This is a Note from Luke.
I hope you enjoy looking through my blog. This is the work I have produced through year 13, doing A2 Media.
Friday, 20 May 2011
Saturday, 29 January 2011
Luke - Evaluation - Question 1
*From Left to Right
Picture 1
When researching and planning our music video we looked at a lot of different music videos, including ‘Whitney Houston’s I Wanna Dance With Somebody’ and ‘Fame from the Original Motion Picture’. In the end, Fame became our main inspiration and at the start of the project we even decided we wanted to use the song but changed our minds. We are setting our video in a theatre school and a stage and the grounds of the town. My partner and I are both drama students so we know exactly the background that our four characters have come from. In the first half of the video we want to portray the drama school and in the second half we want to show them singing and dancing around town ‘spreading the joy’ like you always see in ‘Fame’ type films and pop music videos such as Steps or S Club 7 and music videos from the American TV programme Glee.
Picture 2
This shot was inspired by the music video fame. When doing my research and planning stage, I was immensely inspired by this music video. Throughout our video we see our group of four girls performing. This gives off the impression they are performing arts students and that they are used to this kind of thing. The first half of the video is filled with shots which take place on the stage. This adds to the idea that they are at a performing arts school, also inspired from the music video fame. All of our characters are each wearing the same clothes, which makes them seem more of a costume rather than clothing. In the draft of our video the girls did not wear the same clothes, so this ruined the mis en scene.
Picture 3
There are 4 introductory shots in the first 10 seconds of our film. Each one of a close up/mid shot of the girls separately. By doing this the audience establish a relationship with them straight away. They are 4 girls who are the same age and are clearly ‘hanging out’ so we are lead to the conclusion that they are friends. They are also sitting on a stage which leads to our idea of them being in a theatre school. The mood in the first 10 seconds is very low and each close up shows all of the girls being ‘bored’ and ‘fed up’. This sets the audience up for a big mood change when the music changes and the girls being happy and vibrant and reflect the fun and energy that we want to portray in our video.
Picture 4
This shot, again is close up/mid shot. We changed this clip to being slow motion. The reason for this is to drag the mood change out. It also slowly shows her starting to smile. The song that comes on the radio is a very bubbly pop song, so the fact that she recognises it, alone, shows the type of girl she is because of the music she listens to. When she notices the music coming on she starts to smile so It shows the audience that she likes this song. We could have had any one of the four girls to be the one noticing the music and getting up and singing but the fact it is her, and every one of the shots focuses on her shows that she is the main girl of the group. We thought that this actress would be the one the audience could relate to the most because she is all about ‘having fun’.
Picture 5
This shot is personally a favourite of mine. Again it is a close up/mid shot but it is the first shot that shows the other 3 girl’s mood changing. Our main girl is dancing around the stage singing and dancing, yet these 3 girls are just dancing. This helps portray the idea that they are in a show or something because it is the same format in which it would be. There is a lead actress and then her supporting actresses or the chorus. This theme carries on throughout the video because even in the outside shots where our main girl is not singing she is still more focussed on then the others. The thing about our music video is that we are not aiming to portray real life, but we’re portraying the life of performer’s and instead of talking about issues of the world we are portraying a stage. In some ways, that the world is a stage.
Picture 6
Again, this shot shows our Main girl being totally in focus. She is the only person in shot standing which straight away makes her stand out. Although it is not clear she is also wearing a pink top, where as the other girls are wearing white. This also reflects the idea of having our music video portraying life as a stage and having her as the main performer and the other 3 as her backing girls or in theatre terms, ‘the chorus’. Having the stairs on the stage might be seen as ‘random’ but what it actually is, is scenery, which again is something that you would find in the theatre.
Picture 7
This is the first outside shot we see, and is the first shot which doesn’t take place on the stage. Obviously we still need to keep the theme going through our video so we need to portray a stage outside. The Graffiti on the wall in the background acts as a backdrop to the girls. It was a great background to use because it symbolises youth and what these girls stand for. Just like before in our video our main girl is in a different colour top and is at the front of the line. They are all posing in the same way, which shows them being a unity, which is another thing we see on the stage.
Picture 8
We used IMovie on the Macs to change the contrast on this clip and make it brighter. There were two reasons for this, the first being that the lyrics are ‘Walking on Sunshine’ at this particular bit in the video so it went well together and the second reason was because we wanted to create some kind of different reality. In this part of the video we want the girls to be spreading joy and being happy. This is exactly what we have achieved.
Picture 9
This is a screen shot of our title at the end of our video. Most titles are at the start or end of the video and are in the corner of one of their shots. This is too stereotypical, so I wanted to have a title which was different. This is just a completely black screen with white writing over the top in the corner. I actually think it works really well. It also comes in, exactly on the last beat of music so it works really well. Another option would have been to have it over the clip but I think this type or artist, someone starting over again on her own, and wanting to be original, would do something like this.
Luke - Evaluation - Question 2
Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.
*The music on this slideshow might see a peciluar choice but my reason was because I didn't have the song from my video at hand, but I did have this song. The woman Singing is Melanie C who is a former pop star and went on to become an actress in the hit musical 'Blood Brothers'. The song she is singing is 'Easy Terms'. The reason I think this was a good idea for this slideshow was because it links to the genre of pop because of the singer and theatre, which is the theme in our music video because of the song she is singing.
1.) The colour schemes within my video and my ancilliary products combine together well. The idea of her being on a stage is portrayed with the black backgrounds and a shine of light on her. This is shown in the first half of the music video when she is actually on a stage and then in the anicllary products with a black background. In our video our main girl is wearing a pink top which stands out over the white tops which the other girls are wearing. This makes pink our prilimary colour. This is carried through into my ancillary products, with the pink writing. To make an even bigger connection I could of had her wearing pink clothing in the photoshoot but I thought that would be a bit too much.
2.) Throughout our music video, we focuss on the girl singing because it is her music video. We do this by using close up shots off her and making her look glamorous. You can see that we have also done this on our digipack and poster. The shots off her are either up close or in a position which portrays her as being a glamorous superstar, which is what she is. On my poster, I have four pictures of her, one which is the one the audience should focuss on, and 3 more in which are there to make the main one stand out more. I made up a story for her, that she had just left a girlband, so the poster empahises the fact tat it's just her alone because even though there are four shots, they are all off her.
3.) The editing in my video is simple and I have only changed it to look surreal in the dance sequence bits.I changed the contrast and sharpness of the clips on the dance sequence to make it seem that they are in their own world. All of this action takes place on stage and from my own experience, when you are performing on stage, you go to a completely different world and that's what I wanted to show in this small sequence in the video. This is carried on through my ancilliary products. I have put negative effects on some of the pictures, especially on the Poster. The 3 pictures in the bqackground which are supposed to represent the girls in the previous band, have all been changed, whether it is with a negative tone, contrast or sharpness of the image to create a surreal image for the poster and to make the main picture of the girl stand out.
4.) The only text on our music video was at the end of the video, with her name and the title of the song. It was just black and white but had quite curly font. On photoshop I couldnt find a font that matched the one in the video so I tried to find one that was remotely similiar. I used this for all of my ancilary products because it was important that they all matched and went together well because they were all in theory one product.
5.) My video, my digipack and my posters all had to go together. It had to be asif my artist had chose everything for them and then put them together herself how she wanted them. It also had to relate to my audience, and I think it does. Everything goes together well and fits together like a real product would.
Luke - Evaluation - Question 3
Mr Ford: Hello Luke, What have you learnt from your audience feedback?
Luke: Oh Hey Mr Ford! I have learnt than in this project, it doesn't matter what I, the producer and directer of a product thinks, but I must keep in mind the audience that my product is being aimed to, and what they like.
Mr Ford: What would be an example of this?
Luke: After creating the draft of our film, we had someone say that they did not like the setting of the memorial statue. After thinking about this ourselves we realised that it was not an appropriate setting for our video because it doesn't fit in with the mood we want to be setting in the video. Our audience would be dissapointed seeing this setting in our video
Mr Ford: Where did you change your setting to and how did it help?
Luke: We changed our setting to down at the local park. This fits perfectly in our pop genre, The idea of the characters being young kids in a drama school, is being emphasised with the park setting.
Mr Ford: I said to you that one of your Actresses did not have the right energy throughout the video. What did you do about this?
Luke: Well Mr Ford, we took on your advice and we changed our actresses. After watching the clip back we did realise that one of actresses especially wasn't portraying the right kind of character we wanted. The pop genre, and our song especially calls for a very high energy, and she wasn't doing this. So we repalced them with other actors.
Mr Ford: Also Luke, You had a few issues with the dance in your video, what can you say about this?
Luke: One of our actresses tripped in the dance sequence. When filming it, we didn't think it was very obvious but when watching it back, it was. 0We got a different girl to create a different dance which would be easier for the girls but look more complicated.
Mr Ford: Is there anything else you would like to add luke?
Luke: We were also given the feedback that our shots were out of focuss, so when filming our final draft we took huge care of this and made sure that each shot was focussed. Also, a girl in our media class said that we should put them all in matching costumes and add lighting to the stage when they are dancing. We did exactly this because it added so much to our mise en scene and made me the video look so much more professional.
Mr Ford: Overall, how was the audience feedback helped you?
Luke: Without the audience feedback we wouldn't have the video that we have now. The people we asked would all enjoy our video. So they know what they want to see, so it is our job to give it them.
Friday, 28 January 2011
Evaluation question 4
Research and Planning
Blogger- I used blogger as the base where to store all of my research and planning This was useful as it would allow me to present my work in different way and still be able to upload them onto blogger.
Youtube- Was massive part of research and planning as it showed almost all of my evidence of where I got my inspiration from and what kind of genre I was doing. Also any ideas that I liked and thought that we may be able to use in our video.
Google- I used google very similarly to "Youtube" as it provided evidence of images of what types of costume I was thinking about using and potential settings.
Scribd- When I was talking about the target audience I used scribd to show a document with boxes and columns. I found that it was a neater way to present this.
Slideshare- I Slideshare was a good way to show our powerpoints of our moodboards for random ideas and inspiration for our music video.
Constructing the music video
Video camera- Without this we would have no music video so this supplied all of the footage.
Blogger- Throughout the process we were blogging any issues and what worked well.
Iphone- This was a vital piece of media technology that we used it supplied us our communication between the actresses and my work partner "Luke" and also talking photos through out the process of filming. It also supplied the music for when we were filming so the actresses had something to lip sync to and with it being a dance number they needed to here the beat of the song to dance to all in time.
Facbook- This was another form of communication between the dancers and luke, we also used it for audience feedback on our work, which was useful as many people can easily access facebook.
Lighting- When filming we used the big stage lighting in our music video this helped us a lot as it created more of a stagy look which is what we wanted to suit our genre.
CD- When we were on the stage we found it easier to use the CD to play in the CD player as it was louder so it was easier for the actresses to hear.
Editing
Mac- The macs allowed us to upload our footage and edit it in time to the music using effects and transitions
Imovie- This was the program on the macs that allowed us to do all the editing and use effects and transitions to add to the music video, for example we used a fade in and fade out at the beginning of the music video where it was showing all the individual girls. It helped to create the slow effect that we wanted at the start. We also used a colour contrast as one clip was a slightly different colour to the others to by using this we were able to match the colours up. I would say especially for the second part of our video were it was outside we used the hare and turtle tool to speed up and slow parts down as we felt this helped emphasise the fun. I also used imovie when doing this evaluation to video audience feedback.
Itunes- We used Itunes to download our song off.
Ancillary
SLR camera- When talking the photos of "Danielle" for our ancillary products. We decided to use an SLR camera rather than a digital camera as we wanted the best quality and we thought about having a few close up shots so we wanted them as clear as possible, it also allowed us to play around with the focusing.
Photoshop- This was a main tool when it came to my Ancillary products as it enabled me to play around with different images, effect and contrasting. It also allowed me to clear up any blemishes on "Danielle's" face so it would have that professional look to it. I found this very helpful as it allowed me to play around with different ideas I had and make them into what i wanted.
Memory stick- This allowed me to transfer all my work onto different computers so I was able to print my work off.
Evaluation question 3
I found our Audience feedback very useful as our draft that we created was not near enough to what we wanted our final piece to be. So it was helpful because we could list and go through the exactly what needed changing and think about how we were going to go about it. After doing our first draft we found that there weren't many shots or any variation of shots. So we thought it would be a good idea to sit at the Mac and go through all of the shots in our first draft and see which we were keeping and then kept adding more in. We felt that this was a really good idea as we found just after 30 of our original shots we had added 30 more in.
I have learnt from the audience feedback that it is good to get a lot of it from different people, So you can take everybody's ideas into consideration. It also helps to get the classes feedback as everybody in the class are all doing different types of genres so they can all add there own individual opinion. I felt that it was good to have an open mind. I also found it very useful especially from the teachers as they were able to tell us that our shots needed to be tighter in so you dont get so much excess space. If they hadnt told us this we might have not been aware of it and it then look messy. Comments like these are little details that make a massive difference as they can show the line where it can look quite professional or really messy. I found that attention to detail was very important and you need to take time to look at the shot you are about to take and make sure nothing that doesnt fit the verisimilitude of shot. We also found that lighting was picked out when it came to the feedback. First we had the problem with shots inside on the stage. This was a problem that we were already aware of as at this moment we werent able to get stage lights that night. Another problem we had was the outside shots that as it got later the lighting changed and became very obvious at the end. So in our second draft we were very conscience of this.
Thursday, 27 January 2011
Wednesday, 26 January 2011
evaluation Question 1 (Music video) Becky
When it came to getting inspiration for the doing it outside, We originally thought of making it really cheesy with all of the dancers wearing yellow rain coats and umbrellas to fit in with the song. But we werent able to get hold of all the same costumes so we thought we would just use the same costumes all the way through. We wanted to show the girls messing around and having fun so we showed them messing around on a park and and walkingover a zebra crossing. We thought it would be appropriate to use The speeding up tool on the mac to show the high energy of the song, we also did a rewind tecnique to fit with the playfullness of the video.
Evaluation Question 1 (Music video) Becky
W also had the idea to use the dance studio at school and have a couple of clips of ballet, we thought that the dance studio would be a good place to do it as it had the proper dance flooring and mirrors, so you could have experimented around with the shots. We decided not do do it as we didnt think it quite fitted in with our song. I did feel that there was potential at the start for it when the music was quiet and building up, but we took a different approach to the music video. By the audience being able to see "Danielle" realising the music.
Evaluation Question 1 (Music video) Becky
After researching glee we liked the idea of filming it on stage it gave that cheesyness to it, which is what you expect in this type of genre. We also thought it would be easy access as we have a good size stage at school and lighting that we would be able to use. We also thought it looked effective that they were all wearing the same costume. So we decided to keep ours basic and similar.
Evaluation Question 1 (Music video) Becky
I have used Tube chop to show the ways in which and where we took inspiration from. For example in this one we liked the idea of having dance sequences in our music video so we purposely put them in a formation and made up a dance routine that they all did in sink. WE thought from looking at the fame video that we wanted to have a mid shot of them all and then also close ups of different parts of there bodies so it was more professional. As we werent able to use professional dancers or many dancers either so thought close up shots would make it appear that there were more and it was full of energy.
Friday, 21 January 2011
Back cover
To createt the swirls coming out of the sides of the album cover i cut out the ones from the fist picture i drerw for the front cover page and duplicated them so it gives them a 3D effect. I also applied the glow effect on them and then used the fill paint tool to add the different colour to them. All of the writing of the song titles were seperate layers so i could play around with where they were placed.
When It came to her name "Danielle" it took along time to decided where to put it, Firstly i out it inbetween the spirally patteren coming down. But i found that because it is quite a long name it looked very messy, So i tried many different ways how to put it and finally came up with this one, which i think works with the album name underneath. By using a glow effect this is what created the different look to the orignail picture i drew. I then found that there wasnt much colour involved so i again using the lasso tool cut out the ( what is yellow part now) of the fields and filled it in yellow. I also cut out the trees that you see on the left from a the picture i drew for the poster, i then applied the glow effect to it, so it blended in with the rest of the front cover. 
I used this picture on my back page of my digi pack , I photoshopped her on to the page by using the lasso tool and cutting her out. 
I then cut the speaker system out by the process by using the lasso tool. Then when I was on photoshop I duplicated the image so I had two speker systems and rotated it around , so then i was able to place the cut out picture of her on top of the speakers so that it looks like she is sitting on them.Friday, 14 January 2011
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