Dianabol

During E2, I found the audio piece to be one of the most difficult. Not only because speaking in a microphone and hearing how your voice sounds to others is hard, but also creating the background music was almost impossible.

I wanted the music to sound happy and relaxed, to me, I find the music reminds me of video games like Stardew Valley which I felt was successful in bringing a calmer atmosphere to the audio. I was very lucky to receive advice and what I should improve on when it came to the audio piece from a good friend of mine as he has experience when it comes to editing. Additionally, I wrote the production plan like I was somewhat talking or explaining something to somebody I know so it sounded more natural.

Next time, I want to improve on the quality of my voice in recordings and learn more about using applications that revolve around editing and music.

London After Dark – Mood board

Cyan Poster 1: ‘Drink it up’, ‘Do the shot’

Yellow Poster 2: ‘Dance it up’, ‘Move those hips’

Pink Poster 3: ‘Smoke it up’, ‘Have a puff’

I previously made a mood board for E1 focusing on ‘London After Dark.’ The main premises of this mood board focuses on the idea of friendship and going out at night in a group. For each poster I use a colour scheme of pink, blue, yellow and black. The pink and blue come from the top left picture of the mood board, the yellow was later incorporated throughout the posters due to the occasional yellow found in the mood board, while lastly, black is scattered all through the mood board. I love how the final products turned out and how vibrant each poster was.

I wanted to traverse deeper into the idea of ‘going out at night,’ and decided to split my posters into through different actions: drinking, dancing and smoking. My models (Rachael and Ivan) did an amazing job at conveying what exactly I was looking for. Rachael’s shots in her dancing and drinking photos were so fun to capture as the prompt provided to her was, ‘party girl in a club who’s a bit quirky and is quite drunk.’ On the other hand, I wanted Ivan’s poses to encapsulate a smoker. His prompt: ‘Quirky, but relaxed. Think of me (Diana) when I’m in the club and how I’m just constantly in the smoking area.’ He absolutely nailed it.

When I got to the point of creating them, I decided to go for an overlap effect throughout. I wanted my posters to feel real as smoking, drinking and dancing sometimes can be quite animated acts. Beginning with ‘Drink it up’, I feel like Rachael’s extremely chaotic but expressive reactions do sum up a lot of people when drunk, which then reinforces a drunk effect. Next, I found that the poses in ‘Dance it up’ felt somewhat real. In a way, because they’re so animated in the pictures, it’s like they’re really dancing, twirling and twisting right in front of me. Lastly, ‘Smoke it up’ is like a continuous smoking loop. I love Ivan’s poses in this piece and how it overlaps in general. One more just little note I wanted to add was the idea of the spiral in the background. To me, I found that the spirals resembled sound waves in a club. Next time, I’d like to improve in a few areas like making the posters and text less overcrowded as I could see how it may be difficult to read. I’d also like to improve on using more lighting effects or using blur.

Creating this film was originally my favourite part of E1. However, for E2, I came across multiple hills that I had to cross. The idea for this film originally came from the news of The Smiths reunion never happening due to the band members distaste for each other. This bothers me as I know I will never see them live, so the best idea is to show what would happen if Rachael and I became The Smiths.

Throughout the film, Rachael and I are seen trying to exaggerate our body language a lot to fit into the characters of Morrissey and Johnny Marr. Myself with the flowers and Rachael with her denim jacket, I feel like we did a good job at acting like them and copying their fashion. We tried to use a lot of different angles and originally, the goal was to find a camera tripod but to no avail. However, we decided to embrace holding the camera shaky as we found it more realistic. Plus, I felt like it fit with the narrative of ‘two friends who all of a sudden are famous musicians from the 80’s.’ Lastly, I wanted the lighting to be very warm as in the first shot with The Smiths vinyl playing, that vinyl is from their compilation album, ‘Louder than bombs.’ The vinyl cover is orange and so, I wanted to do a small tribute for it.

The audio quality in the film is not amazing. That is because I filmed with a NikonD7200. Unfortunately, this camera is more for photos rather than videos. If there is a next time, I’d like to give a try with borrowing one of the cameras from university.

Surprisingly, I found the creative writing portion of E2 the easiest to produce. At first, it was slightly difficult thinking of how I wanted to set the tone for this short story, however, I realised that the best way to write it was to write it how I talk. It felt like writing in a journal at first, but when implementing the more comedic parts, the story began to feel like I was chatting to an old friend. Due to the more relaxed conversational tone throughout, I found that it helped me write easier and express anxiety through my eyes. Looking back, I should’ve looked into using more media influences. However, I find that some of my references and the way I’ve worded my writing is quite unique and I really love the originality within the piece. For example, my favourite parts to write were definitely the Princess Diana quote and the small reference to Dante’s Inferno.

While this isn’t a reference to anything, but instead an analogy I created, I was quite impressed with it:

‘My anxiety felt like my heart’s superior vena cava was growing longer and longer, slowly wrapping itself around my neck.’ I wanted a way to dissect deep anxiety by describing the more physical and emotional aspects in relatable terms.

Reference list:

Princess Diana quote – www.pbs.org. (1995). Diana’s 1995 Bbc Interview | Princess And The Press | FRONTLINE | PBS. [online] Available at: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/royals/interviews/bbc2.html [Accessed 14th Jan. 2025].

The Wizard of Oz, Toto – The Wizard of Oz. (1939). [Movie] Warner Bros. [Accessed 14th Jan. 2025].

Shakespeare quote – Shakespeare, W. (1603). Hamlet. Simon & Schuster. [Accessed 15th Jan. 2025].

The Inbetweeners, ‘Bus Wanker’ – The Inbetweeners. (2008). [TV Series] Modern Times Group. [Accessed 17th Jan. 2025]

Ninth circle of hell – Alighieri, D. (1314). Dante’s Inferno. [Poem].