Because I'm quite proud of the work I did for preliminary task at the start of A2 I've decided to add it to part of this project. To round off my merchandise at a nice 9 I'm adding my wasteland CD cover as an EP to my websites store. However, because the cover has Against the current on the front I've had to take it to photoshop and fix it. I don't want to add Haze because it would be in a different colour and style to the original writing so I'm leaving it without and artist.
As a bit of a jump back in time but in relevance to my course, in the term before the six weeks in which I was creating my 1 minute music video I also took on a bit of a side task. approximately two weeks before we broke up, the head of year 9 approached me asking for some help. They needed a student to help create a video for their year 9 final assembly, It was to the song Can't stop the Feeling by Justin Timberlake and The staff involved planned and filmed all the clips themselves and then gave me the clips and freedom to edit it however I want. I took me six frees (six hours) across the course of three days and I had it done a week before the deadline. I'm quite proud of it if I do say so myself. So here's the video (and I have had permission from all the staff involved to include this in my course work).
From doing this task I got a slight insight into what the creation of my main task will be like in terms of editing. For example one of the main areas I struggled in was in terms of clips. As I said I didn't do any of the filming and had the clips given to me once it was done which meant what I was given was all I had. This meant some clips had to be cut and spread out throughout the video to keep viewers interested. It also meant that I had to repeat sections such as dancing to fill space. From this I've learnt to make sure I have more than enough clips to use within my main task so I don't struggle or have to re-film.
It's safe to say after listening to this song for six hours in editing, I never want to listen to it again.
Sir has given me some feedback on my 1 minute music video which I have shown below.
To add on to his areas of development as some of my shots were actually out of focus, from 00:57 onward. all though its not as noticeable as these are short shots, its still something I definitely do not want to do within my main task.
I would also like to improve on the acting used as there are certain shots featuring both me and the male actor in which you can see us laughing. Also some shots of the male character in which he is shouting at the camera he has a slight smile. I feel as though this ruins the effect I tried to create in my video and will make sure the acting within the main task is more realistic.
Here it is! The finished product! Enjoy.
I had a little bit of a re-think in terms of the style of album cover I wanted to produce. I didn't like the look of the plain photo before with just the artist and song written across it. It didn't look right. So I turned to Google for inspiration and found this cover which I really liked.
I really liked the digital art style and so had ago myself on Photoshop using the original picture as a base to build on.
I decided my efforts weren't the best. However my lovely sister is a lot better at digital art and has the right tools and software. She saw my struggles and came to the rescue. We spent majority of the night sat working (her drawing and me semi directing
(I mostly gave her free range due to her expertise)). It took a good few hours but below is the final result of which I am very happy. Originally we couldn't decide as to whether a colourful background (a comparison to the hard trouble the character is going through) or a more neutral (as though to reflect the character inner pain (Getting deep)) Would work best but eventually decided on neutral.
I then took over to work a title. I quickly settled on the style on of the songs name however the artist wasn't so easy and took me several attempts.
Finally I settled on this one.
This is my preliminary music video task so far. There are big gaps and not yet an ending (hence it currently only being 45 seconds long) but here it is.
I'm creating it in stages (Film,edit, film edit) as I find this much easier in terms on knowing how far along I am and that I have enough footage/what else needs to be filmed. I'm going to be getting more filming done this weekend to ensure my task is finished by our deadline of Thursday but I should be done before then by my set deadline of Tuesday.
Today I took some photos to use for my album. I wanted it to be simplistic but portray the theme and story of the music video. I used a whit wall as the background to and took photos of myself in slightly different positions showing the bruise on my face. I also changed the distance and the different settings on the camera to create different atmospheres and vary the emphasis on the bruise
There was a lot more but they were just a varied few. From here I then chose the one I thought would work best from the album cover. I chose to go for one in which the bruise is paler as although I wanted it to be presented I didn't want it to be the main feature, I also thought if I did change my mind I could edit it brighter later. I also chose this one as I did not have too much hair in my face which would ruin the image and I was looking away from the camera (rather moodily) as though unimportant.
From Here I then cropped the photo to leave space for the titling and keeping my face as the main focus (I'm not meaning to sound self-centered, I promise). I then edited out some of the wispy bits of hair around then side of my face to make it look a bit neater, unfortunately I couldn't edit out the wispy hair at the top of my face.
I still need to edit parts and add titling but hopefully this should be my album cover nearly done!
Here's me applying my make up bruise for filming yesterday. You can't see but I used the same materials as my bruise tester video. I did a purple lipstick base and then applied purple, blue and a small amount of green eye shadow towards the top corner of the bruise and then more red and a bit of pink as it spread down the face
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Today was filled with lots of different activities to do with my preliminary task. I feel like in a day I've progressed quite far. Commence the list!
To begin the day I started editing my shots from Saturday, arranging n the right place if not roughly. I did find I had less footage than I thought but what I had worked very well. I should be filming more tomorrow as Ben is coming round which should give me plenty more footage and I'll have footage in a different location.
Once I got home I managed to get some more filming done of myself for the first line of lyrics and the opening of the song. As for part of the filming I needed a bruise I filmed myself applying the bruise to my face (much like the bruise tester video) which should be uploaded tomorrow.
Finally as I had the bruise on my cheek I attempted to take some photos for the album cover. I tried using different head angles, camera filters and different distances to give me a wide range of options and images to work with.
Editing:-
To begin the day I started editing my shots from Saturday, arranging n the right place if not roughly. I did find I had less footage than I thought but what I had worked very well. I should be filming more tomorrow as Ben is coming round which should give me plenty more footage and I'll have footage in a different location.
Filming:-
Once I got home I managed to get some more filming done of myself for the first line of lyrics and the opening of the song. As for part of the filming I needed a bruise I filmed myself applying the bruise to my face (much like the bruise tester video) which should be uploaded tomorrow.
Photos:-
Finally as I had the bruise on my cheek I attempted to take some photos for the album cover. I tried using different head angles, camera filters and different distances to give me a wide range of options and images to work with.
Today filming began. Me and Ben spent two hours getting some shots, mostly outside shot while the weather was decent. There's still plenty more to film over the next few days but it's a start and now editing can begin. Here's a Gif of me being attacked by Ben's cat. A major hazard in every film set.
via GIPHY
As a practice for part of my music video, I shot my doing a very close up shot (sorry) to practice lining up the video with sound. Excuse the times I mess up the lyrics and the bad quality (It was done on windows movie maker!).
After being inspired by some of our other classmates I thought I'd give cloning ago as a potential feature to use in our music video. I used Laura as a test bunny and although it glitches a bit at the end (I couldn't get the cuts to line up right) and the dodgy sound (I just played the music from my phone rather than download it just for this) I think the technique works pretty well.
Today I did a practice in terms of creating bruises. I used different colour eye shadows and lipstick to try and create different bruise effects. I found using a lipstick base worked best to try and re create a bruise as it helped make the colours a bit brighter. I also found a good bruise effect was made was when I tried to was off the lipstick based bruise in the video (pictured below the video).
These are different bruise testers to the video but create using the same materials and similar techniques.
I present to you, a very rough storyboard for my preliminary task. I promise I am an A level art student, this isn't top quality A* drawings but it mostly makes sense and if not, I did Annotations!
After first listening to the song these are the notes I made in terms of ideas. The video would star me as the girlfriend and Ben Holmes as the boyfriend in the video.
I have chosen to create a 1 minute music video for Wasteland by Against the Current. After long negotiation this song inspired the most ideas (especially ones possible in a small space of time). I've decided the best place to finish the video would be at 1:04-05 ish as this is where the song seems best to cut in terms of lyrics.
Some information about the band and song:-
Band
- Against the Current are 3 piece, American, pop rock band formed in 2011.
- Band consists of lead vocalist Chrissy Costanza, guitarist Dan Gow, and drummer Will Ferri.
- Began by posting covers of songs on Youtube and and were joined by various other Youtube based artists.
- They have released 2 EP's, Infinity and Gravity and 1 full length album, In Our Bones.
Song
- Song is from the newest album, In Our Bones
- Originally released May 20th as part of the album
- Music video was released on Youtube July 1st 2016
Lyric video:-
Music Video:-
As our preliminary task we've been tasked to make:-
- A 1 minute music video
- A CD Cover
- And (If we have time) A website











