20 Final practice video task planning

We have been put into working groups and given a choice of songs to choose from. Our task was to create 1 minute of original footage for a music video and make this footage either in one take, or in the style of director Wes Anderson.

• video upload of the song we have chosen

• video upload of the final outcome we have created

Most film directors tend to shy away from placing their actors in the center of the frame, but Wes Anderson has developed his distinctive style of filmmaking around a fascination with symmetry. Signature moves like his idiosyncratic use of zooms and dolly shots, symmetry in composition, ornate pastel-coloured sets, storybook worlds, and jump cuts make him so unique.

“I have a way of filming things and staging them and designing sets. There were times when I thought I should change my approach, but in fact, this is what I like to do. It's sort of like my handwriting as a movie director. And somewhere along the way, I think I've made the decision: I'm going to write in my own handwriting. That's just sort of my way.” – Wes Anderson

In much of his film Moonrise Kingdom, the characters either cross horizontally in front of the camera or walk in a vertical line extending from it, seemingly fixed to an x- or y-axis. In our one-minute music video, we tried to recreate this focus on centered subjects so all of the shots always include the actor placed right in the middle of the frame. 

Another aspect of creating a Wes Anderson inspired video was the colour correction:

Before

After

Using Lightroom, I increased the saturation of orange, blue, purple and magenta tones which enhanced the prominent colours of the frame. I then adapted the hue of these colours and made the cooler tones warmer, and the warmer tones cooler. 

I also used the tone curves to reduce white and black points to make it look more washed out and used the red curve to give the highlights a blue tint and the shadows a green tint.