The Making of Harry Potter: Props, SFX & Sets

The Making of Harry Potter is a wonderful to visit as it is preserving all the wonderful magic of the films. Our Media class went on a school trip to spend the day at this wonderful experience to let us explore and be aware of the process of what it was like producing the world's most successful franchise.

We saw al the complexities behind making a live action block buster and I was able to look in more detail the Props, SFX and Sets of the Harry Potter franchise.

Properties

Props, shortened from Properties are all the physical objects any of the actors interact with. From phones, books, glasses or bags.

In Harry Potter, obvious examples would be their wands, Herminie's time turner, or even Harry's glasses.

SFX

 Special effects are very important in films in today’s day and age. Almost every major film title has a significant amount of CGI effects. In Harry Potter the complex sequence of quidditch could only be recreated with visual effects.

During our visit to ‘The Making of Harry Potter’ we saw how they created the effect, by shooting live action infront of a green screen before adding in the digital background.

Sets

In the Harry Potter franchise Warner Bros Studio took went to extraordinary lengths to add in extreme levels of detail by hand to increase the actor's sense of immersion in the world.

Eg: Ever wands in Alavandar's shop had a name and label on them.

Technical Works in Music Videos

Technical Terms

Camerawork (Angles and Shots)

• Angels; perspective; moving; shot analysis; tracking
• Feature many close ups to quicken the response of the viewer to connect with the performer.
• Close, intimate shots can be good way to grow closer to the singer and in the case of classic love songs even try and attempt to make the viewers partially fall in love with the performer.
• The massive rise of popularity in portable cameras meant that nearly anyone could be able to record a video and get their music video out efficiently

Below is an example of Taylor Swift's "You Belong with Me" where angles, tracking and use of close ups is these ideas put into practice.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuNIsY6JdUw

Editing 

• Fast paced cutting is a very common convention in music videos today as they don't have time to build up interest so have to captivate the audience as quickly as possible by not lingering on a shot for longer than ten or so seconds.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6yXm88fCa4

Conventions of Music Videos: Promotion

Before the birth of modern music videos was around the mid 80's where before hand videos only consisted of band footage. This was just the norm as it ties the music closely to the performers and was the natural state of things.

One of the first 'modern' music videos to be well received by the mainstream public was A-ah's 'Take on Me'. It popularised the trend of a narrative tied together along with the song. It comes with an ambiguous but  simplistic plot which blurs the lines between reality (A feature of Postmodernism) It consisted of a largely animated portion which was very common in the late 80's but still contained classical style of including band footage within the video, perhaps cautious not to step to far away from the norm.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djV11Xbc914

Today music videos have become extremely mainstream with traditions like multiple narratives, blurred realities and an ambiguous plot. Taylor Swift's 'Shake it off' is a good example of what a modern music video would be like.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfWlot6h_JM

Notes on Music Genre Research: Pop

Pop music is a genre of main stream music that's extremely popular, it comes from Modern Western society in the 1950's/ 1960's and is a softer version of rock and roll.
It's name comes from the abbreviation of 'Popular Music' that's shortened to 'Pop Music'.

Pop music is eclectic, based of other genres such as urban, dance, rock, country, etc.
Pop is usually recognized with short to medium-length songs written in a basic format (often the verse-chorus structure) as well as the common employment of repeated choruses, melodic tunes, and hooks.

Mise en Scene

- Happy/ positive bright lighting
- Sexualised men and women
- Intricate choreography
- Conspicuous Consumption- extensive showing of wealth and power
- Young (Under 30's)
- Pink Pound (Large fan base from the Homosexual male community)

Stars
- Justin Bieber
- Taylor Swift
- Little Mix
- Katy Perry
- Shawn Mendes

Notes on Music Genre Research: Rock

Rock music originated in the USA in the 1950's, and grew in popularity and range of styles
It's roots came from 'Rock and Roll' and heavily influenced by rhythm, blues and country music and also incorporated several conventions from jazz and classical, before defining itself as its own genre.
Early forms of rock and roll groups where found in the mid to late 50's- 60's (E.g. Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins and Jonny Burnette.

Rock features heavy sounding instruments and is very techno based.
The focus is more on the ability of the performers than any narrative a video would have, and features band footage more frequently than other genres.

Mise en Scene
- Typically aggressive or emotional lyrics and imagery
- Dark, interior lighting
- Male dominated industry
- Regular, everyday outfits, not to distract the audience from the music
- Typically indoors
- More performance based rather than narrative

Stars
- Tenacious D
- Coldplay
- Green Day
- AC/DC
- The Beatles

Notes on Music Genre Research: Country

Country music is a genre of United States popular music that was founded in the Southern United States in the 1920's. It's based of south-eastern genre of the United Sates, such as folk music, like Applachian folk music, Blues music, and Western music. Blues modes have been used widely throughout its recorded history. Country music is mostly made up of ballas and dance tunes with generally simple forms and harmonies accompanied by mostly string instruments such as banjos, electric andacoustic guitars, dobros and fiddles as well as harmonicas. it got the name 'Country Music' around the late 1940's where as before was known as Hillbilly Music. Today Country is used to describe the entire genre of which many sub genres within it exists. It is extremely popular in the USA but less so in the UK.

Mise en Scene

- Guitars, banjos and fiddles played by the performers on screen

- Up beat and merry

- Heavy Christian influences

- Western Southern American aesthetic

- Outdoors and one with nature

Stars

- Garth Brooks

- Taylor Swift

- Luke Bryan

- Carrie Underwood

- Jonny Cash

Notes on Music Genre Research: Dance; Dubstep

      Dubstep is a genre of electronic dance music that originated in South London, England. It emerged in the late 1990’s as an offspring of 2-step garage, dub, techno, drum and bass. Broken beat, jungle, andreggae. In the UK the origins of the genre can be tracked back to the growth of the Jamaican sound system party scene in the early 1980’s.The music generally features sparse, syncopated drum and percussion patterns with bass lines that contain prominent sub bass frequencies.

      Mise en Scene

-          A single performer

-          Ordinary clothes, hoody and jeans

-          Features predominately outside

-          Still camera, focused on the performer

-          Akin to a Rock n’ Roll aesthetic

      Stars

-          - Skrillex

-          - Nero

-          - Zombov

-          - Rusko

Notes on Music Genre Research: Rhythm and Blues

Commonly known as RnB this genre has two origins from American history: the black slave community where the large Christian body of Afro American slaves would bonds together over prayer and prayer like songs. The common 'call and response' that's so prominent in Protestant America is something RnB uses in it's style. The second origin is from the black workers of Chain gangs. To avoid punishment for protesting they would sing songs of protest in Black Afro American English aka Abonics. These two origins of black labours singing songs of protest to regular society.

The term was originally used by record companies to describe recordings targeted mainly to urban African Americans, at a time when "urbane, rocking, jazz based music with a heavy, insistent beat" was becoming more popular. In the commercial rhythm and blues music typical of the 1950's through the 1970's, the bands usually consisted of piano, one or two guitars, bass, drums, saxophone, and sometimes background vocalists. R&B lyrical themes often encapsulate the African-American experience of pain and the quest for freedom and joy. Lyrics focus heavily on the themes of triumphs and failures in terms of relationships, freedom, economics, aspirations, and sex.

Mese en Scene

- low light

- black performers

- guitars and drums

- Conspicous Consumption (excessive showing of wealth and power)

- Status driven
- "Bling Culture"


Stars

- Beyonce

- Kanye

- Jay Z
- Puff Daddy

Hello!!

Hello there, my name is Ryan Ratchford and this is my year 13 A2 Media Blog, I hope you enjoy it.