During year 12 and the summer of 2018 I took some pictures of people or things I thought deserved to be captured, as I either had my phone or camera at me, and had the urge to experiment to see how it would look in a picture. This first one I took on a trip to Hungary, on my phone, and edited on VSCOCam. I thought the neutral, brown color palette looked very pleasing, and I liked the minimalism of the picture, something which, after some self-analysis, realised that I always enjoy and look for in picture or video. This one was taken in Greece, in a historical, dome shaped building. The metal stairs and the dark interior, and the sunlight were a good combination. Also, my sister volunteered to be my model, and I was grateful to have someone to take the pictures of, rather than simply the building. Her hopeful expression, bright eyes and hand reaching out to the camera make for a great picture. These following self portraits were also taken in Greece, in my hotel room. I wanted some pictures of myself, but everyone was sleeping so I had to improvise. I put the camera on the sofa, having a 10 second timer, time in which I ran to my place and posed spontaneously. What I liked the most if the way the light made me look different, either it highlighted only silhouette, or created a nice, sort of 'half shadow' on me. In all pictures though, the dim light, along with the neutral colored furniture create a moody atmosphere. This is an older picture that I took in my hotel room. I didn't plan to take any pictures, but as my tea was done, and put my glasses on the table near my newly bought book, I thought it looked like an 'Instagram-worthy' picture of a nice morning cup of tea. What I also did, for one of the first times, was to increase the shadows a lot, to give it a faded look, and turned out to look very aesthteic.
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After I edited my video, I thought it would be appropriate to try to combine the two artists, Lana and Sevdaliza, in some way, so the idea of editing in that vintage, saturated way came to my mind. I took a picture of Sevdaliza that wasn't too edited and upped the saturation, added black borders, made it grainer and tinted it purple and blue, to become similar to how Lana would edit her pictures and videos.
Sevda, or any artist for that matter usually maintains the same look in all their work (website, album cover etc.), so seeing her in a different posture was fun. Even though it was interesting to change her image, I believe the way she portrays and brands herself now works way better with her style of music. Lana del Rey has become one of my most beloved artists, having a unique approach to music and visual representations of it. What I like about her style is her reoccurring motif of the past decades, mostly the 1950s, the color editing done in her videos and that soft, grainy and unsharpened look. It may seem outdated to current video-makers but the fact that she owns up to this style, makes it original and attractive. Inspired by this, I color corrected my videos with more saturation and different hues of pink, purple and blue. In this screenshot I took from her music video for 'Young and Beautiful', I got inspired to also use the square framing for the video, instead of the more short and wide one, which is generally used everytime nowadays. Another music video that really brings out her style is the one for 'National Anthem', where the singer recreated the famous moment when Marilyn Monroe sang Happy birthday for JKF. Lana has been associated before with the late actress, for their femininity and soft voice, therefore it was suited for her to do this recreation. Again, the square format is seen to be used. Finally, below I inserted a screencapture of the music video 'High by the Beach', which inspired me color wise, with the nuances she used. What I also did was shoot in the same frame rate and slow some parts down so it looks amateur and a little choppy, as I wanted to go for that look. So, here is the final product, uploaded on Youtube. I knew from the beginning that I wanted to add extra footage to my music video, because I've seen this done other times too and thought it looked interesting. I downloaded the clips from Youtube, as this was only practice not my actual music video, so i thought I'd put more effort into the filming process rather than creating those vintage videos from scratch. I filmed in one location near my house with trees all around and a nice view. The footage was supposed to be quite shaky to add that 'hand-held' sort of personal video look to it. This, again, I saw in more movies where the man, films a girl, showing his infatuation with her and if he is further away from her, he would zoom in on her, like I've done in my last shot.
My actress knew the song very well so the lip-syncing was on point. One mistake I did make was erasing all the original sound in hopes that I will understand what she was singing, but for one shot I couldn't figure out what part of the song she was singing, until I finally figured it out. Overall it was a pleasant first experience, choosing the right shots to go with the song and experimenting with movement and angles, and helping me cut to the beat and match the visuals to the audio, a very well needed skill for my final project to come. |
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