Bye bye!

So this is our final post then, we've done everything else and the project's over now =( & =[

Emma & Angelie
xxx

Finished MySpace

Our finished MySpace can be found at http://www.myspace.com/AvaAlexisOfficial

Angelie

Finished Music Video

Here's our finished music video:

Angelie

Finished Album Cover

Front:

Back:

Ta da! =)

Angelie

Screening Feedback

We held a screening of our video to two audiences: year 13s on Friday and year 10s (I think?) on Thursday, getting them to fill in questionnaires for us (which we altered slightly after seeing how useless some questions were on Thursday). So here's the results in a shortened version:

Most (about 98%) managed to establish the story of our video or at least understood it.

Everyone partially or fully identified the song/artist's name.

Generally teh yellow text boxes could be read with only a couple being too fast including the one with the front door opening.

The comic book effect was well received with no one saying it was bad. Quotes include: "blates good", "adds variety", "favourite aspect" and our only negative one was "a bit washed out".

The split between buying the single or not was split almost equally. Females and year 10s were most likely to buy it with reasons being it was a good song. Reasons for not buying included liking the orginal better, it being a "girl's song" it was annoying, depressing.

Several poeple (10) suggested that nothing needed improving however others suggested the following: bettwe synching of the performance, changing the yellow boxes, male hero instead of female, more comic book stuff and less singing and smoother camera movements.

The comic effect was by far the favourite thing about the video with 10 votes from just 25 year 13s asked, and almost all of the year 10s. This was followed by Wonder Woman with 5 votes and the story with three votes. Other things mentioned include it being an original idea, the artist, the colours, ice cream (where it moves) and the transitions between shots.

Almost everyone would watch the video if it came on TV mainly for Ava, Wonder Woman and the comic effect being entertaining however not liking the song was the main reason for not watching or the repetitive nature of many shots.

THe question regarding which venues they'd expect our artist to play at wasn't answered too well, many saying they didn't know or not answering. However answers included the Astoria & other simillar sizes venues, small venues, "cotched clubs" (?), discos, general "indie" venues and medium capacity arenas.

TV channels that people thought our video would be shown on were mainly MTV/TMF/4Music/The Hits. One person said "kids TV" whilst two said Heart and one said Kiss.

Or ratings out of 10 varied from 7 to 9 with our average being 8.125

Emma

Another update...

We're erm... working hard and all that for the deadline. We're staying late tonight to sort out our CD cover before our reshoot with Jazmin tomorrow lunch. We've decided to use a theme of glitter in her make up and our decoration/background so that should be fun
I think that's all for now folks!

Emma

Album cover inspiration and ideas

Adele - 19

Duffy - Rockferry

We've decided to create an album cover similar to Adele's and Duffy's. We are going to use a CU of Ava, not making eye contact with the camera. She will be quite well made up and we will probably use a black background, in a similar way to Adele's album cover.

Angelie

MySpace

We've recently made a few decisions about style and content for our MySpace. We've chosen to create an artist MySpace for Ava which is similar to that of Kate Nash and Lily Allen. So, we would make it appear as if Ava checks and updates her MySpace herself

In a similar style to Kate Nash, Ava's MySpace is going to be personalised. She'll write blogs, upload personal photos and post details about her upcoming gigs. Ava would use her MySpace as a way to connect with her fans and also recruit her street team.

Angelie

Update!

So today we've had Miss B go through our video with us bit by bit and given us sooooooo much stuff to think about/look at/change.
On Monday I'm going to change the montage bit in the middle to fit it better to the music and give it a better pattern and Angelie will then use the following two periods top cartoonise the split screen stuff we mentioned cartoonisuing today.
We're also going to add in more close ups and stuff from our random footage over the "doo-dums" with a ghosting effect.
More updates to follow probably!

Emma

More comic book stylings...

Ryan's showed us a way of comic-book-ifying our narrative footage using Photoshop and then using the batch edit function to do whole sequences. Here's an example I did (in about 5 minutes) to show what it should look like...

Lee Mead before comic-bookification:

Aaaaand after:

Angelie

YouTube Channel

(to link to on the MySpace and also upload clips on)

Username: AvaAlexisOfficial
Password: magic1
URL: http://uk.youtube.com/user/AvaAlexisOfficial

Angelie

MySpace Info

URL - www.myspace.com/avaalexisofficial
Password - magic1
EMail - a02empyt@latymer.co.uk

Emma

Cartoonisation...

Max found a really good cartoonising plug-in for After Effects and we tested it out yesterday. It looks pretty good, and it would be loads simpler and less time consuming than the Photoshop way doing comic book images.

We'll upload the test cartoonising to YouTube in the next couple of days :)

Angelie

Last day of shooting

Yesterday after school we did our main performance shoot. As Mrs Thrasher suggested, Jazmin performed without a microphone and it looked much better. We also did some experimenting with Jazmin standing up and singing, leaning against the wall, sitting on the speakers etc. Like many people have suggested, we also shot lots and lots of close-ups. We ran through the song about 10 times (I think... maybe it was 11...) so there should be quite a lot to choose from.

After a discussion with Jake Wynne in Wednesday's lesson, we realised that maybe Jazmin's character didn't seem lacking in confidence enough, and instead seemed more indecisive. So, we discussed the possibility of having some shots of Ava reading self help books. We also did this yesterday, so that should convey the meaning we want it to...

Angelie

Shooting plans

We've changed our shooting schedule slightly, so here's the new plan for the next few days...

Wednesday 24th September (after school) - shooting with Melissa at Enfield Chase train station. [Wonder Woman's first and last appearances]
Thursday 25th September - Emma's 18th and Angelie's 17th birthday! Yay! =) No shooting that day though
Friday 26th September (after school) - Jazmin's performance shots. Also any necessary reshoots.

**EDIT: After speaking to the teachers, we've discovered that it's not really necessary to reshoot any of our narrative shots, so 26/09 will just be performance**

Angelie

Weekend shoot!

This weekend we managed to shoot almost all the narrative footage we needed to with exception of Wonder Woman walking and her introductory shot.
We had fun doing it (lots of silly quotes on the white boards =]) and it didn't take as long as we expected it would do.
We've uploaded all of the footage and will be looking through to identify re-shoots that we need to do

Emma

Response to Mrs Thrasher's Feedback

I agree that Jazmin does look uncomfortable with the mic and we should shoot footage without it however i also think that we can still use some of our old footage because at times she does have moments of confidence holding it.

Emma

P.S. Sorry this is so late, I was at Warwick and then shooting all day today so couldn't blog before =]

Response to Mrs Thrasher's feedback

Actually, now that I think about it, I kind of agree with the microphone thing, that was the source of a couple of problems actually... first day the microphone was too far from her mouth (on the stand), second time it was sort of waving about, like Mrs Thrasher said. We've got a performance shoot scheduled for next Friday anyway, so we could try the performance without a microphone...
We'll see what Emma thinks too...

Angelie

Thr Feedback

Hi girls!

I was watching your footage for your performance bed and agree totally with what Mrs B has said. However, I also think the microphone is a huge distraction, especially as Jasmine doesn't seem that confident using it...it's kind of waving around in a distanced manner from her mouth and I just think it'd look a lot better without it. If you had a band you might include a mic but most times performers just sing to the camera. What do you think?

loving the look btw and have been experimenting with comic book effects for you...

mrs t

Idea change!

After lengthy discussions Angelie & I have decided that we won't be using Starbucks tomorrow, we will instead be using a park bench where the guy will sit down next to Ava as our hero brings them over drinks (we were thinking hot chocolates) so that there is less people likely to get in the way of the shoot.
We're also rethinking our mugging sequence too.

Emma

Performance shoot on 18/09/08

Today we did some more shooting and overall it went quite well. We were a bit pushed for time, since Jazmin only had Periods 2 and 3 off, so had to be back by Period 4, but we worked hard and managed to get about 15-20 mins of footage (I think!). We did what Ms Blackborow suggested and took lots of MCUs, CUs etc. And we got Jazmin to be a bit more exaggerated with her performance, and since she takes direction really well, the footage we did get was quite good. So now tomorrow we just have to watch it back and capture it!

Angelie

Today's shoot (17/09/08)

This afternoon we had a performance shoot which went fairly well. Jazmin was really good at performing and she comes across really well on camera. We're doing some more shooting tomorrow and as Ms Blackborow has mentioned in her feedback post below, our main aim will be to get some shots of more exaggerated performance and also shoot some more tightly framed shots. Hopefully everything will go well!

Oh also, we'll probably upload some of our footage onto YouTube and then link it to the blog some time soon :)

Angelie

BLK feedback

I don't know if i said this before but i do really like the set girls, lovely colours and textures, and jazmin looks gorgeous btw.

just go a bit wild on the performance this time and get in nice and close with your camera (plenty of mids and mcu's too) so you end up with some good cutaways.

nice sweeping shots and plenty of creative movement would be great too

good luck for thursday

Song Lyrics

"Holding Out For A Hero"

Where have all the good men gone
And where are all the gods?
Where's the street-wise Hercules
To fight the rising odds?
Isn't there a white knight upon a fiery steed?
Late at night I I toss and turn and dream of what I need

[Chorus]
I need a hero
I'm holding out for a hero 'til the end of the night
He's gotta be strong
And he's gotta be fast
And he's gotta be fresh from the fight
I need a hero
I'm holding out for a hero 'til the morning light
He's gotta be sure
And it's gotta be soon
And he's gotta be larger than life

Somewhere after midnight
In my wildest fantasy
Somewhere just beyond my reach
There's someone reaching back for me
Racing on the thunder and rising with the heat
It's gonna take a superman to sweep me off my feet

[Chorus]

Up where the mountains meet the heavens above
Out where the lightning splits the sea
I would swear that there's someone somewhere
Watching me

Through the wind and the chill and the rain
And the storm and the flood
I can feel his approach
Like the fire in my blood

[Chorus]

Emma

Performance room

Today we decorated the performance room and took a few pictures:

Angelie

Performance room wall coverings

I've posted the pictures of possible wall coverings on my individual blog and figured I'd post them on here too...

Pictures of the sarees/other material:

Angelie

Window coverings

After talking to Ms B the other day two things came out of the discussion. The first idea was that we could use newspaper to cover the window like in Christina Aguilera's 'Beautiful'. The second was taht we should use fabric/material to cover it. We will try out both of these over the weekend to see which is best.

Emma

Plans and props for Sunday

Since Jazmin can't make the originally planned shoot on Sunday, I'm going over to Emma's house and we're going to set up the performance room for later on in the week. We're also going to test out different types of lighting and some continuity techniques (for the narrative shots).

Props for Sunday:

• Coloured material
• Fairy lights
• Microphone stand
• Microphone

Angelie

Revised shooting schedule

Jazmin is unable to shoot this Sunday, so we've rearranged our planned shooting times slightly....

Our new shooting times are:

Wednesday 17th September from 1 pm - Performance
Thursday 18th September from 10am - Performance
Friday 19th September from 3pm - Narrative
Sunday 21st September from 10am - Narrative
Friday 26th September from 3pm - Performance
Sunday 28th September from 10am - Narrative

Angelie

BLK feedback

hey girls with the bedroom shots can you disguise the windows so you can't see the street/houses etc in the background

Ms B

Shooting Schedule

Our proposed shooting times are:

Sunday 14th September from 10am - Narrative
Thursday 18th September from 10am - Performance
Friday 19th September from 3pm - Performance
Sunday 21st September from 10am - Narrative
Friday 26th September 2008 - Performance
Sunday 28th September from 10am - Narrative

Emma & Angelie

Actor photos

Jazmin (Ava)

James

Melissa (Wonder Woman)

Emma

Storyboard

We created a rough storyboard last Thursday, here are the scans:

Page 1:

Page 2:

Page 3:Page 4:Page 5: Page 6:

Larger versions of the storyboard:
Page 1
Page 2
Page 3
Page 4
Page 5
Page 6

Angelie

Signposts

Now that our performance shots are taking place indoors, it doesnt really make sense to have the decision signposts with the singer. So, we've decided that for each scenario that takes places in the narrative part of the video, there will be a signpost in the place where Ava's character is meant to be making the decision. As time goes on, she'll start to pay less attention to the signposts, to signify her gaining confidence. At the end, there will be a blank signpost or the signpost will disappear (???)

~ Angelie

New location photos

Bedroom:
For our scenarios that are in a bedroom we have decided to use my bedroom because it's got a lot of natural light for most of the day, we can move the bed to create more space, we can change mirrors to suit what we want and I don't mind changing stuff around generally!


We will also be using what is currently used as a music room which has a small enclove that we're going to decorate and move the furniture out of/rearrange so that we can use it (which I will post a picture of later)

Emma

Actor changes

We've had some more discussions and realised that Jazmin may not have been able to do the different weekends so we've asked Melissa (the one who went to Hollywood) if she would be the superhero and she happily agreed to do all the original shooting weekends. This is easier because it goes with our original idea, we might be able to shoot in free time and doesn't mess Jazmin around. Melissa's also been in our media project before so we know she's reliable, gets on with Jazmin and is very enthusiastic!

Emma & Angelie

Further Developments

We were talking and we think we may have found a solution to our problem of James being unable to shoot on the designated weekends. If James can commit, we'd like to shoot with him on the 14th September, 5th and 12th October instead. In the mean time we can shoot Jazmin's performance shots and edit that as well as completing the album cover and MySpace. .

Also, we've decided on shooting the performance shots all in one room which we would dress up to suit the style of our singer. This would be less complicated, more reliable and less restricted than if we were to shoot in central London with only the two of us. We'll post pictures on the blog ASAP.

We've spoken to Miss B about it and she has no problems with our decision

The Group

Group Changes

Jennifer has decided not to continue with Media this year, so the group is now just Angelie & Emma!
Jennifer has offered to help with shooting and act in the video as originally planned, we will discuss this further later.

The Group

*EDIT* We've decided to use James, our original actor, as our hero instead of Jennifer

Meetings Cancelled!

Today (Monday) and yesterday (Sunday) we were meant to be having meetings to storyboard and get location address respectively. But as Angelie and I are/were both ill we decided it was best to cancel and catch up on the work ASAP when we're both less ill.
Emma
x

Hero Generator

I was just "stumbling" on Firefox when this site came up:
http://www.marvelvc.com.br/Hero/

So I made a hero that looks the closest to Jennifer as Superwoman I could:

It won't let me make both her boots blue and doesn't have exact details, but I thought it'd be pretty good to post

Emma

More Lichtenstein style images

Before:
After:

Before:


After:

Angelie

Sky High

So the other day, a Disney superhero film by the name of 'Sky High' came on one of the movie channels in India. While I was watching it, I noticed that the beginning and end both had a comic strip, like we plan to have in our music video. So, I thought I'd quickly post something about it. If you watch the beginning of this clip, you'll see what I mean:



Obviously our comic strip section probably won't look quite as good/advanced as this one, but still...

Angelie

BLK feedback

well done angelie and emma, great location recces, lots of good ideas

love the james McAvoy work angelie - nice subject!

Location Address

I'm assuming we all like some locations?
We need to decide which ones we want to use
But also is anyone free to go back and get the address for the place with the fountain in the courtyard? I'm not free until ages away but anyone can go before then (probably the last week of the holidays) then they should, we can get the letter sorted out for permission and stuff, if not I'll do it.
That sound okay?

Emma
x

An idea

I just listened to the song again and when she talks about a superman sweeping he roff her feet I think we should have the car/drain bit?

Anyways it was just an idea, and I'm off to France now so no internet for 2 weeks, but I put the song on my ipod so might have more ideas to post when I'm back

Emma
x

Location - Near Tower Bridge

10 - Green tree thing between tall buildings

11 - Fountains near the Mayor's building

Angelie & I thought Ava could walk through the fountains at the end after she's shut the comic

12 - Water platform things

Again we were thinking the singer could walk down them

Emma

Location - South of the Thames

5 - At the base of the Eye

6 - The amazing courtyard fountain place with the Eye (down a backstreet)

7 - A small deck thing we found which was a bit like a stage

8 - Old building near Oxo Tower with lights hanging from it (on at night)

9 - Millennium Bridge in front of the Tate

Emma

Location - North of the Thames

1 - Near Embankment station

2 - Nearer to Waterloo station

3 - Opposite the Eye

We'd have the girl in the centre of the Eye though so it would be symmetrical

4 - Big Ben/Westminster

I've numbered them all so we can post comments with numbers for specific locations.

More will be up in following posts

Emma

James McAvoy - Lichtenstein Style

Well, he seemed like a good subject... for me anyway! :P

Before:

After:

Overall, I'm quite pleased with that really! It doesn't look exactly like him, but it's relatively similar. And I think as a comic type image, it works quite well. This one's about a million times better than an earlier attempt I did and it didn't really take as long either...

Opinions?

Angelie

BLK feedback

just checkin in to say hi before i go on hols (no internet for a week!) but wanted you to know I'm following all this with interest.

Angelie just keep going even if it doesn't work, at least you'll know, but for what its worth I like the effect you did to the wonder woman image. looking forward to seeing the photos Emma.

Well done girls, great blogging!

Today's location search...

... was quite successful actually :)
We found some good locations. In particular, one fountain with the London Eye in the background. That one's SO amazing, but we'd have to get permission first. Also, nice fountains near City Hall which would be perfect for running through.
So all in all, a great success I think :)
Emma's going to post location pictures when she gets a chance, but it could take her some time, since the files are rather large and we did take quite a few pictures!

Angelieeeee

Turning photos into comics...

Right well, I've spent about 3 hours trying to turn a photo into a Lichtenstein style image (using the tutorial posted previously) and I'm nowhere near finished yet. Also, it looks really poo. That's probably got a lot to do with the fact that this is a first attempt, but still...

So I'm wondering, is it really worth all the time and effort if it's not even going to be that good anyway??

I'll continue to practice when I'm in India anyway though, since there won't be anything exciting going on over there most of the time...

Oh and I'll post the line art/dot thing that I've done a bit later :)

Angelie

Film research

Over the past two days I've watched Batman Begins again and seen The Dark Knight. I know this is a male superhero but it's given me an idea about shots that we might like to use for our cartoon dissolves that are typical of heroes.

Firstly there's the obligiatory feet shot
(no screen shots found atm)

Then there's the CU of a face which is usually masked
(I can't find any screen shots of this atm but I will later)

There's also the HA shot of them flying/catching a helpless person



Another shot used is them on/in their mode of transport (either from the side or infront, or tracking them from behind)




Also there's the over the shoulder looking out of a tall building shot
(a bit closer than this image though!)

Finally, the frequent shots of the hero's logo
(again will be found later)

Basically what's shown in The Dark Knight trailer

Emma

Research

Here are some videos depicting some ideas we could use in our music video if we used Wonder Woman instead of Supergirl. I think it would be alot easier for us to do.

This first video below we could maybe try and imitate the spin that she does where she changes clothes into Wonder Woman.


In this video she use her tiara to stop the bad guy and it magically flies back to her.


This one is where she fights some men which we could also easily incorporate in some way.

Jennifer

xxx

Just an experiment...

I thought I'd just test out that "line art" thing that's talked about in the link in my last post... it took a couple of hours, but it looks alright... well, apart from her eyes (they look a bit scary). But with practice it could look okay maybe..??

Before:
After:

Opinions? If it's rubbish, feel free to say so - I won't take offence!

Angelie

Photoshop tutorial: Lichtenstein style images

I found this tutorial for how you can use Photoshop to turn your photographs into Lichtenstein comic-style images...

http://www.melissaclifton.com/tutorial-popart.html

Using these techniques, we could maybe take our own still shots of Jennifer in costume and then edit them so they are in the same style as the above picture. This could make things a bit easier for us, since it would mean that we wouldn't have to spend hours searching through Wonder Woman or Supergirl comics trying to find the right parts in the comic strip, and then editing those to change our superheroine's ethnicity... instead, we could just make our own. It would probably be quite long for us to do and maybe won't look quite as effective as if we used a real comic, but I think it's something worth bearing in mind...

Angelie