Saving our skin

I was a bit aprehensive at first, being on my own i was unsure that i could direct, film and instruct my mom all at the same time.
Despite my queries however it went pretty smoothly, the weather seemed to hold up, at least the period we needed and Rosa was prepared and granted was a lot of help by learning her lines. Having got the 47 secs we had on the storyboard in no time i thought it a good idea to get a little extra...be it a pedalling of the bike or an extreme close up of the newspaper flying throught the air.
I did face difficulties however for example the cycling of the bike pedals as in it was physically hard to film while she was moving. Determined not to go back and let Becy and Sophie down though i worked it out and resulted in lying half out of the back of the car, sweating out my own body weight, holding the tripod and camera to get just the right shot.
All in all the filming went really well though and we completed the film in plenty (a day) of time. Each of us think it will score highly. Hopefully.

Saving our skin

With the music video being handed in on Thursday the 26th and having 47 seconds of it missing at the weekend before things were looking bad for us, especially as we were all really busy the coming week.
Knowing the girls had deadlines to reach by Tuesday it seemed as though it was up to me.
When Sunday came around and no plans had been made me and Becy in particular were really worried for our final mark so it was this point that I cancelled my driving lesson and put everything else off on Monday so that i could just go out and do it by myself using my mom as transport. It had to be Monday even without the girls as it was the only time my mom could do it, plus we had to have enough time to edit.

A2 ADVANCED PORTFOLIO: REFLECTIVE EVALUATION (Sophie Avci)

QUESTION ONE







The three videos above are:
- Our completed music video of The Competition by Kimya Dawson
- The official music video of ‘Us’ by Regina Spektor
- The official music video of ‘Foundations’ by Kate Nash
As there are no official videos for Kimya Dawson, I will be comparing our completed music video with two videos from the same genre which is anti-folk. Some of Kimya Dawson's music is actually on the soundtrack for the film 'Juno' by Jason Reitman. This means that the film was most likely aimed at the same audience as we are trying to aim for.










Although Kimya Dawson is a unique music artist, there are some similarities between our video and the official music videos of other artists from the same genre. The use of stop motion is in all three videos although its used differently in our video compared to the others. We decided to use stop motion twice, once where Rosa was looking in the mirror and the words ‘fat’ ‘ugly’ and ‘stupid’ appear on the mirror and then straight after this section when the false tears are on her face. We did this by filming three separate parts, each for 3 seconds so we had enough footage to crop when editing. The first part said ‘fat’ on the mirror, the second part said ‘ugly’ on the mirror and the third said ‘stupid. To make it look effective we had to make sure Rosa stayed in the same place otherwise it would jump and the focus would then be on Rosa rather than the mirror. The stop motion in ‘Us’ had a slightly different effect as it was meant to look unrealistic and slightly animated whereas ours needed to look fairly realistic but still quirky. We felt this technique went well, however my personal opinion on the tear section was that if we had more clips in this part so they were shorter in length, it would have looked much better and less amateur.

'US' - ANIMATED STOP MOTION

'FOUNDATIONS' - CLOSE UP OF HANDS

After watching many videos from the anti-folk genre, we noticed that a variety of shot types were used, from long shots to close ups. When creating our own music video, we decided we also wanted to follow this convention to make the video more interesting to watch and to prevent repetition. In the music video 'Foundations' we really liked the close ups (for example, when the two characters hold hands) so we tried to incorporate a few close ups of Kimya Dawson such as when she closes the door right at the beginning. In the official music video of 'Us' by Regina Spektor, we really liked the high angle shot of Regina playing the piano (PICTURE ABOVE LABELED 'US - ANIMATED STOP MOTION) so we decided we wanted to experiment with a range of angles in our video. We also noticed that in the majority of Regina Spektor's music videos she would play the piano when a piano was actually heard in the music. We found both of these techniques interesting so combined the two, for example when Rosa is on the bed, we included an instrument (acoustic guitar) and took the shot from various angles to make this section more visually exciting.

OUR VIDEO - CLOSING DOOR

OUR VIDEO - ANGLES ON BED

OUR VIDEO - NEWSPAPERS IN FACE

Although the anti-folk genre doesn't apparently have any specific conventions as it is more about the individual artist expressing themselves as unique and rebelling against ideologies and major labels, there are many aspects of the anti-folk artist that are seen in practically all of the music videos in this genre. Usually there is some form of instrument, and as Kimya Dawson is always seen with her guitar, especially at her concerts, we thought it was appropriate to have an acoustic guitar in the music video. The lyrics of an anti-folk song are usually very narrative, so many of the videos (especially Kate Nash) centre on a story that is expressed in the lyrics. As we had chosen a song with a strong narration, we decided to portray the story, for example when the line ‘when I worked in retail they said I was a slob’ was heard, we showed Kimya Dawson (Rosa) working in ASDA. The main thing found in anti-folk music videos is experimentation. I find that no anti-folk music video is difficult to watch or gets boring. We made sure we followed this convention by incorporating new and exciting ideas such as Kimya (Rosa) throwing newspapers and hitting people in the face.

OUR VIDEO - CUSTOMIZED VANS

When creating the video, we had a few ‘accidents’ which turned out really well that we could use to our advantage, for example one day when filming, Rosa forgot to put the original brown boots on which were part of the costume, and instead wore some customized Vans. Although this wasn’t the original costume, we found these very suitable to the music video as they seemed like the sort of shoes the real Kimya Dawson would wear as they were cute and personalized. The biggest ‘accident’ that happened was the walking sections where the camera was really wobbly. Although we originally was going to have it smooth, we ended up using a monopod which meant it was fairly jerky when we watched it back. I do however really like this, and it works well as it makes you feel as if you are part of the scene, like you’re actually walking a couple of steps in front of Rosa.

'FOUNDATIONS' - PERFORMING IN NARRATIVE
Similar to Kate Nash, we have merged both narrative and performance together in our music video by having Kimya Dawson as the main character like Kate Nash is the main character of the ’Foundations’ narrative. We also had Kimya Dawson performing whilst expressing the story, for example when she is on the bed with the guitar she is also performing. This is similar to Kate Nash’s video ‘Foundations’ as she does the same, for example Kate performs when she is at the table playing cards with her boyfriend. We decided to follow this convention as Kimya Dawson’s lyrics are very personal to her and often have a lot of narrative to them so we felt it was common sense to have Kimya Dawson as part of the narrative in the video.

Problems with uploading

This week, our music video was uploaded to youtube, however it seemed as if it was an incomplete video as the sound on the video clip was turned up in some places and a few random white clips were flashing halfway through. After going to the teacher to ask whether they had uploaded the correct video, we watched the video back on their computer and these problems were not visible and the white flashes occured in a different place instead. As our teacher had already seen the completed video where these problems do not exist we have just left it as we think it's a problem with the file rather than what we have actually created.

Group Feedback Questionnaire - Group Six

Our final feedback sheet left us with only positive feedback; they thought that the video was very professional and suiting to the chosen genre, again their favourite part was the newspapers being thrown and enjoyed the variety of shots. They didn't leave any comments as to how we could improve the video.

Group Feedback Questionnaire - Group Five

The next feedback sheet left us both positive and negative results, they thought that the actress was perfectly suited for the genre and video and enjoyed the variety of shots, however, they believed that some shots could have been shorter. As a group we slightly agree that a couple could have been broken up, but when editing couldn't find any suitable places to do so as the lyrics of the song as so tightly compact and fast.

Group Feedback Questionnaire - Group Four

Just like the previous group, on this feedback sheet they too favoured seeing the people hit with newspapers, and also thought that the shots were nicely framed. They too, didn't leave any ways of improving the video.