FINAL MAJOR PROJECT
This website will feature all of my work leading up to my final music video.
LESSON REFLECTION
My weakest attribute would be my skills on other adobe apps other than premier pro. This is because I feel like I haven't used them enough and need to learn more skills which could be done by watching tutorials and exploring the software more.
I would like to make another music video for the final project. My favourite project we have done over the past two years has been the music video one and I found it fun to create. I was happy with the result of the video and my sister was a great actor in it which made it better. I want her to be in this video Aswell as I hope to make an even better one for the final project. When we started researching music videos, I was worried that it would be quite hard to create one as it takes a lot of time and thought.
30/03/2021
In today's lesson, we had Sam and learnt about different genre conventions that feature in films and film posters. We were taught how genres can be applied to films in more forms than just one. The three different types of conventions we learnt about were ICONOGRAPHY, NARRATIVE, THEMATIC. Iconography is all about costumes, sound effects, props and location. The narrative is about story, structure, plot points and character roles. Thematic is about ideas, messages, binary opposites and juxtaposition. For example, the theme of iconography is featured the most out of all themes in Star Wars the rise of the galaxy film. This is because the props in star wars are very iconic such as lightsabers. They feature on the front page of the film poster and throughout the film which is a sign that it is a star wars film as they aren't in any other franchise.
20/04/2021
In this lesson with our teacher Sam, he taught us about film directors and they're signature techniques and styles which our used in famous movies and films.
Edgar Wright - Fast Cut Action Montage
Edgar Wright is an English film director, screenwriter and producer. He is well known for his signature technique of fast cut action montages. The work of Edgar Wright, most notably in his collaboration with Simon Pegg in Hot Fuzz, which uses the technique for comedic effect. Fast cutting is a film editing technique that refers to several consecutive shots of brief duration.
Steven Spielberg - God Lights
Steven Spielberg is an American film director, producer, and screenwriter. He is well known for his 'god lights' technique in a few of his films including The Extra-Terrestrial, Indiana Jones Franchise and Jaws. The one that stands out to me is the light from ET which comes out of the spaceship behind ET whilst hugging the little boy as he is leaving him. This makes the scene stand out and it highlights the special moment in the film.
Wes Anderson - Symmetrical
Framing
As you can see from the video above, Anderson loves to compose his shots with perfect symmetry. From his breakout hit Rushmore, to his stop-motion animated movie The Fantastic Mr Fox, to his most recent movie The Grand Budapest Hotel, Anderson consistently organises the elements in his frame so that the most important thing is smack in the middle.
Directors are taught in film school to avoid symmetry as it feels stagey. An asymmetrically framed shot has a natural visual dynamism to it. It also makes for a more seamless edit to the next shot, especially if that shot is another asymmetrically framed shot. But if you've watched anything by Anderson, you know that seeming stagey has never been one of his concerns. Instead, Anderson has developed his own quirky, immediately identifiable visual style.
Editing to beat of the music
In a lesson, we were given a load of clips which were random footage of a woman driving her car through a city. It had close up clips of her face and the gear stick, it had shots of her outside view of the car and her turning the wheel. With these clips, I went through and cropped the small clips out which were the best and put them all into the timeline randomly. We were then given a sound file of an upbeat song that could be used for a car chase scene. We were asked to edit the footage to the beat of the music, so I played the song and made a key at every beat which is where the clips would switch. Then I made sure that the clips fitted into every section. I didn't get time to do much of the footage but I exported it onto youtube and added it in here. I think it was good to have a go at doing it ourselves as we got to see how it was like. I found it very satisfying to do and watch.
A good example of a video that is cut to the beat of the song is Stormzys, "big for your boots". This song is fast-paced and quite a hectic video as all the cuts are done on beat. The fast paced editing compliments the song well because if the edit was slow, the video would sort of feel put of place and
Creating a B/W effect/tinting your footage/slowing down or speeding up footage/fake stop-motion FX
In this lesson, we were asked to go back onto premier pro and get up the previous scene we edited. This was because we were going to be learning how to add Black and white effect to the footage, how to tint the videos, and how to slow down and speed them up. In the clip I have added below, I have added in the Black and white filter and also edited the tint a little bit. This is an effect on the premier pro that could be helpful in the future if, for example, I wanted to create a Black and white music video.
Single-camera tracking shot based Music Video try-out.
On our first lesson back to college, as we were learning about music videos we were asked to create a scene from a music video that was a single camera tracking shot. In our group, we had Me, Ethan, Stella and Ben. As a group, we decided to try and recreate the song Sunday from Easy Life. This was because in our group Ben was our actor, Ethan was the camera person and I and Stella were the directors and this was a song that ben knew the words to. We decided on using the green screen in the media studio and have Ben stand in front lipsyncing to the song so we could match it up to the dong when editing it on later on.
The clips that we managed to get were not the best as we didn't use a dolly to place the camera which would have stabilised the camera and made the shot very smooth. Instead, We decided to make our own music video using just a tripod and not include a tracking shot. I think we should have included a tracking shot as that was the whole purpose of the task, and if we had the option to try this again we would definitely use a dolly to add this shot into the music video.
The first youtube video I included is Stella edit to the video and think this is the best edit as she added in a lot of backgrounds on the green screen and synced the music well. However, in one of our previous projects, we did cover tracking shots and got some footage of Grace going down the corridor. We recorded this on a camera that was attached to a tripod that went round a person's shoulder. The shoulder tripod isn't as smooth as the dolly but it does give the effect which was wanted in our music video.
We were looking back at different camera shots and angles we learnt when we first started our course. These shots include High and low angles, Dutch angle, establishing shot, full-body shots and eye level. Different camera angles and shots are specifically chosen in media to give a particular effect to the audience. We all of these shots, in our group we had to choose music videos that featured these shots in them and then go and find a space in the college to be able to recreate it. For example, in the Gangnam Style video, there is a shot of two men in a lift and one is on the ground with another on top dancing as the elevator door closes. With the college lift, we recreated this as a full body shot. I really enjoyed this task as we're able to try and match the video completely and we got a lot of shots done in this task. I have a page dedicated to this task called codes and conventions which features all of the original videos and our ones next to it. I also wrote underneath them all what the shot is used for.