An Upcoming Event

On 27th November, our class is attending the Oxfordshire Schools Film Festival. This gives us the opportunity to view other short films produced by local students, as well as share some of our schools work. 

There is also a Q&A with Niv Adiri, an Oscar award winning sound engineer, who has worked on films such as Gravity, 127 Hours, Slumdog Millionaire and many more. This is an exciting chance to talk to someone who is literally at the top of their field. In preparation for this, we were asked to think of some questions to ask Adiri.

Because both Gravity and 127 Hours have to craft moments of complete isolation, I think it would be interesting to ask about how Adiri manipulates sounds to get that feeling of abandonment. For example in the scene below, the build and the drops of diegetic and non-diegetic sounds to create a powerful atmosphere -

The way the sound and the cinematography work together create stunning and emotive scenes, leading to other questions such as do you work on the visuals before adding sounds or do they work on them simultaneously,

This will all be very useful for my project, as although I am using a music track, thinking about the way I can use the sound and beat to emphasise my video and key shots and scenes will be a really helpful idea to discuss and think about.

Ancillary Texts

Its important to focus on the whole brief that I've chosen, not just the music video. We had to choose two out of three options:

1. A website homepage for the band

2 A cover for its release on DVD

3. A magazine advertisement for the DVD

I've chosen options 1 and 2. I've  just started to think about the website homepage for the moment. Before I began, I looked at artists of a similar genre home-pages.

For example Daughter's homepage is quite minimalist. I like this simplicity, creating a clean and sharp, professional looking website. I also looked at The XX's homepage, again very simple, yet effective as it is the symbol of their band.

What I noticed about all of the bands homepages was that they all have links, whether to social media such as Facebook or Twitter, also links to buy new music and merchandise. This interactive format allows an easy experience for consumers to learn and purchase from the bands. It is essential that I add these links to my own homepage. 

I have started to make my website using Wix, a free and easy tool to create professional looking website. Here is what I have created so far-

I have linked Blake's Twitter and Facebook, whilst adding a link straight to Itunes, making it easy for consumers to buy his music.  Using another website called Silk I have been able to create these graphic type designs. This makes an interesting and effective design. 

Below is some of the images I have created-

What I need to work on is tying this in with my music video, so that I can create a pack of three works that all correlate to each other. Although there is still a lot of work to be done on all of my projects, I'm really happy with the way its turning out so far. 

'The Bucket' - Kings of Leon

Recently I've been thinking more and more about the different editing techniques, not just colour treatment or overlaying, that I can use within my media piece. Looking for inspiration I found Kings of Leon's - The Bucket - music video.

I really like the use of the split screen and reflecting the clips to each other. I think it fits perfectly to the song, whilst creating an interesting watch.

I love how the multiple split clips give the video some movement, but I'm really interested in the four split screen as I think this would be a really interesting idea for my female and male character, having their close up faces mismatched together. I also really like how the clips reflect. Another good example of this is Katy B's Crying for No Reason where the reflection conveys emotion. I want to try to mix up both the techniques I've researched. My next step is to do some practise filming of my actors, maybe trying out using a kaleidoscope to enhance the effect.  

Editing Practise

In my previous post I talked about editing a shot for my main task. I have done several experiments with this clip that can be seen in the video below

Before


After



The first of my experiments, at around 2 seconds, is just a simple overlay with minimal colour treatment in order to make it lighter. What I like about this effect is that it gives a very haunting vibe as my main characters face is always staring at the viewer.
Secondly, at around 16 seconds, is again over layed the clips but I slowed each one down to a different speed to create the buffering effect. As the head turns for a second time I added a pinkish colour as it makes it more distorted and brings out the red of her shirt.
My third experiment at around 39 seconds, this time has three overlaying shots, again enhancing the buffering effect and emphasising that movement. I added an embossed effect to the second clip. This makes the clip lighter which I don't really like, however I experimented more with the embossed effect in my final experiment.
The fourth clip has the effect Severe Interfere which dramatically distorts the colours. I really like this effect as it gives it a creepy tone. What you lose in the one is the head turning at different times which I need to work on.


To further my experiments I will be seeing how these effects fit with the rest of my clips and the music I have chosen.

Inspiration

After re-watching Series 4 of Skins I was really inspired by a certain scene with Freddie and Effy where Effy is hiding under the bed -

I found this scene very emotional and wanted something similar in my music video. The connection between the two characters is evident within this seen and helps to make the scene more powerful. This is something I would like to achieve in my piece. 

After seeing Silvana DeFrancis photography (seen below) I was really inspired by this clean sharp image, but yet it still conveys emotion and a vulnerability. The enhanced contrast of this photo deepens the emotion and the effect which is an interesting idea to play around with when I start to edit my music video.

When I began filming on the 27th of October I decided to try an do a similar mid-shot. My attempt can be seen below. What I did instead of staring straight ahead at the camera I made my actor turn her head. In the music video this represents her turning away from my male actor and essentially their relationship. The enhance this clip I want to try to do some more sophisticated editing, perhaps creating a buffering effect as she turns her head to emphasise the movement. I will also dim down the colour to suit the tone of my video.

Actors and Costumes

For my music video I will have two main characters seen in the photos below. I have two costumes for each of the characters in my music video and thought I would describe why I chose these and what they mean within the video as costume is a major part of mise-en-scene. 

My male main character is a 18 years old. In the first part of the video he is seen to be wearing darker clothes as the mood reflects the tone of the video. In the latter half of the video I chose to have my male character wear a shirt and tie as he is supposedly having just been to work, however I did not want his look to be too clean and sharp as this is all supposed to be happening in his head so chose to have his shirt un-tucked and front button undone in both of the costumes.

My female character, (17 years old) seen below wears similar clothes to my male actor for the first part of the video. Again this helps to reflect the tone, but also I feel this is quite representative of what my target youth audience wears, creating a recognisable character. Her second costume is a white cardigan layered over a white lace dress. This seems to suggest innocence yet I feel with quite an ironic tone as the female character is supposedly toying with the boy and his emotions all the way throughout my video. I am aware that the second costumes for both my characters suggest a wedding vibe however I don't mind this as it again can be seen as ironic as their relationship begins to fail throughout my video.