During her talk, I managed to take some notes on the work in which she has starred in, written and produced. She spoke about a competition called Straight 8, which is an independent filmmaking event (Straight 8 Event), and this enabled her to make a film called Stiffy (Stiffy Film) which is what she entered for the competition. This film took them a day to make and they couldn't edit it, so they had to take the shots with a camera and just stop and start when they wanted to cut the scenes etc. Her talk was extremely inspiring, as she talked about the amount of work that she has written and starred in, which was amazing. She said that she made a deal that she would make a short film every month for a year, which I thought was an extremely amazing thing to do, especially whilst still working on other productions.
Her most up-to-date production is Sightseers, which she starred in and co-wrote with Steve Orum and this film was shown at the Cannes Film Festival, which I feel is an amazing achievement (Sightseers Film). I love how Alice actually writes and stars in her own films, as she said that this enables her to do what she wants in terms of she knows how she wants certain scenes to be acted out etc.
During the question and answer section towards the end of the talk, she explained how she improvises a lot of the scripts with Steve when they work together, as she obviously does comedy sketches, which has enabled her to do so. Before filming, she said they tend to do a read through of the script at different venues using their actors to pick up on mistakes, however they tend to film what they do anyway because it normally works first time!
She gave the audience a few tips when writing/producing a film and they were:
- interview actors
- rehearse with actors aside from the film
- improvise
- rehearse as much as possible for the film
Before writing scripts, she said she waits for inspiration to come to her and during her film Sightseers, she pushed female character to develop to have a bigger impact for women in the film industry. She also said that she listens to music during writing and the music that she listens to fits with the flavour of the film, which is interesting and I have done this before in a similar way.
Everything was just extremely interesting about her work and the way that she has just worked her way up throughout the industry and worked with so many big stars.
Throughout the day, we were able to visit music video screenings and I did so, however I wasn't impressed with them at all. The music videos didn't seem to fit well with the song, they were extremely unusual and weren't a typical music video that you'd expect, however I guess they would have fit with the research that the producer had done. I wasn't able to watch the one music video that I wanted and this was Half Moon Run - Call Me In The Afternoon and I did some research online to try and find it, as it featured a girl in the woods and it looked like it would fit into my research/project perfectly:
This was the image that was in the booklet that we received for the day with all of the different events that we could go to.
I really just wanted to see this video to have a look at the way the forest scenes were shot etc, to see if it would give me any tips for filming my forest scene. I have watched this video online and it is extremely strange and not want I expected at all. In a way it does fit in with my final piece idea, as the hands are "reaching out", however it isn't an explicit link: Half Moon Run Video
As well as visiting this, we then attended a Beggars Music Video talk. Beggars are an independent music producer and the talk was about the music videos that they have helped/directed for particular artists including, Adele, Gary Newman and Daughter. This is there website for more information: Beggars
Beggars is a Matador umbrella term and they have produced videos and worked with Adele, Dizzee Rascal, White Stripes and many more big names. They promote their music videos and they found that for Adele's music video "Rolling In The Deep", when they used behind the scenes footage of the music video, this promoted the actual music video even more as the fans felt more of a connection with the artist as their personality came through. One of the men, James, who gave part of the talk actually directed and edited Youth by Daughter, which is unbelievable and a great achievement - Youth by Daughter Music Video
Both of the speakers from Beggars music group spoke about how music videos can influence other things, such as when Kirsty Walk was in Thriller on Newsnight and when The Beatles just made promotional clips for their songs in the 60's.
They mentioned that the best way to start of making music videos, is to find a local band who would like to make a music video and deliver your idea to them in a sentence, being original. He said take ideas from Theatre films and other forms of media. They wanted to get across that "less is more" and the simple videos are the best.
They gave their opinion on a bad music video and they believed for a music video to be unsuccessful, it has to be:
- complicated
- music doesn't fit with the visual
- no information about the band
- not good vive
- "too many cooks"
He said that the audience need to be in the bands world when they watch the music video.
He gave us some ideas on how to promote our music videos and he said that we could use a company called Fast Tracks where you can send your music video to them and within the first 30/40 seconds, you have to get them hooked.
They explained how YouTube is such a great way to promote music videos as it is instant, record labels use it as radio stations and there is no rule book - "anything goes".
After mentioning what a bad music video could feature, they mentioned a successful music video would be due to:
- youtube hits
- lay ground for artist
The whole talk mapped out some great advice and at the end, I gave Craig, one of the representatives, my music card to try and promote myself further as an artist, so I will see where that goes.
In terms of reflection, for my AS work, I didn't have access to anything like this which could have boosted my inspiration, however now I feel like this project has been much more inspiring in terms of the opportunities in which we have been offered and the ASFF has really helped me in terms of the music video side of the project, which shows how much different my AS and A2 research is, showing a huge development and jump.
The music video screenings were based in a clothes shop, upstairs, behind a curtain and in the room, there was a TV on the wall which just had the videos on a loop throughout the day which was really interesting and the venue shocked me as I thought it would be in a cinema.
Overall, this was a fantastic day and gave me some great tips and inspiration for my current and future projects.
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