Started with us learning about star image; and the synthertic or organic that music groups or artists fall into. A synthetic image fitting into a sterotype, or ticking a box appealling for a certain group, usually appealing to younger audiences, with 'one hit wonders' and have short lives in the industry.Our task was to create a group or artist, to fit into either 'lable', create an alum cover with a series of publicity shots. We created a synthetic artists named Marla:
A young female artist, who is set into the pop genre.
Appealing to Younger female teenagers, as..
Her quirky, fun punk yet girl next door image is exciting and new and has a mysterious quality men can find desirable.
A title she could be given is "Noveau Pop Princess".
Her promotion shots, helped us create this image of Town Vs Counrtyside, intravert Vs Extravert sides. The juvinlie like contrast to the image backs the teenage appeal and the isolated images of her in the field supports the mystery.
Our group was happy with the images and are confident she is a good product for a gap in the market. However, the greyscale images contradicted the image and we decided not to use them, the 'pop arty' shots are much more successful in the campaigne to target our audience.
Below is the powerpoint campaigne we used to sell our product...
Childlike yet streetwise font/graffitti.
Clashy colours
A vunerable yet seductive look/pose.
Rebelious to appeal to the teenagers.
The greyscale makes her appeal too organic with the gentle image of the field.
Easy going..
Cheeky...
We really liked this image of playfullness and her mysterious image being 'cracked' so she seems less stern.
These caged boulders, gave a really good effect of her image.
We discussed that the greyscale doesn't work, however the darkness and high contrast does work. It portrays her mysterious side well i think.
A2 COURSE As a group we were to develop a concept, image and brand for a new solo artist, group or band and develop and produce their first pop video, their first DVD cover and their first magazine advertisement. In order to establish the groups image and brand, for a particular target audience.
After forming a group of five we were told we could have no more than four in a group. So Greg and I split off into a group of two and began working on choosing the track and artist, quickly as we were behind.
we had the idea of a Good the Bad and the Ugly spin on the video. For example, the band members would be riding down the streets on a apparent horse, then the camera would track away to reveal they are ‘riding’ chairs and the studio to come into shot, with girls creating horse sounds with coconuts. Yet, this again would become too repetitive.
The suggestion of childish/cartoon like drawings would set the narrative, with the narrative being interrupted by the performance aspect of the singer in a place, like a coffee shop, or a personal space to the singer drawing and singing the lyrics. Being an acoustic, faraway style song, the idea of doodles around the pictures and even taking over the performance would come into it. Thus, finally pronouncing our idea, or gaining some sort of concept, we need to quickly, logistically and efficiently allocate our roles and schedule our production. We are scouting the school for potential characters to fit our soloist and to lip sync. We shall finalise our idea, and then draw out a storyboard, once done we can explore some special effects, staging and locations crew and design.
“In this business. The first rule is, never act out of desperation, because there is always someone out there looking to sucker you”
* Research 
- Melanie B, Spice girls
so for example “Grey’s Anatomy” or such.
ow an established soloist his main competitors in this broad genre, would be the likes of Coldplay, Jason Mraz, and Joshua Radin and Azure ray. All these artists and bands have an image of passion and devotion and originality about their music, they do not necessarily sing soulfully but they show it through their lyrics and treatment to their fans. They are concerned as well as they could be. The fact that he sings about all universal fears and feelings of love, in a soulful way that could act as a soundtrack to a relationship or place memories or set a scene and can hit a nerve or relate to anyone it brings a problem where to sell him to; his stories and poetical lyrics implicate him as a very well educated talented man however, he can be understood and be inspirational to the lower jictar scale. So his star image would be sold as original down to earth creative and true.
14th Floor Records looks after the releases in the UK, Europe and the Rest of the World (through Warner Music). Other acts that are signed with the label are the likes of Joshua Radin, Biffy cliffro, Milo, Sneaky Sound system and The Wombats. After finally choosing a song and creating an artist to sell, we proceeded to create an idea, and then once green lighted, we put together a timeline and storyboard for our video.
We had an original idea that we wanted to add some animation to our video, to add an innocence or dream like quality towards the lyrics.
Therefore we had in an ex student, who has gone into animation, to advice and inform us on what we had to do. The original idea was to add animated extras or stick men to walk by, to create a sense that our artist is in a world of his own. However, this is now not the case. For every one second we would have to produce seven images for one movement, this would be ultimately time consuming, and we would have to start drawing as soon as possible, and not being 100% clear on what the exact sequence was this was a very unlikely situation. However, the advice he gave us, such as, creating a simple frame for the pictures and manipulating film with after affects was as effective and less time consuming.
We were also discussing location possibilities. With difficult possibilities for cafes that would be good to film in for a day, was unclear and not up to standard. Therefore, we thought of the idea that the whole video is quite stylised and dream like that if we created a bedroom / room, with a simple set, simple being table chair white/one colour base room that it would be quite effective, then with the doodles we could create a more exciting atmosphere.
Finding the actor for our artist has been really difficult, still in the stages of finding a perfect candidate, we are trying a mature good looking male that can effectively play a guitar. On the other hand, it was very easy to find a striking female. We wanted her to be a red head, as it is an unusual hair colour which works well with the image that we are trying to portray the originality and maybe quirkiness of the his taste. She is less obvious looking, a striking beauty which works really well.
Once camera testing them, we realised that she works well, very at ease.
Creating a time line for the video was extensive and hard work. With a detailed description of time and music entrances and words, it took over an hour and a half to perfect. Also creating the timeline, I recognized that there is one cello player, which created one more job for us to do, to find a cello player. I researched to find any cello players, to no success, so we are in the process of discussing the image of the cello player. We are more rapidly falling behind, so more effect needs to be put in.
For the story board we had to take into consideration many different composition rules. Different shots, angles, movements, lighting, a rule of thirds. For every frame the process started with numbering the box, adding detail with, stating whether it is placed in the exterior or interior. Described what the shot type and angle was and any description of movement in the frame whilst the shot was in progress. With the use of shading you portrayed the lighting, using the three point lighting convention. For the action of movement and detail for actors, a black arrow is used for movement in the screen whilst for the transition a white arrow would be used and written above the arrow would be mix, dissolve, wipe or cut. We are using the ITV rules, in that the mix would be like the addisive effect whilst dissolve would be from one side to the other.
Learning about composition rules, was fascinating that the placement of characters and motion of cameras can have a real dramatic effect towards the audience. With pleasant placing of the next shots to the direction of a character in the shot to give an impact on their nature.
Film space refers to the spatial dynamics inherent in the film frame. With specific movement and direction the images can become a powerful story element.
The screen direction is referred to in axis. X axis refers to the line that cuts the frame horizontally. Objects can run left to right or right to left on this axis. Y axis refers to the line that puts from the frame vertically, objects can move up or down the Y axis. The Z axis therefore refers to the axis that runs to the foreground from the back ground of the screen, and vise versa: depth of field.
A great example of this is from the very well known British film, ‘Strangers on a train’ 1951, Alfred Hitchcock. From the very start we know exactly who is the good guy and who is the bad, subconsciously, however studying media, it is hard not to analyse a film anymore without being conscious to intricate details of direction.
By using this great technique, we wanted to portray our artist as loyal and positive qualities about him, create a sense of him being humble, therefore in our storyboard we have placed him on the left had side of the shot, and added a small detail of the camera angle being slightly higher than level to subliminally say he is humble.
We have also discussed the style of our character and the colour pallet. With a base monotone background and surroundings colour is important to get right without. By using simple colours like blue to create and white to give a sense of honesty and energy but also a sense of withdrawn emotions they are good colours. Colours can really give an extra depth to a story.
When music videos started to become big, around mid eighties, simple rules such as leading the eye, was really effective. It is just pleasant to watch and quite simply easy to read. A really good example of this is the ‘KANE GANG’ video where every shot finishes with the beginning shot starting where the last shot finishes. Such as a girl walking left to right and then a wipe action starts the shot with a hand playing the guitar where the girl had stopped.
EXAMPLE:
Final preproduction:
Ending the preproduction stage, was by finishing the research and development of the video and backdrop if the artist.The gathering of props and designing the lighting and set design, plus the organising the call sheet: we entered the production stage.
Below is our Call sheet...
BUILDING OUR SET ETC:
On the afternoon of the 17th we put up, painted and arranged our set. I chose a garish warm yellow to promote the idea of a romantic cafe, with a warm connotation yet with a sense of falseness and seediness about it. And to enforce the Parisian feel towards it, we painted the ceiling rail a red burgundy.
Being a very clumsy person I managed to spill some of the burgundy paint onto our yellow walls, therefore I had to mix some more paint. I happened to have a dash too much burnt sienna, so it added to the set building time. Finishing the painting, we took a step back to see the effect. Analysing this we disliked the fact the set looked liked joint flats and not walls, and Greg had a great idea to masking tape the joints and to paint over them. When dried it looked effective.
Bringing the bar out of the studio and up the hill and into the set required a handful of very strong males, so to avoid distraction I got on with arranging other jobs. Luckily all of props and wardrobe was simple, and had easy accessibility, therefore the afternoon ran smoothly.
Altogether, with the subtle touches of dirt spray the set looked ideal for the love strained story, and the hints of the story of O, in which the songs sings of.
18th November 2009, SHOOT DAY:
Excited and nervous we arrived to the set around nine, with YaYa as she hadn’t had access to the cello to practice. Unfortunately we didn’t have an available Cello player, therefore we chose Yaya for her style, photogenic face and Asian heritage, which adds to the story of our artist who travelled.
I had given her the music to listen to and to work out when to play the cello, so that morning we measured out the height of the cello and for her to get accustomed to her newly found cello. She was hard working which made things much easier for us.
Setting up for filming, was great, we had the team of Matt and Luke on camera assistance. They helped us set up the high tech JVC1500E camera onto the vintnen tripod in which we set in the downstage centre of the stage to shoot our first shots.
Dan and George kindly set our lights due to health and safety reasons. Greg and I had to inform them of our required intensity of brightness and colour in which we wanted. Our aim was to create a naturalistic style with non naturalistic lights and gels. We set the red heads to a deep shade purple/amber to commutate late afternoon early evening in the autumn time, and the shadows were increased by lowering the light setting and altering the three point lighting scheme to ensure that shadows were prominent.
In the rehearsal period, we began to realise that the cello player seemed odd and didn’t link into the scene, it was hard to work out why she was there? How could we put the two stories together? We initially saw her as being an aesthetically pleasing device; subsequently we had brainstormed nice ideas and got on with it.
We began to shoot the cello shots. Primarily it was hard, as it was the beginning of the day and we were warming up. YaYa, was inexperienced so it began slowly, as the song was long it took a long time, however, she looked great on camera and we experimented with many focus pulls which looked really effective. One shot required a Spider Dolly tracker, in which we tracked the set, from black to black. Focuses pulling at various instances, setting the focus pull from 5 to 1,1 to 10. It looks and sounds easy, but I found it particularly difficult, to be smooth and walk easily, however, after many attempts, I got the shots and it looked successful with the timings of the music. By doing this I realised that having the equipment and the set come to life it is easier to open your imagination and to spark ideas.
Trying to use the composition regulation of the rule of thirds, and leading the eye, it was difficult, but we shot the various shots, so that we will be able to edit that rule in, which hopefully will look effective.
Having the advantage of a simple set, simple concept and an efficient team, we got things done quickly; we broke for lunch to be back at 1.30, then to require Lottie. The form of romance and cinematographic scenes, gives such an advantage as there are so many ways to create a beautiful scene. I’m really looking forward to editing the scene where Lottie comes in. The actors worked really well, and looked great on camera; hopefully with the advantage of this the storyline will be apparent.
However the day didn’t go that smoothly, little details were missed, such as a sense to the concept and devices of the scene/s. This is where I really understand the vitality and great importance of the storyboard, and the checking over of it as often as you can. With that, organisation would be fluid and the editing will require less stress and procrastination. If to do this again, I would definitely, spend more on a timeline and diagram of the narrative, performance and representation.
Also, the lack of communication between the artist and team was a little slack. Initially, when casting, I asked if our performers could play guitar and if they minded to be our soloist. I did not ask, though if they could sing/lip synch and play guitar at the same time. This really was our main down fall. Shots were damaged as it looked poor and obvious that the actor was acting and not our needed talented musician. It forced me to try and avoid bad strumming and out of sync lip syncing in shots, which then ruined timing, and some of my tracking shots looked poor, which then wasted time. However I did think of an idea to make this a factor which could be useful; having an old fashioned Parisian set, could let us edit the footage with an old flickery film result, which syncing would probably by out anyway.
The day was very successful, with one efficient run, quick filming and a quick demolishment of the set, which was quite sad to do as we became quite fond of it. Our choice of actors was perfect, maybe slightly young looking but very photogenic and engaging to the audience in which he will appeal to.
With attractive shots in filming we will gather some stills for the album cover and promotion shots but we did take some pictures of the couple, which depicted the relationship of the song.
THE MULTIMEDIA CAMPAIGNE:
We are attracting to an age range of the higher teens and twenties, mid JICTAR scale and mainly female. Therefore the campaign will be quite sophisticated and character depicting. His music is a way of escaping the world and to relax and have me time. This sort of music will appeal more to the female population than the male, however it will attract to them also for the males who are in relationships etc.
As he has had a lot of time to work on his album, like artists such as Leona Lewis and Paolo Nutini, they did this to create a name for themselves; to get a head start to gather advice from semi/professionals. He hopefully would appear on shows like Later with Jules Holland, Loose Women, and aim like everyone to Jonathan Ross. But 14th floor Records would try and campaign him to America, where this genre of music is very much liked for the uses of their endless amounts of series, sit coms and TV shows.
Being a loyally home town guy, he would take an interview for his local newspaper, plus with the advantage of creating a worldwide fan base from his travels he could interview globally. Virally he will create a Facebook, Twitter, Blog or MySpace page, and widen acknowledgment through viral word of mouth, which is an underestimated vital tool.
Advertising him, would really emphasise his mysterious, emotive, passionate and observant personality. Head shots, slightly tilted to a high angle, to ensure he seems more likeable and humble. These will be issued for magazines, the internet viral and interview based advertising and newspapers.
CD COVER:
After finishing shooting, we discussed the image of what we wanted the Cover to look like, how to seduce customers. We decided on the fact that he is passionate about his music and slightly mysterious in character, therefore we set him not looking at the camera. Creating a picture of humbleness which will create a likeable intriguing character in which the audience will want. We also liked some of our moving film, so we have decided to search through our footage and create stills through them. These stills, act as a narrative. The narrative influences the idea that our soloist writes and sings about everyday problems, loves, relationship and life that is appealing to an audience.
Here are the stills from the day...
!!! [ still need to be uploaded. Need to find ] !!!
On completion of the practical task of production, the results are a music video, a promotional magazine cover and a digi-pack compromising of four images that represent a CD cover of our artists debut album.
When watching any media product, viewers expect certain conventions, ingredients and elements and it is these expectations that are used to catch the attention of the audience when they are distributed. Pop videos like any other product in the media industry have certain conventions that immediately signify to the viewer that they are watching a music promotional video. They will contain alone, a performance element featuring the band or singer, imagery and a narrative structure accompanying the song, or used together. Within these elements, another convention is the flexibility to disregard realism, for example the Chemical Brothers video ‘The Salmon dance’ where the fish dance and sing. Other conventions include, quick cutting to the beat, special effect, a high ratio of camera shots. As well as using and developing these various forms and convention, we also challenged the conventions of real products.
After listening to the song countless amount of times and researching the story of ‘O’ , it was apparent there was a strong, personal, narrative to the song. We wanted to create our artist as humble, organic creative image that appealed to the every day person, we gave him a the cafe...
This friendly romantic yet ironically seedy location emphasises the strength of ones love, to his soul mate that our singer is trying to portray. The dusty warn look represents the idea of ‘through richer through poorer’ and that our artist is a loyal normal guy, who will look after his love through the bad times. His conventional clothing compliments his environment and generation and in doing so allows a certain continuity that is key to many films, though not necessarily music videos. Plus, though it would be uncommon for a narrative film to be set in a solitary location this is not an actual subversion of a music video convention. Though it is hard to say what mimics a music video convention in terms of setting, the fact that a Café is not a particularly revolutionary idea for the scene of such a video would lead me to suggest that this is more an imitation than subversion.
We added the sepia and vignette effect expressing the idea that love is endless, that throughout the ages love has been present to help the humanity pull through the tough times. However we did discuss the colour palette of colder colours such as blue and green, though we decided that love would be a stronger theme than sorrow of our protagonist distance between his and her love.
The imagery of older and newer flowers are used as a device to represent metaphorically, the life of a beautiful relationship that through the dying dull moments, there is new life blooming. This constructs him to be admired an idolized. It is pull into focus in the foreground so that the cello player in the background is out of focus in the background, we chose to do this so she would not be confused as “Amie” by the audience. This use of a sepia effect is used to add a melancholy feel toward the frame, and this effect has been used in modern day videos, a few including the likes of Elbow in their music video ‘Grounds for divorce’ and The young guns video ‘A Winters Kiss’. However, we used the flower shot as a transition between the cello and guitar playing in this slow paced and sombre nature of the song.
We also lead the using the X axis to create a calming effect,moving the eye comfortably with ease in watching. The flowers are shot on the left had side, which is subconsciously the most pleasing to the eye to watch and represents a good positive a thought to whats on the screen. We then lead to the singer...
This subconsciously is a good subtle marketing technique in that the viewer will more likely to succumb to liking him. Also by showing a full grown flower he then represents this, as hope and full of talent. Challenging the conventions of a fast pace cutting and a high ratio of shots we could not do this with our slow paced track, we used focus pulls and addissive fades as transitions, this therefore creating a soft organic quality that is more suited to our artist who is humble and he cares more about the music and songs and meanings to be heard.
This shot presents our singer performing , again on the left suggesting the protagonist, it also increases audience/character proximity with him, and to aim to sell the album , this should hopefully increase sales.
***
Question two:
According to Dyer, explain your Artist.
Having the advantage of students having free lessons at school and the use of the other demographics like YouTube, focus groups and a questionnaire, we could easily collect a variety of feedback from these sources for our pop video and other products to these specific target audiences.
Our target audience was the female population of sixteen to late twenties. We aimed for the high end of the JICTAR scale; A to B (more specifically, A2 or B1). The JICTAR scale is a scale that depicts certain target audiences related to their education, area and aspirations.
Our higher end target audience is located around the South Midlands, south England, with a reasonably well educated background. Their aspirations would be to go into a blue collar or the arts profession and enjoy life as it comes. This explains the higher end of the JICTAR scale, B to C are usually from a background where the parents are from a tertiary service sector and will live in the midlands, and have aspirations to follow in their parents profession, whereas the lower end of the scale C and D are generally from the north of England, with their background in the primary to secondary sector, and therefore their aspirations would be to earn higher and to achieve a higher end JICTAR status, like C1 to B.
The first responses we gained were from the YouTube comments. We had two valuable comments made on our video of Amie originally performed by Damien Rice:
“ ...the end feels rushed, it needs a clearer narrative ending.”
“I found there was confusion of the relationship between the singer and the cello player, and then the girl who i presume is his love at the end”
This i thought was very interesting, we originally placed the cello player in the scene, to add a sense that our singer expresses his love through his talent for music, and that the Chinese ethnicity of her, would add a cultured side to his brand. However, this obviously got confused, and we did not think of the theory of Kuleshov that 70% of the meaning of the content is seen through the images and mis en scene. To improve on this we could have never seen her face, or again reinforce the idea of Amie, the girl at the end more, so that it is clearer, asI think the cello shot are aesthetically pleasing to the eye and work well with the sombre atmosphere.
[ A Kuleshov Example ]
With only two valid comments, there was little information about enjoyment and understanding of this product. However, I feel these constructive comments, are valid, and suggest that the sombre message about longing for someone is apparent, however there is a confusion the imagery and cutting to suggest that the characters needed to be more defined to place there purpose. However a good comment suggests that our singer Alejandro Roberts image, dress sense and musical talents works well for a female audience
“The singer works nicely with the Damien Rice song, and his image works well to attract a particular target audience”
We then conducted a focus group discussion, consisting of 11 17 to 19 year old students, of which 5 were girls and 6 males. Three females were 17 and 2 were 18, and two males were 17, three 18 and one 19. We posed 10 basic straightforward questions in the form of a questionnaire...
- After watching our media product, what do you personally think were the thoughts and objectives of the piece?
- What does the song say to you, personally?
- What is the message of the song?
- What and how do you feel towards our singer?
- WHat would you say are the implications of the colours of the video on the meaning of the song?
- How does the music video represent the relationship between the singer and his sweetheart?
- How does the the set and imagery contribute to the meaning of the video?
- Where would you expect to find the video?
- Where would you expect to hear this song?
- What do you think the video/song combination says about our singer?
“This video, I felt has a spin on male/female roles in dominance, and that the girl had power of the singer”
This was after watching a very male dominated violent product, therefore i think this is tainted, however, a very valid point was that the singer seemed feminine. We knew that he would attract the female audience rather than the male audience, however this comment made us re evaluate this idea, and saw that it was quite noticeable. Most noticeable was the waiter(ess) position. Then we track shot of the counter, showing cutlery and cake, was registered as his anger and violence towards Amie, maybe suggesting killing her. This was an extreme comment, but logical explanation.
Are questions posed about the meaning, story and representation of the song, can be evaluated to come across well. All members of this group, suggested that he was longing for a lost love, and that they sympathise with him, with a soft star image.His star image, as Richard Dyer would put it was that he is soft, and an organic image, this is more attracted to the female audience. An interesting comment made was from the difference between a male comment to a female comment..
“ I sympathise with him and what he sings about is quite feminine, so i think girls would be able to relate more, and singing for a girl is cute, I want to support him..”
whereas., the male comment was
“ by listening to the song its a good score, but when looking at him he seems too feminine and a bit weak...”
A collective agreement was that the colour palette and set worked, the yellow behind the sepia added to his lost and longing, the warmth of his love yet the coldness of his dismay, and the set and dead flowers suggesting him being run down by his huge hurt.
The evaluation from this focus group, was really useful in the fact that the intended message and imagery was not what we exactly planned, however from this we can tell that our target audience enjoyed and sympathised with him and that we succeeded in capturing the female audience at this particular age group and JICTAR scale.
From a general commentary from the start to the finalised product we had judgements and general feelings from peers, that include, teachers fellow students, past and present and family members. this ranges from 16 to 50 year olds. From this I believe that the audience, and mainly the female audience enjoy this product as it addresses the idea of love and longing which most females incur at this age, which our singer presents in our pop video.
The uses of Blumler and Katz were used as this theory argues that an audience are not passive in observing televised products, and look for certain points or or items. After receiving feedback I agree with this statement. Blumler and Katz distinguish four gratifications that audiences always look for..
- DIVERSIFICATION: Entertainment from their daily lives
- PERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS: Audiences learning about other humans and/or relating to the characters
- PERSONAL IDENTITY: Audiences are looking to use various media texts to relate to their own identity: age, gender, concerns or beliefs about life
- and SURVEILLANCE: Learning about others in the world, a sort of gossip.
We diverted our audience, in producing a visual product to represent our song and singer, then representing ‘longing love’ which is a general attribute that our target audience concern about. Plus with our tracking and panning shots, the audience will feel like they are part of the action and surveying the scene.
STUART HALL’S THEORY OF ENCODING/DECODING
| PRODUCING INSTITUTION / COMMUNICATOR |
| MEANING / MESSAGE |
| AUDIENCE |
| PRODUCING INSTITUTION |
>. Sends >> | PREFERRED MEANING | >> Sends >> <<> | PREFERRED MEANING ACCEPTED |
|
|
| E.g. Al Jazeera v BBC, ITV, Sky, CNN v Fox |
|
NEGOTIATED MEANING |
|
|
| E.g. Offside at Soccer |
| OPPOSITIONAL INTERPRETATION |
“Great is the art of beginning, but greater is the art of ending.”
(Lazurus Long)
To the final thoughts of Media A2 pop videos, but more dramatically the end of an AQA A-level.
...Media language helped with my video’s form and content. Form is what the message of the product is and content is the way in which it is received. This is supported with the tools of media language, which are camera editing, lighting camera angle sound and movement. The form is my pop video where we try to portray our singer’s brand of a soft talented thoughtful organic product.
My production is of ‘Amie’ originally by Damien Rice, it involves imagery combined with performance set in subtle narrative. The meaning of the song is of longing for lost love and by using media language, this aided us to achieve something of the sort.
The use of the camera was essentially our main tool to achieve the brand of our singer. Kuleshov explains that 70% of what an audience’ evaluation of meaning is registered through imagery, what is seen in the frame.
The majority of our shots of Alejandro are shot at eye level.This reinforces the idea of portraying love truthfully. We also film at a 30 to 33 degrees, this gives the audience a sense of reality and a 3 dimensional effect, thus creating an idea that he is touchable, which Dyer defines as stardom. An example of this was the performance element; we film him in a close up to give a sense of intimacy and therefore focussing our attention upon him enforcing his longing for that love.
Movement was used frequently in our shoot, using mainly ‘Dolly tracks’ this gave a sense of being involved with the action and therefore sympathising with him. It is also aesthetically pleasing on the eye, especially combined with the rule of thirds and the X and Y axis.
We slowly track from one side of the cafe to another stopping at Alejandro then dissolving to another shot of him playing the guitar at the point at where it last finished. This is relaxing for the viewer and sympathises with his longing.
The continuity editing gives an illusion that shots are real. However, with the focus pulls and pans of the imagery, flowers and the cello player, this adds an impression of a continuing occurrence over a period of days, again his longing for his lost love. Also, with our ratio of 10 to 12 seconds, cutting in a dissolve transition this adds a sombre effect.
