Rough Cut #2

I've put together my second rough cut; shortening the sequence at the end, removing the middle section and making the music match up better. There is still some work to do but this is closer to the final product.

Ancillary: Cover Drafts

After researching existing products I decided to start experimenting in photoshop over the past week or so to come up with some of my own ideas for my single cover.

Above is one of the images I took during filming, which I really like so I decided to build on this. I played around with the layout and where to put the text. I also wanted to emphasis the rose.

Then I remembered my research and dance remix covers often have an artistic element and so I used the diffuse glow filter on photoshop which I really, really liked as it gives it a more professional and retro feel.

Then I had the idea of creating a pop art effect by using lots of different colours which will catch the audience's attention. I painted in different sections of the image but I changed the opaque settings of the colours so that you can still see the image behind the colours, which I think particularly works on the ocean.

I gradually built up the colours until I only had the skin and hair left. However as you can see by my attempts below she ended up looking like someone out of Avatar so I had to have a rethink..

Blue

White

Pink

Then I had a brainwave to turn the artist black and white to contrast with the rest of the cover.

I liked this but I still wanted the bright red of the rose and so changed that as it it is symbolic of love and passion and so needs to be emphasised for the audience.

I also thought about still having some colour on the artist so I tried that out. 

I also re-did the eyes and lips but I'm not entirely sure it works yet.

I also tried out some fonts that might work...

There's still some work to do on these covers but I'm happy with my progress so far.

Rough Cut #1: Director's Commentary

I've created a director's commentary version of my first rough cut which explains my feelings and thoughts about it and how I'd like to progress. 

I'm now working on my second rough cut keeping in mind all that I've said here.

Ancillary Research: Adverts

I've created this keynote presentation deconstructing magazine advertisements for various music albums. This was useful in studying so I could get a better idea for what I need to do for my ancillary tasks. The adverts I looked at are going to be very influential as I go about putting together my own adverts.

Ancillary Research - adverts

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1st Rough Cut

This is my first (mostly) full rough cut of my music video. There are a few audio sync issues and I'd like to re-shoot the beginning (first 30 seconds or so), but otherwise I shall make another 'director's commentary' explaining my thoughts and changes that I'd like to make.

End of Video: Rough Cut

I've been working on trying to match the images to the beats of the song which is harder than it looks! The end lot of beats is the longest and this is my rough cut. I'll now work on competing the other 'beat' section of the song and placing them into my overall rough cut of the entire song which will hopefully be completed by the end of the week. 

I'm currently unsure whether the ending where she walks towards the camera is effective or whether I should leave it with her looking out to sea. I shall get some audience feedback to see what I should do. 

Videos and Cover Art

During my research it has become increasingly obvious that music videos and artist's covers are very much interlinked and that the themes from the song and video are transferred into the marketing. Thus it's important to make sure the single cover I make completely reflects my music video and vice versa.


Sometimes the themes are even stronger as stills from the actual video are used as the cover art. Therefore I need to make sure that my video keeps a constant in its quality. 

Cover Art

Calvin Harris has been a big influence on my music video. His video for Feel So Close has a very intense feel while being beautiful to look at and reflecting the themes of the music. It's an example of an interlinked video and single cover. I like that it's very direct and to the point and very simple - just having the title and artist name.


The themes of the song I've chosen are about a break up. The female is singing about how their relationship could have been good (suggesting she was angry over the break-up) but she's glad it's over now (implying he dumped her) as she can now see that he 'played' her and that she's much better off without him. I see this as a positive message which is why I want to make sure the song ends on a positive note. 
Also as I'm using a remix it has a different sort of edge to it. It has a sort of caribbean feel and the extra use of drums makes it almost more aggressive and has a faster pace. 

Source

I need to remember, whilst editing, these themes and try to continue them through as I start to put together drafts for my ancillaries. 

River/Interlude/Forest: Rough Cut - Director's Commentary

I've recorded a 'director's commentary' explaining my thoughts and ideas for the process so far in putting together a rough cut of part of the music video. 

River/Interlude/Forest: Rough Cut

I've been editing a lot these past few weeks, and have managed to put together a rough cut of the middle part of my music video.

I'm happy with it at present and asked a few people in my class what their thoughts were. Some of the things they said was that they liked the variety of shots and that it had good clarity. They also said they liked the colours, but to try a draft with the interlude in black and white.


Next I'm going to do a director's commentary of where I am so far and how I want to progress.

Ancillary: Research

As my brief is to create a promotion package for the release of an album, I need to not only include a music promo video, but to also create 2 of the 3 options...
- a website homepage for the band
- a cover for its release on CD
- a magazine advertisement for the CD


I think a website would be less appropriate than the other options as my song is a remix and thus not one single artist or band. Therefore I have decided to make a CD cover and magazine advert for it. 
Today I'm going to look at existing products for CD covers to get some inspiration and ideas for my ancillary task.


Firstly, the original Adele single cover for Rolling in the Deep...

Her album cover is similar - black and white with a simple pose and fonts...

Her colour scheme is black, white and lime green so very simplistic which may be something I want to take on board.


There are two covers for the song I'm using...

Other xx covers for their singles also feature heavily the colour black, but with interesting art and colours...

So far I've learned that the colour black is very prominent and that simplicity is key. I'm now going to look at some other covers that I like to see what works...

Ancillary Research

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Permission Letter

Today I sent off this permission message to XL Recordings, the record company for both Adele and Jamie xx.


"Dear XL Recordings,
I am currently studying A-Level Media Studies at The King's School, Devon and as part of my A2 coursework I need to create and produce a music video.
As a big fan of Jamie xx’s remix of Rolling in the Deep by Adele I have chosen to use this song and am writing to whomever it may concern, to ask permission to do so.
As it is part of my coursework, the song will be used for educational purposes and so it won’t be distributed or marketed for financial gain in anyway.
I hope that you would grant me permission to use this song for my Media Studies coursework and I hope to hear from you soon.
Yours Faithfully,
Sarah Williamson"


As I couldn't find an email address I used this contact portal on their website to submit my letter...

Interlude Feedback

Over the weekend I managed to get some feedback on my Interlude: Rough Cut. I posted on Facebook, asking for feedback:

Here are the replies...

As you can see there are a few conflicting answers, including some helpful advice which I will look at trying. I'm thinking of having it without lyrics except for maybe one or two to make a better impact (e.g. the 'tears' one). I will also try it in black and white to see if that works or not. 

Interlude: Rough Cut

I've put together a rough cut of my interlude which you can see below...

(In the process of uploading to YouTube the colouring seems to have gone more purple than blue so I will alter that before the final product.)
However, whilst editing I thought of the idea of putting some of the lyrics over the video to make the message have more impact, which I tried out...

I'm not sure which works best so I'm going to have to get some feedback before I make a decision.

River/Interlude Shoot: Shot List

Above is the shot list from my river shoot a couple weeks. I've found producing shot lists for each shoot incredibly useful as it has meant I haven't forgotten any shots, something I learnt from my pre-lim filming. Also during the editing stage it means I can keep track of which shots I got from each location so I know what I have available.
I'm now working on putting together some rough cuts so I can see how it looks so far.

Postmodern Exhibition

On Wednesday 26th October, I went to the V&A to visit the Postmodernism: Style and Subversion 1970-1990 exhibition. It was really interesting, informative, inspiring and thought-provoking. (Click here for a BBC video of the exhibition.)

I took lots of notes during the exhibition and learnt a great deal while there.
The exhibition took you through the beginning of Postmodernism right up until (and past) it's death. 

"After all, since it is fairly dead, we might as well enjoy picking over the corpse" - Charles Jencks
As I entered the exhibition I was greeted with this quote and a definition of Postmodernism, in that it "defies definition" but is the most controversial of recent art movements. 
One way of describing it was that it is "like a broken mirror, a reflecting surface made of many fragments". It's key principles were complexity and contradiction and it "shattered the established ideas about style", bringing "a new self-awareness about style itself".

"Whoever decides to abandon the modern movement can choose between Versailles and Las Vegas" - Italian Critic Bruno Zevi in 1967. Zevi was essentially saying that the primary ingredients of Postmodernism at the beginning were ("both/and rather than either/or" - Robert Venturi) high classicism and 'low' pop culture.

Robert Venturi and his partner Denise Scott Brown are very influential architects and in 1972 published a book called Learning From Las Vegas. They also used a lot of collage between the 60s and 70s that used 'Historicism' whose central aim was "to replace a monolithic idiom with a plurality of competing ideas and styles." This was the start of moving from modernism into postmodernism. 

Giulio Paolini's sculpture of L'altra (The Other Figure) from 1984 stood out to me as it plays on the high classicism of the past, but gives it a melancholic edge that is more sad and introspective. 

I have looked at Robert Rauschenberg in the past and have always admired his work so it was interesting to see his work 'Estate' from 1963 feature. 

This follows on the theme of collage, but is developed into 'Bricolage' which is a cut and paste technique.
Anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss defined a bricoleur as "someone working with 'oddments leftover from human endeavours'. 
Therefore if modernist objects were based around utopia, progress and machine-like perfection, postmodern objects seemed to come from a dystopian and far-from-perfect future. 

The exhibition used this clip from Blade Runner (1982) to show this change in thinking, as it dwells on the possibilities and consequences of living in a 'post-human' age.

Moving into the 1980s Postmodernism developed into the New Wave movement. It was the dominant look of the 'designer decade' with vivid colours, theatricality and exaggeration. Everything was a style statement. This change reflected the desire to combine subversive statements with commercial appeal. Magazines and music were the most important delivery systems for this new phase of postmodernism. 

Italian design group Memphis became the forefront for postmodern design and architecture and was started by Ettore Sottsass. The created a 'new international style' and a period style of 'brash colour, vivid pattern and expressive form'.
Meanwhile the energy of the post-punk subculture was broadcast through music videos and cutting-edge graphics. 

It was a few thrilling years where image was everything.

Boy George was part of the New Romantic movement that was huge during the 1980's. Dancers, art directors, choreographers, pop stars, drag queens and nightclubbers were all the unlikely authors of some of postmodernism's most influential style statements. Blade Runner's investigations of identity (Rachael's belief that she is human, when in fact she's a replicant, synthetic life form) are often cited in discussions of postmodern experience. 

Gender was explored, as boys and girls started dressing as each other. Annie Lennox is an example of a pop star who challenged gender norms, showing that androgyny wasn't incompatible with mainstream appeal. 
MTV was launched in 1981 (which I've looked at previously) and so the rise of music videos meant another platform for postmodernism and were vital in broadcasting postmodernist ideas to mainstream culture.
Viewers were presented with a series of celebs posturing before the camera.
There were many examples shown in the exhibition which demonstrate the wide range of musical styles in which postmodern techniques were explored from hiphop to new romantic to techno.

1982

1988

I found looking at the different music videos really useful and made me look at editing my video a little differently. 

"If postmodernism means anything is allowed then I was all for it."

- David Byrne (Talking Heads)

Postmodern graphics and photography involved bricolage, fragmentation and quotation.

Peter Saville was responsible for a number of Joy Division and New Order's album art, where he used 'found' art images.

Magazines such as 'The Face' and 'i-D' produced many postmodernist covers...

By blending the avant-garde and commercial they were a postmodern phenomenon. 
April Greiman and Jayme Odgers used cut and paste to produce posters...

Paula Scher produced posters for Elvis Costello...

Money, however, became a huge issue in the 1980s due to living in Thatcher's Britain. 

Andy Warhol 'Dollar Sign' 1981

Warhol's ironic acknowledgement of his own works market value exemplifies postmodernism in its final stage. Postmodernism collapsed under the weight of its own success. It participated in the culture obsessed with wealth and status that was the undoing of the movement. 
"Money doesn't mind if we say it's evil, it goes from strength to strength. It's a fiction an addiction, and a tacit conspiracy." - Martin Amis

'Protect Me From What I Want' by Jenny Holzer, Times Square, 1985

By the end of the 1980s postmodernism was no longer a radical subcultural style. It had gone mainstream.

Han Dynasty Urn with Coca-Cola Logo by Ai WeiWei, 1994

Ai WeiWei used a 2000 year old urn for the piece above. Ironically after he'd defaced it and turned it into contemporary art it became even more valuable than before.

Postmodernism left behind a set of unresolved intellectual provocations. It was marked with a sense of loss, even destructiveness, but also a radical expansion of possibilities. 
In the permissive, fluid and hyper-commodified situation of design today, we're still feeling its effects. In that sense, like it or not, we are all postmodern now.

The exhibition closed with New Order's video for Bizarre Love Triangle (1986).
The bizarre editing effects and montage style is very influential and the symbolic images make it a memorable postmodern music video.