Roles

As a group we have allocated many roles and responsibilities throughout the group. For example, roles that will be assigned amongst our group are:

This picture is of  'Nathan Bedford' he will be in charge of the props as it's important to get everything organised for filming and practice shots. This role will consist of gathering clothes, props and making sure he ask round for the things we need. His final job is to sort out the lighting as he volunteered for this role and he will basically set up all the lighting before hand and make sure it's in great shape to film in. It will need to be perfect and really effective as it plays a big part in the music video weather it helps to show status, or contrasts of character or colours.

This image shows a member of the group, and his name is Jack. As you can see he is very casual and calm. You can tell this by his body posture but he also significantly has his hand in his pockets. Having his hand’s in his pockets can suggest to the audience that he is very laid back. His costume or clothing is up to date with current trends, which could appeal to a large audience. We will all take roles and responsibilities throughout the making of our music video. For example, we all are taking turns in the editing, filming and acting side of the music video. In addition, we all have similar styles and tastes; therefore we will all choose locations and props.

This is a picture of me, in the kind of clothing that our character will be wearing in the video. You can see the casual pair of chino's and a nice t-shirt also a nice casual pair of shoes. While these items of clothing are relatively normal, we will be using these kind of items whilst creating our video. My body posture here is very laid back and natural and you can tell this from the hand in the pocket and pretty neutral smile. As there is only 1 singer in the song I have been chosen to do all the lip syncing, originally we decided to split up the verses between us, nut this may have been confusing for the audience, trying to figure out different stories within the music video. I have been chosen for the lip syncing role because I am confident in front of camera and i regularly watch up to date music videos, from artists like the streets, so I am confident with reinacted specific body language, and portraying certain moods over to the audience.

Planning posts - checking your progress Oct 16th SJA

WWW:

• Your use of ICT to film a create a mini movie for the 'Initial Ideas' post is a good use of video in your blog to communicate and explain ideas
• The post on 'Lyrics Annotaton' is really detailed - good to see effort invested here
• The photograph you used for the Photoshop practice / CD cover design is really good - nice use of interesting angle and shadow here Ryan. The inclusion of the plane was a bit bizarre though - and I didn't think this worked??

EBI:

• You blog posts ofr 'Planning' are not as up-to-date as they should be Ryan.
• You need to really improve your post for 'Technical Tutorials' - where is your Green Screen work and Final Cut editing? Include this and write a thoughtful written reflection on it.
• Posts on 'Roles' and 'Song Details' missing?
• Your group may need to rethink your song choice as there are aspects of the lyrics that are really inappropriate given that this is going to be submitted to the OCR exam board for your final A Level assessment. References to genitals, etc. need to be either edited out, or a new, more appropriate track from your genre needs to be selected. I will talk to Ms Ingram and the other Media teachers to see what your options can be on this.

Overall assessment of Planning posts so far: IN (Improvement Needed) Too many posts still need development and further work. Some posts that should have been done by now are missing. You need clear labels for 'Planning'.

Technical Tutorials

Publicity Photos- We used a school camera in order to take photo's that would help us to get an image of our genre. We used a variety of different locations however we were not allowed to go outside of school, so by using different angles and the use of the natural light, we were able to create images from different genres. Facial expression plays a massive part in a photo also, as a friendly more attractive look will be more appropriate for the pop genre rather than a grime or rock genre. We used a high quality camera to do this and then I put them al together in a video, with the appropriate genre music laid over the top of it.
Here is the final product of putting all of our images we took together in a video.

Here is a picture of the green screen that we used in class to practice a small lip sync task. The green screen can be very effective as it is a lot budget way to make things look interesting; however it can sometimes make it look unprofessional if not done properly.

The downsides to the green screen are that people are unable to wear green as it will become affected by the effects. When setting up the green screen we also set up three lights that were carefully positioned and focused on the performer. We also set up three camera’s which were also focused on all the performers.

Chroma key

Chroma key compositing is a technique for compositing (layering) two images together.

A colour range in the top layer is made transparent, revealing another image behind.

The Chroma keying technique is commonly used in video production and post-production.

This technique is also referred to as color keying, color-separation, green screen, and blue screen.

It is commonly used for weather forecast broadcasts, wherein the news presenter appears to be standing in front of a large map during live television newscasts, but in a television studio it is actually a large blue or green background.

 

CD Cover Draft

This is our first draft of a Cd cover design on photo shop. We have never really used photo shop so it was a challenge to produce an okay product. While spending an hour on this CD cover design we came across a few WWW's and EBI's.

WWW - The album name has a double meaning, for example we have called it the 'plain' wall as the picture is of Ryan against a plan wall, but he is also looking up at a 'plane' making it different with a twist

WWW - The font of the album name goes with the genre of grime, which we downloaded individually for this product

WWW - When picking the background colour we came across a tool that picks a colour from the picture and basically copies that exact colour/shade making it really effective

WWW - We played around with a load of tools and effects helping us broaden our knowledge of photo shop, ready for the next time we use it

WWW - The actual picture we chose really represented our genre, with the low angle making him look big and the grimy scenario, a rough plain area


EBI - If we had more time to complete this draft, I reckon the final product of it would look much ore better, as we didn't have enough time to experiment

EBI - It would have been better if we included the artists name underneath the album or on the plain wall because we forgot to insert that

EBI - It may appear a little tacky with the plane in the background, so next time we will keep it more simple, but with a lot more meaning

EBI - We should of thought about lighting more so we could of exaggerated his feelings/emotions, and by using high or low key lighting it makes overall look better

EBI - Finally, we have all come to the decision that we should of thought about the costume and how we want the actor to appear to the audience, in our case we want a smart, big looking man

Concepts

When thinking about the concept of our music video, we need to ensure that we are fully aware of what is needed, and why regarding to locations, genre and props. When planning out what props to use, we decided that we were to keep it fairly simple, in order not to distract the audiences attentions away from what's actually important, which is the lyrics and the lip syncing. However, props that commonly appeared when devising our plan were; cigarettes, beer and a pool table. The reason these things were suggested, was due to the fact that our song is very much about this guy wasting his life away, and typical locations would be in a bar/pub, therefore would be a perfeect situtation to incoporate the beer and cigarettes into. Other featuring props to be included would be things such as betting slips, and fruit machines, reasons being because in the lyrics he talks about gambling and wasting all his money away.

Our genre was had to classify, so we classed it as rap/urban, and such artists that we fit into this category were Plan B, Jamie T and The Streets. There are many conventions of this genre that we will have to stick to when creating our video, being that the main artists features greatly in the majority of the video, and that the clothing that needs to be worn will be considered quite chavvy and common. Such items will be hoodies, jeans and common shoes such as Vans.  

Locations that would be quite relevant to our genre would include things such as a launderette, pub, a house (for the waking up sequence), grimey settings, skate parks and other such locations.

The launderette could be a key focus in our video, as not only could we bass some of our music video there, we could incoporate an image from there into our digipak or make our advertisement out of it, as this is similiar to when 'The Streets' used this setting in his song 'Dry Your Eyes Mate', it fits in with the genre because it was rundown and scruffy, which will be perfect for our characters mood, being run down and unmotivated to do anything.

Also in the song, there is a lot of focus around him messing his life up and gambling on too many bets, thus we will need to include many gambling situations, for example in the betting shop, or on the fruit machine in the pub.

Image Annotation

Moreover, here is an image that I have annotated. The image is of the artist Jamie T that produces a large variety of music.

Lyrics Annotation

Lyrics to Charmaine

Song Details

The song we have chosen as a group is Lock The Locks by The Streets.

We have chosen the song as we all find it quite different to the majority of other songs from our genre. Our song is much slower paced and contains very meaningful lyrics. Not only does Mike Skinner sing in our song, but we also have a featuring female artist, and this helps to attract a wider variety of audience and appeal to a much wider range of people. However by the meaningful story behind the lyrics it helps to portray this characters life out in a story, which we will try to put across to the audience in the form of a music video. The challenge will be having an equal amount of lip syncing and acting contained in our music video, as if it's too boring, the viewers will get viewer fatigue, and will not want to watch anymore of our music video. Although the streets is a fairly popular artist, a lot of his work goes unnoticed by people who are not familiar with his kind of urban genre, so in our group we decided to portray his work in a way so that many people are able to enjoy the music video, even if the music taste isn't quite to their ordinary. Many different locations will be needed when referring to our video as the lyrics talk about many different places such as his house and the pub, which we will clearly need to portray when creating our music video. In order to keep within the genre and the sort of style incorporated within the streets, we will need to keep our costumes and locations similiar to that of other 'the streets' videos, such as the hoodies and jeans in the launderette in his song, 'Dry Your Eyes Mate'. This will mean keeping to the conventions of our rap genre, rather than majorly challenging them. We will have to be very organised and plan out strategically which costmes will be used at certain locations, and give valid reasons for our choices made. I am looking forward to creating a music video for this song, as it will give me a chance to experiment and get into Mike Skinner's shoes, and have a chance to portray my take on the song over to our target audience.

Final Assessment for 'RESEARCH' section - Oct 10th

www:

• Well done for going back through teacher feedback quite carefully and investing a last minute effort to improve your blog Ryan - It needed it! - You really have improved many of those IN's to something which looks much better, and shows a greater level of effort and time investment - THIS NEEDS TO CONTINUE.
• All posts have been generally improved in some way - the blog is overall quite visual, with a good use of contact  sheets.
• Most written comments make sense, and show a general grasp of media language - although not all written analysis seems genuinely thoughful and reflective.

ebi (for Planning & Evaluation Sections now):

• Time management MUST IMPROVE - this is part of the assessment criteria - don't leave it until the last minute again Ryan
• Always think of ways (and be prepared to allow yourself time) to really come up with creative and unique ways to present each posts - make sure you use functions like the YouTube tagging feature, or a voice over commentary to talk through any analytical posts. Use JING to 'show' technical skill - this will boost your mark in this aspect of your blog. You should have been making use of gif's and other more creative ways to communicate your Planning and ideas - this all takes time - but that's the expectation.
• Be super organised in the Planning stages of your music video now - None of your work over the coming weeks can be thrown together - you will need to storyboard, plan effectively, try out lighting, etc, etc... Always document this and keep on top of blog posts. You cannot afford to get any more referrals.
• Bring correct equipment (folder / pen) to show you are investing effort in the lessons and coming to classes prepared to focus and make progress every day
• You need to clearly LABEL all of your posts under 'Research' and 'Planning'

Overall mark for RESEARCH section: Mid Level 3... could develop into Level 4 for 'Research & Planning' if you invest every effort into creating brilliant posts for 'Planning' - You need to use class time much more efficiently Ryan, and be more preapred to come in to Media in your STUDY periods to continue to work on your posts and make them creative, original.

Initial Ideas

Here is out post about our initial ideas as a group. It was just a brief discussion with the first thoughts about music, props and costume. The reason we decided to do a video representation of our initial ideas was because we thought it would be much mroe interesting to do and to watch, as you can see our reactions to decisions/plans, rather than having a load of notes scribbled down on a bit of paper.

Carol Vernallis

Whats Her Name

Conventions of a music video

Camera shots:  Music video's in general contain many different types of shot contained. A lot of shot stereotypically used are close ups, long shots and mid shots. The long shots are used to emphasize the location and setting, and are often used when the artist is wealthy so they can show off there richness. However close ups are used to show the emotion of the singer and also to reflect to the audience the words being sung. This image is a perfect example of an establishing shot to show wealth as it shows a massive house with stunning grounds.



Camera movement:  There are many camera movements in music videos, but the main one that is used is tracking shots which follow the band through the "story" contained in the music video.

Mise-en-scene:  The mise en scene in music videos refers to the arrangement of props and performers throughout the music video. The mise en scene can determine what is the most important element in the scene. For example the most important thing will usually be in the centre and in the light.


Editing: The usual cuts in music videos consist of jump cuts, as this is the most formal way of a dramatic change in scene or location. For example you can change the time of day just by cutting the scene, as it will get darker immediately rather than gradually. However things like cross dissolves and fades are often used too, to make the video flow better.

Lighting: The lighting in a music video can determine the mood. Dark and gloomy atmosphere is depicted by having dull boring colours, like this ipicture from Aloe Blacc's i need a dollar. Contrasting this a bright in focus picture can portray a happy more euphoric mood.


Props: The props in a music video are very important to create the mood and setting. For example, if there was a video with a lot of guns and knives in it, you could depict that it is quite a serious and dangerous mood. However the mood of a video can be shown as very happy if the props such as flowers are used to show that the mood is happier and more celebratory.  Also the prop of the bible in this book helps to reiterate the fact that it is clearly a wedding.



Costume:  The costume can be linked to showing the mood of a video also, as things like wedding dresses can be used easily to show a happy mood as it is quite clear they are at a wedding. Costume's can be very unique however as people like lady Gaga likes to be "weird" and where strange clothing completely irrelevant to the video itself.


Colour:  The colours used in a music video are used effectively to create the mood as bright colours such as Blue's and yellow's are happier colours and are used to portray a positive mood to the audience. Whereas if colours such as dark grey's and blacks are used, then a negative more sinister mood will be portrayed to the audience, and these could then be reiterated by the lyrics.

Advert research

This is Plan B's magazine album advert to promote his album 'the defamation of Strickland Banks'.

This advert follows the typical conventions a magazine advert. For example, the advert is the big, bold, red title, which is 'PLAN B'. The second biggest thing that catches the audience’s eye is the name of album, which is 'The defamation of Strickland Banks'. The album covers use the same font throughout which allows it to look significant and professional. In addition, the title is in a white font, which is very effective as it contrasts against the black background. Moreover, the other red and white titles work well against the black background because they will catch the audiences’ attention.

The black, white and red theme is very visible as it runs through the whole advert. This colour scheme and font type stays throughout for a particular reason, for example having the same font and colour allows the audience to recognize and familiarize with the advert.

The advert is very important as it addresses the audience that there is a new album out. Therefore, it is key that you use persuasive language. For example, within this advert the use of the words ‘Multi-platinum album of the year', makes the album seem much more appealing to a wider audience. Moreover, in the corner there are ratings out of five. This also is another way that the audience can be appealed to the advert.

However, the main centre of attention is Plan B himself. The advert shows a large image of him to the right of the page. He is the main centre of attention as he is also the lead singer and most important person. He is wearing a shirt and looks very smart. Having a positive appearance will also make you look appealing to a large variety of audiences. 

Rihanna advert research

CD cover analysis By Ryan Clark

CD cover analysis By Nathan Bedford

CD cover analysis - by Jack Devonport

Andrew Goodwin theory by Nathan Bedford

Bordwell and Thompson By Jack Devonport

Bordwell and Thompson – Categories for Editing   

Editing is one image following another on the screen.

Kuleshov Effect: Is how editing can work to create meaning.

Four different relations between shots and editing:

·         Graphic

·         Spatial

·         Temporal

·         Rhythmic

Graphic

Transitions between shots can be linked graphically.

Patterns of light and dark, fine and shape, volume and depth, movement and stasis.

 

Can be used to create ‘smooth continuity’ or ‘abrupt contrast’.

Graphic Match: Linkage of shots by graphic similarities.

Graphic Continuity: Centre of interest is contrast throughout cuts, maintaining lightning level, avoiding strong colour clashes.

Graphic Discontinuity: Contrasts colour and footage types, movement and stillness, placement/shape of focus figures.

Rhythmic

Duration of Shots: The length of each in relation and its pattern involving accent, beat and tempo.

Specific emphasis on particular shots giving different effects.

Spatial

‘Space’ (setting, location) – how this relates to shots following it – similarities and differences.

Temporal

Time of action and contributes to the plots’ manipulation of story time – order, duration and frequency.

The order of presented events can be manipulated – changes in story-plot relations which interrupt ‘temporal’ order.

E.G – Flashbacks increases story knowledge and flash-forwards creating enigma.

Punctuation: Shot change e.g. dissolve, wipe and fade signals omission of time.

Empty Frame: e.g. figure of interest seen moving out of a frame, cuts to empty frame where figure moves into.

Cutaway: e.g. a shot of another event elsewhere that does not last as long as the omitted action.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7bvT1w77Yg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rI82hsBrq8w&feature=related

Questionnaire and results

This is a preview of our questionnaire that we used to receive our results.

 In the picture below it shows some results from our questionnaire. For example, this table shows that the majority of people listen to music a few times a week; the second most popular is listening to music less than once a week. This is an important question as it allows us to understand how much people listen music, and how we shall go about adressing the audience our music video.

This table below shows how people choose to listen to music. The table shows that the majority of people listen and watch music through YouTube. This seems to be the most common because people can easily access music this way quickly, and can also download the songs from here.

The second most popular choice was to buy an album from a store; this can be seen as surprising due to the modern world as there is an increase in music downloads, hence why music shops such as HMV are suffering.

Moreover, another question that we asked was, 'What moods do you associate with pop/grime music?' The table below shows the results that we have collected. For example, the most popular answer was mad, what is meant by this is that it makes the audience a bit more energetic and lively. The least most popular answer was sad. This may because the speed and tone of the music doesn't make people feel that way, but for the people that did choose it, it could make them feel this way because of the lyrics.

Here is an example of a pie chart. We gathered this information through the information in the above table.

Images relating to genres

WWW;

- The variety of shots/poses were really effective for specific genres, for example a hard man approach with a low angle shot making it really good for a Grime scene.

- The quality of photos is really good as they are clear.

- Angles used were very adventurous with objects in the way such as the plant shot, where you can see Jack through a breakaway hole.

- The time we had to do this in was little, so managing to gather other 30 shots in good places was an achievement for our group.

- The video made was different and therefore much more enjoyable to watch, also with the music being played over the top, it really brings and atmosphere to the video.

EBI;

- In these variety of pictures to do with our genre (Pop, Grime and Rock) we could of used different locations in every Host, making it more watchable and pleasant for the viewers.

- Using different costumes/make-up would have been better for genres like rock especially so we could really express our feelings for the album.

- If the music was synced with the shot changes it would look much better.

Brief

Our task for this unit is to research and analyse music vidoes from many genre's including specific research on our chosen genre. We then will have to create a music video for a song of our chosen genre, along with album covers, posters and other forms of advertisement in order to make our single more popular and audience friendly. We will conduct research in order to find out what our audience likes which will then help us to make the best video possible containing many elements of traditional music videos and some original ideas.

Assessment 'RESEARCH' SJA 03/10/11

www:

I've looked right back through your blog and there is some evidence of thoughtful work and effort Ryan (especially in earlier posts). Your analysis of 3 Pop and 3 Rock videos were good and show the kinds of standards you are capable of achieving (although just using contact sheets and whole length You Tube clips do not really push the medium of a blog to full potential...)


ebi:

Overall, really disappointing to open up your blog and see so much work missing Ryan.
Post 1 - Brief missing??
Post 8 -Conventions of a music video - no visuals? No effort demonstrated?
Post 9-11 - Theories - all missing???
Post 12 - Low Budget - only one entry (meant to be two) - dull, no creativity in use of blog, overly simplistic vague comments / analysis - not a Year 13 standard...
Post 13 - Mood Board - needs written paragraph to explain how artists from within that genre wish to be represented
Post 14 - Genre research - only 3?? Meant to be 5... I would go back into the posts Jack and Nathan created if I were you, as they are vague and overly simplisitic - I wouldn't submit these towards my own mark without improvements...
Post 15 - Genre research / Conventions - just OK...
Post 16 - Analysis of 3 x CD covers - only one done??
Post 17 - Record label research - Re-do the entry on 679 Artist - as this is so clearly copy and paste - Plagiarism - make this your own work
Post 18 - Advert research - one only - meant to be 3???
Posts 19-20 - Audience research - where is survey? Where are your results?

Make sure all posts in this section are under the label 'Research'

Overall: UN - UNSATISFACTORY (referral) Both Ms Ingram and myself have made it very clear you are underperforming - you know what you need to do. I feel as though I have just spent more time giving you feedback than you have done to bother to complete the work Ryan. Sort yourself out, as this is simply not good enough if you hope to stay on our A2 course.

You have until Friday 7th Oct to COMPLETE this Ryan - final grade given then with no further opportunity after this date.