Changes to the Music Video

Due to the feedback we recieved from our teacher about using Ashleigh as Alice's mother, we have decided to change the scene to Alice and her friend arguing, we will be changing the setting of the scene to make this clear. Ashleigh will still be in the music video however she will be Alice's friend, as this is more believable. We will continue filming this scene, and hopefully it will work out better and recieve better feedback.

I personally think that Ashleigh will work better as Alice's friend and we can also link this relationship back to when they are sitting next to eachother in the classroom scene as Ashleigh is embarrassed of Alice's behaviour and rolls her eyes at Alice.

Lighting Issues

All of our lighting will be natural lighting as our film is closely linked to realism. Here is some photo evidence to convey how we have experimented with inside light.

Firstly, we looked at how we could control inside lighting within the bathroom as the majority of our film will be located in this room. This image conveys the image with natural lighting with open blinds and main light switched off. This is rather dark and may affect our video.

By turning the light on we will be able to control the lighting more however this may look too artificial. As the light is quite small it gives a larger disadvantage as it gives the chance of more shadows in the room and this is a major problem as we do not want it to be obvious that we have filmed.

Another form of lighting in the bathroom is a small light next to the mirror where Alice will be standing in the film. We fear that the bright light near Alice’s face may give her a false sense of hope which will not work well within out video.

We also experimented with the blinds in the room. Closing them made the room too dark however if we open them we will be affected by outside weather conditions which are beyond our control.

By opening the blinds completely we were able to obtain a main source of light into our video. Whether it is sunny or not the whole room will always contain natural light from outside and will not add extra factors of chances of shadows. It is essential to maintain continuity throughout our video and so lighting is very important. 

5th Filming - Classroom Scene

Upon our fifth time of filming we chose to record the school scene, in which Alice and her teacher have an argument and Alice leaves the room. We were lucky enough to be able to use our own media teacher and the rest of our media class during filming which was very helpful. We made it so that Alice was sitting closest to the teacher, so that she was aware of Alice's actions of misbehaviour and not listening. We decided to have the teacher giving out work back to students and Alice would be the only person in the class that failed, and so an argument begins; Alice rips up her work and the teacher asks her leave, thus making Alice angry and she storms out of the room. This will then lead straight on to Alice leaving school and taking off her badge, she will then walk down the lane back to her house and remove her blazer whilst doing so, to be getting rid of all of the remnants of school from her appearance.

Here are the photographs that were taken during this period of filming:

These are the video's we achieved in this period of filming:

The first shots we filmed were general shots of the classroom and the lesson to allow the viewer to be aware of the environment and the start of the story.

We then decided to film our teacher giving out work to her class, and giving positive feedback which can be seen through her actions. However, when she got to Alice, who's work was not so good, an argument begins: 

We then filmed a shot of the teacher marking Alice's work, so that the viewer will be aware as to why she is so angry when giving Alice her work back:

We also filmed some reaction shots of the pupils in the class towards Alice's behaviour and the tension in the lesson:

 

We filmed the argument between Alice and her teacher in the two point of view shots, which we had planned to do from the initial stages, we also did a side view:

Lastly, we filmed Alice leaving the classroom/being sent out:

We will now edit this scene and ask for feedback from our teachers and peers.

Practicing Ancillary Tasks 1

After researching into the CD covers, I have begun looking further into the process and started to make basic covers which could be useful in our final product. I chose a random shot of Alice from the first go at filming just for practice. I decided to use Photo Shop to edit the background of the image, and then transfer the photograph onto In Design to add text. I will experiment with this photograph until we have our own photo shoot with Alice, as I need to practice so I am aware of what types of photographs I would want in the final product.

 

I have looked into copying the same picture next to each other so I can begin to look at copying different pictures on top of each other once I am able to do this properly.

This is my first attempt:

I am aware that this is not very good, however by copying the image back onto itself this has given me experience and I will now go on to try and copy other images onto the same photograph so I can be sure of what I would like my final ancillary product to look like.

 

I have continued to look at two different images from the first shots of filming as they are of Alice's face. I have used the 'clone tool' to copy one picture onto the other, however I am not pleased with the result, maybe once we have done a photo shoot and I have better photographs to work with it could look better, but at the moment I am unsure on this idea:

 

 

I think the images look to clear cut and messy, I will try and make it more transparent in my next attempt:

 

 

This image is a bit too close together in my opinion and I have now been made aware of how to layer images on Photo Shop and have managed to create this image below.

 

 

I have carried on to add a third image of Alice of her looking an opposite direction to match the one I have researched on Ellie Goulding:

 

 

The square outlines on the second and third layers is something I will ultimately change however, for a start I think that this is a good attempt and links well to my preliminary research into CD covers. I will continue to practice these ancillary task images until I am happy with the outcome.

 

Specific Photograph Research

I have started to look deeper into close ups and mid close ups of particular artists in order to give me ideas for my ancillary task of creating a CD cover. I have particularly looked at Ellie Goulding and her photo shoots, which I think will work well with our model, Alice. As they are both young and have blonde hair, we could also dress Alice to the same styling as Ellie Goulding if we wanted to use her as an icon.

These are the images I have been most interested in after researching:

I think the effect used in the two images above of the model moving and the camera capturing the picture to create the blurred image works really well and I think if I was able to create this for an album cover then it would hopefully be quite successful and I will try to achieve some type of research on how to do this soon on my blog as I feel it would be an interesting cover.

I like the close up shots in particular as they are more personal and I think they will work well with our music video song choice as the lyrics are personal and convey a lot of strong emotion. I think that the background in the photograph should be simplistic and not very busy as the main focus should be on the model and the message they are giving out with their song title. 

The main focus in the majority of these photographs of Ellie Goulding are her eyes and hair and I feel these are her main attributes and this could also work very well with our own model, Alice. Hopefully after this research I will be able to compare my own photographs to those I have researched to see whether or not I can fully achieve my ideas.

I have also done some minor research on an artist called Birdy, she is a fairly low key artist however I think that she has similar features to Alice and although they have different hair colours their hair styles are quite similar. Her album covers are also very simplistic, which I like as they convey a certain message to her audience.

Her expression in the photographs look quite solemn and naturalistic which I think is good as the song we have chosen to use is not very upbeat or too heavy. I particularly like the way in which her CD covers are presented with the main focus being on the image and the artist with the busy-ish background blurred out or just a plain background which allows the audience to focus just on the artist. The fonts used are very similar and I think that they fit well within the layout and I would appreciate being able to achieve something similar to this in my final product.

Research for Ancillary Task: CD Cover

Whilst producing a Music Magazine, me and my group also need to create two separate products. We need to make a CD Album cover and an advert for our music video in the style of a magazine advert. My group and I have discussed this and we are all going to make separate ancillary tasks and then compare them together in order to either choose our favourite one or create one together using aspects of the singular ones we have made.

I will firstly begin to research CD Album covers and decide which are the ones I feel will fit our music genre the best. The genre we are focussing our music tasks around is Indie Pop, I will research some Indie Pop artists and their CD covers in order to point me in the right direction when creating my own products.

I began to research general Indie Pop CD album covers and found these were the ones I liked the most:

I focussed mainly on the simple covers, with just the image and artists name as I thought it was most effective and allowed the viewer (me) to focus mainly on the photograph and the album title which is the main aspect of having an album cover. I like the way that bright colour is used against the stark black and white in these images, as it brings the veiwers attention to certain aspects of the photograph. I will hopefully acheieve this in my own work.

I then began to look at the artist that we have chosen, Pink, and to research her album covers. As we are using her song 'Less Than Perfect' I thought it was appropriate to have a look at her covers and how she interpreted her lyrics to arrange an album cover.

This is the single cover that Pink produced for the song that we have chosen. I really dislike this cover, I think it looks quite bland and tacky. Although it has used the aspect of colours along with black and white, however the colour scheme used and the photograph chosen, in my opinion, do not work well together. 

This is the back case of Pink's album cover. I think that the colours used are simple and work well however I think that the font is too close together and not very easy to read. However, I think the idea of using a different yet similar font for each individual song title is a good idea as it conveys the different meaning of each song.

 This is another single cover produced by Pink. I like the idea of using a pattern on the cover, however the photograph is unappealing to myself and I also dislike her outfit. Her pose is quite provocative and considering that our model is Alice, being younger than Pink, I doubt that we will have her positioned like this.

Pink is in the same position in this cover aswell, however he outfit is more revealing and she is facing the camera. I like this cover more, due to the colours used the layout of text and image together however I am still unsure of her pose and the composition of how she is presented as a whole.

After briefly researching into album covers, I will now go on to looking more closely at the way artists are presented in photographs on cd covers and how we are going to present Alice too. We will be having a photoshoot in the near future to allow us to experiment with different shots whilst decided which we think will work well.