Alice in Wonderland.. Continued

Before I start this post, we (mainly me, no one else cares) have decided to call our main character Eliza (Because it's kind of Alice jumbled up.. Kind of)

I spoke to the rest of Team Mac 1and we all love the subtle theme of Alice in Wonderland that we're going to start to weave into our shots.

Here's a picture of an extremely brief mood board I did:

Most of these are cartoon images from Disney's original film, but it shows Wonderland and all the aspects of the film.

A few of these are relevant:

TEA CUP
At the dinner scene, Lucy and her parents are going to be dressed formally and will have tea cups in front of them, like the Mad Hatter does at the tea party scene in Alice in Wonderland. It's subtle and we love it.

POCKET WATCH
Lucy's dad is going to have a pocket watch and check the time (maybe we can stop the music and have some tick tocks?) because Eliza is late for dinner. She's late, she's late, for a very important date. Ha.


Dilemna: Do we go for an old watch that would suit Eliza's father's character? Or do we go for an abstract one, to fit the whole situation Eliza is going through? Decisions.

Alice In Wonderland idea

Just as I was checking over my post before last, regarding the whole Alice in Wonderland symbol, I began to think about this actually being a major theme we can attempt to weave into a few of our shots without being too obvious.. Also, I'm unsure about the whole copy right thing so I shall talk to the girls and Ms Foster about it so that we're not going against any infringements Disney or whomever may have rights over the character.

But I found this picture and thought it was quite cool, especially as Rosie stands out in the normal world; with her family/in public etc, but in the end she's going to fit in. In her Wonderland? I know, I'm on fire today, but yeah, I think that, without realising, we're actually doing a modern version of it... Maybe it's just me over thinking or the Yorkie bar I just had has gone straight to my head. Either way, I think this is quite quirky.

I'm not saying that in the final scene we should have Cheshire cats and Mad Hatters jumping about but a subtle interwoven theme would be great to talk about in the exam because it fits in with quite a few theorists.. (Am I allowed to say this or?)

Shoot Preview!

I've also been so kind as to upload my favourite part of the material Rosie and I got on Friday, so here it is for you (all 3 of you who care):



This is completely unedited; no one has changed any colours or quickened the pace. I was just lucky enough to ACTUALLY SEE THE SKY CHANGE COLOUR. Rosie is my witness. Totes amazeballs.

Screen shots from Friday's shoot

Here's how Rosie was dressed on Friday:

TOP PICTURE: Rosie's got bright blue eye shadow on (if you can see it) and bright red lips. And her platinum blonde hair also stands out. She's just perfect for our protagonist. (Is that the media term for main character? Or shall I just use 'main character'? Who knows/cares.)

MIDDLE PICTURE: Rosie's got a really quirky jumper on - with Alice in Wonderland on it. This is intentional: Alice is the well-known character who is bored by the outside world and only finds excitement in Wonderland. The character Rosie is playing in our music video story just needs to find her Wonderland, and this is her journey into finding it. (THEORIST ALERT: one of Roland Barthes' 5 Codes was the Symbolic Code; a heavy focus of symbols that have deeper meanings = ALICE IN WONDERLAND IS THE SYMBOL)

BOTTOM PICTURE: Even her leggings aren't the normal dark colour - they're plum or something. So indie!!! No, but seriously, this style epitomises our character and her situation - even her boots are quite dark but if you look closer they are covered in flowers. This just shows that every inch of our character is different. Which is exactly what we want.

We all love how even though it was a dull morning, Rosie still seems to stand out which shows how different she is to her surroundings. This is such a key concept in our music video's story and to have our first shots come out like this shows that the whole thing is going to be a lot easier than all three of us anticipated.

I feel like we should give our character a name instead of saying 'Rosie' or 'our character'.
Will ask the team and report back.

Early Morning Shoot!

I sacrificed my 9 hours sleep last night to get up at 6:30 this morning for filming our initial scene for our music video.
I dragged Rosie along and she looked absolutely fabulous; exactly what we wanted her to look like.
I'm really pleased with the end result and hope the girls are too.

Here's a picture of me filming:

Location: Forty Hall

The original plan was to have Rosie walk across the field with our lovely picture-esque sunrise in the background, but what we did NOT take into consideration is that the sun DOESN'T RISE WHERE WE WANTED TO FILM. So, instead I decided to film her in front of the hall in Forty Hall.

Ideally, we wanted pink skies that we saw yesterday but according to Sod's Law, that wasn't possible. But still, I'm absolutely thrilled with the outcome and can't wait to start filming the next bits!!

Album Task!

This week's blog task was creating a practice album cover. Thanks to Pete the Examiner's blog, this was a lot easier than I thought! Can't wait to start the real thing!!

- The task included getting a random name for the band using a "randomly-generated Wikipedia" page.. Honor Among Lovers was my first. Not a great band name, but hey ho.

- The album title was randomly genereated in a similar manner - the last few words of a random quote page. I got "watching TV by candlelight" - a bit weird but, again, hey ho.

- The random generator strikes again for the image of the album cover, I got an owl in a tree, as you will see below...

Photoshop was a lovely new experience. I had to put my band name and album title on top of the image, choosing the font all by myself (!) and adjusting it to how I wanted it. I decided to invert the background, to really highlight the owl on my album cover that I have there for no particular reason, other than the fact that it was randomly chosen for me. I wanted to make the text quite elegant and I quite like how it's come out. I really like how all elements of my album cover don't fit together or make sense. It's quirky and it's mine so I don't care.

Here it is:

Group Vlog (minus one)

When Athena was off last Wednesday, Lucy and I sat down and planned our music video's order and structure, putting in new ideas and also take old ones out.

Here's the group blog Miss Foster took...

Storyboarding: Done!

Lucy and I finished off the storyboard we started last week.

We started off doing it all in order but then I forgot to put the underwater shot in so the second picture is in no particular order. But we're aiming to shoot the shots we wrote down on the second page in one day so the order for that doesn't matter until we edit.

Exciting times.

Location!

This is the location for our dinner scene that we want to shoot for our music video.
We all love this room because it's simple and elegant, a place our protagonist wouldn't fit in but her posh, conservative family would. Hopefully this will capture her difference when compared to her family.

Here's a clip from 'Pramface', the BBC3 show on last year. It's the dinner scene with Laura's family; as you can see, she doesn't fit in...




Shout out to the Nagle family for letting us do it here.. Filming shall commence soon!

Mood Board!

Here are the screen shots from my Mood Board presentation!

Starry Eyed

When I was researching Ellie Goulding's record label this morning, I came across an extract from an interview she did with Digital Spy.

When asked what 'Starry Eyed' was about, she replied with:

"It's about letting go. As opposed to all the sad and depressing things I write about, I decided to write something about the joining together of people in some kind of euphoric state—be it at a festival, at a show or in a club. I wanted a song that would reach out to people of every background and every enjoyment, whether you enjoy a natural high, taking drugs, drinking or whatever."

Although it isn't mandatory for the song to match our video concept, its great to hear that our video will match Ellie Goulding's intentions.. Although this was not our intention...

This has made me REALLY excited to start filming!!

Permission

Here is the email we sent to Polydor Records requesting the permission to use 'Starry Eyed' for our coursework.

First A2 Vlog!

Don't know whether this will work because I recorded this on my phone and then uploaded to to YouTube and then to my Google+ account.. So let's see if this pans out how I wanted it to...

To summarise when I waffle about:

- The concept of our music video.
- Black and white?

That's pretty much it...

Miley Cyrus - Star Project

"A star is an image, not a real person, that is constructed (as any other aspect of fiction is) out of a range of materials (eg advertising, magazines etc as well as films [music])."

MILEY CYRUS

Born in 1992, Miley Cyrus grew up to be one of the most famous and influential people in the world. With a country singing father, Billy Ray Cyrus, it was always inevitable for her to be in the public's eye. However, in 2006, after being cast in Disney Channel's 'Hannah Montana', Miley quickly became a teen sensation. In the series, Miley played a young girl called Miley Stewart, a school girl with a secret double life as a teen pop star, named Hannah Montana. The show lasted for 4 years, including 98 episodes. Both the show and Miley's success were largely down to each other and the former's success would not have been possible without the latter's and vise versa.
Cyrus eventually became the first artist to have deals in television, film, consumer products, and music within The Walt Disney Company.

Her debut album, in 2008, away from her Hannah Montana persona was 'Breakout', by 'Hollywood Records' -  founded in 1989 and is one of the major Disney Music Group labels. The album title was influenced by it being Cyrus' first record not affiliated with the Hannah Montana franchise. Her contract with Disney was still in place and, as agreed, she did 3 Hannah Montana soundtracks, including the films.This album featured the song '7 Things' about then boyfriend Joe Jonas and 'Breakout', a song about breaking out of the 'boring' routine of school, homework, chores. All of this album was written by her but the creative control ended there. She had minimal choice over her image as a young star.


This video sees several young girls in the same shots as Miley, suggesting she is singing about is relatable to thousands of teenagers, which was her MASS audience. (She already has 14 million followers on Twitter... I may or may not be included in this extortionate amount...) To appeal to this audience, the Hannah Montana albums were, obviously, full of cheesy, relatable songs to young girls about school and boys and falling in love.



Her second album 'Can't Be Tamed', released in 2010, again by Hollywood Records. Again, the album showed that Miley's Disney past was slowly but surely becoming just that; a thing of the past. On this album, she was one of the three composers in the writing of the record, who were Angie Aparo and Antonina Armato.The 'Can't Be Tamed' video saw Miley Cyrus dressed as a large bird, in a cage, prancing about in front of an audience, something she has never been afraid of doing. It was supposedly written about being trapped and people observing her. The song, according to her, bears a theme of "breaking out and feeling free".
And here it is:


 Her third album, 'Bangerz' (Yes, with an actual 'z' where the 's' should be, she's cool, leave her be) has not been released yet. It graces the music industry on 7th October this year. However, with all of the media coverage Miley Cyrus has been getting recently, it will be no surprise when it's number 1. (I'm calling it now, watch this space!) Last year, she left Hollywood Records and signed a contract with RCA Records,the second-oldest recording company in US history. 
With her personal life ALWAYS in magazines, it is no wonder why Miley has gone off the ol' beaten track. It appears that her recent split with her acting fiance, Liam Hemsowrth (Thor's brother) led to her to write the heartfelt song 'Wrecking Ball' and do the whole naked thing to represent her sadness (See previous post for more details).
Last year, she shocked pretty much everyone when she cut off her long, lucious locks in attempt to REALLY get away from the whole Disney shibang. Miley said herself that she "never felt more [herself] in [her] whole life". So there you go, is that not enough proof that as a child, she was made to do what agents/record companies/televsision companies wanted her to do? If you ask me, good on her for finally taking that step into doing whatever the hell she likes.

She recently tweeted the following after THAT performance at the VMAs:

'"Mile, if twerkin woulda been invented... And I had a foam finger... I woulda done the same thang you did." - DAD'

 Her recent VMA performance caused a lot of controvery in magazines, newspapers and social media sites such as Twitter.

Her video for 'We Can't Stop' is unable for embedding, apparently so the link is here

So. Miley Cyrus' image has DEFINITELY transformed:

.

 

I think that the main reason Miley decided to take control of her own image was just because she was getting older. Having millions of screaming little girls at your feet must take its toll and the constant pressure of doing what's 'right' as a 'role model' is unfair for anyone, especially for someone as young as 20. I think it just got to the point where she was like "F*$& it!!". I would have also done the same.. To a certain extent.. Maybe not the whole tongue thing she has going on...

Lyrics!

"Starry Eyed"

Oh, oh, starry eyed
Hit, hit, hit, hit, hit me with lightning

Handle bars, and then I let go, let go for anyone
Take me in, and throw out my heart and get a new one

Next thing we're touching
You look at me it's like you hit me with lightning
Ahhh

Oh, everybody's starry-eyed
And everybody goes
Oh, everybody's starry-eyed
And my body goes
Whoa oh oh ah ah
Whoa oh oh ah ah
Whoa oh oh

So we burst into colors, colors and carousels,
Fall head first like paper planes in playground games

Next thing we're touching
You look at me it's like you hit me with lightning
Ahhhh

Oh, everybody's starry-eyed
And everybody goes
Oh, everybody's starry-eyed
And my body goes
Whoa oh oh ah ah
Whoa oh oh ah ah
Whoa oh oh

Next thing we're touching [x8]

Hit me with lightning

Oh, everybody's starry-eyed
And everybody goes
Oh, everybody's starry-eyed
And my body goes [x2]

whoa oh oh ah ah [x3]

Blog Task!

IDEA ONE

Two Door Cinema Club - Eat Up It's Good For You



Pro's:
- The beat is immense, I feel like we could have done a lot with it.
- It's got that 'running' feel - every time I listen to it, I just think 'Let's get our character to run everywhere; different locations, different times. For the hell of it'.
- It's Two Door Cinema Club. (Is this a good enough reason?) (I think so.)

Cons:
- It's Two Door Cinema Club - although a good thing, they're essentially a boy band and, as a group of three girls, lip syncing wouldn't look realistic.
- We've found a better song.
- I can't think of anything else. The first one was the main reason why we didn't pick it..


IDEA TWO

Lykke Li - Little Bit



Pro's:
- It's sang by a woman! Lip syncing is doable.
- The opening beat is really different to anything I've ever heard so trying to find shots to go with it would be such a challenge. And I love a challenge.
- It's mellow, which I love - with a beat like this, there's a lot of different shots and editing techniques we could explore.

Cons:
- The beat is a bit TOO mellow for us crazy gals in Group Mac 1. The concept that we came up with, and simultaneously fell in love with, wouldn't fit this song.
- I couldn't imagine myself attempting to lip sync it. Mainly because to make it realistic, we're actually going to sing over it and I just cannot hit those high notes. I don't want to deafen anyone.
- It would get annoying to constantly hear all the time. No disrespect Miss Li.


IDEA THREE

The Naked and Famous - Punching In A Dream



Pro's:
- The beat. Oh Ma Gaaad. Such a good song and there's a lot to do with it, again, a girl running through loads of locations... Maybe I should give that idea a rest?
- Sang by a woman. Woop!
- Who doesn't like this song?

Cons:
- We've all seen the video before and it's basically, wait for it, a girl running in front of a green screen.
- I'm just afraid that if we did a song like this, we'd stick to the genre really tightly and not break any conventions, which is ideally what we want to do. We want to be the Miley Cyrus of the Indie genre. But fully clothed..
- It took us a while to get an image in our heads about the content of the video if we had picked this song. I was hoping for a lightbulb moment. Which is what I got with Starry Eyed!

More Ideas!

One of the big scenes in our music video is the Powder Paint scene, which we're really excited to do!! I've looked into doing it all in an abandoned barn and getting a big group of people. The only thing left to do is order the powder paint.. AHHH!




We'd love to re-create something like this, but a bit more intimate. I.E, in the barn I mentioned above!!

CONCEPT.
The whole music video is going to be about our female protagonist's journey about finding herself. This sounds really cliche but I think we have the skills to make it work.
A vlog will follow shortly..


Here's Athena's lovely plan for some of the shots:

Plan!

Lucy and I just planned a few bits of our music video and took a few, rough ideas and wrote them down. 

Here they are:

We have a few more ideas but they will be discussed with Athena on Wednesday!

Inspiration!

In terms of editing, this is exactly where I personally, and as a group, want to be.

The pace of transition between shots is quick and fits the beat when it needs to. Also, when the pace of the content of the shot slows down and then quickens up, the viewer gets to take in every pixel on their screen; something I don't think I have ever seen before and, if I have, it wasn't as capturing as this because I don't remember. This technique is extremely admirable and in our 'To copy' list. (Are we allowed such a list?)

The simple black and white font at the start is so sophisticated. Everything about this video oozes class and you can tell that every shot was carefully and precisely planned; something that I think we're going to have to do to be able to recreate something as fantastic. Although, I think the zebras would help our case significantly.

THIRTY SECONDS TO MARS - Up In The Air



What Not To Do:

MILEY CYRUS - Wrecking Ball


Although this song is very catchy, this is the exact type of video we want to steer away from. I've seen quite a few interpretations of the video over the past few days on Twitter; some people calling her rude names and others justifying her licking a hammer - she's 'addicted to the pain of love'.. Acceptable idea but why the low angle on her? Because she's a woman? And she's naked because we was 'stripped emotionally' - again, fair enough, but with the correct use of shot types, I think that we'll be able to do the exact same thing, but with clothes on..
The whole video is the complete opposite of our plan for representation of women in our video. We want, as girls ourselves, to be powerful; not sexualised and not necessarily above men, but equal. Which is arguably a key representation that is overlooked in this industry.

So to summarise this post:
- Take a leaf out of Thirty Seconds To Mars' book and spend some time on different editing techniques to make our video look as amazing as theirs.
- Leave the stereotypical representations of women to Miley and Terry Richardson and be innovative in our portrayal of females.

'Star' Project

Foster has given us a project for Research and Planning, which involves looking up artists and their image and seeing whether there has been a transformation over the years, if its dependent on their genre, their role in the media industry etc.

I'm very excited about it because I'm sure that there is an abundance of information out there. Also, it gives me an opportunity to research theorists such as Richard Dyer, as well as deepen my understanding of the field.

I've found a really useful website on Richard Dyer and his theories on Pop Stars. An interesting idea that he proposed was:

"A star is an image not a real person that is constructed (as any other aspect of fiction is) out of a range of materials (eg advertising, magazines etc as well as films [music])."

Now to decide on whom I'm going to base my research on!!

Success!!

WE DID IT!!

We've picked the song we want to make our music video for!

We love the beat, the drop in the middle and, following the random concept, we've got a few ideas. But we shall storyboard and then upload within the next couple of days. We have a lesson this afternoon so we shall do it then.

Exciting times!

The song's verses are quite mellow and fit with our concept quite well. The song also has a drop that we can do a lot with. We asked Miss Foster quite early on in the course if we could extend the drop for more effect because the idea for that shot is one where the focus will be on our main character. She said yes, so we'll look into that and once we start filming and get the shot, we shall see if it fits!

I've TubeChopped it so you can see what I'm waffling about.






Why this is the Chosen Song, and not the other ones:

- Ellie gave me, personally, a bit of a lightbulb. As soon as we put it on, my head exploded with ideas.
- Now the we have our concept, we've realised that this is the only song that we've come across that actually works.
- She's a lady so we can lip sync, whoop.
- Her video is SO boring, so we won't be attempting to steal any of her ideas... Not that we would...
- It's got a drop that we can do a lot with; none of the others did.

Congrats to Miss Goulding, the honour is all yours, I'm sure.

Decisions, Decisions...

We haven't even properly started the course yet but music videos are hard. Take me back to the two minute film opening!!

We love so many songs, especially those with male singers (we've decided to go for female artists/bands with frontwomen for lip-syncing purposes), but some of them we just can't imagine what we'd do with them and others, we'd just recreate the video. Its very difficult so we're trying to find an 'indie' song by a low-key artist who probably hasn't released a video yet so it gives us a fighting chance.

Here are some of the songs we have considered but kindly rejected.

THE NO PILE:

The Naked and Famous - PUNCHING IN A DREAM



We love the video and hopefully we could recreate the beauty and simplicity in ours. Regarding the song, we all love it too much and feel like we'd just try to copy the video or listen to the lyrics and make them literal. Although 'punching in a dream' would look pretty funny...

Lykke Li - LITTLE BIT



We want a really upbeat song and this beat is a little too basic for us. When we first heard it all together, we decided that we couldn't picture us doing a lot with it. We had a few ideas, but not 4 minutes worth.

First Media Lesson Back!

First lesson back after the summer and we're already straight back into the routine.

Here's a video that we liked regarding content:

The Joy Formidable - Wolf's Law



We love the black and white shots and the fact that they have no connection to the lyrics. The cinematography is really unique. Like this video, we're aiming for a story to tell with depth to entice the audience. If we have a decent and exciting concept, the cinematography will be effortless and the Oscars will come pouring in.

This is a definite source of inspiration.

Summer Update

I have just returned from a month in Vietnam and, whilst out there, I took lots of pictures and videos. None of them are relevant to anything in anyway, but that suits us as a group, which we discussed at length before I left/the girls broke up for summer. The plan is to quicken up a series of pictures we all got, as well as our videos. Other elements will come into it too, for example, we discussed having a paintball/flour scene, but that shall be reassessed in September.

Our random concept is one we're going to stick to, I think.
The idea is to merge all of the shots all 3 of us have collected on our travels this summer. With three very different destinations, all in different continents may I add, I'm really excited about the outcome of our music video. Going back to school doesn't seem so bad because at least I get to see what the girls captured on their adventures this summer!

Here are some of my shots:

 My Son - Hoi An - old, ruined Hindu temples, destroyed by French colonists.

 White Sand Dunes -Mui Ne - natural beauty at its finest

 Ho Chi Minh - the crazy roads, full of bicycles and mopeds - they have no concept of STOPPING AT A TRAFFIC LIGHT. 

Fairy Stream - Mui Ne - a wonderful little stream that people are allowed to walk along. Did not see fairies but it is definitely a stream.

Videos will be posted at a later date. Maybe.

Concept

I've been thinking about what song we could do for our music video quite frantically over the past week because I really want us all to know what kind of things we need to shoot over the summer because Team Mac 1 are going to various places over the world; Spain, America and Vietnam, to be precise. So yes, being my normal stressy self, I'm panicking!

HOWEVER. Athena, Lucy and I all had a little chat and we've come up with the concept of our video. Which is a little strange, seeing as we don't know what song we're using. But, we've decided to go for the 'random' concept. We all agreed that, whilst it would be fun to do something like Katy Perry - Firework and take everything she sings about seriously, a random concept with no real story line will suit us a lot better. Lots of videos being released now have no relation to the song they accompany, for example:




As Miss Foster says, "When trying to be creative, think giraffe..." - while we don't have the facilities/contact links to film a giraffe, we will be adopting her point!

PLAN:
On our holidays, we are all going to be filming random shots and capturing random pictures to go with the TOTALLY RANDOM CONCEPT/THEME.



I've said random too many times...

Music Video

In today's lesson, we came up with these two choices. We are still looking, but Lucy and I have our hearts set on the first one. We've got lots of ideas about the concept and content, but that shall follow when we finally decide!

Eat Up, It's Good For You - Two Door Cinema Club




This Time - David Lyre

Prelim

This is my preliminary video for A2 Media. I asked my two friends (who don't do media) to help me and this is the outcome:




How to Save a Life - The Fray

As you can see, this is really basic in terms of a 'music video'. There is a mid-shot for the duration of the video, with no zooming, panning or angles. In terms of location, we only have one, which limits the video, even more so.

Hopefully, Team Mac 1 (as we shall forever be known as) will do A LOT better than this for our final music video!!

First A2 Post!

And so the A2 Media journey begins! Exciting times!

This is the preliminary that some of the media girls did in lesson last week.. A brilliant rendition of Sinead O'Conner's 'Nothing Compares'. So bummed I missed it!