Today's work involved getting to know Adobe Premier Pro and beginning to work on our own fashion films. Since I frequently make video diaries of my holidays, I'm probably overly excited about this week's project. I've also made a fashion film before with my friend who is now studying Film Production. The only difference now is that this week's final product will be a one minute short, shot by myself, and planned with Loredana and Christele who are in my group.
Adobe Premier Pro is unfamiliar to me as I'm used to working with Windows Movie Maker, Serif and iMovie. However, since I've been able to pick up each of the three programs relatively well, I didn't think I struggled much in being able to edit the clips we test shot around Ravensbourne as a means of getting a feel for the program.
Originally we wanted to shoot a story highlighting the trouble brides-to-be go through when finding that perfect dress. Our only drawback was that no wedding dress shop would allow us to come in and film under such short notice. Loredana is interested mainly in wedding dress design and so we thought it best to nurture this and instead decided to film a short without a plot, showcasing long floaty gowns- perfect from a formal night.
The girl in the film is inspired by Juliet and Ophelia, two Shakespearean women who both suffer from tragedy and come to rather tragic ends. Ophelia commits suicide, drowning herself in a lake through the grief for her murdered father and Juliet kills herself over the belief that her beloved Romeo is dead. Further inspiration came from Yoann Lemoine's fashion film for the perfume, Lolita Lempicka as we found ourselves enjoying watching it whilst also feeling slightly uneasy for the duration. There was this eery creepiness that we loved and we really wanted to bring this element into our own work.
It would have been nice to do more research but as our aim is to be editing on Wednesday, we took what inspiration and research we had and began looking into locations. We wanted a classical garden of some sort, somewhere that is beautiful but when empty can also give an ominous appeal to it. I remembered seeing some photographs that an older student a few years above me had taken back when I was in GCSE level and when I looked around on Facebook, I noticed a classmate had also taken some photographs in the same location over the summer. All it took was a quick message to her and we were then equipped with the location's name (Pergola and Hill Gardens, Hampstead Heath) along with instructions on how to reach the secret garden.
Christele looked into music and we've provisionally decided on using the OST (official soundtrack) from The Good Wife (Season 5). We wanted something that would evoke a sense of urgency as we've planned to film lots of running shots and the OST sounds like a winner for the moment.
We also managed to storyboard the entire film basing our shots off of my friend's photographs. Whilst it isn't ideal and it's definitely a drawback, we didn't want to be faffing about when it came to filming and so storyboarding seemed like the right thing to do (storyboarding is also another thing my film production friend drilled into me after sternly telling me, 'no, we cannot go with the flow'). If we had had more time, it would have definitely been helpful and more professional to take some test location shots as then our storyboarding would have been much more thorough.
Once the storyboarding was done and we had decided what music we'd use, what feel we were going for and where the film was going to be shot, all that was left was to check the weather. No rain = all okay.
This film relates to the title 'Structural Attachment' through the emotions we're going to try and portray. Our character, or muse, will embody Juliet and Ophelia as she runs through the column-lined pergola. She's frightened, scared, and is being chased- perhaps by someone or something. It could be the ghosts of those that they love and this will show their psychological attachment. The location itself symbolises structure through the countless columns, numerous overhead wooden beams and stone stairs and bridges. As one area of 'structure' that I'm interested in is the juxtaposition of malleable and flimsy structure as opposed to robust and hard structure, the contrast between the stone architecture and the soft, almost whimsical movement of the dresses is very interesting to me and it's my aim to capture this on film.
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