Now you have completed the journey through to the final stages of my A2 project.

Evaluation Question 4

New media technologies. on Prezi

I created a  prezi to create a spider diagram with a brief outline of some of the new media technologies we used. The construction of each task was carefully planned so that when it came to improvements/amendments fixing parts of our project- this wouldn't be too time consuming.


Ilustrator- we used to create our logo as oppose to photoshop because we wanted to have spent less time on this task also with resizing our logo we were better off using this programme as there was no tendency of the logo being deleted when resized. Also quality was never an issue.

Final Cut Pro- we used in place of Adobe Premiere pro (which we used for our AS film opening) because we found it meant we could create a wider variety of effects in our music video and once we got use to the programme it was quite simple to use.

The Evaluation was made more simple with the help of these programmes as we had evidence online as well as documented when analysing our project.

Facebook and Youtube- worked as good social sites for us to gain constructive critism, share our type of music and also a modern way to promote our artist rapidly.

Slideshare- was an effective programme in regard to all the planning and research we had to display for our project.

Evaluation Question 3

Question 3

Final Music Video

Evaluation Question 2

How effective is the combination of your main product ancillary texts?

Q2

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Question 1 part 2

Q1

Evaluation Question 1

Question 1

Theory of Music

Theory of music

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Feedback moodboard with words

This is some of the feedback I got from my class mates and friends about the artist and music video.

Location

To accomplish  a certain level of satisfaction within our target audience, as a group we looked at the feasibility of the potential locations,  marketing planning as with the ways in which we would market our product and how this would link in with the location in itself.

The initial location we had was a school sports hall, as the main character would be performing on the school stage however, this changed as we wanted to eliminate any chances of bad lighting in our production.

By using a TV studio for our music video, we were able to produce professional lighting qualities and therefore made the stages of editing easier. We also used a member of our groups house to film part of our music video ( the singer waliking down the staircase). Looking at this aspect compared to our AS project we learnt that lighting was an easy area to improve over a shot period making editing in a sense an easier process.

Research into what makes a good music video.

Todorov proposed a basic structure for all narratives. He stated that films and programmes begin with an equilibrium, a calm period. Then these agents of disruption cause disequilibrium, a period of unsettlement and disquiet. This is then followed by a renewed state of peace and harmony for the protagonists and a new equilibrium brings the chaos to an end. The simplest form of narrative (sometimes referred to as ‘Classic’ or ‘Hollywood’ narrative).

 Our Music video could follow this  concept as it  displays a traditinonal narrative which could be applied in the same way to  a music video. However, it would not be crucial to implement this within our music video.

BARTHES’ ENIGMA CODE – The narrative will establish enigmas or mysteries as it goes along. Essentially, the narrative functions to establish and then solve these mysteries.

Maslow's  hierarchy of needs was again used (following on from our AS project)  to achieve a certain level of satisfaction for our target audience.For instance being able to establish a sense of freinship with the artist in relation to our audience so that they can enagange well in the music.

Shot List

Rough Cut

Rough Cut Feedback:

When we presented our rough cut to our class and teachers for constructive feedback on what to improve on.

Feedback comments: -Very good lip synching
-Good lighting
-someone said they enjoyed the mirror image, and how the her
clothing changes
-Split screen was good
- end of the video had bad lighting

So with the last feedback comment we had to work out if the lighting could have improved by editing or if we had to re-shoot the end of the video.In turn we did re-shoot.

Shooting Schedule

Magazine Advert

 As a "powerful ideological force" in society stated by  Angela McRobbie ; the cover of a  teenage magazine together with its content should provide a sense of escapism and enjoyment for the reader. And  an altogether accurate representation of all teenage girls today.

Magazine analysis

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Potential Target Audience Interview

One of our group members conducted an interview with a student, towards our target audience as part of research into how we could achieve a certain level of satisfaction using the Maslow's hierachy of needs chart for our target audience.

Lip Synching - Practise session

We had a practice lip syncing session to make sure she knew the lyrics to song and was well suited for the song.

Major Meeting 2- Production Planning

In this meeting we constuctively planned the special features we wanted to impliment and discussed several ideas we had intended for our music video two of the main ideas were that we wanted to:

- Have the singer change instantly spins  into a different outfit(in the same way that this was achieved in Lady Gaga's Loove Games video). However, in the end we settled for a simple technique to achieve this idea as the process used in Lady Gaga's music video was much to complex for us to create.

These images show the idea we had of our artist rapidly sinning around into a different outfit as displayed in Gaga's music video.

This is an inspirational video, we later planned to use a similar technique to the technique Charlie McDonnell uses it in his video with the "Superhero Costume."

- We also had the idea of imitating the tecniques used in the HP advert starring Jay Z in a way that we would have water in the background with the song lyrics (and I look across the "water") in tune. With this aim we found that the techniques would be difficult to achieve as it would involve using expensive professional equipment as well  the amount of time needed which we didn't have.

Digipak Feedback

 I asked a photography teacher for constructive critism on our final digipak.

-Good use of typefaces, clear and effective.
-Good quality photos.
-There is a clear emphasis of the specific key colour which links in with the theme.

Plot

The video starts of with various shots of drums and the drummer himself. Then fast cuts into the singer waking up to turn on her radio displayed with a match on action shot. Then there will be jump cuts of the singer walking down the stairs with
ambi-editing. As she walks down the stairs she will be shown in two different outfits at the same time to create a sense of ambiguity.
Following this, there will be a fast cut to the singer applying her lipstick as she pouts prior to singing in the mirror with her everyday look as a reflexion. There will then be various close up shots and medium shots of the singer as she performs followed by tracking movements which lead to a close up shot of her moving her feet to the rhythm.

A long shot of the singer will be used at this point. Before the birds eye view of the singer spinning around. The camera will then be panning from the singers shoes all the way up to her face, displaying the transition of the everyday look into the glamorous “girly” look.

Digipak

Here are the before (above) and after (below) digipak's of our final choice.


Prior to the final digipak design we had a photo shoot with the singer of our music video. We found that our pictures could have had better lighting,so we had another photo shoot by which we achieved good quality lighting for our digipak images. The final design was created with an emphasis of the positive portrayal of women;  physical beauty  reflecting emotion and mild sex appeal  in consideration of the target audience.

My Digipak Attempt

Photo Shoot

We took several photos, many of which were done in an ambiguous sense showing two sides to the singer.Furthermore we wanted to have the singer looking quite sexual to convey feminism ( as with phyiscal beauty). We used props such as an umbrella and a selection of cosmetics to enhance the singer's apperance for the photos.

Photo Shoot Plan

Presentation1

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Strickly Sweet Tour CD

Magazine Advert

Above, is the final magazine advert and below the magazine advert I created.

Photoshop was used to create our magazine advert as this simple applications of: agjusting layers,resizing objects were done within a resonable amount of time.

We felt that using a strong image would help engage the reader at a first glance but also mean our advert would be clear and effective. Our magazine advert holds certain features such as: the motif of the colour pink(to attract our audience with a "girly" theme).We made sure it had a balance from strategically placing elements (the logo,type) so thst it flowed.

Considering the psyche of the readership our advert would influence their sense of perception was very important. With this in mind, we concluded that vibrant colours with an appealing contrast would be well suited for our target audience-to grab their attention. This was my final magazine cover attempt;below are the before and after images.

Story Boards

I drew the story boards for our idea, using bright  coloured post-it notes meant that it was easier for us to spot things to improve as a group. I looked at various examples on how to create our story board which involved brief analysis in order to get our work to a high standard.

Photography Training

We were taught the basic concepts on taking professional photos:

Composition
Exposure
Lighting effects
Post Production

These are the four basic points to consider when taking photos.

Composition
When taking a photograph , we use the rule of thirds in order to incorporate the main focus into our composition; Imaginary lines are drawn dividing the image into thirds both horizontally and vertically. We then place important elements of the composition where these lines intersect.

Exposure

This is the total amount of light allowed to fall on the image. Adjusting the ISO button controls exposure. It works by boosting the lighting, the higher the ISO the lower the quality of the picture.

Lighting Effects

The quality of the light you use determines how your subjects appear. With outdoor photos, the direction of light changes as the sun moves across the sky which alters the shape and direction of shadows. A high key image is a bright image full of light with mostly white tones; a low key image is dark with minimal lighting and with a lot of black tones and shadow areas.

Post Production

This is the stages after the (photo) shooting such as: editing the picture, digital retouching.

As part of the training we had to produce our own depiction of professional photos.

Inspiration & Target audience

 These singers all have an influence on our music video idea; two of the Kelly Clarkson and Hannah Montana both  display an ambiguous charcter. They show very much different sides together dominant artists.


Our music video is targeted at teenagers and young girls. 10-15  is our age range as our artist will appeal to predominantly females with the exaggerated "girly" sense which will be showed throughout our project. Our music  video will fit in with a mainstream music institution such as Hollywood Records.

Editing

We used the HD- Apple Intermediate Codec 1080i50 format to edit out footage towards the final music video. We were given a tester tutorial to become more familiar with the package. An advantage we rapidly noticed was the technique of saving our footage to a folder of which could only be accessed on our individual computer and login.

Music Video Feedback

Positive Comments:

-Simple but effective (Carla Goddard)
-Good choice of character-singer matches song (Kayliegh Crook)
-I like the shots of the tamberine(James Morrison)
-Good use of lighting(Terry Boateng)
-I like the singers costume it makes her look very much unique(Sandra Mavunga)
-Good lip Synching(Duane Amarque)

Recommended Improvements:
-Improving the focus(Charlotte Cudmore)
-Add footage of panning of the singer lying down gradually into cuts of the shots of the drums(Matt Shires)

Music video analysis

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Sara's presentation

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Noisettes work

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Lighting Tutorial

We were given a tutorial on lighting in a studio to improve our knowledge. A selection of techniques were displayed as we learnt about how to set up the lighting for quality effects. In the lighting set up is: the key light(most important, highlights the subject) which can project hard/soft lighting, the fill light used for balancing the contrast and blocking out shadow areas. Lastly, the back light used to illuminate the subject from the back. This is known as three point lighting. When creating a silhouette (conveying drama, mystery, emot
ion) the subject becomes under exposed and very dark as the key light is not present.

Representation of Women

Women make up a larger percentage of the consumers that buy artists cd's today. Generally genre's such as RnB, Hip Hop  disempower women as they convey the negative stereotypes of women  as with sexualisation; they are frequently presented as a product of male pleasure and consumption. In turn, we tried to use sexuality in a positive way showing that with ideologies such as our singers shot revealing dress and long curly hair, she comes across as a classy but sexy individual.

As a group we decided to carry on the lipstick idea from AS to A2 media .In our AS project it had fairly more significance being that the movement of a female applying her lipstick was part of the opening of our short film however, this year we incorporated the movement in in our music video as it thoroughly displays the alter ego shown as the singer changes outfits. It also connotes the significant love element as well as a hint of danger.

Creating a Logo

We used a programme called illustrator as opose to photoshop to create our logo as we found it worked as a faster application and also it meant that quality in itself was better.At first  we all individually created a logo and later on we decided to use our best suited logo.

This was my Logo:

This was our best suited logo:

Lyrical Planning Sheet

lYRICAL Planning Sheet

We researched clearly the shots we were planning to use and all the editing techniques for example the video bellow show the editing technique we used to have the main character in our music video spin into a different outfit and all at once.

Major Meeting 1

We had our first meeting to arrange thoroughly the plans and pre production planning for our music video and how we intend for it to progress. We also looked at the different locations we all had, researching into the initial location.

Song Choices:

Costume Analysis

Not only is this costume a reflexion of who she is coming from an African background. But it also conveys Debbie as a driving force as she is emphasizing her individuality with this different style clothing.

　　Debbie’s costume was created to emphasise her sex appeal as she is wearing a short black dress and a selection of pearl beads which reflect her individual and elegant style. We felt it was crucial for her to look sexy to carry the connotation of romance which ties in with the song as it tells the story of the singer wanting her partner back. The frequent use of the colours red and black in the low key lighting create a warm tone to some of the scenes because of the essence of love which would be associated with this type of music (our soul/jazz/indie genre.)