, we would have a moving shot of a Chic-Fil-A drive by to show our location. Then, we would have a close up of the Chic-Fil-A Sign. From here, getting closer to the words, we would take a pan of the inside of the restaurant. Then, we would transition to a pan of the inside to really characterize the restaurant. We also plan to give effects on these transitions and add flare to the shot. Also, we also need to add a fade in to start off the music video. 

For the second half of the video, there is words so things are more tricky. We start to incorporate people and the use of fire. We start by showing a Chic-Fil-A burning to show it bing closed on Sunday. From here, we cut to showing a church to show what is open on Sunday. Our next shot was tricky because we did not know what we wanted people to wear. We went back and forth between people wearing all black and white to show uniformity. We have them taking a selfie and putting their phone in their back pocket. We toyed with the idea of using a gram cracker as an phone for the lyrics "put the gram away." We decided this was not a good idea as some people may not get the hidden reference. We wanted to leave this shot for a few extra seconds to really drive the point home of people not being on their phones on Sundays.

The last 15 seconds were the hardest. We started by having our whole group members praying to follow the lyrics. We still are undecided as to what we are going to wear. In the middle of our circle, the Chic-Fil-A bag will be burning to show the closed on Sunday aspect. Next, the song talks about a serpent, so we are going to have a Chic-Fil-A bag, then we will open it, and the snake will be inside. This is going to be a hard thing to do because incorporation of a live animal is always hard to do. We want to do a close up of this snake to show its detail and really sell the scene to the viewer. Next, we want the final ashes of the bag burning to show the end of the Chic-Fil-A. This would be a good way to close as we started with the bag fresh on fire. Then, we will fade out to complete the video.

The first box is a scene of the Chick-fil-A sign. The next is a pan of the Chick-fil-A sign. The next is a close up of the sign. Then it’s another close up of the sign. Then it’s a pan of the window of Chick-fil-A. Then it’s another pan of the window. The next is a bag burning. Then it’s three people praying in a circle. Pan of the church. We open Chick-fil-A bag and there is a snake inside.  Next is a person taking a selfie and then putting away a phone. The last of the bag burning and then the ashes. 

Music video research

At first, we were having major issues with our groups. Another pair kept trying to steal our group members, and there was a whole argument over who got who. Eventually, I ended up with who I wanted, Alex and Jorge. We ran through several songs like "Start With Me" and "90210," but these songs were ruled out because they cursed and we wanted to stay away from this in our projects. We ended up picking "Closed on Sunday" by Kanye West, this song fits into the rap genre but it isn't typical, it is very slow and doesn't really embody that classical rap sound. We liked this song because we thought it would be slow enough to add all the effects we wanted, but fast enough to not bore the audience and lose their interest.

With the song "Closed on Sunday", the first 40 seconds of the song is a instrumental. Our group got the idea to shoot B-roll for this section of the song. The B-roll will contain: Low angles, High angles, Tracking shot, Pans, and Tilts. We were also thinking about having the Chic-Fil-A write"Closed on Sunday's" on their big sign. After the instrumental is done playing, Kayne West starts to sing about how Chic-Fil-A is closed on Sunday's. For this we thought it would be best to, have the actors in the music video, dress up casually. Kanye usually wear jeans, shorts, and T-shirts in his music videos, which gives him the simple sense of style. The actors will look depressed, once arriving at Chic-Fil-A and noticing that it's closed. This scene will be a tracking shot of the actors and close-ups of their facial expressions. For the editing portion of our Music video, we will align our transitions in footage, with the lyrics and beats of the song. We shall add effects to make the music video visuals more appealing.

It was Friday and I was in New York when Jack called me. He said I was in his group for the music video project for AICE Media. He said that he wanted me to choose the song I wanted to use in the music video. At first, I chose the song 90210 by Travis Scott,  ur later realized that it curse a lot in it. So we decided not to use that song. The next song that I decided to ask if we could use was start wit me by Roddy Rich. Although this is a good song, the same problem reoccured and there was too much cursing. Then, I looked through my playlist looking for non explicit music to use, when I found Closed On Sundays by Kanye West. This song starts off slow and it doesn’t curse at all, which made me think it was a good song to use for the music video. We can film at a chic fil a since they are closed on Sunday's and is mentioned in the song. I can take a close up shot of the sign at chic fil à that says closed on Sundays. I can look for good scenes to use for good transitions and keying while filming for the video.

Editing the Commercial

Since the computers weren’t working for this class, I decided to just edit the video at home. I use a software called Final Cut Pro X. First, I had Jack send me all the footage. Then I uploaded the footage to the computer and moved it to my external hard drive. Then, I made a new library and project, and imported all the clips into the library. I dragged the clips into the timeline in the order I wanted them to be in. Then, I trimmed them down the unnecessary parts of the clips, and from here I was ready to add music. I imported  the music onto Final Cut Pro X, it was tricky to fit the meat of the music to the scenes of the commercial but I got it eventually. I started the music nine seconds into the commercial, I think this added some a nice effect that something’s about to start. I made sure to cut the commercial down to exactly thirty seconds as before it was at sixty seconds. Now, I can get into the specifics. For the ending, I sped up the running by 150% because it looked like I was running too slow. For the Nike sign and slogan, there were four steps. First, I had to look on google to find an image of a Nike swoosh that had black in the background. Then, I downloaded it and added it to the commercial for the desired time. From here, I added the luma keyer effect onto it. Basically, what this does is remove the black background from the image so it’s only the Nike swoosh. From here, I added the negative Fredy onto the image to turn the swoosh from white to black. Now, I added the prism effect on top of that to add the prism rainbow border around the Nike swoosh. Now, I went I to the coller correction under exposure, and made the darks as dark as possible. Now, I just repeated these steps onto the just do it slogan, and you’re done. One this was done I was looking it over and decided it needed some color correction. I selected every clip, and turned them into a compound clip. From here, I added the custom LUTs that I downloaded online onto the compound clip. I made and LUT be the “humble” lut. This made for darker tones and a slight blue tint. Up to here was easy, but exporting the video was a struggle. First, I had to export the commercial onto the external hard drive. Then, I tried airdropping the footage to my phone. Unfortunately it was too large of a file and it didn’t let me airdrop it. So what I ended up doing, is texting the video from my computer to my phone. Since o had to email it to the teacher, I tried to email it from my computer, but it for some reason wasn’t working. So I emailed it on my phone and put in the video as an attachment. Since the first draft of my commercial was so long, one minute, I had to find ways to shorten up the video. I went through the clips and found the ones that didn’t seem necessary, and cut them down as much as possible. I also took a whole scene, when u was walking it was really wasting a lot of time there.