Amazing new location!

Check out this pic of our fab new location!!

And here is the description of what the cinema is like straight off the website :) for some reason it won't let me do a direct link so this will have to do :)

Aldeburgh Cinema has a fascinating history: it has been screening films continuously since 1924 when the auditorium was built onto the back of a 19th Century shop. The auditorium retains a number of original features, including art deco lights. For many years the cinema was privately run but in the mid 1960s was in danger of closing. A group of local people, led by Lettie Gifford (whose contribution is recognised by plaques in the Foyer & also the delightful walled garden at the rear) and including the composer Benjamin Britten & his partner Peter Pears, banded together to buy the cinema and run it on behalf of the local community.Since then the cinema has gone from strength to strength. Grants from the National Lottery have enabled the foyer to be transformed and the auditorium to be refurnished to a very high standard, including Quinette seating, acknowledged as the best in the world. The cinema was a founder member of the UK Film Council's Digital Screen Network and is equiped with a 2K High Definition projector, enabling it to broaden its programme and screen films in pristine condition, in addition to a pair of 35mm projectors. The cinema also boasts Digital Dolby Stereo, a PA system and a Bechstein grand piano.In 1995 the cinema started the Aldeburgh Documentary Film Festival which has welcomed many of the best documentary filmmakers in the UK over the years to introduce their work to sell out audiences. In 2008, the 14th Festival hosted sessions from Jon Ronson, Dan Cruickshank, Melvyn Bragg and Stephen Fry. The next Documentary festival takes place 20th – 22nd November.

The cinema also hosts a Children’s Film Festival in October and numerous special events, including live opera & ballet from the New York Met & the Royal Opera House.

Success woop woop!!

We finally managed to finalise a date with Aldeburgh cinema for our day of shooting! Neville and Susa, two very helpful members of staff at the cinema, are now expecting us on Friday the 27th of November between 10 and 12:3. We are so excited now that this random idea we had has actually become a reality! The cinema is very quaint and old, complete with a grand piano which we can hopefully incorporate into our shots! It's perfect for our style of video, which we are hoping to be very retro and art-deco inspired. Eek so excited now! Hopefully some time next week we're going to go to Bury to film our footage we need from town. We will keep updating on here about how it's all going. Yay so exciting! Thankyou to Neville and Susan - what diamonds!
Post more soon!
Hannah xxxxx

Test shots &&& photographs!

Hello!
Below is a short video experiment Jess and I made during one of our lessons, we used the HD camera to get lots of short takes, we then used final cut express to manipulate the moving image. By cropping, layering and rendering different shots together we were able to create the motion that there is two or more of the same person! The first part of this video shows me in conversation and reacting to myself, to do this we shot one clip of me sitting to the left of the steps, kept the camera in exactly the same place and then i moved to the right and we shot another clip. We then put this together and edited on final cut. The clip at the end shows Jess 4 times in various positions on the steps, to do this we took many 3 second shots, each time changing place and then cut, cropped and layered them together via final cut. This method will be important in our final piece so we thought we'd get some practice before hand! It has certainly helped us gain experience and understand the software more! :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1c0Z-D_xTg Enjoy!!

Okay, so now for some photographs! Having decided on Aldeburgh as our beach/seaside location. Here are some photographs i've taken on my travels whilst being there!



Above are pictures of the controversial shell sculpture on the beach between Aldeburgh and Thorpeness, some people love it...others dont! But we do! This will become an important artistic feature towards the end of the video (all will be revealed in the storyboards which will be uploaded very soon!!)


Above is a photograph of a spiral staircase I saw along the beach and thought it looked very rustic and could work well for some of our shots, so therefore has been storyboarded into our video!


This is probably the most famous house in this small seaside town due to its tiny size! It stands alone overlooking the beach and is really rather quirky! Currently we don't know if we can use this building due to permission etc but I still thought i'd mention it because its awesome!


And finally, this was initially a framing composition idea, we all really liked it and have incorporated it into the chorus! :D

Anyway, i've just heard we can film in the Aldeburgh cinema on the 27th of this month!!!
we are over the moon about this :D whoopeeeeeee
thats all for now, byeeeee. xx

DVD Covers + Story Boardin'

Hello :)


I've finally managed to get a some images (that my laptop will accept) of some trial atempts on iWeb :) Here is just an idea for image arrangement for the DVD cover. I have used the Official Santigold album cover and picture for this as we haven't started filming just yet (but SOON!) so therefore can't use our own pictures. But as you can see I've managed to get Santigolds head and lower body in and the vital two words from her CD Cover. I am quite proud of this even though it doesn't look like a lot of hard work, it took a lot of effort and learning how to use iWeb correctly however I did really enjoy it :)

I would use the white space in the middle to add more images or writing :)

Now on to... Story Boardin' - We have finally finished Storyboarding and Lorna beautifully copied them up into neat with lots of lovely colour :) and they will be scanned up onto the Blog very soon! But in the mean time I have a few pictures of us hard at work, although it doesn't seem like it... WE REALLY WERE! And we're throughly proud of ourselvs as it took much determination to complete them!!

Post again soon :)

Storyboard Success & Cinema Celebration!

Hello (:
After our disappointment over the Cinema in Bury St Edmunds, Lorna had an idea about Aldeburgh Cinema and we decided to do some research into it and found: that it has a fascinating history: it has been screening films continuously since 1924 and the auditorium retains a number of original features, including art deco lights. Then we decided to contact them and Hannah called up and to our delight they were very positive! They are calling Hannah back within the next few days to confirm and arrange dates, which will probably have to be in the morning to avoid clashes with film times.

The postive move on the cinema front gave us all a well needed boost and we powered on with our storyboard almost completing it with only a couple of chorus' left! We are all feeling much better about the project on a whole and cannot wait to really get the ball rolling.

Our Ancillary tasks are also progressing and we were all happy with the designs I made on iWeb. When we start filiming we are going to take a still camera with us to take photos for the ancillary tasks and also look to take still frames from some of the footage.

In todays lesson we are going to finish and copy up our storyboard into a neat version which we will then scan into our blog for you all to read (: furthermore we are also going to hopefully make a start on shot lists for each location and general lists for everything else we'll need!! As previous experience has shown that you need a list for everything!!!

All in all, we are happy :)

Cinema Maaaan

Hey :D

As we've been storyboarding, one of our ideas that developed was using a cinema screen in which we would layer shots to create the impression of our main character being played on a film in the cinema. We all really liked this idea as we thought it would link our different locations together and we could create different looks with the mise en scene. For example, more of a dramatic look for inside the cinema, with the dark lighting and dramatic make-up, contrasting against more of a bright and airy feel for our outside locations (which we think should be either the beach or in a big open field). As we were really keen on the cinema idea, I contacted the old Hollywood theatre cinema in Bury (we thought this would fit with our style than the multiplex as it would look more authentic and retro) to discuss using the cinema to film in. Unfortunately the manager replied saying this wouldn't be possible at the time we needed to shoot as it was moving to another operating company :( :( so i guess its back to the drawing board. Luckily we did have a back up idea in the pipeline in case the cinema screen idea fell through. Its essentially the same idea but using billboards in town instead.
Jess is on holiday at the moment but hopefully me and Lorna will be getting together to do some more storyboarding, a long process but hopefully our planning will be worthwhile! :D
Hannah xxx

Textual analysis (Kate Nash)

I asked an ex-media student for a detailed response to Kate Nash's 'Foundations' music video. the reason for doing this is to explore personal opinion and what potentially works well..and not so well within a video! This can then help us when storyboarding our ideas because we will have first hand examples of themes that the audience like/dislike.

Here is the video!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhC4E055OsY

Ok, so the first question I asked was 'Which do you find the most memorable part of the video?' in response I found that the sequence of Kate eating the lemons with the lyrics, "You said I must eat so many lemons, cause I am so bitter" really stuck out to the ex-media student because of the direct link between lyrics and visuals (below)

They then went on to say that the recurring theme of animating simple objects such as the toy dinosaurs was memorable to them, once again linking lyrics with image, "Everyone we're with will be embarrased" even though they are inanimate objects, the childish twist of having toys rather than real people creates a more conceptual feeling to the video


I then asked 'Do you like the video, and why?' The reply I got was positive, they thought it was a fun video by the way that some of the lyrics matched the visuals in a conceptual and playful way. Another favourite part of the video for them was the shot where the lyrics are "..and humiliate me, infront of our friends" followed by Kate looking over at the fish bowl implying once again that the goldfish substitute real people.


Next, I asked if 'Overall do you think the video sells the song, or does it clash?' the reply i got was again positive due to the underlying narrative structure within the video, they then went on to say that the kitsch references throughout compliment the artist and their independant style.

'Likes and dislikes within the video?' Likes; the animation of objects, giving them a sense of life! and also the high angle shot of Kate on the stairs looking up towards the camera as she sings directly into it. They then went onto say they liked the compostition and framing, as it's not central.

Dislikes; singing into the camera too often.



Finally I asked 'What do you think of the locations?' to this they replied that the house offers a location we can often associate with due to it being very realistic and naturally lit, especially as the song targets relationships/friendships therefore can easily be related to our own everyday lives. They also liked the use of the different rooms throughout the song.