Thursday 25 March 2010

Thursday 18 March 2010

Wednesday 10 March 2010

Thursday 4 March 2010

Summary so far......

After having several problems with our group, with one member leaving, Paul and I have had our work cut out to catch up. The digi-pack which our third member was in charge of was nowhere near completed, so after designing the CD cover, and the DVD case- the magazine advert was the only one that was completed- i set about making them in Paint and Microsoft Word;
Front of CD cover

Back of CD cover

Magazine Advert

DVD cover

I'm not completely sure what compelled me to do this one in black and white; the only reason i can think of is, its to show that relationships aren't black and white. There are other factors present which determine it's outcome.

Inspiration!

This is additional research to that of our pitches;
In this CD cover I liked how the eye took up the whole image. It gave me the idea of putting the man inside the girl’s eye. This is to show that the man is trapped in the girls ‘mind’s eye’, so even though she won’t go with him, she still thinks about him a lot.


Even though this is a Playstation game case, I liked how only half of the man’s face was shown. It linked to one of my ideas for a shot in the video; by only showing half of the man and woman’s face in the last scenes, when they go their separate ways, it could show that by leaving each other they are also leaving half of themselves behind. Give the impression that they don’t really want to part, but they feel that they have to, hence the line in the song “at least I know I died on the road”; showing that if they don’t split then the man will forever regret his decision.


With our complications of getting everyone together at the same time, we had to make a strange compromise, a boy playing the girls part. Not only does it make the words sung in the song not relate, but also the images featured in the digi-pack are now ‘wrong’, so to speak. But the original concept of a couple splitting up, with the theme of abstract, is still there; and I believe that by creating a music video about a homosexual relationship is entering the realms of postmodernism, and also hitting the mark of the abstract theme, as the gay relationship depicted with in the video goes against preconceived notions and conventions of the typical romantic genre.

Also during filming I found that some of the shots I wanted were too technical and could have become too time consuming for the amount of time we had. So my idea of there being no cuts in the video until the last few shots, showing that the relationship had ended for good, has gone. Some of the transitions are still there. But I feel I have lost some of the seamless flow of the journey the man is on.

Stills of Music Video

Finally, after about a billion years of planning and trying to sort out a time when both the actors were free; and then having to make a compromise with a boy playing the girl character; effectively creating a music video about a homosexual relationship, we have filmed our film.
The stills below are key scenes in the video:

This is the first shot we see of the man. We tried to create a sense of isolation and loneliness with the tall dominating trees, and a long deserted path into the unknown; also the fact that he is a lone figure quite small in a big setting promotes this idea.


At this point, the singer is well on his way to forgetting the boy, but like everything, to forget we have to remember. So in this scene we are travelling with him through his memories.
The angling of the shot is to allow us to do split screen.


This shot uses the road with the vanishing point. We plan to have Jack disappear half way through Alec’s walk to show that the man is nearly ready to move on from him.

Location Planning

Armed with a camera, we ventured out into the bitter cold winters air in search of locations we wished to film in.

This path lined with trees was perfect for the metaphorical road/journey we wanted our singer to embark upon. Its positioning was isolated (except the lovely woman and her dog we can see in the background, but fortunately she wasn’t a permanent feature), and it was only a short walk from college


This bridge is meant to represent how the man/singer is running away or over looking his problems; the boy being his problem, hence why he is walking over the bridge to get away from his lover. It also adds to his journey; though the railings either side are keeping him ‘in’ showing that he is still confined to a set track, even though it is a different one to the one he was following.


The over grown hedging at both sides of the fences are meant to portray the singer blocking the boy from his mind. Hence the fences are barriers for keeping thoughts of him at bay; as he has refused to join him on his journey, and he feels he has to leave.


This road- though not easily seen in this photo- has a vanishing point. In this location we plan to have the man walking into frame representing a new beginning