Lily's A2 Media Blog

WES ANDERSON STYLE MUSIC VIDEO The next task we were given was to create another music video.  We had to plan, organise, film, and edit a Wes Anderson's style music video in under two hours. We got into groups that ended up as Megan, Daisy, Tazmin and I in one team. We did some research into how Wes Anderson usually directs his work.. Here is some of the research we used..  Just as with the tracking shot, Anderson’s deep-rooted love of symmetry in all of his shot compositions has taken shape over time. Traces of this trait can be seen in all of his early movies, of course, but cut to present, and his initial obsession has bloomed into full-blown mania. The man simply cannot resist the draw of reciprocal arrangement of props and characters in front of his camera. This attribute pops up in  Bottle Rocket  and  Rushmore , but check out everything from  The Royal Tenenbaums  onward, and it becomes more and more prevalent. T...

ONE-TAKE MUSIC VIDEO To add to practice and research, another task set by my teacher was to plan, organise, film, and edit a one-take music video in under two hours. We got into groups that ended up as Megan, Daisy, Tazmin and I in one team. Firstly, none has ever even tried to make a video like this, let alone created a one-take video, so we knew that this was going to hard, complicated and at the same time, fun. We were given the song, 'Grace Kelly - by Mika' which we thought was a brilliant and clear song to front our video. Quickly, we started to research previous professional and student-made on-take videos to see how it was done. Particular ones that stuck in my mind were the Ok Go videos, compromising of a range of weird running machine dances and science and paint experiments/domino effect videos. Once we had seen how much organisation went into these, we knew that we had to plan throughly but quickly because it may take a few tries to get it right, but each try was ...

'DRAGON'S DEN' PITCH PLANNING We were set the task of creating a 'Dragon Den' style presentation of our idea so far, so we expanded on our presentation for our plan so far to do this; giving a more detailed explanation of our ideas. We will then pitch this to a panel later in the week. Here is the power point we prepared: TL & LR

ANCILLARY TASK 2: PRACTICE ALBUM COVER This was our second practice ancillary task, after the recreation of a movie poster. For this, my teacher, picked names out of a hat and so, paired us together with someone new to work with. I was paired, luckily, with Noah Carolan. He takes Art Multimedia, and so has a vast knowledge on editing skills in both photoshop and adobe illustrator which came in very handy. We, then, picked a number between 1-6 and got this album cover to recreate: David Bowie's Aladdin Sane. We had several ideas on how to complete this best, but we decided to play to our strengths and began to plan. The theme of this one was makeup. All the album covers given out relied fairly heavily on makeup; on the face, on the hands, etc. We lucked out, getting an album cover that didn't require much makeup... but even so, Noah and I had no face paint of any kind between us to recreate the lightning bolt streaking down Bowie's face. So, instead w e printed ou...

ANCILLARY TASK RESEARCH  For this task, we had to create a 'talking head' video where we ask people on their thoughts about famous album covers and film posters to try and get more of an understanding of the consumer side to our ancillary task. Hopefully the information we gain from this research will let us know what makes a successful film poster or album cover and some things to avoid including; as well as giving us an insight into what consumers from different demographics think works. These are the questions we asked: 1. What makes a film poster/music album cover stand out from others? 2. In what ways can you think of film posters/music album covers linking to the film plot/music video/song themselves? 3. How much of a marketing tool do you consider a film poster and album cover to be? 4. As a consumer, what hints/tips can you give us in regard to making our own posters and/or album covers? Video by Noah Carolan

ANCILLARY TASK 1: PRACTICE MOVIE POSTER In different groups (different to our coursework groups), we were given an existing film poster. I was put with Jordan Rolf (below). We then had 2 hours to recreate this poster as close as possible to the exact detail and then upload to our blogs. We only had the resources we had come to the lesson with, so one group had a camera in their bag and we used our phones and computer but another group forgot their laptop so had to print things out of hand-edit it together. Immediately, we knew we had to take a photo who looked as similar as possible to Jim Carrey and was wearing a similar suit, so we went into a sixth form common room and asked a friend to pose like Carrey with a white background. Then we looked for photos on the internet of penguins, edited them, and arranged them into the photo. Thankfully, Jordan knows how to use photoshop very well and it wasn't difficult. After that, we closed in on the writing and to...

MY PLAN. OUR PLAN SO FAR: RESEARCH: To start off our A2 media coursework we did some reserach into existing professional and student made music videos for inspiration. From looking at these we realised that the music videos that had the most impact were ones with a mixture of storyline and performance, as it helped give the song and band an image for the consumer to associate with them. Some of the music videos that we thought worked the best also made the audience feel something in what they were trying to portray, whether it was happy, sad or even just interested by the content. The best examples that we found were: Ok Go - This too shall pass , The Lumineers - Sleep on the Floor , and The Strypes - Behind Closed Doors.  The kind of sisterly love we want to display: THINGS TO AVOID: From our research we leart what makes a bad music video as well. In the student  made videos we watched it became obvious that the easiest things to do wrong were lip syncing , ...

MUSIC VIDEO OR SHORT FILM? Our plan as a team, have decided that we want to carry on down the music video ideas route rather than diverging into short films. We thought that as we all haven't made a music video before, we wanted to try it and as we love music videos, we wanted to see what it would be like and if we were any good at it. As a group, we watch a lot of music videos in our spare time anyway, so we figured we have a lot of ideas about stories and artists, lip-syncing and ideas/settings/practicality. Based on our filming and editing skills, we also beleive that it would be well suited to ours to create a music video, rather than a short film because m usic videos are often much shorter than short films, which means that we have to get a lot of footage into just a few minutes. This however is a good thing, as I like to use only seconds of a scene and edit them all together to get a more dynamic feel.  Making a music video also gives us the opportunity to combine the crea...

OUR PRACTICE TASK EVALUATION What went well? Whilst filming, numerous things went well. Firstly, the weather was perfect for our idea. We had planned to film outside, so a rainy or windy day would have been bad for the film and the camera. It was hugely sunny and hot, so the lighting was perfect for filming. Our idea revolved around a relationship, and was generally happy, so bright, sunny lighting was perfect. What didn't? The main problem we had with our filming was organisation. This was in many forms; first of all, it was difficult to choose a date and place that was available for all of us. Some of our group don't live in Wymondham, so it was difficult for them to get to the location. Moreover, the task was just before our mock exams, so it was a rather busy time, so we struggled to organise a time to meet. Once we did meet at the location, we hadn't created a proper plan of our video, let alone what we were doing on that day exactly. Because of this, we ...