What the VHS 'style' entails of:

I'm a fan of VHS-esque filming simply because I find it quite nostalgic. I think of it as a filter it can really make anything look good and it gives it an interesting twist when you seen modern day things being filmed in lo-fi. In my video i'd like the opening scene to start with a 'time stamp' appropriation of the name of the film, who's it by etc. This is an example of one I found at the beginning of Duchess Says - Black Flag:

and again at the beginning of Foo Fighters - White Limo:

I'd also like to include a clip from a film which has some sort of relation to the music being played in the film - like maybe a character saying an interesting quote before super imposing the actual video itself. Like what's done in this video for The Bronx - Past Lives:

Superimposing seems to be appropriate to use instead of cuts, it looks better and its keeps a constant flow in the video which could come across as engaging. Superimposition is used throughout this video (which is also a parody for those creepy 90's Calvin Klein commercials)
Twin Shadow - Slow:

'Education' by Alan Parker for Pink Floyd/ Holland Park Kyoto Gardens

Education (The Wall) The above is a clip from the 1982 musical film 'Pink Floyd The Wall' by Alan Parker the screenplay was written by Pink Floyd bassist and vocalist Roger Walters. The film is full of symbolism and metaphorical scenes with hardly any dialogue - and where there is dialogue it comes from the music being played. This is what i'd like to do in my short film, i'd like to create a musical film with no dialogue just scenes with creative cuts, editing, and beautiful location choices. I'd like to film around Holland park's Kyoto Gardens which is a beautiful backdrop for almost any type of filming - its caressed with amazing waterfalls and fountains which I think would be a good alternative. Although I haven't yet had the chance to visit the Kyoto Gardens in the flesh, I've come across some good youtube videos which shows the majority of the gardens so I know what to expect when filming. I'm going to visit the gardens after school on Thursday to take some photos and map out exactly where I want to shoot. Take a look at the Kyoto Gardens in this video that i've found:

Production diary: Week 3

Mr.Perez gave everyone a film to watch this week which could be loosely based on what everyone had an idea about doing. As the first director we were introduced to was Maya Deren (who I was very fond of) I was excited when he gave me a collection of her short films to watch. Although my film won't be heavily inspired by her ambiguous works, she really opened up my creative agenda and I learnt a lot from watching her films about the way people can interpret things differently and how I can be influenced about ideas a thoughts around me but express them differently each time I think about them. Deren was really a stepping stone in my journey on how to perceive post-modern avant garde media. Deren was also a prominent writer for the theory of cinema which is the beautiful thing about her work. She managed to transform cinema into art in motion and emphasised the art within her film to the point where it left some critics terribly dismissive simply because she wasn't following codes and conventions from Marxism or Strauss but she was challenging ways of perception.
I learnt a lot more about Deren through the way she is perceived and received by journalists and film theorists now, one of the most interesting articles I read was: Butler, Alison. “Motor-Driven Metaphysics: Movement, Time and Action in the Films of Maya Deren.” Screen, 48:1 (2007). A scholarly analysis of Maya Deren’s film aesthetics and artistic theories, with special consideration of the role of movement, time and action. Butler’s work is a solid piece of film theory, largely connecting Deren’s ideas to those of French philosopher Gilles Deleuze. One of the most recent works on Deren, is indicative of the bourgeoning recognition of Deren’s merit as a film theorist by current scholars.

Video Analysis: Life with Uzi - Scene Girl

Analysis in terms of representation, gender, and race representation.
In Laura Mulvey's 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema' Mulvey writes of the "objectification of women as representation/signification of male desire." In this video the women filmed are being shown in an unattractive light, smoking, drinking, and overall carrying themselves poorly on camera - which is the point Life with Uzi are trying to make. These are the types of girls people want to stay clear of, hence the subtitling 'never trust a scene girl', 'scene girl' according to Mike of Life with Uzi is "a scene girl or guy is someone who presents themselves online as something more than they are." In plain English that translates as some one who is 'fake'.

In terms of race representation, we see Life with Uzi here in front of Taco Bell (a popular Mexican-ised American fast food chain). It's a typical spot for teenagers and all Americans alike to cure their hunger issues, here Uzi is just 'hanging out' with his friends in the suburbs, a typical teenaged American thing to do. The fact that they filmed the entire video in a Wal Mart and in the suburbs of St.Paul,Ohio really plays on the fact that they may possibly want teenagers watching the video to easily relate to them - they're perceived as fairly normal guys yet all these girls are all over them. This leads to emphasise the fact that these girls are 'easy' to get, there aren't and flashy cars in the video or massive house with swimming pools being shown - just bundles of $100 bills. This could also imply that money is all it takes to get these types of girls to notice them.  

Subculture and The Meaning of Style, Dick Hebdidge said that a subculture is a group of like minded individuals who feel neglected by societal standards and who develop a sense of identity which differs to the dominant on to which they belong. Ken Gelder lists 6 ways in which a subculture can be recognised: 1) Often have negative relationship to work 2) Negative or ambivalent relationship to class 3) Through their associations with territory ( The street, the hood, the club) rather than property 4) Through their stylistic ties to excess 5) Through their movement out of home into non-domestic forms of belonging (social groups as opposed to family) 6) Through their refusal to engage with they might see as the ‘banalities’ of life. Other ways of recognising a subculture might be symbolism attached to clothes, music, visual affectations like tattoos etc. Subcultural values often associated with being ‘cool’.

Production diary: Week 2

As I know I want my film to be music based, I started thinking about the music around me and what I can do with it. Many of my friends have musical talents and I'm well connected with local musicians in the area I live in. But I decided to not involve a short list and just produce a music film/video for one of my closest friends who sings in her free time and had studied music at school.
India Chambers is a talented singer from Shadwell in East London. Of Jamaican and Spanish decent Chambers studied music at Pimlico Academy from GCSE through to A Level. She had the hopes to continue with her musical education and study Music with English at Goldsmith's University London, but had a change of heart and decided to just go with English (which she equally enjoys!)
Chambers has been working on her first EP now for about two years, although it seems like a lengthy amount of time - she's really putting her best efforts into this one and wants to produce something to really be proud of. The song I've decided to make the film for is one of her first recorded pieces appropriately named 'India's Song' which was written by Chambers and her producer Daniel Duke. Funnily enough, the song was recorded in my living room using a portable studio and it came out a lot better than expected, so I was really eager to make a film for this particular film.
below is a photo of India Chambers photographed by me.

Production Diary: Week 1

During the first week of deciding what my film was going to entail, I watched various music videos (as I knew I wanted my film to be music based) and focused particularly on those filmed using VCR cameras, or edited in the VHS style. I've always found mass inspiration in the 1980's/1990's so I knew that this would be a good era to derive inspiration from.
below you can have a look at two of my favourite music videos which I hope to take inspiration from in regards to camera angles, location, and editing.
Pet Shop Boys - West End Girls (1986):

Beck - Loser (1993)

Video Examples

I started looking at v/h/s filmed music videos, simply because I'm a big fan of film in that era - although most of the films were shot on really decent cameras which didn't allow room for the pixelated effect which I find aesthetically pleasing in a time where this is scarce to us now. I also found it interesting that American 'cool kids' where using this style in their music videos - and people were totally loving it! Life with Uzi are an art collective who specialise in filming. Below are two videos filmed by them, and one starring Mike from Life with Uzi himself.
Spooky Black - Without U:

Here, we're exposed to the mass use of super imposion, quick cuts, and flipped - disovling images of the main singer. Close ups of him on the sofa in a white du-rag, mid- shots of him in an Ohio forest on a cold winter's afternoon and a nice range of pixelated scenery. Life with Uzi - Scene Girl:

Again, the same effects were used in this video - so we already see the traits which Life with Uzi use to make their mark. Speedy cuts, super imposed layered recordings,time stamps, fast - forwarding effects (like that seen on an actual v/h/s recording) but this time they went an extra step forward and gave us subtitles, maybe hinting towards a sing-a-long?
Not only are suburban teenagers barely out of high school enjoying the v/h/s effect, west coast rappers are using the trend to their advantage whilst they can.
Snoop Dogg - Sensual Seduction:

The only difference here is not only is Snoop depicting a different era, his video was shot on a series of professional cameras and the effect was added on after filming during editing. Also, theres been use of a green screen, professional lighting, a smoke machine and paid extras. But the matter still stands, Snoop Dogg is a fan of the v/h/s effect.

A Life Choreographed for Cinema: Maya Deren

At the beginning of our course, we were first introduced to the works of Maya Deren a Ukrainian born American filmmaker. Deren attended the school of Social Research and it is evident in most of her films that she was very interested in alternate social realities. Deren was said to be the 'entrepreneurial promoter of avant-garde film making.' And she was praised on her wanting of creating new experiences and evoking new conclusions in her films. Deren had massive interests in things such as: dance, voodoo, and subjective psychology. She also had specific editing techniques of which she was fond: multiple exposions, jump cutting, super imposion, slow motion, and continued motion through discountinued space. Critics believed that Deren had the 'ability to turn her vision into a stream of consciousness.' Deren adopted Einstein's notion of the relavistic universe to explain the idea of constant metamorphosis. For Deren the spatial and temporal plasticity of moving images was perfectly suited to this phenomenon. 'Meshes of the Afternoon'