The Filming Process: Hard/Easy? and Changes made:

The whole filming process was a fun one with many awkward and streeful times along with it. The ideas and images in our heads that were created for the music video looked to be very imagainative and unrealistic when i started filming as it looked like some of the angles wouldn't work, there was limited space, the lighting was too dark or too light in some cases and even sometimes the location or angle that the camera was pointing in a room didn't work so a lot of changes had to be made during the process to make the video successful and fulfill the brief. Adapting to surroundings and locations was the hardest as i had an idea of what shots i wanted to film on certain days and how i wanted them to look but when you put the artist and the camera in to the room/space you are filming in many things need to be changed because of the lack of space able to move around and create angles and lighting was a big part of the filming process because it had to on point for the shots to work, so a lot of moving about and juggling shots had to be done.

The shots that were filmed containing the buses was pretty hard to shoot because i had to try and time the shot and camera filming with the arrival of the bus and the movement of the artist which was very time consuming and became annoying as the bus schedule was very long and the waiting around for the buses to come was again time consuming when other shots had to be filmed. Another hard thing was framing the shots and keeping the camera stil when panning along with the artist running for the bus, so there were many elements that could go wrong and that had to be taken into consideration when filming theses sequences.

The bedroom shots were extremely hard but fun to shoot. The main bulk of the video was focused on in the bedroom and the artists movement and action had to be followed in such a confined space. The angles that had to be created in the bedroom location had to be constantly changed because of the lack of space and the style/image i wanted to create, also the lighting in certain parts of the room were different than others so continuity filming had to be taken into consideration and a lot of re-filming had to be done because of the bad lighting.


The shots at the desk were easy enough to shoot because there was only a couple of frames that were based around the desk and computer. The most recognisable ones were the lipsyching of the mother to the daughter in the middle of the video. This was very hard as i had to shoot and re-shoot many of the shots because of the lighting and because the lip-synching had to be shown through many different angles which was time consuming but this was the easiest part of the filming process for me as the camera barely had to move but focus on one subject. Because of the size of the bedroom the desk was only able to be shot from about 4 angles again because of the limited space.

The shots in the hall way were difficult to shot as you can see from the image there is very limited space and a narrow space to position the camera etc. It was a fun but stressful process when filming.

The Shots from the kitchen i wanted to seem natural, just like the camera was following somebody around their everyday life, which was where the artist was palced within, so these shots were simply done with the camera placed on the work surface of the kitchen and then the aritst/ subject simply made some toast as she would usually and the camera followed her, these were some of the easiest shots to film during this process.

The lipsyching part of the video was hard as a lot of things had to be take into consideration. When she was lipsynching as part of the everyday life it was easy as she had to move about and sing but against these curtains i pulled them closed and put her against them to make it look like a studio setting so that there was a mixture of moving lipsyching and performance in the video. Overall the Filming process was both enjoyable but very time consuming and stressful at points because of the changes that have been mentioned above.

Evaluation:

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

My music video uses the music of Phats and Small with the song Turn around which comes under the genre of UK house music. We chose to use this song because is a kind of old song but people still know and recognize it and I wanted to make a video that was different to others of this genre and change the style of the original video and see what I could come up with. Some of the videos that inspired me when making the video and brainstorming ideas were:

The original video for the movie obviously inspired me because of the documentary like style of the video and also the quick use of camera work and editing – which speeds up the pace of the video and makes it more visually exciting. I wanted to make my video in the style of the original but clearly different so this video played a huge part in the planning stages and the process of making the video to stay with the style of Phats and Small but add my own twist to it.

* Kate Nash – Foundations: the realism style of the video and the way that it is shot in only one flat but still has the effect of the musicality portrayed which is exactly what I tried to do, I only used a flat to film but the way the music and words were portrayed in the video were clever. The angles that she uses including the close up resembles some of the shots used in my own work. I also like the fact that she uses everyday life and focuses on the daily routine, which I was trying to do in my music video, following a girl around on her daily routine from when she woke up and I wanted to show the good and bad side of her life.

* Bob Sinclair – Love Generation: This video cleverly follows a boy around town driving his bike throughout his say and highlights what he does in this time and it has a happy/sad side and a progressing narrative towards the end. This hugely inspired me as this is what give me the idea for the good/ bad day and the following around of a person, this heavily inspired the way my video turned out and was helpful in the planning process.

* Lilly Allen – Smile and LDN: The social realism that she uses, housing estates, London streets, rubbish etc there is no glitz and glamour and the delayed beat intro idea arrived from her LDN video which was an effective opening. Also in the LDN video there is a clear establishment between the good times and the bad times, which I tried to convey through my video and was inspired by hers.

(Add links to the videos on you tube)

(Show still screens of shots that inspired me and that resemble mine.)

I believe that I both developed and challenged the genre conventions of this style of music because usually for house music and this genre the videos are usually based around a club/party scene with a boy/girl romance and dancing etc but like the original video we have tried to keep the dance feeling of the music and visual style but we added an element of documentary style video to it, adding the dancing and lip-synching and incorporating everything together to create our video. We didn’t want to follow the typical conventions of a house music video because so many are on the market at the moment with the recent interest and rise in house music and they all pretty much look the same and can get boring so we wanted to step away from the typical video and try something different for this genre style. Also it could be said that we did go along with the conventions of the house music video because it could be directly compared to the original video in that we used the focus on a character, the close up lip-synching and the fun, dancing side of things. I didn’t want to challenge/ develop the genre and style of the video to much as it already connotes a certain style to its audience and they have a certain style of video that they like to watch, which already existing artists and video creators have done.

Here is the Digipak that I have created for my artist’s album:

(Image of Digipak)

My Digipak is inspired by the actual video as seen in all of the still images taken from the video. It is a conventional 6 panel Digipak that includes track lists, images that link to the video and advertisement where a clear comparison and connection can be made. There is information on the artist, CD etc. It follows the typical conventions of an already existing Digipak but obviously changed with the style of music and the visual element (still images) from the video. The UK house music scene influenced the video with the cartoon style images, limited colour scheme (red, white, black and pink) which were colours that appeared frequently throughout the video which again helps the audience make a clear link with the video and Digipak. To help me when I was creating this Digipak I researched and looked at already existing Digipak’s so I could see what they contained and how effective they looked. When researching we saw that most of them used large images as the front covers and large writing to establish names etc which we then followed as we didn’t want to stray away from the conventions of these Digipak’s. We followed a couple of rules when making our Digipak’s even though we had to individually create a Digipak using our own style we all kept the same fonts, used still images from the video and put the same information on it so that they all looked personal to our own style but also all had a clear connection to the Uk house music scene and to the video itself, which was conventional for the genre. The advertisement was made with exactly the same rules and it shows a clear connection to both the Digipak and the music video, which is helpful as audiences can clearly notice the style of the artist and establish it. The advert is A4 in size and is meant for a magazine/ newspaper, it has information on release date, Album name, tour dates and website information on the artist including the Polydor logo for copyright clearance and overall it shows and resembles an already existing advertisement and follows the typical conventions of this genre of music and also goes along with the conventions of typical magazine advertisements and the information it consists of.

(Add image of A4 advertisement)

Here are some Digipak’s and Advertisements that inspired me when researching and creating my own:

(Add images next to writing of the Digipak and adverts)

ACDC Advertisement – all of the block images inspired me for the designs on the front and back of my Digipak and also using the artist and album name in the middle of the images in another colour for impact is exactly what I done on the front of mine.

Eminem Relapse Album Cover – the use of an effect on the image to make it look more creative and make it look like it belongs to a certain style, also that the cover is just purely focused on the artist and nothing else, the limited colour scheme really works well.

Oasis Digipak – the limited Colour scheme is a running theme that works well in the Digipak’s, too many colours can take away from the effect of the album. The limited information on the front, image and word information limitation was heavily inspired by this Digipak. The simplicity is effective which is what I wanted to convey in mine.

How effective is the combination of your main product (video) and ancillary texts (Digipak and Advertisement)?

I believe that the combination of both my music video and my ancillary products are very effective, I think this because I have purposely made clear visual links between both. For example the same still images are used of the artist and mother from the video all with a cartoon style filter from Photoshop used so it establishes a clear style for the audience to recognise. I have used the some of the same images from the front of my Digipak and on my advertisement, which are clearly recognisable and stand out from the video so all 3 link very well in my eyes. Throughout the video there is a clear colour that stand out which is red, white and black so I have tried to carry this on and keep these the limited colours in both the Digipak and advert so even without noticing the images the colour scheme is easily connected with both the video and ancillary products. All throughout the making of my Digipak and advert I used the font – Handwriting Dakota which I thought was a fun style of writing to use that portrayed the fun of house and dance music, these can be looked at and made a clear comparison. On all of the images I used outside of the video I used a Photoshop filter called poster edges, which created a cartoon like effect over the image, and this theme runs through my advertising poster and Digipak.

My audience for my video and fans that would buy the Digipak and see the advertisement in their magazines would recognise them and see that there is a clear link between the music video and ancillary product. I believe my ancillary products to be successful in that it follows a certain style that fits conventionally with the UK house music genre, it clearly connects with the main product (video) and I have a running theme, style throughout all of my products that audiences can make clear visual links with. I also believe that my video is very successful as I have followed conventions of the house music genre, maybe developed them a little bit by adding my own idea to the video and taking it away from the club/ party scene but overall it looks really good and I achieved what I set out to achieve and it looks like how I imagined it when I was planning it, overall I am very happy with both my main product and my ancillary products.

I believe and hope that my target audience would be attracted to my main product as well as the ancillary texts because I have made my products with a clear target audience in mind and planned to aim it a certain audience which is teenagers up that are usually interested in this genre of music and like to party and go out on the club scene. I also think that the target audience would like my work as I tried to connect the video strongly with the actual lyrics of the song, it didn’t contain many lyrics but I interpreted them in my own way (got to turn around – as someone having a really bad day then waking up the next day and things turn out to be good) and made the video in strong connection with the lyrics which I think the target audience of this genre appreciates and would like. Teenage girls would probably be the main target audience for my video as the main character, the artist in the video is a girl and because of it following her through everyday life, girls may find connections between the video and their own lives and appreciate the good and bad side created, but also could be aimed at boys because the artist is a pretty girl and also the voice of the music is sang by a man so may be drawn to it because of that.

How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

This year we used new state of the art video cameras they were introduced at the beginning of the year to move away from the older ones that used to tapes compared to the newer ones we used during this process which recorded onto 2 memory cards, it made it much easier to film as the recording just transferred straight onto the Mac rather than logging and capturing and also easier to work with. The memory cards were convenient as they plugged straight into the mac's and wasn't as time consuming as the older versions.

Planning and Researching before we began to film was very helpful as it give us specific shot types to film and an idea of exactly how we wanted the end product to look. All of the brainstorms, shot lists, storyboards, watching existing videos and researching the music industry, all of this really helped us as it gave us a better idea of what we was aiming for and a clear idea of what to film. it also broadened my knowledge on what music videos should look like, how i wanted mine to look and also just opened my mind up to what the music industry involved and how it functioned. What i thought was very interesting during the planning and researching stages was deconstructing music videos and looking at individual shots, pulling out what they mean and how they work well, it showed and looked much deeper into a music video not just at the music but what every shot meant and conveyed to its audiences. Blogger gave me a place to collect all of my research and put it in to one place so that i could look back during the filming and working process, it also helped as i could single out and add links to videos that were relevant to the work i was referring to.

The internet was obviously a key part in the planning stage as we used it for you tube to research videos, Google for a search engine to gather information on the music industry and other artists, blogger to collect research and upload all work and other sites were used and very important in my research and planning. Computers and the internet were crutial during the planning stage and was heavily relied on throughout the whole process.

Photo shop was used to edit photos, add filters and effects on to my photos and also to create my advertisement. I found that the advert was easier to create on photo shop as i have a previous experience of using it and found it easier when editing the photos. I used the Quark express package and already existing template to create my Digipak, it was conventional and had 6 panels that showed links between my advert and video. These packages (Photo shop and Quark Express) were used on the Mac, this was helpful as i am familiar and comfortable with using the Macs, also we could print screen, grab still images from our music video and use them on the Digipak and advertisement which i relied on heavily as all of my ancillary products are based around screen shots.

Final cut Pro was the program that we used to edit the clips and create our video. We used transitions, cuts and effects over the clips to create an effect and make it become more visually exciting. We were also able to change the speed of the video and manipulate it to the effect and style that we wanted. It was a very helpful program as we was able to change anything and create a personal and individual style on the video. Green screen wasn't used in my video as i didn't feel that it was relevant or needed. Colour picker was used to enhance some of the clips were the lighting was a bit dark.

For the planning side of things i made a storyboard by hand and drew up the shots that i wanted to film but then took still images of each one and created an animatic, a moving storyboard to get a rough idea of what the finished product was going to look like if i stuck to the shots i drew out when planning.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

(add comments and reactions to video)

evaluation first draft

Evaluation



In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

There are a variety of ways in which our media use, develop and challenges forms and conventions of real media products. These ways involve our mise en scene, camera, editing and sound involved in our finished media product.

To begin with, there were a couple of videos that we were influenced by. For instance, we were influenced by the use of editing a video called ‘emotions’ by destiny’s child. This is because they used a 3-way split screen showing what 3 characters were doing at the same time. The reason we were influenced by this was because we wanted to use the 3 way split frames to show the central character getting dressed to go out partying at the same time, we wanted to show extreme close ups of girl’s putting their bangles and their boots without actually revealing who they were to create suspense.

Another music video which influenced us was a video called ‘make her say’ by kid cudi. We liked the way this video was edited using a different type of split frame. Instead of a 3 way split frame, they used a horizontal 2 way split frame which we thought would be interesting to put in to our video as it would look different and challenge a lot of other ‘funky house’ music videos, yet still fit the genre. However, we were not able to complete our plan of using a horizontal split frame as we the time we had to edit our video was very limited therefore, we had to leave out our idea as it would have been time consuming leaving us no time to edit the rest of the video.

As a group, we did not want to challenge the conventions of the genre of video too much as we felt that it would have been extremely difficult to challenge it. This is because, the genre ‘funky house’ was still new to many people in the UK as it hasn’t been introduced for a long period of time therefore people were just getting the know the music of the genre. This meant that, if we were to challenge the conventions of ‘funky house’ it would have been very difficult for us to do and we didn’t really have our own ideas of how to challenge it therefore, we decided to try and follow the conventions of real ‘funky house’ videos.

To show this, the DigiPaks we created were very much influenced and followed by the ‘funky house’ genre. I did this by, ensuring that the digipaks were bright and colourful as funky house as majorly based on colourful club lights making it look ‘funky’ and outrageously fun! To help me create my digipak I did a research and looked at existing ‘funky house’ albums to view the conventional styles of a funky house CD. I have seen a variety of funky house albums that pretty much followed the same type of styles. For instance, the entire funky house CDs I have viewed over the internet as party of my research reveals that they were all very colourful using colours such as pink, blue and green. I also noticed that most funky house CDs had girls at the front of the CDs. This emphasises the ‘male gaze’ as boys would be attracted by the girls on the CD and girls would want to be like the girls on the CD therefore they would purchase it to enjoy the music which represents partying and club life.

Because of this, we have decided as a group that we would have some house style rules for our digipaks and poster even though every body’s would be an individual piece of work. We have decided to all use the Bauhaus font as the letters appeared quite chunky making it stand out. As well as this, we agreed that we would use only bright colours on our poster such as, green, pink, blue, yellow and white. As a result, I also have decided to have a picture of me and Solone on the front of the digipak as we were smiling in the picture, which was taken from the video shoot. This makes the CD look fun and attractive being influenced by other funky house CDs.

For the poster to promote my Digipak I also made a research on what funky house posters looked like. I found out that, all posters, which promote the actual album, have particular elements of the digipak cover in the poster in order to make it recognisable to the consumers for which album the poster is promoting. For instance, the poster of the album should have preferably the same image used as the cover of the digipak with some additional information about the album.

In my poster, I used a capture shot of the image, which I used and edited for the front of the digipak. The reason I did not try to re-create the effects and designs I put around the image I have used for the front of my digipak was because it would too difficult as well as time consuming. This meant that, I decided to use the same image I used on my digipak of me and Solone, which would still make it easy to recognise for the audience without putting the additional designs. To make my poster look typical of other funky house posters, I used the same colourful fonts that I have used in my digipak to make my poster stand out and look bright. I have also, added in the name of the record label as well as the artist’s website with some information about where to purchase the CD from.




How effective is the combination of your main product (video) and the ancillary texts (digipak and advertisement)?


The combination of my main product and ancillary product is very effective. This is because I have made clear visual links between both the ancillary product as well as the main product. For instance, my promotional package all follow a particular house style. This is shown in the digipak as I have used the font called Bauhaus which I have also used in my advertisement poster. As well as this, the image I used in my poster is exactly the same image which is the front of my digipak. However, the front image of my digipak has an effect on it from photoshop and designs around it which is also from photoshop. I did not re-create the effects and the designs as it may have looked different. This is because, I attempted to re-create the image and add in the designs unfortunately, when I printed out my advertisement poster to see how it appears, the image looks very pixelated therefore, I decided to use a capture shot of the image rather than putting effects on it again.

My audience would recognise them as linked products as all the colours used in the front of the digipak is exactly the same as the poster as well as the way the title of the digipak is presented, they are presented in the same font and position as the poster. I think that my main and ancillary texts are quite successful. This is because, we followed the conventions of real ‘funky house’ videos without completely challenging it and we kept it the same the whole way through the video. We did not attempt to mix the ‘funky house’ style with any other genres, as it would have been too difficult and confusing to challenge this genre. The ancillary texts would also be rather successful as they have a very clear visual link with the main product as they follow the same styles of fonts, colours and images.

I believe that my target audience would be attracted to the main product and as well as the ancillary texts. This is because the main target audience for the ‘funky house’ genre would mainly consist of teenagers and adults who like to have fun and go clubbing. This is because; ‘funky house’ is an upbeat type of music, which a mixture of house and UK grime. The reason we would associate it with teenagers is because, grime was originated by teenagers producing their own music and lyrics and mixing it with house music turned it into a new music genre called ‘funky house’. The reason that our target audience would be attracted to our products is because; we involve conventional forms of ‘funky house’ such as, bright clothing, party life, and girls in tight clothes. Boys would be attracted to this because, the song and the video reveals guys going out to have fun at a club, and looking at girls and dancing with them, which is typical of a young adult’s and teenager’s party life on the weekend. As well as this, girls would be attracted to this because, they would be influenced by the way the girls are wearing their clothes and dancing in the video getting attention from people. Girls would be attracted as they would want to have nights out and impress guys whereas boys would be attracted as they would want to also go out with their friends, have a drink and dance with girls.

How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?


We used media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages in various ways.

To begin with, we were introduced to a brand new state of the art video camera which uses memory cards rather than tape. This was very new to us as, last year we were using an older version of video cameras of which we had to carry around tapes for recording our video clips. However, the memory cards this year were able to store all our video clips which was much more convenient for us as all we had to do was put our memory cards into the apple Macs in order to upload our video clips. This was much easier as we were also provided with two different memory cards named A and B in case we ran out of space on one memory card.

Making a decision on an artist.

We still havnt decided on an artist or a song to use for our music video practical. Next lesson as a group, we'll discuss properly the possiblities and quickly make a decision. Next lesson is tomorrow.

mise en scene in my AS thriller

The establishing shots show much of Chinatown in London because we wanted the audience to think we was there, but the actual location was in Bethnal green. A basement was best suited as it’s conventional for crime thrillers. The basement didn’t have any windows and had little lighting (partly because we arranged the darkness), most of the space was already taken up by boxes and cans of Chinese food and ingredients, these were our props, along with the ‘majong‘ table, which we surrounded around the characters.

Chinese triads dress formal and smart. The bodyguard is wearing a suit however the boss (Maria) is dressed smart yet sexy, this grabs the audience‘s attention. This provided an effect of a smart and dangerous; the audience will thus know who is the business men/ women and who is the victim (Dainai); she dressed in whatever she was wearing on the day as she is the civilian. We wanted to create a underground feeling with the kidnapping and interrogation. This would keep the audience interested and the trailer ends with a cliff hanger rather than a question.

Our thriller however is non- conventional in the fact that our main character is a short female boss, a male is seen as more dominant and powerful. The victim is also a black female which isn’t conventional as usually males get into trouble with gangsters. The bodyguard however is a male which is conventional. The height of the bodyguard increases his statute, and is even more increased by the shortness of the bosses height. Our first trailer was a test whether our dialogue needed to be better than the mise en scene and we discovered that the mise en scene said more than the characters could in a shorter amount of time.

Key narrative ideas to help steer influence on my music video

Key Narrative suggestions

Toradorov Propp suggested that conventional narratives are structured in 5 five stages.
a state of equilibrium at the outset
2. a disruption of the equilibrium by some action
3. a recognition that there has been a disruption
4. an attempt to repair the disruption
5. a reinstatement of the equilibrium
For example James bond films there is a disruption created and then it goes through the process but eventually solved.

Equilibrium = disequilibrium = new equilibrium
Narrative sense is provided to connect the story line.

Narrative involves transformation – situations are developed through the disruption progress.


Laura Mulvey
Women’s desire is subjected to there image in society. Feminist say Men look at women in patriarchal way because men phantasies and are obsessed with the appearance of women’ silent image. Feminist get frustrated with experiencing oppression as they feel controlled because of men’s physical obsession and assumptions of society.

Cinemas produce pleasurable clips in film, e.g.: obsessive over a woman’s looks because it fulfils sexual satisfaction can come from watching, in an active controlling sense.

Using another person as an object of sexual stimulation through sight, this can display narcissism and self ego.

A world of sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has split between active/male and passive female. The determining male gaze projects its phantasy on to the female form which is styled accordingly. Women are displayed with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact so that they can be said to connote to e to look at.
Women are displayed as sexual objects of erotic spectacles from pin ups to striptease, it simply plays and signifies male desire.