1950s Inspirations

Costume from Test

Costume from test shoot.

The costume from the test shoot was based around the 1950s. We wanted the image of a 1950s housewife but with a modern twist. I wore a red spotted dress, apron, cardigan, and Doc Martens. The Doc Martens add a rebellious side to the artist. The Doc Martens also contrast against the formal tone and suggest that the artist is young and the housewife suggests she is traditional and more grown up. Linking this to the song, the lyrics "Your from the 70s I am a 90s bitch" suggest that the man is older than the artist, and we wanted to link this into the song somehow. When researching costume and housewives from the 1950s I found that many of the housewives had half aprons, we decided to recreate this, and I think it looks effective.

The makeup and hair we researched and decided to do a down hair style with winged eyeliner and lipstick. If we do this again I think it would look better to curl my hair and put it up, as this would look more traditional and make a bigger impact if later my hair is down in the video. I liked the slight quiff at the front of my hair, and would like to recreate that. I also added a beauty spot as it makes it more convincing. 

1950s Shoot.

Here are the videos from the 1950s shoot we did a few weeks ago. There were a few issues with uploading, so they have had to be split up.

Meeting 16/12/13

                                                                                Today we tried to get dates down to film over christmas time as by now our plans for the holidays are more clear. Although we have an online events calender which we fill in when we have plans, it has been hard to keep up with when everyone is free.

We have decided for this reason that we will film after our mocks which will finish mid January. We decided that Kirsten will be doing the filming and me and Nicola will be helping with the editing as well as directing with the filming.

Opening Inspirations.

From our research we have found that a lot of music videos have an opening before the video. In planning and story boarding we have been coming up with ideas for the opening. I suggested to the group that we do a silent opening with the artist being a 1950s housewife. For many of our meetings we have been thinking about the aspects of Voyeurism within music video and how we might include that in our video. A student music video that was shown to us started the idea of playing with voyeurism for me.

As well as there being much controversy over women in music video and how they are exploited currently. "Blurred Lines" created a huge debate due to the objectification of the women.

Similarly Lilly Allen's "Hard Out Here" has been dealing with this issue, parodying Thickes video, and showing a strong female character. This has been a particular inspiration because like Lilly Allen we want our artist to be a strong female, drawing from the rebellious themes in the song, "I don't care, I love it".

I had the idea of the opening being the artist dressed like a 1950s housewife. This inspiration for this came from Lady Gaga's "Telephone". This opening allows us to play with voyeurism as we are showing the female in a stereotypical way. We then show her in power, showing her as a strong female, who is independent of traditional values. This links in to our song as she is tired of her partner.

Inspirations

Battles Ice Cream

 

This music video is inspirational and useful in helping us with our own video as there are many elements to it that can be used in out own. Especially the use of fast pace editing, we thought this was very attractive as it made it more interesting and filled the screen with detailed original pieces of film. Although it is fast paces there only a few locations, we like the fact that the shots are not repetitive as they continue in a chronological transitioned form. We hope to use this in our own video as the beat to our song is also fast paced so it would match the mood of the video, also the song does not have a deep sad feel to it, so up beat positive shots will be very effective in the overall look of the video.


Paint Speakers

 

We watched this and though it would be a great idea to incorporate this into out own video. Although we wanted to avoid too much narrative we felt we where making it to serious and wanted to involves something more spontaneous and creative. This looks really cool and if we where to do it we would have to consider the possibility of it looking slightly ammature. We would have to find  an effective background and consider the cost of paint.

We have been looking at sites such as Ebay and Amazon to find paint. The normal art paint that generally comes in bigger quantities and is also more expensive. The art paint is cheaper however surprisingly still expensive. This is worrying as it may limit the amount of test shooting we can do.



Image

As a style icon and 'character' Effy from skins is the image we want to replicate in some elements for our main singer. Effy has a very mysterious and rebellious attitude which perfectly matches our song lyrics of 'I don't care'. Like our chosen singer she is very photogenic so draws in the audience. Her clothing is very casual, slightly short cut but represents the costume idea that we have which is slightly grungy.

Health and Safety

Risks we need to consider:

Paint: Although we are just going to use art paint, we have to make sure that when we do scenes that involves 'play fighting' that we are careful and keep it away from eyes etc.

Table flipping: In the opening scene of our music video we will be flipping a table or smashing plates, both of these can be dangerous so we are going to make sure the target areas are completely clear, as well as doing test runs to make sure it will not be dangerous.

Cake throwing: If we choose to do cake throwing we have to be careful that we don't get cake in anyone eye.

Meeting 12/12/13

Today we discussed the dates that we would be free to film over the next week and the Christmas holidays. We realised it would be very difficult to film next week as we have coursework deadlines, as well as this we are all going to see family around Christmas time. Another issue we have come across is the upcoming mocks.  These are being held in January, so due to revision and the rush to edit means it will be hard.

Group Planning: Test Run of Powder

Today we did a test run of the flour. We discovered:

• It is a very difficult substance to work with- the particles made in difficult to focus, we will need to stop and check that the shot isn't blurry in the real thing. Also finding a way of covering the camera and equipment.
• If we shot the powder we would need to think about dedicating an entire day due to clothes getting covered. Also we need to make sure we have a shooting schedule so that no shots get missed as we will be changing clothes often, making sure we are organised and locations have areas to change etc, is also important. 
• We also need to make sure the powder shots are close ups so that we can see them well enough.  

Powder Paint Filming - test (flour)

Photos of flour testing

Today we tested using flour as a basis for our paint dust. The actual paint dust will be made with either cornflour or normal flour we need to look at the consistency of the powder and how well it works with the colour in it.

The colour will be put in using food colouring and we will then enhance colouring during editing.  Doing a test shot gave us the opportunity to see if this would work as well as if we used poster paint. Also we needed to see how much of a mess it would make, considering the locations we plan to use.

Also as we plan to use the song title throughout we looked writing it in the flour we think this would look good when we actually have coloured powder and would also add another shot to our music video.

Rough Storyboarding

Meeting 10/12/13

We wanted to finish Storyboard that we had started, the process of planning has been a struggle as we all very different ideas of what we want in out video and how we will go about it. While we where story boarding we decided that our intro would be best silent, with as comedic feel to it which will break out into the music.

We came up with a visual schedule of the next week and agreed that if we had a clear view of what we wanted to do, we could attempt to do it in lesson time, but this is quite unrealistic as our individual thoughts are strong but collectively vague.

Group Meeting

Today we have been developing our storyboard and have come across some issues with development. We are certain on how much narrative we want to use and we only really want a narrative at the very beginning of the song. Our biggest issue is the fact that we want to make our video very much like the original. We want to have it disjoined and not really any narrative to the actual core of the video.

Our biggest problems are

• Agreeing on the amount of narrative we want to use
• Trying to figure out what order we want the shots in
• Completing a storyboard that we all agree on