Analysis Of An Education

In Mrs Scott's past two lessons we watched a  British film called An Education and was asked to write an analysis about it. I've done it already but thought i'd post it on my blog to because i haven't been able to find a working printer.

Analysis of the film ‘An Education’

I really enjoyed watching An Education in my media lesson and I understand why it was such a successful British film. An Education is a 2009 British coming-of-age drama film, based on an autobiographical article in Granta by British journalist Lynn Barber. Carey Mulligan (Jenny Mellor) is one of the main characters along with her charmer Peter Sarsgaard (David Goldman) who is nearly double her age.  

The plot of the film is basically about a 16 year old school girl (Jenny Mellor) who is an excellent student in school and has a lot of interests trying to make her dream come true which is to go to Oxford University. All her hard work and the help of her strict surrounding pay off well until she meets a charming older man called David Goldman.

David starts to take Jenny out to concerts, clubs, and fine restaurants regularly and as a young 16 year old girl Jenny loves the life he allows her to experience and the way he treats her. He manages to easily charm her parents into approving of the relationship.

However,  soon  into the film things start to go a little downhill when Jenny recognizes that David is a con man,  at first she is shocked  and doesn’t approve of this so she decides to no longer stick around. Unfortunately her decision to walk away doesn’t last very long as David manages to persuade her he isn’t doing anything wrong and Jenny falls for his persuasive charm.

After having a little more fun David asks Jenny to marry him, no surprise Jenny accepts and drops out of school convinced she no longer needs education because wealthy David can give her everything she wants. A very short while after the proposal Jenny finds out another very shocking secret that David had been keeping from her. He was already married! When she confronts David about her heart breaking discovery he returns to his old family and doesn’t appear again.

In the end Jenny realizes that she had made foolish decisions so she pulls herself back together and does everything she possibly can to get into Oxford University.  Luckily she manages to get help from her previous tutor and all ends well although she never sees David again.

Ideas

Andrea and I have been doing a lot of research on youtube in order to gather some creative ideas. Whilst watching various music videos we came across one that used an idea we came up with before we done any research which was to have a slow motion pillow fight with feathers falling everywhere. Interestingly enough we've managed to find a video of the exact thing we would like to do.

Slow motion pillow fight:

Hurtwood House Music Videos

Andrea and I have been watching some Hurtwood House music videos in order to gain some creative ideas for our own one.

Here are a few of our favourites:







We particularly love some of the ideas in the last two music videos such as the draped sheets, fairy lights, swing and the girly feel of them both.

Finished Prelim!

Yesterday afternoon (Thursday 14th July) Andrea and I went up to the media room to upload our prelim off the camera and see how much of it we could get done. We managed to get it done in the afternoon and stayed a little bit longer after school which was unintentional but we didn't realise cause we were caught up with our video. We timed the shots in the Lily Allen - Smile video in order to get our timings right. Both Andrea and I done the editing together to make it fair. I'm happy with the work we've done and the preciseness of our timing and lip syncing.

Filming Preliminary Video

Today was a long but extremely fun day. Andrea, My Boyfriend and I came back to mine after school to film our prelim in my room because that is where Lily Allen spends 30 seconds of her time in the video. We previously made a storyboard for it which Andrea brought along to make it easier and more organised for us to do. We had 16 shots to film in total and managed to get them all done. Andrea done the filming and I was Lily Allen along with a bit of my boyfriend in it. We made sure that we took our time and made it look as similar to the actual video as possible. Andrea and I even went out shopping today to buy some props for it. I bought gold earings, a gold necklace and a gold ring to go with the Lily Allen look and Andrea bought the chocolate and crisps that i had to eat several times during the filming process. We filmed the same shots several times till we got the best one. It's now ten to ten, Andrea left about twenty minutes ago... That's how long we spent on filming for our 30 second prelim video. It was fun to dress up for it and eat all the junk food! but most importantly it was good practice and fun for us both.

Change Of Plan

Like I explained in an earlier post Andrea and I had pretty much decided to make a music video to Beyonce and Shakira's Beautiful Liar song but we took our teachers advice not to. Because of this I done some more research to find two girls that sing together as seen below. In today's lesson iIshared the songs with Andrea, Nada and my teacher, we came to a final decision which is to produce a music video to  Aly and AJ's - Potential Breakup Song which i think is great!

Here it is:



After watching countless amounts of female duet music videos on youtube I came to the decision that Aly & Aj are my favourite as they are young which will make our music video sound and look more realistic and suitable to our appearance. I think it is also important to like the song before attempting to produce a music video to it as we will be working with this song for a few months and it is important that we do not get extremelly bored and fed up with it. I like the fact that this song is up-beat as I believe that it will allow us to come up with and include a lot of fun creative ideas. Also, the up-beat style of music represents us better than slow music.

Lip Syncing Practice

In todays lesson both Andrea and I practiced lip syncing to the prelim song i'm going to do in order to get used to it and see if we can manage to do so. Andrea and I are both going to be in our actual music video which is why we decided to have a little practice together. We filmed two videos today and edited the first one because the second one was something we decided to do for fun and also to practice a bit more.

Here's our practice prelim (not the real prelim):


The next one you're about to watch is really quite embarassing but funny and was a bit of fun for us too :)
Here it is, ENJOY!:

More Research On Female Duets

In Fridays lesson my group and I shared our ideas with our teacher. We originally planned to create a music video for Beyonce Ft Shakira's Beautiful Liar song as we believe we can create a far better video than the original because the original video is quite dull and boring with not much creativity in it. However, our teacher thought it would be unoriginal and hard to do because 'Beyonce and Shakira' ring bells which means we would have to go all out and have posh cars, amazing locations ect. I think it's a shame that we didn't really get an approval because i'm sure we could have made a really good video for it as we have already come up with really good ideas and have made plans for it. We weren't planing on having posh cars and every bit of luxury in it just because they're well known singers due to the fact that it doesn't go with the song anyway and like i said we have come up with interesting ideas that fits in well with the song.

Furthermore my idea from the start was to choose a song that's not known by a lot of people so i understand what my teacher means so i have taken on board her advice and have done some more research to see if i can find any more songs with two females in it that aren't as well known. I have found a few songs that might be worth looking at and sharing with both my group and teacher to see what they think. Whilst researching i came across a female duet group called Aly and Aj. I listened to all of their songs on youtube and have posted the ones i think are best below.

Aly and AJ songs:

Checklist

Here are five main things we need to do in order to achieve a good grade in our A2 music videos. 

FINAL A2 GRADE

q Ask friends or approach local bands and get permission to use their material

q Approach unsigned bands on ‘My Space’ etc and get permission to use their material

q Collaborate with music department/students in your centre on the project

q Create your own music or sound track

q OR…Use a music track by a well-known artist, but email the record label asking permission: be aware of the dangers of using a well known artist à your videos are more likely to mimic existing videos and not challenge conventions

Beautiful Liar

Andrea and I took advantage of our free time to do some more valuable research in order to gain a wide range of interesting ideas for our music video. We watched many music videos from different genres and looked closely at the cinematography used in order gain more knowledge about the different types of camera angles, shots and movements that are available for us to experiment with.

For the past two weeks we have been on top of things as we have already made notes and plans for our music video. We are going to try all of our ideas and see what works out best. Once i have made our final plan i will put a photo up of it on my blog to show you all the ideas we have come up with. Due to the fact that both Andrea and I want to play a part in the music video we decided to look for songs with two female singers in it. After a lot of research we have found a song that we are currently thinking to do. I believe that the song we have chosen doesn't have a great music video which gives me more of a reason to make a music video for it because we both have really good ideas for it.

To start off we watched the music video together a couple of times then made notes of our ideas and then we searched for the lyrics, read threw it a few times and made more notes. Reading the lyrics helped us quite a lot because the song made more sense to us and helped us to understand the message behing it. We both belive that we can make this music video better than the real one.

Here's the song we are planning to do:


Beautiful Liar Lyrics

Ay, Ay, Ay
Nobody likes being played
Beyonce, Beyonce
Shakira, Shakira (hey)

[Beyonce] He said I'm worth it, his one desire
[Shakira] I know things about 'em that you wouldn't wanna read about
[Beyonce] He kissed me, his one and only, (yes) beautiful Liar
[Shakira] Tell me how you tolerate the things that you just found out about

[Shakira] You never know
[Beyonce] Why are we the ones who suffer
[Shakira] I have to let go
[Beyonce] He won't be the one to cry

[Beyonce] (Ay) Let's not kill the karma
(Ay) Let's not start a fight
(Ay) It's not worth the drama
For a beautiful liar
[Shakira] Can't we laugh about it
(Oh) It's not worth our time
(Oh) We can live without 'em
Just a beautiful liar

[Shakira] I trusted him, but when I followed you, I saw you together
[Beyonce] I didn't know about you then 'till I saw you with him again
[Shakira] I walked in on your love scene, slow dancing
[Beyonce] You stole everything, how can you say I did you wrong

[Shakira] You never know
[Beyonce] When the pain and heartbreak's over
[Shakira] I have to let go
[Beyonce] The innocence is gone

[Beyonce] (Ay) Let's not kill the karma
(Ay) Let's not start a fight
(Ay) It's not worth the drama
For a beautiful liar
[Shakira] Can't we laugh about it
(Oh) It's not worth our time
(Oh) We can live without 'em
Just a beautiful liar

[Shakira] Tell me how to forgive you
When it's me who's ashamed
[Beyonce] And I wish could free you
Of the hurt and the pain
(Both) But the answer is simple
He's the one to blame

Beyonce, beyonce
Shakira, shakira

[Beyonce] (Ay) Let's not kill the karma
(Ay) Let's not start a fight
(Ay) It's not worth the drama
For a beautiful liar
[Shakira] Can't we laugh about it
(Oh) It's not worth our time
(Oh) We can live without 'em
Just a beautiful liar

Preliminary Video Choice

In this lesson we were asked to find a simple music video that we can copy just as a practice. We only have to make up to a minute of it. This will help us get into the mood of filming and editing again and will help us when we are making our actual music videos.

We have chosen to make about 30 seconds of this video as it i quite simple to do. We have chosen for me to be Lily Allen.

Here's the music video:



Here's our storyboard:

Shots for Smile - Lily Allen:

1.  Singer eating chocolate, mid - shot, panning into face/
2. Singer and guy on bed, lying on side, wider shot
3. Side shot with arms crossed, sitting up on bed, mid shot.
4. Close up from below, checking phone
5. Mid shot lying on side eating crisps
6. Same shot as 3., from sitting flops onto bed, mid shot
7. Head and shoulder shot from slightly below, looking up.
8. Panning shot with her and male on bed reading book
9. More of shot 5
10. Same as shot 1, finishing chocolate.
11. More of shots 9 and 5
12. wide shot showing her sitting on bed from front
13. Close up from her level of her looking into the camera
14. panning shot of her sitting on bed, panning as she sings 'When you first left me I was wanting more'
15. Mid shot of her sitting on bed, not singing
16. Similar to 13, but singing 'what dya do that for?'