BLK feedback

good stuff you guys.

i'm going on holiday in the morning so will check in again next weekend. no internet for a whole week!!

great blogging though

Getting into character!

I found this and thought it was quite cool...I haven't put all the tips in as we're focused on film noir style femme fatale rather than a more modern one (also some were about scent, voice etc which we don't need to worry about). However, some of them are useful in a 'getting the gist' kind of way...

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HOW TO BE A FEMME FATALE
Femme fatale literally means "fatal woman" in French. According to the movie Mildred Pierce, it can be defined as "the kind of woman men want...but shouldn't have!". Ever seen females who are seductive and alluring, yet clever, a bit evil, and mysterious? Like Poison Ivy or Cat woman? Allure, mystery, and classy, dark glamour embody the femme fatale. You can become one too!

1. Wear dark, sexy, retro clothes. Not too gothic-looking, though. Think Angelina Jolie in the mid-90's. Subtle, well-cut clothing that draws attention to you, but in a tasteful way. Stick to colors like black, maroon, and emerald green. Look for silk cocktail dresses, dark-wash, high-waisted jeans, expensive-looking, dramatic jewelry, and fishnet tights.
2. Hang out in mysterious places. Not sketchy or scary. Just unusual. Remember that when in interesting places, one meets interesting people. Try out an obscure, artsy coffee shop, clandestine night club, or unique antique shop.
3. Be mysterious. Dont let everybody know what you are feeling or what's going on. The very mystery proves to be the allure of the femme fatale.
4. Wear your hair in an extreme side part with Veronica Lake-esque waves. Wearing it in a dramatically short style is also a good choice. Stick to true, bold hair colors, like bright auburn, dark brown, or platinum blonde.
5. Wear pale foundation, 'cat's eye' eyeliner, and red or maroon lipstick. Avoid glitter and 'teenager' makeup at all costs.
6. Watch old movies. Mildred Pierce is a great starter. As far as music goes, Fiona Apple in "Criminal" is a good example. Let them inspire you. But don't let them take over--a femme fatale is individual.
7. Being well-educated is something that will set you apart from the flock. Being beautiful with brains adds sex appeal.

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WARNINGS

• Don't be mean! Femme fatales generally end up killing the man they love or destroying his life. Be femme without being literally fatale. But breaking his heart is okay (assuming he deserves it).
• Do not be an "available" girl. A femme is always classy

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THINGS YOU'LL NEED

• Eye-catching, classy clothing
• A mysterious allure
• Mad poker/pool/video game skills
• Deep voice
• Great hair
• Unique, memorable perfume

-cattttttt

Going on holiday

Yeah, I'm going on holiday tomorrow morning (really early) until August the 2nd. Soooo I shall not be active on the blog until then I should imagine. Just thought I'd re-mention it. Will still be in England though (Isle of Wight to be precise) so if contact is necessary it wont cost any more than usual to do it.

Byeee!

-Angela

Costume Idea: Women's coat

Might be a bit early for talking about costumes for the narrative portion of the video but I bought a coat in TK Maxx the other day for £17 (not with the project specifically in mind) and I think it's really nice and possibly might be appropriate for some of the shots of the femme fatale?

Description: Its sort of beige/coat coloured, double-breasted, flattering/womanly fit, and about knee length (this might be inappropriate for the purpose, as perhaps conventionally femme fatales wore longer coats?).

Will post some images up soon.

Obviously we'd need to do some research into the films and archetypal characters before making any decisions on costume here, however, but it's an idea.

-Angela

Meeting

we met as a group yesterday afternoon, and discussed our dress codes for the main performer.

We thought for performing, he should wear a tight-ish suit, and should have a bit of eye makeup, eyeliner, and mascara etc.

we also thought that we would be able to get pretty much anything at a charity shop, but asda have had a range of men's suits for under £20.

xxLuke

Costume Idea: Gold suit

Gold suit for performance?

xxLuke

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I dunno it might be a bit tacky/Butlins entertainer and probably expensive.

-Angela

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ha tacky yet i think it might work...if not the whole suit just the tie??? Actually no that might look terrible

-Cat

Test Shoot (incomplete)

COPIED AND PASTED FROM ANGELA'S BLOG
July 17th
As a group decision, we are going to be test-shooting some performance shots of James lip-synching to the song 'Gold' in the drama block [more information of this is posted on the group blog].

I just wanted to post some ideas here instead of the group blog at first, to build up some ideas to help the trial-shoot go to plan, as I will not have confered with the group on these ideas probably until tomorrow.

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July 20th
The whole group (me, cat, james & luke) spent Friday lunchtime (18th) doing the test shoot in the drama block for performance shots of james.

I think this went really well, not just in the end result but I think we all as a group had a renewed sense of enthusiasm for the project.

What we gained from this experience
...........

--

We gained the idea of how James looks on camera, and the fact that the powerful voice could work with his looks.

Basically, we proved that our idea can work!!

xx luke

Holiday Dates

Cat

• 30th July - 17th August
• 20th August - 25th August
  

Angela

• 26th July- 2nd August
• 20th August- 25th August

James

• First Week (Saturday-Friday)
• Last Week for 14 peaks trip (only a few days)
• Maybe 3rd August-17th August (probably not)

Luke

• Thurday 28th -31st

Lipsynching practise

Here is a video that James and I made to practise lipsynching, nearer the start of the project, it's just taken a while to get onto youtube.




We thought it would be fun to do, we had a free afternoon and thought it would be beneficial practise, having been enthusised by the busted day.

xx Luke

Things to do

• Find locations (recce)
• Research film noir (femme fatale etc)
• Get costumes sorted
• Keep posting ideas
• Post holiday dates

-CATHRYN and angela =)

BLK feedback

thanks to Zen for offering to help out, sorry to lose him.

nice work on friday guys, James did a great job with the lip synching performance and the rest of you with camera and lighting. most convincing.

this is still going to be tricky to pull off though, the song has such a BIG sound and will need powerful imagery to go with it. you have got a lot of really hard work ahead of you. you have turned things round in the short term, but this is just the start and I must admit I am concerned as to whether you can sustain the high energy levels, organisation and team work needed to pull this off.

this idea could work out to be a massive success or a glorious failure, so there is high risk involved. lets talk about these concerns on monday please before things go any further.

Today

Today we lost one group member, so now we are down to four. Zen has said though that he will attend the shoots if we need him. We did a test shoot today to the song and everyone seemed happy with it. The lighting looked good and we were all pretty confident that the idea would work really well. We will blog the video from the the test shoot next week, when it is added to youtube. The drama block, where we will be filming the performance, is only available in the first 2 weeks of next year due to the school play, so we will film all the performance in those two weeks and then start planning the narrative, which will be shot on a different location.

James

Mock Music Videos

Relating back to my last post. I looked at some mock music videos for ideas. An example of some mock music videos that have already been made are blink 182 - all the small things. Which mocks all current boy bands.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=O5mxgG4y_Wc

Weird Al Yankovich - Smells Like Nirvana. Which mocks the Nirvana song and video 'Smells Like Teen Spirit.'

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=ixyTNd-Ln38

Also, the way that this video cuts to the old man cleaning and the croud reacting from the performance is how i'd like to do the Umbrella video.

James

Possible idea

Well basically, im gonna push for the idea for the Spandau Ballet because I think the idea is really good and im pretty confident with the narrative and performance. Although sometimes things just dont work so i thought i would come up with an idea for more back-up.

Mcfly have done a cover of Rihanna's song 'Umbrella' and it does not have a music video. It has been recorded proffesionally, so the quality is good.

Here is the song - http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=y3HDaHAWmJo

Im thinking the idea could be 'Luke Diamond and the Allstars' cover of Umbrella by Rihanna for example, rather than selling it as an original song. And I am thinking that the video could have a solid perfomance base in the drama block with a lot of extreme close ups and close ups. I was then thinking there could be cuts to shots of the band members performing scenes from Rihannas original video, with backing dancers, dancing in the rain, painting a member of the band gold, and maybe smoke and dancign with umbrellas.

This will be done in a funny way, as they will be a young band, appealing to their young audience, that will already be familiar with the original video, with thier sence of humour.

James

Drama studio

Hi angela, i just went to check, and the drama room is free break, lunch AND all afternoon

brill!


xx Luke

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Edit: this is angela confirming that I have just checked with Mr Deans and he wont be in school tomorrow, so I was referred to Miss T as the nearest available media teacher at the time and have confirmed that we can use a school camera tomorrow for the test shoot.

-Angela

p.s. cheers, luke!

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thanks for confirmation

xx luke

BLK feedback

some very positive postings here.

angela - excellent idea about the test tomorrow, check with mr deans in advance that you can use a camera and leave enough time to capture it and have a look at it in premiere. mr deans will need to create you a premiere project as well.

re cats ideas - yes good point to open things up a bit and move away from such well known songs at this stage

the golden rules - stick to them for the duration of the project. its no good losing the momentum after a week or two

i'm very pleased to hear about the weekend meeting; let me know when it is and I will check the blog around that time in case there is anything on there that you want me to listen to

lets get this right now, don't rush - work through everything carefully. try to be very practical and think about implications before moving forward with an idea. boys - don't lose confidence in yourselves as performers - I still feel convinced by this aspect of your work, just lets get the context right. keep things simple - the best student music videos always are

i hope to see you all in the lesson tomorrow - i'm going to be showing lots of clips from past students music videos to hopefully inspire and encourage you in the right direction

Potential Idea

See my blog for a potential idea for the song and video.

During meetings today I think I got some good feedback from my group regarding the idea.

Miss B highlighted some potential problems with the idea, however.
These included the plausibility of James being the convincing owner of the voice in the song 'Gold' by Spandau Ballet. I think this is certainly a valid point and therefore we are looking into doing a 'test shoot' of James lip-synching to the song in similar lighting that we would have during the performance of the idea. We can therefore see with clarity whether in fact he would be convincing as the part. He is after all 17, and the song involves quite a powerful, mainly voice.

We will be carrying out this shoot during periods 7 & 8 tomorrow, possibly leading on to after school. Me (angela) and James are free during this time.

If he is not convinving in the role then we would either have to cast for the character, but as this is very difficult then it is probably we will have to abort the idea.

Will write on any updates to this arrangement if necessary

-Angela

Group Meeting

Period 6, Thursday 17th July
Present - We took on board cathryn's track selections (see below) and have found they all have very strong illustrative narrative structure and we would therefore have to base our whole video around that. We looked at Hurtwood House's videos for inspiration on ideas on a budget. We are now more open minded about the genre of music our track is from in order to mae a pragmatic decision.

Aims - look at less well known pppy/rocky bands for tracks
- post any ideas
- find potential tracks without videos

-Group

Group Initiative (aka golden rules)

1) Blog negative as well as positive
2) ask feedback from group and BLK in person AND on the blog
3) Be truthful, ask for help
4) invite blk to meetings
5) blog EVERYTHING


we have also decided to meet at the weekend



xx Love luke

Previous Initial Ideas

In case of the 'Gold' idea having to be rejected entirely....

We will either need to go back to the punk/pop/rock boy band idea that we were thinking with 'Crash and Burn' by Busted or a McFly song, or consider a different genre entirely.

I thought it them a good idea to blog some of our previous ideas in order to show our progression of thought, and why we rejected them or moved away from them.

Idea A
Near the beginning we were considering doing a very abstract, montage-style video.
This could include body-painted figures, or even synchronised dancing.

Example: Duran Duran had quite an abstract video for 'Planet Earth':


It does have about 50% performance however. And certaily a very 80s vibe, which could be very difficult to emulate.

These are some videos that Luke brought up at the time that were quite inspirational to this abstract theme:



Idea B
We also thought to have a video similiar to 'the Macarena' or 'The Ketchup Song'.
We thought we would have a very simple dance routine, and have (possibly the members of the group) a group of people dancing through different places/situations/in different costumes.
It would just cut from one scene to another, so there would be no great difficulty with continuity. Deliberate continuity 'mistakes' would even be built in; perhaps they walk in with no hats, and enter the next scene with mexican hats and marraccas?

This could allow us to engage the audience with the visuals: mostly this would be the changing mise-en-scene (e.g. location).

Finding enough locations should not be difficult, as they do not all need to be particularly amazing. Off the top of my head a church (perhaps during a quiet part of the song, with them acting reverrant), a rather stunned teenager's bedroom, central london, a bus etc.

The video for 'The Macarena' features just lots of different people dancing/lip-synching to the song:



The main area we would have needed to focus on with a similar idea is getting the mise-en-scene perfect to be entirely effective. Forming a band identity with this song would be immensely difficult, however. It is significant in this respect that 'Los Del Rio' appeared to be one hit wonders (at least in 'the west') and also do not feature very heavily in their own music video.

It also relies on finding a similarly very catchy song with good 'hit' quality, that does not have a music video; very difficult I believe. Also, we would need to compose a dance sequence. This could be difficult, but then again many student videos appear to have dance sequences so it cannot be impossible.

Positives also include that we could be very creative in the aesthetics of this idea, as narrative would not be the main feature (if we were indeed to have any narrative: I think perhaps just a beginning i.e. a reason for the dancing etc and also an end, like they walk out of a room and turn the lights off behind them would be enough narrative).


It is after these ideas, and after the Busted video shoot that we thought of the idea of doing a punk/pop/rock boy band similar to McFly and Busted, and there is an existing post on this idea.

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I think this brings us about up to speed with our current state of events, and some of the ideas we considered more seriously during our group development so far.

-Angela

Back to ideas

Right I've done some searching for songs similar to 'That Girl' and 'You said no' without music videos (as far as i know anyway) by poppy/rocky bands

So far...

• Son of Dork - Slacker, Little Things
  
• New Found Glory - Forget Everything
• Bowling For Soup - Everydays a Saturday
• Mcfly - Hypnotised, Just my luck, Broccoli, Nothing, Down by the lake, met this girl
• The Used???
• Sum 41???
  

-CATHRYN (tell me what you think guys/add more!)

treatment

Scenarios:

1) Ball boy at tennis match - keeps staring at woman in small shorts, starts to bend over, he looks forward and gets hit with tennis ball.

2) Waiting at a restaurant, peeeeng girl walks in and he trips, and drops tray of food, falls face first into messy curry and girl steps over him, and helps him up. LA shots of heels and skinny jeans. reaction shot of him with curryface. he takes her hand, she smiles shyly. (in the part of the girl of the song "can't believe you got that girl") other guys staring through the window, looks on their face like "how?!?!?!"

3) Quitet shy guy, just stares at the breasts of the girl who comes up to talk to him due to his gormless stares. they start to talk to her and he stares at her boobs still, causing her to slapindaface.

4) walk past shop window, hot girl, double take, it's a butters girl.

5) face against glass

6)tranny. girl turns round. is man.





all intertwined with performance.

Song Choice

- Genre- soft poprock, yet not indie.

- Not too poppy, not too rocky. Strikes a happy medium.

- Appeals across the board. Teenage girls and boys who idolise specific band members

- Fits with idea of not getting girls and quite adaptable...we can add a personal, original edge

-amplification of lyrics

quite fast paced, encourages fast cuts to keep snappy.

BLK comment

please can you link all your individual blogs to this one, ta

Presentation work

1. Who the band are?
A three piece boy band all with different but conventional individaul identities...similar to bands such as new found glory, sum 41, blink 182, bowling for soup, busted, mcfly etc

2. Their name?
Initial idea is 'First Aid' but undecided.


3. Their image/identity?


4.Early visual ideas outline?
Seperate perfomance to narrative...undecided of location but the one james suggested by the dockalnds seems good. However might be too cold or difficult to get to...
Members of boyband strutting aroudn thinnking they're really cool and getting really dirty looks, slaps etc from girls
Possibly have a really geeky girl following them round who one of the bang memebers ends up with in the end warner brothers style (the screen gets smaller surrounding their heads and the band memeber winks at the camera or something)

5.Target Audience?
Will appeal across a wide range of audiences. The different individual identities of each band member (the hot one all the girls fancy, the quirky one, the cuter idnie/surfer style guy) means there is something for everyone. Girls will fancy them and boys will idolise them and due to their poppy/rocky sound, they will be veyr popular with the young teenage generation.

-CATHRYN

More Image stuff

After talking to Miss B, I was thinking maybe the three members shouldn't be too different, otherwise it will be unconvincing that they are friends. I think we should still stick with the nerdy, surfer guy, but the second member should be divided into two slightly different members. One could be more emo/scene, wearing eye-liner and crazy hair, kind of like the guy from Son of Dork.

The other guy could be more grungy, wearing the thick rimmed glasses and a beanie hat, baggy clothes and chains and stuff. Maybe like Kurt Cobain.

We need to make sure they all look similar-ish so that it is convincing that they are friends and have the same interest/taste in music. We are also gonna have a drummer who gos kinda crazy, just to empahise that they are trying to be rock, rather than pop. He will not have any singing or acting parts, just a couple of close-ups.

J-Dawg

BLK feedback

nice posting here.

the image thing is an issue, you can't go for a busted remake 'look' so this idea is very reassuring.

make sure you label each post with who wrote it ok!

Video Idea

Band Image

We were thinkign that the band would have three main members, and maybe a drummer who doesn't sing. We were thinking they should be a cross between Busted and Blink-182. So slightly more rock than Busted, but more 'constructed' and boy-bandy than Blink-182.

All three of the members will have their own 'thing' that they are known for. One will be the quirky, crazy looking one, one will be the nerdy, surfery one, and the other will either be the mature one, the one that looks most like hes from a boy-band?? (not sure yet).

The quirky one will wear a beanie hat and eye-liner, his clothes will be baggy and will have a chain comign from his jeans. He might have thick rimmed glasses yet, kind of scene, emo ones, but not sure yet. Like these...




The nerdy, surfery one will have short spikey hair from hair-gel rather than wax. He will wear beads around his neck and wristbands. He will wear either long or short sleeved t-shirts with short sleeved open shirts over the top. Kind of like the guy from 'Evens Stevens' But not as loud or colourful.

Dunno about the third member yet.

James

Song choice

http://youtube.com/watch?v=HDYEy7A-K-s