Leigh's Year 13 Posts > New Blog

Hey everyone,

Just a message to say, to see my A2 Media work, you'll need to follow my new blog @ http://switchbackmedia.blogspot.com/

Thank you!
Leigh :)

Director study on Michel Gondry!!!

So here is some basic background...Michel waqs born 8th May 1963 and is from Versailles in France. He not only directs short videos and music videos but is drummer for the pop/rock band Oui Oui which non-surprisingly he has done several videos for. Overall he has won 16 awards for his videos and had been nominated for 14. More recently Michel has been directing full legth features such as Be Kind Rewind and The Green Hornet which are both comedies where he has worked with big names such as Jack Black and Seth Rogen. He claims that he has worked with all the artists he could want to apart from Micheal Jackson.



Some of the artists he has worked with include:-

• The White Stripes
• The Chemical Brothers
• Bjork
• Oui Oui

One video wonders!

• Kylie Minogue-Come Into My World
• Foo Fighters-Everlong
• The Rolling Stones-Like A Rolling Stone
• Daft Punk-Around The World

Some key videos I feel he has directed were:






His other work includes short fi;lms like "La Lettre" and "One Day". He has also done advertising for Schmirnoff, Drugstore and Polaroid. Michel has had the chance to work with big names like Jim Carey in short sketch like films like "Pecan Pie". (Films he has directed are listed earlier)

His style I feel includes these features:

• Repetition (of images)
• Colour distortion
• Time and space (playing with the idea of)
• Modernism
• Filmed in urban areas, often cities
• Surreal settings
• Fast images (faster than like eg footage has been sped up)
• Transport is often involved whether it is a car or a train
• Point of View shots are used in some pieces

CGI is used in msot videos to distort, repeat or overlay images. Editing software can be used to fade and cross over images as well as make sure the edits keep in time with the beat of the music.
Lights are often used to make a video extremely dark to bring out a colour contrast or it is extreme bright colours so you almost don't know where to look. There are some videos where black and white images are used-often in short films and advertisments.

I think this director is a certain inspiration to us all. His videos are always wacky and out of the ordinary and for this I feel that he is to be admired for his creativity and imagination. His videos show good editing skills along with the flare that every director needs

Director Profile: Sophie Muller

Why do a bog-standard blogpost, when you can do a Powerpoint!

(Download the whole powerpoint with the videos embedded HERE > Note the file is 51.7MB and may take awhile to download... but the videos will work even when you don't have internet access. The embedded videos do not work on the powerpoint below...)

Director Profile - Sophie Muller

Analysation of a music video

Goodwin
This video shows that the true characteristics of the genre seeing a performance element in their videos where upon the band plays to the camera. Thee lyrics match the song in a way as when you are not seeing them performing they are walking down boulevards without anyone there so in a way it follows. Editing seems to mostly change when the chord does on the guitar or every few beats but this is hard to tell what could be counted because the video is purposefully jumpy and of a bad quality almost where it appears that there are holes int he film at times. Considering the darker location I think this is done on purpose. There are many close-ups of Billie Joe's (the lead singer's) face to make sure that he is recognised to be important in the video and though most are of him there are some of the other two members because they are all in the band together-the main focus staying on Billie though. They are in a dark location playing instuments isolated and alone which tends to eb the style of music video they have. There are no scantily clad women in this video but the band wear smart/casual clothes by wearing shirts and jackets with ties on some. This is to promote a particular look for the band. Also showing them doing performance shows how good they are at playing their instruments making them idols to the general public. There is no synergy in this video.
Green day are associated with labels such as Lookout! and Reprise. Reprise is then owned by Warner Bros. Therefore Green Day are owned by a major which means they have bigger acsess to money and resources. So although on the outside they look like they are siding with major rock labels they are all under the same institution.

This shows a representation of the world as time goes on. He talks about how he walks alone and I think this represents age in the fact that as you get older no one will be there to help you, you just have to go it alone. It also shows the lower class areas of this world, most rock bands like to make out they have come from darker backgrounds so it will match their music.

Our examples of Goodwin's theories

For each of Goodwin's 7 theories we picked an artist or a music video that we felt suited each theory.

1.There were several genres to pick from but choosing the metal/hard rock stereotype we picked a music video that we felt showed definate stage performance.



2.This is a video we felt that the song video reflected the lyrics of the song


3.After discussion we finally came to the conclusion that this music video correlated appropriately with the music


4.Iris by the Goo Goo Dolls was a perfect example of close-ups in a video as most of the focus is on the lead singer throughout


5.Videos by Slipknot have an iconic style in all of their concerts, albums and videos as each band member wears a mask and the video Dead Memories shows us just how this image works for them


6.Plenty of videos include scantily clad women even in some music videos where the singer is a woman herself. In all genres women are seen this way. Lady Gaga being a classic example.


7.Many music videos cross between the music by the band and images from television or a film that the song was featured in. A recent and famous example being Decode-Paramore

Iconic music videos

This music video was releases in 1972. i think its icon because Alice Cooper has been a massive influence of all metal bands to date, with the theatrical appearances, rebellious songs and guitar solo's. I also think this is icon as even today we still hear very heavy metal bands performing a salute to Alice cooper by playing this song at gigs. some even show the music video along side it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8vnVWfOzZI

Iconic Music Videos!

Ok so this is a song from the 80s which was actually banned after it's first release on MTV in 1983 and by some radio stations. The lyrics was deemed to be too rude and the video had graphic sexual references. This banning made the song a number one hit in the top 40 for five consecutive weeks. So here it is. Relax-Frankie Goes to Hollywood.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KaqqmsIzTw

Some people today would say that this is the average music video but it shocked the 80s making it the icon it was

Conclusion!

The Film!!!

so yes. this is a little late, but it is here and ready to be viewed! so with no futher delay here is 'The Puppeteers Playhouse' !!

Heroes, (Play)fighting and Guy-Talk

Hello blogfans! Especially those of you who appear to be viewing our blog from South Korea, Denmark or even Alaska (according to our blog stats, we have viewers all over the world!) :)

It's a Wednesday afternoon (roughly 12:45) and I've temporarily been left on my own in the 6th Form IT Room. Me, Katy and Nick are all doing various things to do with our evaluation (inbetween playfighting...) It's also my birthday... so we/I/the whole class have had part of a carton of Cadbury Heroes for work inspiration... oh hang on... Katy's back. *types furiously to avoid potential injury*

We've totally finished our film, and you'll see that on the blog later this evening! (if YouTube behaves itself). We have also started collecting Audience Feedback on our final piece, which we'll be posting here in due course. Inital responses have been extremely positive, and I personally find our film better and better every time I watch it.

Nick at this moment in time is off collecting more Audience Reseach with some of his mates, and me and Katy (who is on my right) are starting to plan out some of the questions for our evaluation which we'll be kicking off after half term.

I hope you all appreciate this blog post, as I'm risking injury sitting at this computer. A rugby ball is being thrown over my head backwards and forwards while I sit here... who knew blogging could be so dangerous? ;)

Finished !

well it would seem we have done the impossible. we have finished, filming and editing our Thriller Opening, and all of us are relieved and distressing in our own way. Even though we have finished, it was a stress filled project, with many hiccups along the way but we have made it through with a respectable attempt at a thriller opening. We have asked groups of people what they think of it, and have received a lot of positive responses from them all. Monday is the premier date for our thriller to arrive on the blog!!

Now that we have finished making this film. i would like to give a massive thank you to both our actors and my fellow Imaginarybeardies for all the effort they have put in and the time they have taken out of the norm to complete this project. Cheers guys...even though it is a school project.

On a side note, i have been rather lazy in posting this but i feel that any of the followers of this blog should be able to see the team being the imaginary beards

We have. from left to right; Nick Anderson(myself)    Katy Mathews    Leigh Last

Audience Research-2

With the first part of our film complete we decided to show the first minute to a random member of our audience we would like to aim the film at. He recognised:

• The light and dark places were able to make it a "creepier" place
• The location as appropriate almost looking as if it was someones basement-a place a prisoner may be kept
• He could not tell that the tracks were different and he thought the tracks used were appropriate to the action
• The only issue was that he could not see the other character at all when Richard our main character talks to him-we are sorting this lighting issue.

We felt the problem this feedback was both constructive and helpful in the further editing of our film.

Note: Audience Research-1 member suggested the harness technique with the camera. We tried this and found it to be successful and it will be featured in our opening.

Editing

With our clips now in chronological order (for the most part) and our music over the top of the first minute our film is well on it's way. Of course this is not without encountering a few problems:

• In one of our clips we must enhance the ligthing. For a thriller we know that one convention we chose to use is a contrast of light and dark-very dark, so dark in fact you cannot see the other character he is speaking to. Using the software in Final Cut Express we can enhance the lighting to make him seen.
• One clip of ours is missing. It is either on the server (that has crashed although all files are backed up) or on the DVD-rom we needed it on to be able to play it on the television in the piece. We have found that we cannot successfully rip the audio from the DVD and only the video. We now play the waiting game in the hope that the technician will get back to us soon.

Our editing is well on it's way and with the thought of titles in mind we have felt it to be so far successful.

Music...

With the deadline for our edited film being Friday and the limited amount of time we have although composing our own music would have been preferable we simply feel we don't have the time to compose our own piece. Instead we have chosen to use unlicensed music from a website called http://www.unlicensedmusicweb.com/. We took a range of tracks from this and all brought in sample music to use for our films. We have so far in the editing process decided to use two of the tracks found. We have merged them so hopefully you cannot tell they are different. We are yet still to work out what music we would prefer to use in the final piece.

Filming... IS DONE!

On Thursday evening, a miracle occured. We have (hopefully) managed to complete all of the filming for our thriller opening. It's a wrap! HORRAY.

We managed to refilm the opening (which was originally damaged on the tape) and film additional shots that we felt we needed to increase variety and effectiveness of the opening - so that meant lots of CLOSE UPS!

Now it's time to get down to the nitty gritty of really getting on with the editing process over the next week. Getting the whole thing done to a quality standard asap is our main goal. All 3 of us will be hard at work on editing over the 3 lessons next week (and more than likely a couple of free periods we have together) to get this complete.

Over the last week, we've started looking at the kinds of music we're going to be using in our opening and come to the decision that we'll be making our own backing music. Music is my area of "expertise" and I'm happy we decided to make our own, as we can plan, produce and manipulate our music into fitting our film better than having a stock soundtrack which would not "flow" very well with our opening.

Audience Feedback-Number 1

We showed an extract of our film to Alex, he works with cameras so we figured he might give us some new ideas. He said that we had some interesting footage though at one point it was ever so slightly out of focus. We were talking amongst ourselves about how we would need more close-ups within the piece but we didn't know how to make them more interesting. Alex suggested that we use some kind of harness to put the tripod on the person you want the close-up of with the camera focused up at their face. This would give a low angle shot and a more interesting variation of your average close-up...so we are going to experiment with it and see where it goes...more updates on audience feedback will be posted after further editing has been done.

How did we use this information to influence our thriller film?

We considered the answers from our initial audience feedback very carefully when deciding exactly what we could take from it for our thriller film. Some of the responses we took from it were:

• A psychological thriller-secrets are revealed to the main character as he complete the challenges
• Ideas from the Dark Knight-Things like the masks we used in costume to conceal identity were used in our thriller film. Had we had a bigger budget future challenges in the rest of the film could have high-tech gadgets like in Batman.
• Mind games are played with Richard, the main character, by the puppeteer-he must complete the challenges to reveal the secrets of his life that he has forgotten
• All of our characters so far are male as we have only really introduced the main character and the controller.
• We used the setting of an abandoned place so we can get the idea that Richard does not know where he is which creates a further sense of disorientation
• We used casual clothing for the average man in our piece
• You cannot tell what time of day it is set as we are inside in a place with no windows (further adding to atmosphere of confusion) but had we filmed further than an introduction it would be at night.

After considering the audience feedback carefully and inputting the most popular ideas we hope that ours will be a successful thriller opening.

Our questionaire

At the start of our project we did a thriller questionnaire on the conventions that people prepared.
1)Are you male or female?
We asked more males than females but only by one so it didn't bias our results

2)Which age group includes you:
13-14
15-16
17-18
Our main audience age group is 15-16

3)Which specific genre of thriller would you have said was your favourite?
Criminal
Psychological
Sci-fi
Supernatural
The main answer we got was psychological

Out of the ones named which would you say was your favourite thriller?
Dark Knight
Shutter Island
4.3.2.1.
Terminator
Reservoir Dogs
Number 23
Dark Knight was the most popular answer however we had widespread results


5)What are your favourite thriller themes?
Mind Games
Extreme Violence
A Different World
Mind games are more widely associated with the genre

6)Do you prefer a male character or a female character for the lead?
Male (14) we asked why and had some interesting responses

7)What location would you prefer to see a thriller set?
Abandoned house or warehouse
Outdoors i.e. graveyard, old park, old fairground
A parallel universe
The setting that was most voted for was something that is abandoned because this best shows isolation

8)Which of these examples do you feel is best at creating an atmosphere? What do you focus on most during the film?
People
Music
Dialogue
Setting
Music is important at creating an atmosphere to the audience

9)Which costume do you think the character should wear to make the film see more realistic?
Smart clothing
Casual clothing
Costume (parallel world)
Casual clothing would bring our characters into the 21st century

10)What time of day is more real for a thriller?
Daytime
Night
Twilight
Night is more scary and criminals come out at night so it makes sense that this when we should set our film at night

Props List

Here is a list of props that we needed for our thriller opening:

Props List
Hooded (Over)Coat
2x Masks
2x Cardboard Boxes to cover "padlocks"
DVD Player
Table
TV
A free door
(Several) Keys

Would you Adam & Eve it? It's our Preliminary Task!

After various filming and technical setbacks, the ImaginaryBeard Productions team are proud to say: Our Preliminary Task is now complete. Just press play below! :)



The whole point of doing this preliminary task, was to show that our team understands various key concepts relating to film production. These key concepts included a correct and well-produced "action-match" (@0:11), the "shot reverse shot" procedure throughout, and "crossing the 180 degree line" (@1:24). Also we varied our camera angles between long shots and over-the-shoulder shots.

We found ourselves in a position to learn from our mistakes, as we did an extra "pre-preliminary" task - due to the amount of errors we had in our orginial task. We made the content longer, varied the shots we used and polished up our edits to make them more professionally seamless.

We hope you enjoy... but know it's time to get our teeth stuck into the main event... our thriller opening!

Media: 24th January 2011

In today's lesson I had a great deal of fun arguing with our beloved Mac.
There was a purpose... I hadn't gone mad, don't worry!

I totally completed the editing process, and tried various times to get the final preliminary task file to save correctly. After several attempts, it worked... and you can see it on the next post after this...

We did get some luck however. We thought that because Final Cut crashed at the end of Wednesday's lesson, we'd lose a substantial amount of work we did that lesson. Thankfully however, the project did save, and we could finish it today!

Meanwhile Katy & Nick were doing several different things. They both had another look at what style our titles should be in and also they watched a few thriller openings, to increase their own research on what thriller film openings (are they conventional? etc.) Details of their research will be put up here soon.

After all this, Nick was set to work on abit of blog work. He ended up trying to "artistically manipulate" our group blog photo. In other words, all he achieved in this area today, was to make Katy's head massive. :)

Filming

So the time has come for this all important message! our filming has been finished and we are about the start the longest and hardest part of our entire project... editing!!!!
So today was our last day filming as we had issues filming on Monday due to the school being set on fire and the camera not having and battery... so we finished today instead of Monday.
Today in filming we did the middle part of our intro, which is the main part of the introduction. so it was the most difficult part to film. Now that we have finished filming and have hopefully got more than enough footage than we need so we can start editing it together and well we hope we will get it finished in for the deadline and not need to redo any parts or film anything extra...so we are well on our way now through this project and i hope u enjoy our preliminary tasks and will follow us as we work onwards through this project and will be waiting with baited breath for the release of our thriller opening!!!

Our Pre-Preliminary Task...

Before our current (and proper) preliminary task, we already had 1 go at it. This attempt (while extremely humorous to our group while filming) was full of errors that we could learn from, to make our proper preliminary task even better.

Here it is...



Now, as you can see - that's pretty short. 20 seconds was actually way to short, as we were meant to aim for over a minute. Also, a couple of errors in the editing process meant we lost some of the original footage, and had to work with what we had left, hence the short and substandard result.

We learnt various things from this pre-preliminary task:
1. Film a longer conversation (even before we lost half of the above practice film, it was too short)
2. Increase shot variation.
3. Save in iMovie more to avoid footage loss!
4. Avoid sound or continuity errors.
5. Don't use MJ impersonators. Which of course is the main reason why I'm posting this. ;)

Now we know where we went wrong... our PROPER preliminary task will not have these errors. :)

This Week in Media... (17th/18th/19th January)

Hellloooo everybody. Leigh here, updating you lovely bloggers about what's been going on in our Media lessons this week!

Most of our time this week, has been concentrated on getting our Preliminary Task done and dusted. We jointly took this decision, due to the ongoing issues with the school's Mac server (which is probably in a thousand pieces in a repair centre in Brazil or something due to the time its taking to fix) which mean we can't access the footage of our main film opening which we have uploaded so far. Fingers crossed it'll be back next week...

Good progress has been made over the 3 lessons we've had this week, with editing split between mainly Katy and Nick on Monday, and myself on Tuesday and Wednesday. We've shown various skills required in the preliminary task, included how to cross the 180 degree line correctly, shot reverse shot and action match. We reached a stage where it was totally finished in Wednesday's lesson, but due to a dreaded "Mac crash" we had to revert to the work completed during Tuesday's lesson. I'll probably put some extra time in during the next few days to avoid spending any more lesson time on it, as we were technically finished!

We were also intending to finishing filming on Monday, but couldn't. Why? Because the battery had less than 10 minutes left on it... and we (or should I say Katy) brought the wrong charger. Our excuse... we had a fire at school during Monday's lesson, and therefore we totally forgot to check the adapter was the right one!

The master plan is to finish filming tomorrow, and continue work on the main piece next Monday! Time will tell if we stick to that plan! ;)

Till next time blog fans...

Tuesday/Wednesday's lesson (11/2th)

The problem with the server, that had all preliminary task footage on it and as it was recorded on a hard drive camera had been deleted, meant we were filming our preliminary task...we have learnt from our lighting and time mistakes before and hopefully we should never have to btoher our actors again.
Wednesday was spent editing our task and I am sure it shall be posted on our blog in no time :-)

Filming

Ok so also on Monday we filmed further footage. With two weeks left to complete filming, the keys having not been done over Christmas and the one that was done for that day was done wrong, we improvised finding some old keys we could use...a close escape. With the props problem out of the way and we headed off to the shelter. We had everyone in costume, everyone in place, the scene was set and the lighting was creating a rather nasty glare on the camera. We originally had in the story board that the table would be alight instead of the door. We changed this due to the fact that halogen bulbs are difficult to remove and usuing both would mean you could see further into the room than we wanted. After figuring out how to change the lighting on camera to fit with the plot line and changing a few light bulbs we finally had the lighting we wanted.

We hit a few bumps that filming session but luckily nothing that wasn't efficiently solved. After filming half of the challenge it was time to call it a day and so we are back on Monday 17th for what could be the last filming session...

Editing

So the server has officially crashed!!! Complete with all our footage...However all hope is not yet lost as we can re-import it again.
So whilst we are working on the computer's hard drive along with the rest of the school we were shown how to use Final Cut Express (like iMovie but ten times better and much more advanced). We spent a lesson looking at effects, transitions, timeline rules, sound and other editing software. We found some footage to play with and had a go. We made the decision to use this programme instead of iMovie because although it is more complex we felt that it allowed us more options to do exactly what we wanted and create the vision that is "The Puppeteer's Playhouse"!

The team behind the beards

So i have decided i am going to post a little about the team behind the imaginary beards, and those who are helping us with this important project. so here are the roles we took on at the start of this.
Katy Mathews;
Director
Recruiter for actors
Hair and Make up specialist
Costume Design
Prop design

Leigh Last;
Head of editing
audio design
Continuity consultant
Prop design
Head Technical support

Nick Anderson;
Light effect designer

Special effects designer
Title designer
Storyboard artist
Lead camera operator
Costume design
Prop design


These roles are but guide lines that we have set so that the work load is shared as equally as possible. We are all sharing responsibilities and are taking part in all aspects.

i hope this allows for those who follow our progress to get slight more insight into the team behind the beards and i shall also be posting photography of our actors and ourselves in the near future

Editting

So... editing has started on both our preliminary task and our Thriller opening. With both started off successfully we then hit a few issues... We have encountered various issues with editing thus far due to varies technical and footage issues. We originally thought our preliminary task was done with a short sequence of Cat Nash and Jordan Lunn having a wonderful conversation...with a shoe thrown through the middle... we then came up short after the editing process with only 15 seconds of usable footage and have been forced to rethink and redo this task. With another issue arising shortly after...the lighting had changed between two scenes !! and it has come down to our abilities with editing lighting that we may be able to solve this issue, but alas we were cut short by the holidays and have been forced to wait until we return to school to fix this issue.

now the most important one.. Our thriller opening...we have edited together "The Puppeteers" speech and upon returning from the holidays we plan to edit together the start to our opening with the footage gained from a full day of filming during the holidays. With this footage i hope we will have made a strong start to this project and im hoping that there will be less issues with the editing process of this project than our preliminary task.

The storyboard

This is the story board for our thriller intro... basically this is a shot shot by shot view of our thriller introduction. We use this as the basis for filming so that we know what shots we need and in what order, the storyboard shows the key shots we have in our introduction. Obviously our introduction will not be 100% accurate to this storyboard as we may be unable to obtain some of the ideal shots that we want, but this gives us a basis for what we are looking for in each shot and allows us to focus on what shots we need and in what order, The storyboard is also very useful when it comes to editing the footage as it shows us the order in which we want our story to play out, without it im sure our group would argue continuously over which shot went where and we would never get it finished.