Styling Course

Last week I got permission to be off school to go on a Fashion Styling course at Central Saint Martins School of Art and Design. It's something I've been considering as a career, but it also had a lot of relevance to our Media projects, as it's all about getting the look right for a shot, something that's very important for music videos as the artist needs to project the right image of themselves in order to sell records and get across their mood or opinions. We were also taught by a professional fashion stylist who has worked on music videos such as Jessie J's Do It Like A Dude, and helped with the initial styling of the artist Example.

We has to do a final photoshoot, and were given a variety of themes to work with. We went with the theme of White, and went for a Princessy feel. Here are some of our final photos;

I really enjoyed the experience and I feel like I will now be more confident and knowledgeable when it comes to the styling for our music video.

Heart Skips a Beat

I really like the location used in this video and it fits really well with the song.I also really like the idea of the band on a record roundabout, although we probably wouldn't be able to do anything like this in our video.

Harry Potter Review

Everybody's looking forward to the movie...

In honour of the release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows: Part 2 being released today I found this brilliant parody of Rebbecca Black's 'Friday' Harry Potter style. Although it's meant to be funny I really like the shots, and it think it's quite impressive how they managed to capture the cinematographic quality of the actual movies. I'll be watching it today and I'm really excited, but sad that it's the last one. I'll post a review of it in due course though!

In Order to Achieve a Good Grade:

FINAL A2 GRADE
q Ask friends or approach local bands and get permission to use their material
q Approach unsigned bands on ‘My Space’ etc and get permission to use their material
q Collaborate with music department/students in your centre on the project
q Create your own music or sound track
q OR…Use a music track by a well-known artist, but email the record label asking permission: be aware of the dangers of using a well known artist à your videos are more likely to mimic existing videos and not challenge conventions

Evaluation

Here is my evaluation for my AS media experience!

Storyboard

This is the storyboard for our prelim video. It's a little hard to see but it's basically the shots from the fist 30 seconds of 'Smile' in picture form.

Practice prelim

Today we did some practice lip syncing for our prelim. As Beste and Andrea are going to be in the main video they took this as an opportunity to get some practice in for lip syncing and also we all got the opportunity to start learning how to edit in a way that works for the music.

Shots for 'Smile' - Lily Allen

1.  Singer eating chocolate, mid - shot, panning into face/
2. Singer and guy on bed, lying on side, wider shot
3. Side shot with arms crossed, sitting up on bed, mid shot.
4. Close up from below, checking phone
5. Mid shot lying on side eating crisps
6. Same shot as 3., from sitting flops onto bed, mid shot
7. Head and shoulder shot from slightly below, looking up.
8. Panning shot with her and male on bed reading book
9. More of shot 5
10. Same as shot 1, finishing chocolate.
11. More of shots 9 and 5
12. wide shot showing her sitting on bed from front
13. Close up from her level of her looking into the camera
14. panning shot of her sitting on bed, panning as she sings 'When you first left me I was wanting more'
15. Mid shot of her sitting on bed, not singing
16. Similar to 13, but singing 'what dya do that for?'

These are the shots for the first 30 seconds of the music video for smile. I decided to add another 10 seconds in so that we could get some practice with lip syncing, as the first 20 seconds are just various shots.

Bridesmaids

Yesterday I went to see the movie Bridesmaids, which has got lots of publicity over the past few weeks and has been dubbed 'the female version of 'The Hangover'' by many critics. The movie was directed by Paul Feig, starred Kristen Wiig and was written by her and her best friend Annie Mumulo. I personally found it to be a lot more witty and realistic than most rom-com films, and also a lot more funny. One of the movie's main strengths was that rather being entirely about a slushy romance, it was more about friends and how women can make total fools of themselves.

I think it was more realistic than other films because the actors were all fairly unknown, and aren't unrealistically glamorous and beautiful, which is often one of my pet peeves about rom-com movies. It also portrayed women in a much more interesting light than the typical archetype Hollywood actresses who bring no personality into a role and are fairly dispensable as far as the job's concerned.

The script also showed really accurately the way women talk to each other, and introduced quite an unusual storyline in the character of Helen, showing that being beautiful and rich doesn't mean everyone likes you, something that isn't often communicated in Hollywood movies. Overall, I really enjoyed the movie, and I think they left the storyline in a good place to maybe have a sequel, something that I don't often hope for with that genre of movie, but this time I have my fingers crossed.

Prelim Video

Today in our lesson Miss told us we need to start our practice video in order for us to get a feel for the various shots and angles used in music videos. We have decided to reshoot the first twenty seconds or so of Smile by Lily Allen, as it's simple but uses shots in an interesting way.