Research and Planning - Music Directors

David Fincher 

HE is best known for directing Hollywood films such as The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The Social Network and  Alien 3. He has then worked on music videos with Madonna, Aero Smith and the Rolling Stones. The videos include:


Madonna - Vogue

Rolling Stones - Love is Strong

Research and Planning - Music Directors

Emil Nava

http://www.pulsefilms.com/talent/emil-nava/

http://icould.com/videos/emil-nava/

Some of the videos done by Nava:

Rita Ora - R.I.P

Ed Sheeran - Lego House

Jesse J - Do it like a Dude

Filming experience

As a group we did some filming with our lead actor Dan last week. We used punt hill as our 1st location to capture the fist few frames in our story board. We were planning to include an extreme close-up of half of Dan's face on the left hand side of the screen in focus, mouthing to the words of the song. However, we have found that the camera tends to focus on the background rather than on our actor due to the background dominating on the screen. This makes Dan go out of focus. As we need to move during this shot we are not sure whether this type of shot would work and will experiment further with it. If it still doesn't work we will have 2 options: Make the shot stationary or include the whole of Dan's face which will dominate the screen and make the focus work.

We have also found out that shooting on a sunny day makes the grass reflect most of the light, making the frame too light for our liking. We wouldn't like to shoot in bad weather conditions, but we'll try to shoot in the late afternoon, when the sun is not as bright. It will also take us a few tries to decide on the type of lighting we need as we try not to rely heavily on Final Cut Pro effects. We are filming again Friday 19th October with Tess, one of the female leads in the same location, and will go onto Boulter's Lock if we have time.

BFI Film Festival

On Tuesday 16th of October we went on a school trip to a London BFI film festival and viewed a film called 'The Road' by Marc Isaacs, which follows the main route into the UK - the A5. 

After the screening there was a Q&A session in which Isaacs talked about the process of silming. The shooting time of the film was 3 years with about 6 main characters, 2 of which died in the end. The director explained that although he was a part of the participants' life, he had to keep a professional distance to maintain a working relationship. He didn't want to intrude in their lives in order to shoot the reality.

 Synopsis

Q&A

Possible Shooting Location

We discovered this skate park during the day. It is completely covered in graffiti and would suit our genre of music. However we have to be careful as shooting in such locations may imply that skaters listen to Dubstep, whereas their music tastes can vary significantly. Also this place was noticed by a few other groups in our class and they are also planing to shoot there, in which case we will find more places like these, in order to avoid similarity or copying.

Planning and Research - Magazine Spreads

I have been loking at varouis magazine spreads of the artists advertising their tours and CD's. During my research I have discovereed a few techniques:

This magazine spread is done in black and white to portray a dark genre of the music and also to add mistery to the picture. The date of the album release is bold and clear at the bottom of the page, making sure that it is visible to the audience. The name of the band and the single is also in bold at the top of the page, attracting attention.

 In this magazine spread, the picture of the singer is full page, containing the picture of her album cover which is exactly the same. This could have been done to make it easier for the public to recognise the album by the cover when they see it and therefore want to buy it. The name of the singer is also in bold and the name of the album is just underneath in a slightly smaller font.

This idea is also a good way to make an advert stand out because it stands out as it meets the eye. This makes the audience come back to look at it again and look at the name of the band/artist. Once again the name of the band is at the top of the spreadand the name is in a different colour at the bottom of the page, also featuring a list of tracs that are in the album.

This is a double spread with the singer and the name on one of the pages and reviews on the right. This however does not mention a CD name.

Marina has a simillar approach to Gwen Stephani by including her album cover image on her magazine sread. however those two differ but are of a similar style. Both pictures have a tins them and the writing is of a simillar font which makes it distinctive. The list of the songs that are included in the CD pack are also stated on the advert.

  Overall i have noticed a pattern of simillarity between the spreads of different artists/singers. Their name is usually done in bold and at the top of the spread, with an album name either at the bottom of the page or right under the singers' name. The shots for the spreads vary from close ups to long shots, which could be down to personal preference or different marketing strategies.

Planning and Research - Music video Conventions

1)There is a relationship between the lyrics & the visuals.
(The visuals serve to amplify, illustrate or contradict the lyrics)
The music video could be illustrating what the song is about, the lyrics might relate to what is going on or it might go with the title of the song.

2) There is a relationship between the music & the visuals.
(The visuals serve to amplify, illustrate or contradict the lyrics)
The visuals of the music video might go with the beat or the rhythm of the song which could emphasise what is going on.

3) Particular genres may have their own style & iconography.
The conventions for different genres wouldn’t be the same such as R&B which would show all the glamour, money and rich lifestyle whereas Rock would focus more on the instruments and the band and the lighting is usually dark to give off that atmosphere.

4) There is a predominance of the Close-Up of the main artist/lead vocalist.
A lot of close-ups would be used of the artist to show who they are and get them recognised. We would also be able to see the emotion that is being shown with the lyrics and along with the music.

5) The video may help to develop the artists own style or star iconography – which then becomes recognisable beyond the video.
Some artists will develop a style just because of their music, this image will then carry on off screen where people will expect them to act a certain way because of what they’ve seen.

6) There is likely to be a reference to voyeurism, particularly in the treatment of women & in systems of looking.
Women are often used in music videos to appeal to the male audience and sell the video.

Lesson Review

As part of today's activity lesson, we have been brainstorming and coming up with ideas of products that would make our everyday life easier. The group came up with all sorts of ideas, including a calorie counter spoon. My group came up with ideas such as:

Automatic Shoe Cleaner, Automatic Cat Groomer, Robot, Pet Hair Vacuum, Rocket Backpack, Increasable Bed Sheets, and GPS glasses. The glasses and the backpack have already been invented but we were unaware of this. We then had to choose our 5 best ideas: 

Further into our lesson, our teacher came up with a quote that described what our blogging process should be like.

I think this is a good quote because blogging should be about sharing ideas, even if they are ones that will not be used, it is still useful to have them. It is also about trial and error, about trying to find 'the one' idea that will benefit us in the end.