Evaluation Deadline

The final deadline for your evaluation (final final final version - no editing allowed after you've posted it) will be in your second Media Studies lesson this week (week commencing 25th January). After this date, your teachers will look at the work and make a note of who met the deadline. Students who post their work after this deadline will have marks deducted.

If you are having technical difficulties posting blogs it is your responsibility to inform your teachers before this deadline.

Video Deadlines

ROUGH CUT DEADLINE: midway through week of 30th November.
FINAL DEADLINE FOR VIDEO: Friday 11th December@4.30pm

How to make a pitch

Making a Pitch

Once an artist has recorded a song, it is handed out to a variety of different pop video directors who will work in consultation with the artist on ideas for a video. This is called a ‘pitch’ and is presented to a creative team who will be responsible for marketing and promoting the video upon release.

Each director will talk through his or her ideas with the creative team, and will aim to make their video concept so incredibly exciting that the artist and creative team would be fools to listen to anyone else’s ideas!

Task
Before you can film your video, your group must first pitch your ideas to your teachers and class (creative team). This 10-15 minute pitch will be marked by your teacher, and these marks will be used as part of the planning allocation for your coursework.

There are several key areas that must be covered in the pitch. They are:

1. Start with a ‘concept’ for the video in one sentence (“a yacht cutting through the Ionian sea with the Greek islands as a back drop”; “A group of rebellious teenage girls taking over the gym at high school”).
2. Who would your artist be signed to? Would it be a big label or an Independent? Internet only download?
3. A brief outline of the video’s narrative (or content if not narrative based).
4. Setting and locations to be used. This should be relevant to the concept, but needs to be specific citing exact locations: e.g. setting might be a beach house – locations within which might be pine-clad attic study.
5. Costume. Clearly must be related to the concept. E.g. lead singer and supporting dancers will be wearing school uniform – navy skirts, white shirts, etc.
6. Some discussion around specific shots and other technical codes. It is essential that the director talks through how they would film an artist, describing the mise-en-scene, how the shots will be lit, how the camera will move, etc. Are you using any special effects or equipment?
7. Audience – who is the video aimed at? This must be specific – it’s not just about age and gender – think back to the task you completed on audience a few weeks ago.
8. Where do you envisage it being shown and when? Internet, music channels?
9. Describe the visual style and graphics of your digipak and advertisement. Will you produce a 4, 6 or 8 panel digipak? What will it contain? How will it meet the needs of your target audience? Have some initial sketched ideas to show. Explain the link between the video and the artwork.
10. Storyboard – you must show a completed storyboard for your video.
11. Production schedule – you must have a completed production schedule.

12. You must conduct a risk assessment for filming off site – listing the potential hazards you might encounter and what you can do to avoid these risks.

Section 1A of the exam
Please write a paragraph on each of the following 3 questions and be prepared to answer questions during your pitch on them:
13. How do you plan to use digital technology in the production of your 3 products? Be specific about this – think about the packages and equipment you will use, as well as how you intend to use the internet (blog and vimeo!).
14. How have you used conventions from real media text in your planning? Think about all 3 products for this question – reference real media texts and draw comparisons and ideas.
15. What have you learned about research and planning a production, compared to AS?

What do you do next?
Allocate tasks to each group member. Each group member must prepare a short presentation on their designated tasks.

You may use music, visual aids, demonstration or even audience participation if you wish!
Remember to put your contribution to the pitch on the blog.

How to produce a digipak

Ancillary Product Planning

Individually you will make the following:

~ A digipak for the release of the album that your music video is taken from.
~ A magazine advertisement for the album, which may include an image of the digipak

What is a digipak?

It’s a modern approach to CD/DVD packaging, usually made of thick cardboard, and allowing the possibility of including a lot more information on the band/artist in the form of a small stapled booklet that is inserted into a small pocket in the digipak.. They are visually pleasing, allowing sophisticated graphics that can run across all of the panels establishing a graphic theme. They can come with 4, 6 or 8 panels that fold outwards. They allow the possibility of including more than one disc, perhaps in the form of DVD extras or additional recordings, that accompanies the release of a song, album or DVD.


What should your Digipak contain and look like?
You will need to plan a minimum of 4 panels (sometimes referred to as ‘panes’) for your digipak that will need to include the necessary information about the album release that it is for. Depending on how many panels you decide to produce (remembering that it is minimum of 4) will depend on how you layout your design and information. You should research digipaks on your blog.

Planning your digipak
Digipaks often include some or all of the following information (this will definitely depend on how many panels you choose to produce). Through your research into digipaks you should decide what should be included on yours. You should start your research by focusing on your target audience and their expectations of what should be inside a digipak – what would they like to see? It could include:


¸ Name of band
¸ Name of album
¸ Track listings for the album
¸ Production information, including copyright and company details
¸ A few thank yous
¸ Collage of photographs of the band during the filming of a video or rehearsal for a tour
¸ Snippets of lyrics from the songs
¸ Behind the scenes information on the making of the album

You could also choose to produce the small stapled booklet containing other information about the band that many artists/groups choose to produce now, and that fits inside a neat pocket on the inside cover, but we certainly don’t expect you to do this!!

Colour scheme and graphic layout for digipak and advertisement
You will need to carefully plan the style and look of your print ancillary products, choosing a colour scheme, font and graphics to feature on the digipak and the advertisement so that a clear visual link is made between these two products. You could choose to use some images from your music video; you could choose to use the same or similar images across the digipak and the advertisement.

To help you with planning your digipak have a look at some that are on the wall in 323 to give you an idea of what they can look like. You can be as creative as you like but remember that it must link visually in some way to your artist/band image.

Preparation for submission:
For submission purposes you will produce your digipak to CD size pages (12cm x 12 cm) using Photoshop and will upload them to your blog, clearly labelling which panel is which. We will also ask you to print out a colour hard copy for us to send off to the moderator, along with your advertisement and promo video. You can, if you wish, attach your colour hard copy to some cardboard to produce an actual mock-up of a real digipak.

Your advertisement must be produced to A4 size and printed out in hard copy. It can then be reduced in size for uploading to the blog.


Have you paid your fiver??

Don't forget to pay your £5 course fee. This covers your memory cards, all your colour copying, your trip to the cinema and the DVD of all the work from the A2 year. Take your £5 to Micky or Marisa in room 340 by Friday 9th October.

Keep up the blogging!

Remember to date and tick the blogs off your check list as you post them. If you've lost the check list that was given out to you in the first media class in September then you will find spare copies in the cardboard filing unit in the A2 Media Studies classroom (room 333) - help yourself.

Your teachers will be reading and commenting on your blogs each week, so it's important that you keep up to date.

We will be selecting a blog of the fortnight, nominated by teachers - watch this space to see who will be first.

Proforma for obtaining copyright


Your full address and postcode

Date

Record company/band
Full address and postcode


Dear (insert name of copyright holder – record company/individual or ‘Sir/Madam’ if you do not know the name)

Request for Copyright Permission to use part or whole of: (name of song by name of artist)

I am a student of A Level Media Studies and for my Advanced Portfolio I will be working in a group to produce a promotional package for the release of a new album track. I would like to request permission to use the above track for this project.

The finished project will not be made available publicly and will be used solely for coursework purposes. The holder of the original copyright will be fully acknowledge in the finished project.

If you do not hold the rights for this song I should be grateful if you could forward this request to the appropriate person, or return it to me with the contact details in order that I might approach the copyright holder directly.

Yours faithfully


Your signature

Your name printed

Summer work 2009

AS-A2 Summer Work

Researching a Promotional Package for the Release of a Single & Seeking Copyright Clearance for a British Song Release

Your summer work will prepare you for the first unit on the A2 course that starts in September – the Advanced Portfolio in Media. The brief that you will follow is: A promotional package for the release of an album, to include a music promo video, together with a CD cover and magazine advertisement.

The FIRST part of your summer work is to research the promotional package for the release of a single. Select a single from a British artist of your choice and collect together information about the promotion of this single. You should aim to include, amongst other things:

¸ Magazine or Newspaper articles covering the release, including reviews;
¸ Magazine or other print advertisements;
¸ A press release;
¸ Information on the record label;
¸ A note of where and when you see any other promotional material (such as moving image advertisement, interviews with the singer on television, etc);
¸ Information on how the Internet is used in the promotion of new songs.

Your materials should be arranged on a piece of A3 paper that can be displayed in the A2 Media Room in September. You can collect A3 paper or sugar paper from your teacher before the end of term.

Production work on the A Level Media Studies course is subject to copyright laws, which means that you cannot use songs from well known artists without seeking the permission from their record company first*. The SECOND part of your summer work requires you to seek copyright permission for a song from a British Artist. Firstly, indentify an artist and song, then establish who owns the copyright. The easiest and old-fashioned way of doing this is to look on the back of the Album/CD case, or it is possible to source this information from the band/artist’s official website. Use the proforma on the reverse of this sheet as a guide and send your request off to the relevant person/people. You will need to bring a copy of your letter, plus the reply (if you receive it in time!) to the first lesson back in September.

Deadline

You will be required to informally talk through your campaign to your class during the first lesson back in September. Your A3 ‘collage’ will be taken in by your teacher and marked, and will form part of the planning mark for your A2 coursework. You should also bring your copyright letters with you to this lesson.

Failure to complete the summer task will result in marks being deducted from your coursework.



* You could decide to select an unsigned band from Myspace – in this case you would write to the band directly and ask their permission to use the track. This may be more likely to result in permission being granted and they may love your music video so much that they decide to use it!!

Thursday, January 21, 2010

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)

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