Amelia's Anthology of Illustration

A collection of different playing card illustrations found in Amelia's Anthology of Illustration

I was looking through my illustration book and I noticed a variety of different playing card illustrations which are really cool.
The reason I thought it’d be good to share these on my blog is mainly because we hung playing cards from the tree in our band performance scene, which looked really effective.

Although we used ‘traditional’ playing cards we could have made our own which would relate more into the concept/ideas we had for our video.
The playing cards I looked at inspired me to create my own design that links into my groups video.

This card obviously portrays the tea party concept of our music video.

It's not as good as the ones found in AAOI

26.02.10

Today was a bit of a fail.
I was late for filming due to being ill, then when I arrived we didn't have all our performers as they were busy with their own projects and it was freezing! So Emma Rob and I decided to delay filming the 'Tea Party' on Monday when all our performers would be available and we had more time etc.
We did manage to shoot some footage of our Queen of Hearts, Playing Card and Mad Hatter characters, which hopefully we will be able to use. After this I went home because I still felt unwell so unfortunately the footage from today hasn't been captured on Final Cut Express as of yet.

Monday we plan to set up first lesson then shoot second lesson. Fingers crossed the weather won't be so depressing and all our performers are available.

I look forward to seeing how our speed change part of our song works out aswell as the stop-motion character change shot.

Setting Up

These are the photo's Yasmin and Max kindly took for us on set of our band performance on Tuesday. They're mostly of us creating the set of our location and the props we used. Thanks again to everyone who helped.

Lip Syncing at the Tea Party

We're going to get Emma to Lip Sync at the tea party shoot tomorrow
So for this I was thinking we should speed our track up so we can have emma singing at normal speed with everyone else around her in slow motion.
My group isn't here at the moment so I don't know how they will feel about it but i'm going to speed the track up and save it so we have the option tomorrow regardless.

I was thinking that maybe we should slow the track the down so in editing we can speed it up and everyone around Emma is fast and chaotic but she's at normal speed.

I think this would be easier to achieve and would probably fit the wonderland theme better.

I'll save the track in both ways so we have the option tomorrow.

The Set-Up

Elliott and Rob filmed some shots of us all setting up as I thought we didn't have a stills camera on set. This is what they shot:

Problem

I remember from yesterday there being a problem with the camera/our footage

The trouble was that although the camera was on Auto focus it had trouble focusing on the band performance, however because we had a plastic bag over the camera to protect it from the rain I couldn't always tell if it was in focus.

The only times where the camera wasn't in focus intentionally was when I had put it on manual to get my lights out of focus coming into focus shot.

As I captured the footage onto Final Cut Express a moment ago I noticed that a large amount of the footage is out of focus. 

To overcome or disguise this problem we are going to get Emma to lip sync the song at our tea party shoot tomorrow so we have more footage of the song actually being sung. We will still use the footage we already shot as some of the out of focus shots actually look quite nice because of the lights. Also if Emma is free before or during the weekend we could get some close up shots of her lip syncing with the set-up we had yesterday, but with just her and just a complete run through of the song.

Filming

Today after college my group and I shoot our band performance, as planned. We started off pretty un-organised to be perfectly honest, however once we got started I think it went well and I felt more confident, until it began to rain and we had to cut filming short.

We began in the classroom, collecting everything we needed (Camera, tripod, tape etc) then our performers went to get changed into their costumes. The performers we had on location today were the Band (Emma, Rob and Ali) plus our characters (Mad Hatter, White Rabbit, Queen of hearts and Playing Card) unfortunately we only got a shot of our Mad Hatter character, so our other characters stood in the cold and rain for nothing :( but they were a huge help!
On location we had to make a quick change on where we were shooting as we only had one set of lights and a short extension cable. Luckily there was this tree which looked like it had fallen over or something that had logs up against it. It looked like it had an arch way on one side so I broke away branches to create more of an opening. All of us then began to hang the lights up and tie playing cards and other props we had on branches and on the logs. It was a bit of a tight space but I think it worked. We then did a few quick shots of the props then of our Mad Hatter character leading the camera into the location.
It got a bit panicky at one point as there were grey clouds above us and it felt like it was about to chuck it down with rain, so we hurriedly shot a run through of the song with our band and instruments, then it stopped raining for like a second so we tried to do another one but it began to rain heavier so we had to cut it short and go inside.

Tomorrow I plan to capture the footage from today onto Final Cut Express and begin to edit it. I’m reasonably pleased with today’s filming however I’ll only know for sure if it went well tomorrow when I get to see the footage.

Max and I think Yasmin kindly took some photos of us setting up which will posted on here soon.

Plan for the Week

Tuesday - Rob & Emma spent the afternoon creating a schedule for the week
Wednesday - Shooting the band Performance at Long Road after college
Thursday - Taking possible digipak photo's whilst Emma is helping another group and editing footage from Wednesday
Friday - Shooting the Tea Party in the morning at Long Road

Weather

I wasn't in college today due to being ill still, however I shall be in tomorrow, anyway Emma text me letting me know Rob and her created a timetable for the week and plan to shoot the band performance tomorrow. I just went on the BBC website to check the weather and it doesn't look good (forecast for Wednesday from 12pm to 6pm)

this obviously is going to be a problem as we dont want our performers to get wet, or our lights or even the camera for that matter. Hopefully the rain will hold off till after we've shot our footage though...

Prop list

I made this prop list to insure we have everything we need for when we start filming this week.

Props we have:
Instruments (Bass, keyboard + microphone)
Fairy/Christmas lights
‘Drink me’ bottle (tags only)
Vintage pocket watch for White Rabbit character
Costumes
Glitter (I bought some today)

Props we need:
Tea set
Keyboard stand
Bottles for ‘Drink me’ tags
Table
Table cloth
Chairs
Eat me cakes/biscuits
Extra props we would like for the Tea Party

I wrote down table and chairs, however if I can remember correctly there is old un-used chairs and a table near our location that we could use (they may be un-used, I actually have no idea).

I’ll probably add to this later but at the moment this is all I can think of.

Digipak + Magazine Mock-up

This is late but i'm ill and my head hurt too much to do some final editing on my mock-ups yesterday.

I wish i'd put more effort into these as I don't feel they reflect what I want our final digipak and magazine advert to look like. Although I did take all my own photo's for this and create the 'set-ups' for them. I would have liked to have the band members on the digipak or at least Emma (Lead vocals), but I wasn't prepared to be in the photo's to represent the band due to being ill. I did have an idea of having Emma sort of tied up in fairy lights (like this: http://www.flickr.com/photos/httpwwwfacebookcominboxrefmbprofilephpid1429330704refname/3840379604/) for our actual digipak as that reflects our light concept in a creative way which would make our digipak look more attractive.

I guess it's a good thing that this is only a mock-up.

Digipak front/back:

Digipak inside:

Magazine Advert:

As part of my target for this course, set by Nick, every week I must find a 'source of information' or whatever it is that doesn't come from the Internet. Last week I went to the LRC and found a book called 'the Art of Alice in Wonderland'. This week however I found a piece of street art.

Basically, I went to London today and saw this piece of art work on Brick Lane:



It features playing cards and a white rabbit, which is why I thought it relates to my project. I love the mixed media aspect of it.

Visual Ideas

Basically a post for me to just update you with the photo's i've been taking for the mock-up Digipak and Magazine advert. They're just raw photo's, which aren't very good, but hopefully after thry've been edited they'll look better.




(This photo is actually from the photography task set a few weeks back)

Cousins

Just because I love 1:48 to 2:01
Which I guess could relate to our video for the changing characters shot (can be seen in our animatic) where we want to have a mid shot of all our Alice in Wonderland 'characters' changing like the Orange - free gig advert:

An image from Disney's Alice in Wonderland.

As our location is in a foresty/wood area I thought we could create signs like this for our video. I think they would look good in the opening of the song as we are having our Mad Hatter character lead the camera into the woods where our band performance will take place.

SCREEN TEST

In today’s session, our group finally shot some test footage of Emma lip syncing. We decided to only shoot Emma lip syncing the first two minutes of the song because she is most confident about this part and we wanted our footage to be strong. My role was camera operator and editor whilst Emma performed and Rob controlled the music. We filmed in two locations – one inside and one outside, using one close up, one low angle, one side angle and a long shot. We started off inside using a plain background – we did this to focus on the lip syncing itself, then we went outside and filmed in front of hedges/trees as this location is sort of similar to our actual location. We then came back to the classroom and I captured the footage onto Final Cut Express and began to edit away with Emma.

I think Emma is a strong performer and the test footage we shot is convincing which makes me feel confident about shooting our band performance in our video. The only thing that I think needs to be worked on is the performance in between the singing however there is always the option of placing ‘cut-away’ footage in these parts.

Although I am pleased with this test footage it would have been better if we had gotten more organised and shot practice footage of the band performance on location with instruments. Although we didn’t manage to do this, if we have time after half term we can do this then – if not we will have to story board the band performance in a lot of detail to ensure we get the best footage possible.

This is our footage:

L3 TEST FOOTAGE - SHADOWS - Tina, Emma and Rob from cmdiploma on Vimeo.
We hope Nick enjoys the amazing dancing in the video.

11.02.10

Emma is still helping another group, so it doesn't look like we'll be doing test footage today.

I've been playing about on photoshop and doodling ideas for the digipak and stuff as I have no idea what else to do

I used the photo I took for the photography task and added a photo from flickr over the top, then added the bands name.

My crap doodles

It's been an unproductive day.

11.02.10

The plan for today is to do our screen shots of Emma lip syncing to Shadows 

I bought in my fairy lights so we might be able to use them as well 

We may go on location however we might stay inside as it's just a run through of the song, depending on how everyone else feels.

At the moment Emma is helping another group which is why we're going to do the screen shots next lesson.

Weather

I've been thinking about this a lot since we decided on our idea, location and costumes etc. Since we have been having such poor weather and it's been awfully cold, i'm worried that we won't be able to use the costumes we want because our performers will freeze in our locaton (seeing as it's outside)

I'm not sure how we can overcome this problem
I'm sure i'll think of something.. like heaters or something ?

Weather forecast for the rest of this week..

The Art of Alice in Wonderland

I protested about this a lot to Nick but seeing as I had to wait for Angelica today I decided to go to the LRC (like Nick had insisted I do) and try and find something that relates to the project.

I actually found this really interesting book called The Art of Alice in Wonderland which is basically a combination of illustrations produced by 30 'masterful illustrators' of Alice in Wonderland characters and quotes.

'The art of Alice in Wonderland is a visual treat that is sure to delight every Alice fan.'

The book was produced by Wonderland Press and Stephanie Lovett Stoffel and published in 1998.
The images in the book range from classic wonderland to more modern contemporary illustrations. I took a few photo's of the images I liked the most.

Tea for Two and Two for Tea

I found this image of an Alice in Wonderland inspired Tea Party set in a forest. What appealed to me about this photo is the location and the simplicity of it. It works well and looks effective which I think is due to good props and a good location. The prop that stands out the most for me is the old bird cage sitting on the rightside of the table, it's visually interesting and if we use something like this in our video we can make 'cut away' shots, which will help make our video more then a band performance.



I'm hoping our Tea Party shots will look as effective as this.

COSTUMES

These are photo's of the costumes we will definitely be using in our video.

(Mad Hatter - In the actually video we will be using a different performer - but for the purposes of today and taking photo's we 'modeled' the costumes ourselves)

(White Rabbit - but we'll put bunny ears over the wolf ears - it will totally work)

[More to come]

9.02.10 - Morning lesson

In this mornings lesson my group sorted through some of our costumes and some of our props we brought in today ready to take photo's.

These costumes include a Queen of Hearts costume, a Playing Card costume, a Mad Hatter costume and a few skirt idea's for the bands look. We also need to take photo's of our Rabbit costume (which we already have sorted out)and our Alice costume (which we also have sorted out) but don't have with us today. 

The props are the ones I made or found that can be seen further down on my blog (vintage pocket watch, 'we're all mad here' sign and a 'Drink me' tag)

This is the hat were using for the Mad Hatter character which I developed to make it look more authentic. 

More prop ideas?

Vintage pocket watch

I have this cute vintage pocket watch I bought at a vintage fair a while ago, it doesn't work but will look great as a prop in our video for our rabbit character.

This idea is based around the white rabbit in Alice in Wonderland and the song he sings as he hops along holding a pocket watch

'no time to say hello good-bye I'm late I'm late, I'm late'