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Tag: media 4

Where were the Eggs?

Like all good things, our summer adventure that has been “The Great Belgian Egg Hunt” has come to a close. Where were the eggs? Well – the eggs would have to be the things that we learnt over the process of the hunt, and the ‘Great Belgian’ sounds too heavy so ill leave him behind.

I can safely say that i learnt a lot through these short six weeks. Firstly, the course was very practical, compared to the 12 week studios, the egg hunt took no time in getting us into gear. By the end of the first week we were already conceptualising and creating our end product. This whole notion of practicality and learning while doing was one i really appreciated, I learn best by DOING, and this course had a lot of doing. Especially the filming process, using new equipment, organising extras and directing. Opened me up to a world of learning. For example; I learnt that a video camera would have been better for our wide shots. That its almost impossible to use a 5D in direct sunlight. When working with actors one has to be gentle but give clear direction. All these practical learnings have ensured that next time I am faced with a similar situation I will be more informed on how to act.

Secondly, not to boost his ego – but, Rohan was a pretty great mentor.  I say this not only because because I know he will be assessing this post, but also because he actually had REAL LIFE experience with music video making. For example, from day 1 he was showing us his own work and explaing to us how it was done. This was inspiring, as we quickly learnt that a production does not have to have a huge budget to look good, and there are many ways to achieve a particular look or do an effect. This experience that Rohan had also came through when it came to editing our work, he was able to give us an industry perspective on what worked and what didn’t and often pointed out cheeky editing stunts we could pull off. This adds to my original point about practical learning throughout this course. It was simply the best way for me to learn, to be able to see examples, try things and receive feedback.

Finally, what impact has the studio had on my professional journey? Well, Iv’e realized that i really like music video production! For one, the sound is totally taken care of; dont have to worry about a sound guy – and great sound automatically adds so much value to your production. Additionally, its such a dynamic and diverse field, whereas, often with feature film there are basic filmic and narrative conventions which should be followed. However, with music videos there is room for experimentation that does not take one and a half hours of an audiences life. Furthermore, there is more room for detail, being a student and not having a large budget, its easier to do 3-4 minutes of quality work than making a 90minute film with over 30 scenes. Lastly, I have a passion for music and evoking emotion through music (im not sure im necessarily good at it – but its fun), therefore music video seems to be the perfect space to bring my interest for film and music together. I have actually contacted another two singers in Melbourne and im going to continue making music videos and see where life takes me.

Until next time,

Jordan

Tones of Subjectivity

Art is arguably one of the most subjective things in the world of existence. It is a form of creation, which in turn is a way of bringing into being ones perspective.

What does all this fancy-talk mean? Well, it means that when a work is being created everybody will have different opinions on how that work should be. This is what we faced when collaborating to colour grade the music video. Up until this point the decisions had been fairly easy to make, as it is a narrative video there were straightforward ways in which things were done.

However, when it came  to choose a font and colour grade – differing opinions came forth. Should the video have warm tones, cold tones, what type of warm and cold tones? All these questions came forth and there did not seem to be a middle ground. Here are a two of the different grades:

Screen Shot 2016-02-18 at 6.32.40 pm

Yellow Tones

Screen Shot 2016-02-18 at 6.33.23 pm

Green Tones

 

Screen Shot 2016-02-18 at 6.35.07 pm

Yellow Tones

Screen Shot 2016-02-18 at 6.34.41 pm

Green Tones

 

Screen Shot 2016-02-18 at 6.42.59 pm

Yellow Tones

Screen Shot 2016-02-18 at 6.43.24 pm

Green Tones

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Although being very subtle differences, they do very much impact the final emotion of the piece. This however is still a very subjective thing and is a matter of personal opinion. Currently, there is still no sure fire method for deciding how our group will settle on a final colour

in-Zayne effects

Like most people exactly like me, I cant resist a pun.

Remember Zayne Malik? Former member of One Direction? Yes of course you do. Well he recently released a music video:

After watching this video my Music Video student atoms were very excited. Whhaaaat are those effects!?! The video footage itself is pretty average – shot in an infinity chamber with basic lighting. Would technically make for a very boring music video – but the special effects make the video very intriguing to watch. From the liquid effects, to the 3D animation and kaleidoscope, I didn’t know where to look.
I simply had to share my mind blowed-edness with the world of le’blog.

Georgia on my Mind

Terrible title – Yep. I know. But this song was stuck in my head today because Georgia Fields came in for her second visit to our class. To give us a chance to actually get hands on experience with cameras and experiment with live shooting, Georgia played a set of about 5 songs for us, and we filmed the action.

One song which particularly stood out was this one, which I managed to find another copy of on youtube:

Quite a deceptively cute song with a nice little sting…

And here is actual footage from the class:

Due to the fact that I was already quite familiar with camera operation, I was sent into the lighting booth on this particular occasion. This meant communicating via telephone with the people in the studio and adjusting the lights as per their instruction. I enjoyed this as I was quite unfamiliar with lights, and i got to learn quite a bit about the ins and outs of the control room…

Overall, the day was quite successful, as everbody gained practical learning and got to listen to great music!

Scout! Wild Panic!

Tomorrow is the day! The Shoot!

So, when we did our original location scout we were still quite unsure about the treatment for the music video. We were still vaguely stuck on something to do with balloons and a guy with Elvis hair… Thus, when we did our original scout to the botanical gardens we did not have specific shots in mind. This caused me to panic today, because tomorrow is the shoot and I am meant to be shooting this music video with a camera I am not totally familiar with.

In order to calm my nerves I took a walk by myself into the botanic gardens today, I took my own camera and a 50mm lens, and decided that probably everything would be ok. Luckily now we have a good idea about the various scenes in our music video and the princesses that we want to have starring. Therefore, I was able to pick locations that would suit the scenes. The scout was quite a success as I enjoyed walking around the gardens at the same time. I talked to a few people and told them what we were going to do, which they found quite interesting.  Additionally, I was able to plan a few shots so that Im not totally surprised when it comes to shooting tomorrow.

Here is the current shotlist:

 

“HEY YOU THERE” by Aivy – Production Shot List

 

Shot Description TIME NOTE Location
1 Abby sitting on the bench absently strumming ukelele 0 – 0:20 85mm Aivy OpeningFurther around lake accross from Cinema
2 Reverse angle x x Original Location
3 Closeup of ukulele x
4 Distance shot from back near hill when suddenly balloons float into camera x 85mm or 24-105mm
5 Abby sees the shadow come over her?/ Sees baloons in the reaction in the water and turns around to see them x 85mm
6 Balloon reflection x 85mm
7 Abby perspective sees elvis hair from the back x 85mm
8 Balloons and elvis drift out of shot. Abbys eyes follow.
9 Abby gets up and runs after him FADE
Scene Change to Rapunzel
10 Rapunzel gets her hair caught on the bushes  Repunzels Struggle
11 Elvis hands her the brush tight shot
12 Abby asks for elvis through bushes shot
13 They walk off and they are having fun and talking about life FADE
Scene Change to Cinderella
14 She drops her stuff sits on the floor in distraught ness Do we wanna show the pathway?  Cinerlla Fall
15 Hands her thongs close shot
16 Abby Asks for Prince

reflection????

FADE
Scene Change to Sleeping Beauty
17 Trying to study Sleeping Beauty

Shouldnt this be rapunzel?

18 Hands coffee
19 Abby asks through the pillars
20 Rapunzel is busy trying to be beautiful on the tower and abby pulls her over / pulls her along Fade
Scene change to them looking for him
21 Crosses bridge and looks at map fade  Group Cofused Shot
Scene Change to Snow White
21 Scene plays out Screen Shot 2016-02-14 at 1.44.52 PM

Bench Near Mulans Pagola

22 He hands orrange to them
23 Abby and crew show up
Scene change to Travel
24 Walking shots of whole group  Group Travel Avengers shot
25 Wider shot of the travellers MAYBE GET THIS ONE? Or just with the trio?
NO FADE. Sorta suddenly shows mermaid
 Locked off Wide
Mermaid shot
26 Ariel on bench (With baloon) and they tell her to come with them

she says no

Undecided
27 Wide of Ariel 24-105
28 Elvis is finally found! 2:35 85mm Establishing Final Shot
29 Lots of angles and the couple shot  Arch for the Couple
Fade to post song scene
Couple runs off into sunset with castle behind  IMG_3751

 

Treatment 2.0

 

Today in class while discussing our original treatment with Rohan when he asked that we flesh out the idea. It needed something more. We then started to discuss the characters, one suggestion from Rohan was that we over exaggerate the characters to make them interesting. Throughout this discussion we came up with the idea of using Disney Princesses. The idea is that we focus on the struggles of Princesses living in todays world. For example, we have Sleeping Beauty trying to study but she keeps falling asleep.

We put this Idea of having all the characters as Princesses past Rohan and he said it would probably be better to stick with other characters that are easier to portray and more exciting to watch on screen. However, we figured that we could pull it off and wrote the following treatment:

 

Treatment Written by Maggie O’Shea:
The clip opens with our protagonist, ABBY, sitting on a bench in a large lawned space by a lake. She is dressed in feminine, retro-­style clothing and there is warm afternoon sunlight. She’s absent­mindedly strumming on a ukelele when something catches her eye. On a path nearby, a man with Elvis ­like hair walks along carrying a large bunch of helium balloons. As Abby watches, he happily gives the balloons out to passers­by. At this point, she begins singing as she remains seated and plays the ukulele. After a few lines, ELVIS HAIR disappears.

 

Abby (still singing) cranes her neck looking for him, and stands up to wander around and look for him further. She can’t spot him, so gets up to look around.

 

We cut to our first character, RAPUNZEL, a young woman with absurdly long hair. She is walking through some trees, but finds her hair is snagging repeatedly. She sits down to try to untangle the knots, and is approached by Elvis hair, although we don’t see his face, who hands her a hairbrush and a balloon, which she accepts thankfully. As he disappears, Abby arrives frantically, miming and pointing to the balloon to ask where Elvis Hair is. Rapunzel points and the two walk in that direction.

 

We then cut to our second character, CINDERELLA [ALAINE THOMPSON]. She is walking along a path carrying several shopping bags when her heel breaks and she stumbles. She sits down and begins to try on shoes from the bags. They are hilariously varied and she is increasingly desperate as none of them appear to fit. As she tries on something truly ridiculous (eg, a pair of flippers), Elvis Hair once again comes to the rescue (although we don’t see his face), offering a balloon and a pair of thongs which she puts on gratefully. Again, Abby arrives at the sight of the balloon with Rapunzel and Cinderella offers to join the search.

 

Our third characters are an older couple, SNOW WHITE and PRINCE CHARMING. They are having a picnic, and we watch them take food out of a hamper until Prince Charming pulls out an apple, causing Snow White to recoil in horror. A hand enters the shot behind them offering an orange instead and a balloon. Again, Abby arrives at the sight of the balloon with the other princesses in tow and the group move on.

 

Fourthly we have SLEEPING BEAUTY [CINDY NGUYEN], a uni student reading a text-book and making notes under a tree. She tries to concentrate, but repeatedly nods off. After about the third time, she falls asleep completely, and a hand from the side of the shot quietly places a red bull next to her with a balloon tied to it. Sleeping Beauty wakes only to see him leave, and is shaken fully awaking by the arriving Abby and is roped unwilling into the shot.

Finally, we have a quick shot of a woman at a bench reading a book. She has already received her balloon which she is holding. When Abby arrives to ask for her help, she shakes her head, and we cut to a wide shot where we see she is wearing a mermaid tail. There is a jump cut to

Abby wheeling THE LITTLE MERMAID along in a wheelchair.  

 

In the final scene, Abby sees the bunch of balloons over a hedge or tree, and the group eagerly runs to see Elvis Hair. Abby is at first too shy to approach, but the group encourages her, almost physically pushing her towards him. She taps Elvis Hair on the shoulder and he turns so they face each other. They introduce themselves, and he offers her a balloon. In our final shot the two walk off into the distance and we pan up to a shot of the balloon.”

Women in Music Video

This weeks reading was focused around a very interesting topic; namely the representation of women in music videos. Both readings were excerpts fromMusic Video and the Politics of Representation (2007) by Diane Railton and Paul Watson”. The first section was a study on Pinks “Stupid Girl” music video. The video aims to challenge many of the ‘Paris Hilton’ stereotypes of womens beauty and image. However, the discussion was if it was fair to both sexes or simply urged women to be more masculine. Personally, I have strong beliefs in the equality of men and women, thus this video was intriguing for me. Although it did challenge the image of women, it did little to provide an image for what a strong woman could be. In a way it was a critique without presenting a solution and therefore should not be taken too literally as a feminism text, and more of a satirical remark. 

The second reading was where most of my interest was sparked, the treatment of Black vs White women in music video. It compared the representation of Kylie Minogue in ‘Cant Get You Out of My Head’ versus Beyonce in ‘Baby Boy’ – and the results were shocking! I had not realized up until this point that black women are represented in a much more degrading way than white women. The reading suggested that they are portrayed as more ‘animalistic’ and ‘available’, where as white women are ‘untouchable’ and ‘idolized’. After this was brought to my attention I started to notice how often it happens, for example with Niki Minaj’s ‘Anaconda’.

It simply has given me headspace to be more conscious of how i portray women when i make my own music videos, and be more critical about the music videos i watch.

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