Birdsong

When filming on loaction in Exeter we accidentally captured a great shot of two birds flying over Hannah and Steve, which was reminiscent of the book we're using as a prop, Birdsong. The book is a romantic war novel, however it relates to our music videos narrative well as it too focuses on the beginning of love/infatuation, happiness of love, and loss of love. 

There is also a BBC adaptation of the book that we have been watching too. It has given us great inspiration for some shots and editing techniques that we may explore with our music video. Above the BBC trailer is some art work and a theatre poster. This has given us some ideas for our poster and album cover.

Album Cover Draft

Based on our ancillary poster idea of making the background a scrapbook, I've drafted an album cover with a similar theme, as we feel the idea would work better as an album cover. Surrounding the central title, are many symbols of romance and love, such as flowers, cupid and a heart-shaped necklace (featured in our film). The key is a metaphor for love as it connotes opening up and letting somebody into your life. There is also a bow and a mirror which are typically 'girly' objects, contrasting with the title 'The Beach Boys", suggesting that this could be a story about a girl and boy who fall in love. The background would be a mixture of layers such as faded letters and photographs giving it a scrapbook feel. I think that framing the cover with a border also adds to the scrapbook effect.

Filming 27/01/12

Today Rachel and I did some more filming in Exeter. We filmed a variety of locations such as:
- Gandy Street
- Cathedral Green
- Cafe
 In each location, we filmed a variety of shots such as follow shots, close-ups, wide shots and two-shots, gaining some great footage! We found a little cafe with a large window looking out onto the high street that's perfect for our beginning scenes where the couple meet. Unfortunately, our camera ran out of battery during the filming of the cafe scenes, so we'll have to go to Exeter again soon to finish them. We captured some lovely shots outside the Cathedral, with the sun reflecting off the wet pavements creating a source of natural bright light, enabling us to capture a silhouette of the couple which is something we wanted to achieve. Overall we are pleased with the progress we made today and look forward to filming more footage!

 

 

Ancillary Poster Draft

 Rachel found this old book which we thought would make a great background for a scrapbook style poster. This brought us to the decision to start our ancillary poster from scratch, using this book as the background. 

 We then added a vintage-looking ... which we edited in Photoshop.

 

 Finally, we added text to create the title, "Wouldn't it be nice" by The Beach Boys.

We love the feel of this poster, but feel that perhaps it has more potential to be an album cover rather than a poster. We will continue experimenting with ideas.

Update

We are having to take a break from filming as our actors are studying hard for their exams! We will carry on working on our ancillary tasks during this brief period. 

Poster: Take 2

Taking comments on board from our former poster we designed a new one, with our target audience in mind and we were inspired by Michelle Caplan, a collage artist. 

Ways we have changed our poster to fit:

• In our music video our female protagonist keeps her memories in a scrapbook which is very personal to her. Me and Rach both have scrapbooks as do many of our friends, thus we know that it's a popular hobby for our target audience. Therefore this poster would draw our audience in because they can relate to it on a personal level. 
• This poster is a visual representation of the female protagonist's memories, creating enigma because the audience may question why such images have been included on the poster.
• We used layers in Photoshop to keep the vintage/homely vibe that our audience liked from our previous poster.

We are planning to included more images that relate to our music video, and alter our poster further depending on audience feedback. 

Michelle Caplan

I decided to do some more research into my ancillary tasks (creating an album cover and poster) and remembered this amazing collage artist, Michelle Caplan who I've studied before as part of my Art GCSE. I photocopied some pages from my old art book showing an Artist Study on her. She really inspired me and I think her style of art is perfect for this project, so I'm going to use her work as a starting point for the ancillary tasks.

I also created a response to Michelle Caplan using personal photos and memorabilia, so I'm familiar with the collage techniques that she's used. This will help me when I make my album cover and poster using this style...

Her portraits "bring life to a families photographic history, each piece with it's own narrative; trying to the tell the story of the person behind the image". This is really what I want to achieve in my piece and it could be done really well with collage, as I can use memorabilia combined with photos to tell the story of the boy and girl in our video. She says: "A piece can capture a point in time in the ever changing life of a child, or evoke the memory of a beloved relative long past", which can also relate to our video, as we want to capture a point in time and evoke memories. Here are some of my favourite pieces of hers: