Chiaroscuro and Tim Walker photoshoot

To experiment with different styles of photography we conducted a photoshoot trying to achieve the dark, tonal styles found in Carravagio's work, known as chiaroscuro, and also tried using light shades to create photos that are pleasing to the eye, like Tim Walkers photography.

An example of chiaroscuro (Adrian by Alexandria Huff)

'The dress lamp tree, England' by Tim Walker

My Tim Walker photos

    

    

   

My Chiaroscuro photos

My chiaroscuro photos all turned out blurred as I had to keep the camera on a long exposure to let in enough light, my friends found that the cameras on their phones captured the image better, however my phone camera quality is terrible so it would probably have been worse, nonetheless I do like the effect that was created through this technique.

My photoshopped movie poser

As a practice exercise I created a copy of a movie poster on photoshop, I chose to recreate the movie poster for the film 'Paul'. This exercise helped me as it allows me to hone my skills in preparation for creating my ancillary tasks, such as a page in a music magazine.

Original

My version

Alternative rock album covers

This selection of alt rock album covers shows many distinct differences between the styles used for this genre and those used in the alt hip hop genre, firstly and most noticeable is that is is much less common for the band to be seen on the album cover for an alt rock band than for an alt hip hop album, the pictures tend to be more aimed to be pleasing to look at and like a piece of art than that of alt hip-hop artists. They also tend to show very obscure images, often heavily edited to confuse and intrigue the viewer/listener or to make a statement (such as in Nirvanas 'Nevermind' album cover showing a baby chasing money, a commentary on the modern world and capitalism). I will try to use these more artistic and creative aspects in my digipak and album poster as well as showing my two characters (as is common in alt hip-hop album covers) somehow to try to show the fact that the Gorillaz's music is an amalgamation of the two genres.

Alternative hip hop album covers

These Album covers serve as an example to the range of styles that can be found throughout the alt hip-hop genre in relation to album covers and album art, often the album covers show a picture of the artist, or at least a representation or drawing of them. These album covers also tend to have very bright, vibrant colours and most have a 'parental advisory' logo on them, showing that they include explicit content. I will try to take influence from these pictures in the creation of both my digipak and album poster to try to make the genre apparent and to make them look like real products that could be found on the market.

Music video inspiration

Woodkid - Iron

The opening shot in this video shows a flag flying in the wind showing the bands logo, this shot is very artistic and the imagery of the flag evokes ideas of a kingdom or victory, the black and white used throughout the video creates an avant garde, arty feeling to the video.

This shot shows a boy silhouetted against a grey background, lying on an altar. This is a taste of the amount of symbolism that is found in this video. I like this about this music video as it causes the viewer to ask questions about the narrative and characters in the piece. Also the drum beat kicks in around this point, with the other instruments behind. because the song is very dramatic it goes well with the video.

Also, shots like this are scattered throughout the piece, many of which show or connote to aggression and anger. These shots make it seem that this is a major narrative point in the video, that the characters are rebelling or in some way angry. This particular shot is very emotive as people can look at the character and see that he is angry, this is backed up by the fact that he is holding a mace while shouting towards the viewer. furthermore the tattoos, buzzcut hairdo, piercings and necklaces all make the character seem more angry or violent.

Initial idea photos

These are the photos that we took to help spark ideas for our music video and also to show the desired style that we will be trying to achieve in our piece, they are all in a rather artsy style that gives the idea of a kind of dark, but slightly ambiguous video.

                    

Pitch

When we presented our pitch to our class we were able to obtain a lot of valuable information from our class and teacher. the main criticisms that we had were that the video would be clearer if we were not to have the colour changing effect (having the video changing from black and white to colour when the record scratches in the song) as this might confuse the viewers, we were also told that we may need to add some backstory to the protagonist as this would allow the audience to empathise better with them and so improve the quality of the video. We were also told of a possible location in Exeter where we could film the mugging scene, Overall the feedback we gained was very useful.