Starting to edit

Filming part 2.

We filmed on friday in sixth form a short scene with the white board projecting our time-lapse and we wanted Ella to stand in front of the board so that the video was projecting on to her!

The silhouette looked very effective and hopefully will look good on camera too!

Also we tried out getting Ella to mouth along a line or two to the song! 


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Today we filmed the most part of the inside stuff for our music video.

We finished our filming in the half term and gathered round to my house to film the bath type scene.

The props and equipment we used were...

- The tripod and camera

- A Lush bath bomb

- Flowers

-The disco ball 

- A disposable camera

For the costumes we wanted Ella to be wearing something really quite natural and light so when Ella brought round a few dresses we choose one that was white and flowy to go with our feel for the video.

 The bath bon which looked really good when fizzing up did come out a sort of orange type of colour, one me and Anna weren't 100% sure on. So for the colours we may change them and mix up the colour throughout the clip. 

We also filmed the scene in my bath tub at night time around 8pm so that we could turn the lights off and use the disco ball as well as play with different lighting. The disco ball actually worked out really well (even though it didn't work) and gave a really nice feel to the scene with the multi colours. 

Analysing a CD Cover - Lana Del Rey

I choose to analyse a fantastic music artist, someone who I've been a huge fan of for years since 2011.

Lana always keeps a generic sort of look with her CD covers , she always is seen posing on the front of the cover straight faced.

All photographed by her sister Chuck...

http://www.yourgirlchuck.com/#/lana-del-rey/

http://www.yourgirlchuck.com/#/lana-del-rey-4/

These are her most recent albums under the stage name 'Lana Del Rey' (albums not in order of release).

Lana keeps certain themes throughout her albums...

-She always has the same font in big bold writing

-Apart from 'Honeymoon' she is the sole thing that the audience will focus on

-She keeps a specific colour theme in the font

-She keeps a neutral straight face on her portraits

Analysing ONE specifc CD cover

I wanted to narrow it down and analyse one of her covers and I choose to look at the 'Paradise edition of Born to die'.

Genre 
Lana's music genre can be described as dream pop, indie pop, baroque pop and rock music. Her music is often quiet sad with her singing about love and heartbreak.  She definitely captures the dream pop atmosphere in this album cover through the sun kissed lighting in the portrait and the 'born to die' title.  It gives the audience a feel that the music is going to be quite slow and meaningful as the album cover seems very calm and artistic, its not bashful and in your face with striking colours.

Lettering/ Font styles
Lana keeps the same generic theme for her fonts in all of her album covers, she like a really bold clear font so that the audience can identify that this is her music and album.  Generally she has her name at the top then the title of the album beneath her. In born to die the title of her name is slightly folded behind her portrait, possibly to focus on her more. 

Image
Centred in the middle of the album cover is Lana the main focal point of what the audience want to see, she keeps throughout her first 3 album covers the same stance of being in the middle section of the image and looking into the camera. This looking notion into the camera creates a connection with the audience, possibly drawing them in more to the cover. in ways her images are iconic to her and her fan base as this is what they expect to see from her as an artist.

The location of the portrait also seems to have a very tropical feel to it with palm trees and water, this could be represented as it being her paradise for the 'paradise edition'. She is pictured in a type of swimsuit costume which also reflects the paradise idea of tropical paradise.

She did also release after this the 'Tropico' short film which features a few of her songs from part 1 of the paradise edition.


Colour
The album in general is very rich, therefore being represented with rich colour in the font and image. The titles have a golden colour present in them, not only for the richness of the album but the fact it is a paradise edition of the album, so its extra special so needed extra attention to colours.

Inspiration for the bath scene

We also wanted to do a scene in the bath, and I went onto Pinterest to find a few pictures for inspiration we could take ideas's from...

We definietly want to use the flowers and use a bath bomb to give us colours and ideas to mess around with on the day we film this! 

Analysing a Magazine Advert - Florence

I decided to analyse Florence and The machine's Magazine advert (or what I cloud find as an advert) and see what things reach out to the audience and what needs to be in an advert. 

On this magazine advert its advertising the fact that tickets for the artist are going on sale.

There are some key features which show that this is a clearly a imagine advert and make the audience interested more.

Colour.

In the advert there seems to be an almost grunge feel with the colours that the artist has chosen, the image which is centred is actually the album art featured for the front cover of the album. It seems that that brightness has been dimmed down, with the contrast being increased so colours seem more vibrant. As the album was titled 'Lungs' they are the main focal point that they want to audience to be focusing on, so have portrayed them to be very vibrant and standing out.  The small flowers all around the individual accentuate with their increased contrast of colour again add to the drawing in of the vibrant Lungs.  The distinct colours are very grunge in the photo and outside the photo the only colour is black and white, perhaps to help draw focus onto florence in the middle.  

Rabbit heart

The XX are known for very simplistic album covers and adverts, often just being black and white or possible marble type colours. Florence may have incorporated their black and white features as normally she may have gone for an old vintage back ground or possibly grungy photo/colour. this may have been down to drawn the audience in more that The XX were being featured. 

Titles.

Clearly positioned at the top is the artists name and the special guest which is going to be featured at a show she is playing, the font used for the name is iconic to both Florence and the band but also The XX. They possibly did this so that form a far the audience can clearly identify who the artists are! Also positioned below the centre photo is the dates and place where the show is going to be, this is in big bold writing again centred, keeping the audience more drawn in and less likely to look away due to it being in the middle. 

The titles are also all in black and white, maybe doing this as a way to get capture attention in all lighting that the advert may be viewed in!  The white stands out and is clear to read due to the bold font used, especially in the date and place!

Position.

The first thing the artist wants you to see is the image in the centre, this is why it is the centre piece and the biggest portion of the advert.  However they also position the titles of the artists at the top acting as a title for the whole advert. The way florence is positioned and is the only person featured shows how she is going to be the main act that the audience will see that day, as well as The XX.

Image.

Florence is the lady in the image and is the main focal point for the advert, as I said before she is the biggest part of 'Florence and the machine' band and is the one who is the singer in the songs. This image was also the cover for her 'lungs' album and as a point of that her own lungs are emphasised. This may have been done for a number of reasons, as a listener of Florence I think that the lungs are shown profoundly due to the way she sings. She has this voice which you can tell she sings deeply from her lungs with the amazing vocals she produces in 'Dog days are over' and 'shake it out'.

Spectrum

Conventions.

As for the conventions, Florence and the machine is an Indie rock band form England, they're known for their dramatic and eccentric production and florence's amazing live vocals. She has also been described as a mix of rock and soul music. The advert shows usual conventions of music adverts, with a close up portrait of the artist, bold striking titles to capture and standing out colours. 

Album covers - For inspiration

Here is a mood board of a bunch of CD covers I love and like.

For the rest of our project we have to create a digipack of an album front and back cover with 4 inserts inside, I put some relevant and iconic album covers together to help give us ideas and inspiration for what we would want on our digipack.

Filming part 1.

After discussing our ideas and what we plan to actually film we planned to film on the Sunday the 2nd of October and go to Ashton court on this day to film the more outdoor type of scenes.

These are some images of when we went to film...

The 'hair hearts shot' from our story board

We wanted to add in the element of futurism with the mirror and this almost Alice in wonderland aspect 

Alice in Wonderland

When actually going to Ashton court and finding a good set up we put our equipment under a huge tree which on reflection mirrored a lot of Alice in Wonderland

We had multiple shots of flowers and the mirror, including things in the mirror, creating this idea of false reality and how things are perceived? 

This was a shot when Ella didn't realise I was taking it, she was walking around holding flowers

This is a group pic while we were out for the day, I'm pretty sure we had finished filming then and decided to document a successful day!

Note: We also had other parts to film and decided that this would be best in the half term to film!

Costumes, Props and Equipment needed for filming (overall)

COSTUMES

For costumes we were quite specific in what we wanted Ella to wear due to the songs lyrics, the artist and the vibe that we wanted to carry out in our video. We actually went to her house after sixth form and looked through her wardrobe to try and find the best clothes to wear!!

We settled on this vintage cream tie up at the front blouse and also a charity shop vintage golden lace skirt, me and Anna both agreed that it went with the vibe that we wanted to portray and Ella looked super lush!

This was what Ella wore in the video when we filmed at Ashton Court

PROPS

We had quite a few props to use and bring to start filming for our music video. We were going for an earthy vintage look and to complete this we used the props to help! The props help us to fulfil the genre and conventions of not only our song but also our music video, they're often the part that the audience like to focus onto creating excitement and a focal point!

I bought the flowers from a shop and we used them in multiple ways 
and in different shots

Anna bought the rocks and stones, also the glitter as well! And we thought that added to the nature aspect of using the Earth  

Again the flowers we used in multiple ways, on the floor, in Ella's hair, behind the mirror, in the bath. they were very much a re-occuring feature for us!

Other props that we used were...

• Glitter
• Mirror's 
• Disposable Camera
• Candles

EQUIPMENT

We had multiple pieces of equipment that we wanted to use in our video to be able to get the best results possible, this consisted off...

• A DSLR camera to film (Canon 600D)
• A tri-pod to steady the camera
• Then vintage pentax camera 
• Go Pro

The DSLR and tripod were standard filming equipment we needed to actually be able to film the music video with and the Go Pro was the other camera we used to be able to capture the time lapse easily.  The pentax camera was more of a prop but still was able to take pictures as it was a film camera!

Risk assessment

This is a risk assessment table for health and safety measures, just incase something goes wrong and so also that we are prepared!

NOTE: Only one of our health and safety risks occurred - Ella stood on stinging nettles and we managed (luckily) to find the leaf to stop her foot stinging!

Story board first draft

This was our first version of our story board for our video, although we came to the conclusion that due to the fact we want our video to be very sketchy and random that this would be very much a guideline for editing it.

We wanted to start off with a time lapse for sure and throughout the instrumental start of the song almost hint at what was to come throughout with short small clips of different aspects, for example the bath, deer, Ella etc.

We still want the unexpected feel through the video and want the almost story line to start to come through with the aesthetic aspects.

Also we wanted to have the aspects of Earth, water, wind and fire present in the whole video.

When the lyrics are starting to come though we wanted the shots and scenes of Ella to come more in and be present, all being very jumbled and un calculated to go with the very fast change of lyrics.

In some parts we want to link the lyrics of the song e.g "A river through the kitchen" to the visuals on the screen being the bath tub scene of water and flower bath.