Edward Elgar

Edward Elgar was an english composer, many of whose works have entered the British and international classical concert repertoire. Although Edward is often regarded as a typically English composer, most of his musical influences were not from england but from continental europe. He felt himself to be an outsider, not only musically, but socially. He was also a self taught composer, and in protestant britain, his roman catholicism was regarded with suspicion in some areas. He was sensitive about his humble origins even after he achieved recognition. He married the daughter of a senior british army officer. She inspired him musically and socially, however he struggled to achieve success until he was in his forties. After a series of moderately successful works his enigma variations became popular in britain and overseas.

After finding a little more about Edward Elgar, I was thinking we could use a piece of his music as the soundtrack to our video, however I would still like to have the soundtrack played on a piano. I have been looking at examples on youtube and I think this song could work nicely. 

History of worcester video

History of Worcester - Cathedral

The city of worcester is a city and a county town of worcestershire in the west midlands of England. It has a population of 94,0000 people. Also the river severn runs through the middle of the city which is overlooked by the twelfth century cathedral. Worcester is also the final battle site of the civil war, where Oliver Cromwell army defeated King Charles II's cavaliers. Worcester was also home of Royal Worcester Porcelain and the birthplace of the composer Sir Edward Elgar. It has also has the Lea and Perrins factory where the traditional worcestershire sauce is made and it has one of the fastest growing universities, the university of worcester. 

The cathedral was founded in 630 with bishop Bosel at its head. The first cathedral was built in this period but nothing remains of it. The existing crypt of the cathedral dates from the 10th century and the time of St Oswald, bishop of worcester. The current cathedral dates from the 12th and 13th centuries.

The cathedral contains the tomb of King John in its chancel. Before his death in newark in 1216, john had requested to be buried in worcester. His buried between the shrines of St Wulstan and St Oswald. It has also got a memorial to the young prince arthur who is also buried here. Because of this factor King Henry VIII was spared destruction during the english reformation. 

Brief - Visit Worcester

Today we was given our brief. The brief is produce three versions of an advert or a service, this will be produced in groups of four. I began thinking of what advert we could do. I started to brainstorm some quick ideas.

There are some:

• Chocolate -  Milka, Cadburys, Galaxy. 
• Fast Food - Mcdonalds, KFC, Burger king, Pizza hut, Dominos, Subway.
• Drinks - Pepsi, 7UP, Fanta, Coca cola, Lilt, Fanta.
• Games - COD, Spyro, Skyrim, Gears of war, Fifa.
• Places - Birmingham, Worcester, London
• Audience - Men, Women, Young adults, Children. 
• NightClubs - Tramps, Bushwackers, Sin, Mars bar.

After much debating we decided to do a promo video for visit worcester. As we checked on the worcester website and they haven't got a video. So this would be a great angle and we would contact them and see if they would like to use our video. Again we began brainstorming the main places that we want to include in the video.

• River Severn 
• Food
• Nightlife
• Hive
• University 
• Art gallery
• Theatre
• Cathedral 

However I will be researching deeper into worcester, as I want to capture worcester perfectly, otherwise this video won't be a success in my opinion. I would like to show a lot of the history as worcester is an interesting little city. However as a group we need to properly discuss about the target audience as this will help us decide what we're going to show on each certain video. I would like to aim our video at tourists and up and coming university students. I think this will be the best angle to go down. I will be putting my ideas to the other members of my group and see what they think. 

We have been looking at other videos that are promoting a certain area or part of the country and here are a few examples I have found.

After looking at this, I knew we needed a soundtrack. I noticed the music is quite soft and relaxing. I would like to use a soundtrack that includes a piano. 

Journey Development

This lecture consisted of doing another journey however this time it had to be longer and more thought had to put into the pre production. We could've developed the idea from last week, however we chose to produce a brand new idea. 

This is  some of our brainstorm:

• Train
• Relationship
• Book
• Moving
• Life experience 
• Emotions
• Car
• Funny
• Travel 
• Item

Our final idea was a journey of a can of pop, this consisted of making the cans "come to life". I was looking forward to doing this. As a group we decided what we needed to be in the minute long film. For this particular film we needed to cans of pop. One of the problems which we came across was the choice of the different cans, as we needed a boy and a girl. We was going to use coke and diet coke for the girl. However we finally decided on tango orange and apple. As last week we didn't spend enough time on the storyboard, we sat down and run through what we needed to do.

These are our frames:

•  Someone buying a can
• Drinking it 
• throwing it away
• rolls towards another can
• three of scenes of the cans together in love
• feet walking towards the cans (cans point of view) 
• a foot stepping down on one can
• a black shot
• one cans have been crushed whilst the other is sad

We used the university as our location, including the cafe, the smoking area, and a fore court. As a group we decided to add expressions on the cans to show emotions. Because otherwise the shots would be stiff, as we couldn't add any music. However I felt the stickers added emotion well even though it was very basic. 

The hardest part of this production was getting the cans to roll to each other. We had to redo this scene several times, as we was editing in camera. Also we was going to do four scenes of the cans together but we remembered the rule of three, the viewer expects something to happen in the fourth scene. However overall I thought this particular production went really well, I feel more comfortable with the camera and the frames. I'm looking forward to producing my own film.

Camera Movements

Pan

The horizontal movement of a camera from left to right or vice versa, where the camera base is static. 

Tilt

A camera movement in which the base remains stationary, but the head of the camera moves up and down.

Tracking shot

A camera movement where the camera follows the action on rails or tracks.

Steadicam

This camera has the freedom of a handheld shot but its stabilisation device smoothes out the bumpiness of the handheld shot.

Handheld

The camera is literally handheld by the camera operator. Often bumpy and jerky.

Zoom

A single shot which moves towards a particular subject.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSzjUQ-OsSU

First Task - Journey

This lecture consisted of producing a short film on a journey. This could've been a typical journey such as your walk to university, a bus ride, love story etc. However we was told to move away from this initial thought path and think outside the box. We was put into groups and we started the pre production of a journey. In our group we had many ideas however we all agreed they was too basic. We finally decided on a journey of a person reading someone's diary. 

I knew the main element would be the frames and what we needed to express the journey efficiency. We agreed on what roles we would undertake, with this in mind we began storyboarding. 

As a group we decided these were going to be the main frames:

• Person coming in and finding the diary
• Sitting down and reading it
• Views of different emotions whilst reading
• Slamming the diary down in anger

With this in mind, we began seeing how it would look in production, we sat in one of the sound booths because this was our location. The actor had to do facial expressions as he was reading. As he was reading what a mystery person had wrote about him. As a group we decided to have laughing, sad and anger. We needed to make the viewer aware so out next stage was to think about how we could do achieve this. After much debating, we used a pan shot. This also gave the effect time had gone by, which fitted in nicely. 

This was my first time on a camera, and thinking about each frame is very important. We also had difficulties with editing in camera as we had to rewind the tape back several times. This slowed down our production. When producing a film again I would take more time on the frames first as this slowed us down.