Elliott/Sven;

On Friday, I had to perform in Elliott and Sven's music video as the main vocalist. For this we went to the drama room at Coleridge and did a band performance, with Sven, Liam(in my group) and mine and Elliott's friend, Glenn.
I had to quickly learn the lyrics and perform with the mic on a stand.
They only had a set amount of time with the instruments so I hope their footage is what they wished for and wasn't too rushed.

In the afternoon, Elliott and I went and shot some more for his video on the stage of Coleridge, quick, simple costume change and an acoustic guitar. Again, we had to return the instrument on time so we didn't have much time again.

I sat on a stool in the middle of an empty stage and had to fake to play the guitar as well as mime. I forgot how much the strings hurt without a pick but I managed to cope through this.

Monday morning, and it was off shooting again at long road, for the painting scene.

Luckily, it was a very sunny, warm day but that did seem to cause a problem with the exposure on the camera. My group had the same problem on saturday, but for some reason it did no difference.

I was a bit ill today as well and found it difficult, but I really do hope that the footage is all good.

Filming;

Today, we finally(!) did some footage for our video.
We went out to Bottisham to film in the barn there like said on our opening plans for the video.
We got there at about 1pm and spent until 4.30pm filming in Bottisham all together.
The first parts we got are of Fran without the costume, inside and around the barn, for this we used two abandoned barns and also a tree for her to lay on.

I did the filming whilst Liam was in control of the music and Sophie and I both directed Fran, our performer.
My boyfriend, Alex, also helped out too, by seeking more locations for us to shoot in and being a props man helping us carry all the props and equipment around the village.

We had a quick costume change after doing all this and went back to Alex's for some refreshments too aswell as changing the costume and taking a break after two and a half hours of shooting.




After the change of costume, we started to go off to a graveyard nearby, then it started to rain! Luckily, I had an umbrella so we held that over the camera whilst filming to protect the equipment.
When we got to the graveyard, there was about five grave stones, so we had to make do with the small space we had with these in. As it was raining, I was a bit worried about our performer, but she said it was all okay because she had the wig on.
We shot around the church too, we did a quick shot of the tower clock because it was very Alice in Wonderland style, and all together the church is very old and quite wrecked looking.


During all of this, the tape started to run out, so we had to very quickly just film key bits of the song then stop and start during non versus.
This was VERY irritating, because we had a lot more to do, we had used up all 32 minutes of our tape, Alex said that this is because it is an HD camera and that takes up more memory, but if we had known this in advance I think we would've asked for two tapes over this weekend.

We're all free again on monday afternoon so we shall shoot what we wished to do anyway and find another location aswell to make up for our loss of footage today.

Watching the tape back, I am very pleased with our costume footage, and think that maybe we should've shot her in the costume sooner, but getting to the barn location was horrendous, so I guess we couldn't.
We'll get Fran to wear the costume again on monday.
Also, Alex had some garden ornaments of forest animals, so perhaps he could bring these on monday and we could have a Snow White style shot of her sitting on the grass with them surrounding her.

Makeup;

These photos are examples of what the makeup might look like(excuse my terrible face).
I tried on two pairs of different eyelashes to see which would work better- feathers or mega long lashes.

The feathers were a lot more better to actually see and move around with, however the long ones weren't very confident.

Everywhere;

Due to Elliott letting us use his house during shooting tomorrow, I have agreed to be the main performer in his and Sven's music video.
This is very last notice so I will have to learn the lyrics quickly and I'm not too sure what I am wearing(or look like) is what they desired for their video.

Here are the lyrics;
Turn it inside out so I can see
The part of you that's drifting over me
And when I wake you're never there
But when I sleep you're everywhere
You're everywhere

Just tell me how I got this far
Just tell me why you're here and who you are
'Cause every time I look
you're never there
And every time I sleep
you're always there

'Cause you're everywhere to me
And when I close my eyes it's you I see
You're everything I know
that makes me believe
I'm not alone
I'm not alone

I recognize the way you make me feel
It's hard to think that
you might not be real
I sense it now, the water's getting deep
I try to wash the pain away from me
Away from me

'Cause you're everywhere to me
And when I close my eyes it's you I see
You're everything I know
that makes me believe
I'm not alone
I'm not alone

I am not alone
Whoa, oh, oooh, oh

And when I touch your hand
It's then I understand
The beauty that's within
It's now that we begin
You always light my way
I hope there never comes a day
No matter where I go
I always feel you so

'Cause you're everywhere to me
And when I close my eyes it's you I see
You're everything I know
that makes me believe
I'm not alone
'Cause you're everywhere to me
And when I catch my breath
it's you I breathe
You're everything I know
that makes me believe
I'm not alone

You're in everyone I see
So tell me
Do you see me?

Stop-Motion;

After lunch, I am planning to ask Steve how we can create the stop motion style effect for our video.
The reason for this is because he might say there is an easier way to do it whilst filming or to just do it during the editing progress.

This will help us understand and learn the techniques for this project and future ones.

Plan for Tomorrow;

Tomorrow we all plan to meet in town at 12.30pm, my father will take us first to Bottisham, where we will film the barn sequence with her in her 'normal' clothes.
After this, we will head to Burwell, where Elliott is 'kindly' letting us change costumes in his house(I have to perform in his video now) then outside his house is the graveyard we wish to film in so we will do that aswell.

After that we will go to Histon where we will film the forest sequence with the same costume.

On monday we shall film at Long Road in the glasshouse style thingy with the same costume as before.

Alice In Wonderland Premiere;

This afternoon, me and a couple of friends(also from this class) are planning to go to the London Premiere of Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland.
It would be great to meet the director himself as he has been quite an influence on our video, also the whole Alice in Wonderland theme.

The Weather;

Here is a weather report for this weekend.
Hopefully the weather will stick to this report and not rain on saturday or monday afternoon.

The Dress;

Now, this is my favourite dress and is made of netting, so at first I was scared it would get caught on something, but now seeing the prices of most of the dresses which could be suitable.


Me wearing the dress;

Fonts;

Because I am designing the page for the book at home, I will need to print off a suitable font for the fairytale effect, because I am not able to draw it convincingly.

Template;

Here is a quick template I drew for my own use, because I don't have a computer at home I drew this template to remind me of what we want our page to look like, obviously it'll be a lot more fancy and well done.

Filming;

Our performer just got in touch and said she is available for filming friday evening and saturday.

The problem with friday is that it is meant to be raining heavily and it would also be too dark for the setting.

We will be filming in our two off-site locations on saturday.
The reasons we definitely need to film over the weekend is because-
A) It'll be daylght and mildly sunny
B) It's off-site locations which will take a bit of time to get to each of them, there will also be costume changes throughout so a whole day is needed.
C) The only time our performer is available is then, so it is vital to film then.
D) We're running out of time and we have always planned to do the filming one day of the weekend.
E) All of our group is able to attend aswell.

Imagery for the book;

I've been browsing around trying to find a suitable image for the 'Fairytale Ending' for the end of the video.

I haven't been that fortunate in finding many so far, but these are the ones I've found suitable.

I've been using the keywords 'fairytale ending' and it only comes up with depressing things and shoes...
So i tried one of my favourite fairytales, Sleeping Beauty but so far these are the images I found;



Obviously I doubt with the Disney one, we'll be allowed to use due to copyright, but the style and layout of the spread page looks really good and I think it would be good to re-create a 'THE END' page like that, aswell as the image of the two lovers on the other page.

In our video, the ending is (possibly) going to be the girl sitting in the barn with an old fashioned book, opened on a page with a princess and a prince looking all, lovey-dovey, but the girl has pasted a picture of herself over the princess.

Album Cover Example- The Back;

Marina and the Diamonds has an interesting back cover for her new album, it's her with her head tilted back and the titles of her songs arched along the curve of her back.
The image is also very photoshopped and looks like a sixty's style painting.

Comparing our Digipaks;

All together, I think that each of our digipak ideas are great and would work well for both the style of band and genre of music.

Liam's-

Liam has gone for the same sort of theme as Au Revoir Simone used on the album of the same theme.
I think that the very basic, but arty, mixed media style works very well and the basic use of two neutral colours- Green and Blue.
I also find that the font does work well, but perhaps could be different on the back.
Another fault is the CD label is the same as the album cover, it could be different, but not too different maybe a green sky and blue tree/grass?
The scribbles also look good with the rest of the digipak.

Sophie's-

Sophie came up with three different ideas, but are all relatively similar, using the same images, just in different locations on the digipak.
I like the natural feel to this, although I find that using images of the artist from the actual music video doesn't work so well, but I've always felt this way, unless Sophie means to use the images we took whilst filming test footage- that would make more sense.
It would be nice to see them in colour though.

Postphone;

Unfortunately our performer can not make it today to perform in our video, so we will have to do the shooting at College on Monday hopefully.

Digipak Example images;

Due to the lack of a pocket watch, these are some examples of what my images would look like for my digipak, without the editing.

The image I originally got the idea from is this;


And the page from Alice In Wonderland I wish to use looks like this;


Here are the images I took for the examples;










The flash looked like this, but I don't think it works as well.
I also like the pinkish tint on my images.



Here is an image of the teacup used and also an illustration from Through The Looking Glass;

Inside the book;

Here are a few images from the Visual Art book for Tim Burton's Alice In Wonderland.