Feedback on Planning

Well done girls; you are all working at a level four for planning and the regular updates to your concept and progression are improving your blog in terms of the criteria for the mark scheme.  Continue to ensure you post visual evidence for all posts and keep up the quality comments on each others posts.  Hope the shoot went well, looking forward to seeing your footage.

AR: Deconstruction of a Digipak

GENRE

How is the genre of the track/artist evident?
The genre of Lana Del Rey's music is alternative pop, specifically chamber pop with an electric style that also places her within the trip hop sub-genre of music. She has an original cinematic style that appears to reject rock and grunge endeavouring to return to the elegance and classically based style of 1960's baroque pop. The period is reflected in Del Rey's star image and visual motif through how she dresses and the style of her makeup and hair evident in this album cover where her hair is in the wavey thick style of the 50's/60's and the top button, white collar shirt, red lips and winged eyeliner also reflect this era effectively. The obvious American, cinematic, film noir esque theme is shown in this image as the blue sky, white shirt and red lips emphasize the colours in the American flag, also colours often used throughout Del Rey's print work. Her female pop image is shown through how she faces the audience, looking at the camera with a powerful, serious expression proving herself as an original individual lacking in weakness within the music industry.


MEDIA LANGUAGE

What visual techniques are used? (rule of thirds, texture, colour, tone, mise-en-scene)
-The artist is placed in the centre of shot which connotes an intimidating, threatening person as it breaks the rules and stands out so grabs a viewers attention and asserts the artist's talent and dominance in the music industry. The symmetry is aesthetically pleasing however it has a dismissive connotation making the artist appear simultaneously present and absent like Dyer's identified paradox.
-Costume involves a see-through top with an obvious red bra underneath conforming to the use of women as objects used for sex appeal in the music industry.
-The background is slightly our of focus so all attention is put on Del Rey's sharp image.
-Red to blue colour scheme is used predominantly in female pop artist work that I found out in previous research into album covers shown in my mood board. It produces a parallel of stereotypical feminine colours and male colours and rejects any warmer yellow tones.
-The location used is a very normal suburban area obvious by the wooded gate, blue sky and green trees. The artist is ordinary and accessible which are features of a star identified in Dyers critical framework of 'star image' paradox theories.
-The body language of her chin up and shoulders back standing face on with the audience has a similar stance of a strong, powerful soldier which opposes Dyers star characteristic of an artist with an anti-authorial attitude. However it does have originality because women are not shown emphasising their feminine assets by pushing out their breasts and bending their waists instead no sexual image is suggested in terms of how she stands.

How is meaning generated through these techniques? (semiotics)
-The slight low angle shot is a sign that conforms to the social myth that female pop artists are totally inaccessible and extraordinary as she appears to look down on the consumer.
-Her costume appears to subtly emphasise her sexual desire with her red bra showing through the white top this reinforces the social stereotype that female artists are promoted in their videos through 'soft porn' and fetishism.
-The use of the red lip stick emphasises her voluptuous lips which are part of her visual motif and an iconic sign that connotes her femininity.
- Her costume acts as an iconic signifier that rejects the social myth that an artist is extraordinary because the plain white shirt is a universal, multi-gender garment that is not dependent on who you are or how much money you have.

What linguistic devices have been used? (look at emotive language, use of quotations, connotations of song/album title)
As well as the artists name the title of the album 'Born to Die' also appears. It is a powerful statement that reinforces Lana Del Rey's metanarrative of often having focused themes on Philosophy and God influenced by her religious upbringing. It is named after the song from the album, a common feature of music albums to further promote a specific song and to relate with an audience that may have only heard that song so it compels them to listen to more.

Is there any intertextuality/references to popular culture? How does this create meaning for the audience? Think about postmodernism here, use of parody, pastiche.
There is a subtle reference to 50s/60s pop culture which is a feature that has developed Del Rey's visual motif into what she looks like now. I noticed her stern expression looked like the blank expression the 60's model, Twiggy, is known for. In these images of the model I have selected certain aspects relate to Del Rey's album cover like the bold pastel pink similar to the sky blue tone used. Also her slight low angle with the camera positioned just under eye level.

REPRESENTATION

How are the band/artist represented? Does this add to their 'meta-narrative' in any way? How does it help sell their product?
Lana Del Rey's metanarrative is most predominantly her struggle with alcohol dependence from a young age and her interest in philosophy and God spurred on by her Catholic school education. Her narrative follows her self-styled gangsta image as she appear involved with dangerous  high-profile mobster type men. This image is reinforced with her subtle hoop earrings that have a rough, 'independent female' connotation. She is shown to be innocent which is emphasised by her 'Lolita' relationship with older father-figure sort of men. Her innocence is evident in this text by how the top button of her plain white shirt is done up; symbolic of purity. The fact that her bra can be seen through the shirt however gives an idea of the sexual desire behind her innocence.


INSTITUTION AND AUDIENCE

How might this print text be consumed? How is this evident in the way it is constructed?
The text could be consumed on the album art of online digital downloads from internet music shops such as Itunes and Amazon. It could also be as part of the CD or vinyl cover sold in highstreet shops and supermarkets.

THE BACK COVER

The back cover displays important information about the product such as a track list, bar code and details about the label and key names that went into the albums production. Simple colours white and light blue are used that synchronise with the colour scheme of the front cover. The same font is used for the track list, in capitals also. The image is reduced to just a plain white background with no photography or texture, this gives it a very clean cut, neat look.

Group: Review of Thursday 23/10/14

Amelia
In class: I took photographs of my drawings then together we edited all the images in time with the track to create our animatic.
Out of class: Finalised preparation for filming our Field shots during the following week: props and equipment.

Emma-Louise:
In class: Collected images off the internet to use in our animatic then uploaded them onto Premiere along with the track.
Out of class: Finalised preparation for filming our Field shots during the following week: cast members and travel schedules.

Group: Animatic

 

 

1. What was your individual contribution to the storyboarding and animatic task?

Charlie - I helped plan the shots we were going to be including within our music video, discussing composition of the actors in the frame.

Amelia - I drew the illustrations in the storyboard and edited them into an order based on our shot outline post. I added the track and built the shot entrance and exit around it.

Emma-Louise - I found the images online or used images we had taken in previous location recces to represent some scenes more realistically than drawings and helped Amelia edit them into an order.

2. What have you learned from completing this process in terms of, camera - distance, movement and angle; editing - duration and transitions; sound - relationship between lyrics/sound and visuals, emotional colouring; Mise en scene - locations, character blocking?

• In order to conform to the pop genre, we included camera angles such as CU, LS and MCU within our animatic that would help to establish a rapport between the actor and target audience, which most pop music videos intend to achieve. This also helped us to visualise what the shots would look like when we actually film them, enabling the filming process to run smoothly and go to plan.
• Furthermore, constructing the animatic was a very useful process as it helped us to get a feel for the composition of the actor/s in the frame, placing them in the rule of thirds or centre frame to evoke specific emotions such as isolation and dominance.
• In terms of editing, we were able to time manage each shot by cutting them in time with the music on the animatic. This provided us with knowledge as to how long each shot would appear in the video to conform to a pop genre style of a fast cutting rate.
• We have manipulated the beats in our sound track as indicators demonstrating when we need to cut the visuals to fit the lyrics being sung. This will make our music video flow better as the narrative fuzz will be apparent as well as an amplified effect we aim to show.
• By being able to draw shots we plan to use, it gave us a clear idea of character blocking when we came to film the field shots particularly. It allowed us to portray status amongst the actors, by placing the female in front of all the male animals communicating her importance and significance in comparison to them.

3. How else has this process fed into the development of your concept?

• It helped us cast a realistic representation of what our final outcome will look like by ordering all our shots into the right order. This gives us a visual example of how it will look so we have something to follow.

4. How was this task more complex/different from the same task at AS?

• This task was a more complex process to construct compared to last year, as we had to jumble up shots within the animatic to make it conform to an amplified music video look. Whereas last year, we simply drew out shot by shot each scene location which made it easier to form and know exactly where each shot would go.
• This year, we included digital images collected from the internet to go into our animatic in order to show the multimedia skills we have learnt from last year. Also, it allowed others to visualise our conceptual ideas and the colour grading's we intend to use on specific shots which we couldn't achieve through just drawing the images.

5. What were the challenges/difficulties of carrying out this task?

• Most music videos include multiple spontaneous shots that make them unique in comparison to existing videos already in the charts. Therefore, having to plan every single shot in detail was hard for us to do knowing we will include unplanned shots when we film.
• Placing the shots in the correct order to which we are going to have them in our actual music video was also a challenge, as we didn't have a distinct idea of definite shot positions.

Group: Review of Wednesday 22/10/14

Amelia
In class: I finalised the shot outline and clarified with the other group members that they were happy with what I had created. I then went on to start drawing sections of the storyboard getting ready to produce the animatic.
Out of class: I will finish my drawings and collect images ready to put into premiere and edit in time with our track to form our animatic.

Emma-Louise
In class: Edited the track in 'Audacity' so that it was double the speed but the same pitch in order to help Charlie lip sync easily in the speed ramp section of our final piece.
Out of class: Will embed the fast track into a post and outline its uses.

Group: Speeded Up Tempo

We want to include a speed ramp in a section of our song while still having Charlie lip syncing accurately so we speeded up the tempo while keeping the pitch the same so Charlie can lip sync to that before we slow it down to it's normal speed. Then the song will be the normal speed and the visuals will be in slow motion to give a dreamy effect.

Group: Review of Tuesday 21/10/14

In todays lesson, the group adopted the same approach as within yesterdays lesson in completing different tasks.

Charlie
In class:
Today I changed the blog post explaining our animal mask concept, in saying how we now want all of the animals to be different whereas before, we wanted them to be all the same. This is because having different animals with help to portray a naturalistic feel, with not all wildlife animals being the same. This will make our music video idea explicitly clear that we are not trying to present all men as being the same. We want to imply how some men treat women with disrespect (in this case, via a one night stand) and therefore women perceive them in a negative light. After I have finished making these adjustments, I helped Amelia finalise her blog post about the shot outline.

Out of class:
Plan for storyboarding and finish completing the call sheet and risk assessment for our film shoot in half term on Monday 27/10/14.

Amelia
In class:
As Amelia had left gaps out of the shot outline where she was unsure about what shots we could use, she consulted both me and Emma-Louise to see if we had any ideas which could fill these gaps. We both managed to contribute what we felt appropriate to fit certain parts of the song and managed to complete this post fully.

Out of class:
Plan for storyboarding

Emma-Louise
In class:
Emma helped Amelia fill the shot outline gaps primarily and spoke about plans for Mondays shoot on the field location which is close to her house. As she knew the area fairly well, we asked her about what shots would look appropriate and where abouts in the field they would look best according to her location reccie.

Out of class:
Plan for storyboarding