Album Covers

This is Adele's only album since 2008 when her debut single 'Chasing Pavements' was released. The album also contains the song we are using for our video 'To Make You Feel My Love' which was originally a hit for Bob Dylan. I really like the simplicity of this album cover, although you can only see half of Adele's face and she is looking down so you cannot see into her eyes there is a lot of emotion conveyed in this picture. I really like the dull colours too because it fits in with the emotion- sadness.

Diana Vickers' 'Songs From The Tainted Cherry Tree' was her debut album, released on 10th April 2010, it was postponed due to Vickers' leading role in the West End show 'Little Voice'. The album has her debut, number one 'Once' and other hits like 'the Boy Who Murdered Love'. I really like this album cover because of how the colours are used. Diana Vickers herself is in a very light-shaded black and white which is very simplistic but looks effective. But the particular bit i really like on the cover is the title, because it's such a contrast of colours where is goes from black and white to a bright hot pink. this is effective because it catches your eye.

Corrine Bailey Rae's debut album 'Corrine Bailey Rae' went straight in at number one in the UK. The album includes songs like: 'Like A Star', 'Put Your Records On' and 'Trouble Sleeping'. I like this cover because it's also quite simple because there aren't a lot of colours in it. I also like this album cover because the picture connects with the music and the music videos i.e. flowers- on the video for 'Put Your Records On' Bailey Rae is riding on a bike down country lanes surrounded by flowers and trees, the song is soft and happy and has connections with the summer.

'Night Work' by the Scissor Sisters was released in June 2010. The song 'Fire With Fore' was released 8 days before the album was released, but like most artists, this was used to promote the album. I love this album cover because it has absolutely nothing to do with the music that is featured on the disc, it has disjuncture. As a group, Scissor Sisters are seen as quite an openly sexual band, their frontman Jake Shears wears very little clothing and at one concert he wore a little bit too much as he flashed. The bands name 'Scissor Sisters' has sexual connotations. I like how simple this cover also is and the fact it's black and white but the writing of the album name 'Night Work' is in bright red writing because, again, it shows the contrast in the colours.

Filming, Step 5 - Refilming

On Wednesday in media first lesson, after uploading our clips onto the Macs in the editing suite there were things on the video present that weren't there before. This was a massive problem! When filming on Tuesday night, the screen on the camera was just Liv against a white background for the make-up scenes and the lip syncing scenes, but when uploading the clips onto the Macs we could see the doorframe, door handle and Livs top. Our best decision was the re-film then and there, so Mr Ford let us leave the lesson and go to Livs and refilm the scenes.

We then changed our idea for the start and end because we didn't think it did the video justice. We then made the start sad, where it was just liv laying on the bed cuddling a cushion, obviously yearing for someone. And the end is happy where liv has an engagement ring which implies the person she has been yearning for has asked her to marry him and they are going to live happily ever after.

Filming, Step 4 - Beginning and End

We couldn't come to a decision of how to begin and end the video, we were afraid that they would both look really bad comared to the main part of the video because that looked really good. We decided to begin and and the video with Liv on the bed, not singing. We figured a happy ending would be a contrast to the sadness throughout the video. Liv put on a big shirt, like you always see in movies, and at the beginning of the video sat looking at a ring onher wedding finger looking sad, then at the end was a shot of Liv falling on the bed looking at her hand smiling then looking into the camera and doing a cheesy smile. We only planned for this to be a temporary start and end until we could think of something more effective after looking at it in the editing suite and seeing what it looked like in there with the rest of the video.

Filming, Step 3 - Exaggerated Make-Up And Filming

We decided, because Liv has her hair down whilst lip syncing, she would have her hair up with a head band, flower and other various things on her head. We chose to do this because the colours in the make-up would be easier to see which is what we want because the whole idea of doing a lot of make-up was so when Liv cries it looks convincing because all of her make-up is smudged etc. Things in her hair, on her head and around would, one-by-one be taken off which symbolises that Liv is stripping herself of anything artificial and is being natural because she loves someone and is showing her true self. That is why when filming, we didn't want Liv's top to be seen because we only wanted the audience to see her bare shoulders to make it look like she has nothing to hide behind; 'this is me'. This turned out to be a bit of an issue thoughout- because liv wasn't miming, she was singing... so everytime she took a breath you could slightly see the top of her strapless top which made it look naff, this then made us film numerous times.

Laura did start doing Liv's make-up but it took too much time so in the end Liv did most of it herself because it was easier and we didn't have a lot of time left at this point. The shots we filmed with Liv wearing make-up will be used to convey serious emotion in our video. Although Liv looks sad when lip syncing she isn't crying, so we decided that (like Natasha Bedingfield - I Bruise Easily) we would get Liv to smudge her make-up and cry. Because Liv couldn't properly cry she had a glass of water next to her where, she quickly ssprinkled drops of water on her face so it looked like tear drops. She also put water on her hands inbetween takes, so when she smudges her make-up it smudged more. Because Liv smudges her make-up and then wipes it off with a make-up wipe, we were under a lot of pressure to film it in one take because if there were any mistakes we would have had to wait for Liv put all of her make-up on again, luckily thios didn't happen and we were ok.

This is what liv's make-up looked like before she cried it out and smudged it:

Filming, Step 2 - Setting Up And Filming One Half

When setting up we found it hard to find a good spot to place the camera and where to place Liv. At first, we tried it where Liv was against her wall because it is plan, but the gap between the wall and Livs big bed was too short which was bad because 1) the camera was too close to Liv, and 2) i couldn't see if the shot was ok with lighting, placement etc. because it was litterally right next to Livs bed. We then changed the camera position and where Liv sits to where Liv sat against her door, which actually worked out better because the door was white not cream, so this was effective in showing her natural look and the colours in the make-up later on. This angle was also better because there was a greater distance between the door and the camera and room for me to sit behind to camera watching to see if what was being filmed was ok.

By the time we had the positioning and everything sorted out it was getting dark outside but wasn't dark enough to have a big light on, we then decided to use a lamp as a kind of spotlight on the shoulder shots because it highlighted key features and emotions on Liv's face, which in the end looked really effective. We originally had an office lamp so the head could move in the direction you wanted the light to focus on, but as we moved it it broke! So we then had to use a normal bedside lamp, although it looked good it was a lot of effort and was quite awkward as Laura had to sit and hold it facing the right way without moving for 4 munites numerous times.

When we eventually got filming, we decided to just make Liv lip sync the whole songinto the camera so we could cut bits we don't need in the editing suite. This was ok at first, but Liv fumbled or forgot a lot of words which made us have to film the same thing over and over, which made us run out of tape space! So we then told Liv to do it again, after re-winding the tape to the beginning and starting over. But she continued to forget words. So laura decided to get the lyrics Liv forgot, on her laptop so Liv could read them because it was the same verse she kept failing on.As we continued, things still didn't look quite right, so we told Liv to sing out loud along with the music because she wasn't miming convincingly enough. When she started to do this things looked really good and we then got the whole song filmed in one take.

Filming, Step 1 - Removing Existing Make-Up

Because we filmed after school, we obviously had to remove any existing make-up Liv had on to get a natural look. The natural look was then used whilst lip syncing, this was inspired by Natasha Bedingfield's 'I Bruise Easily'. Originally we were going to have wearing eye make-up but we wondered what it would be like without eye make-up because it makes a person look really different with no mascara on. Liv then removed one eyes make-up so we compared it to the other eye and decided it looked a lot more effective to have no make-up at all. Also, when a girl has no eye make-up it makes her eyes look more puffy, which we found effective as she is crying in the video.

When Liv removed all of ther make-up she was then very concious of how she looked and her skin condition/tone so we then suggested a bit of foundation/concealer to make her look less pale and blemished. What music video has women or even men not wearing a tiny bit of make-up to make them look better?? Liv then took her hair out of a pony tail and put it behind it shoulders for filming, we felt this looked natural. Because we were going for a more natural look, me and Laura told Liv to wear a strapless top so when filming her singing at a shoulder shot, we would see bare skin, this looked really good and effective when filming.

This is what Liv looked like for our shots of her lip syncing into the camera looking natural:

Filming

This evening we have filmed our new idea for the video. We have come to the conclusion that prefer the new idea to the house party idea as it is less common and a more creative idea, so therefore we are glad we changed it. We started off filming me without any makeup and recorded me singing the whole song, we decided I would just sing the song out loud instead of miming as we thought it would look so much more realistic and after a few problems with miming we decided that this would be ideal. Laura then applied my makeup whilst Jordan set up the camera ready for the next scenes. Jordan took pictures of Laura applying the makeup to show the different stages. We decided in the video my makeup would be over the top, and as we were inspired by Natasha Bedingfield's video "I Bruise Easily" as we thought her makeup was great and we liked where she removed her makeup as she was showing emotion. We then filmed myself crying and wiping off all my makeup to the music without any singing as we thought we could insert parts of both clips where I am wearing makeup and not wearing makeup. We filmed a fair bit so we can play around with it and manipulate it to how we want it too look. It was hard to make myself cry so I used water on my face to make it look as if I was crying to mirror the characters feelings. We filmed the ending, which we might change as we are not completely sure it will work yet. After watching the video back we can then identify what needs to be done and if we have done a good job. Until then everything is going smoothly!