Conventions of a Music Video

Digipak Analysis - Rihanna

Katy Perry - Digipak

This is my analysis of Katy Kerry's digipak

What is a digipak?

Digipak
A digipak is simply an open CD booklet that has gatefolds with plastic CD holders attached to the inside of the cover and a small/mini booklet with information on the artist and the album. These were first created in 2000 and have been popular ever since.

The information that is commonly found in a digipak is: track list, album title, images to link to artist and album and lyrics. The most common size for a 4pp digipak is 139.5mm x 6mm x 125.5mm.

Teacher assessment - digipak analysis

A Level Media Progress Check - Lily
NSE - Teacher
Focus of assessment	Conventions of a digipak/analysis
Relevant assessment criteria	There is excellent research into similar products and a potential target audience
Evidence of progress/ evidence of meeting criteria	Detailed look into what goes into a digipak. You have used media language through your analysis.
Areas to work on next/ ideas to consider	Try to be more specific about what the audience will like/get from the digipak, through the specific aspects of it such as images or layout.
Additional comments

Time Line Of Music Videos

1960's - 1970's

1980's

1990's

2000's

Lip Sync Practice

Lip sync practice
When practicing lip syncing, we decided to go into a group and each have ago of filming and actually performing. This was a good idea as it allowed us to have a go at all aspects of lip syncing and secondly it allowed us to play around with different genres of songs.

The first song that we tried was 'Broke' by Hannah Grace. I filmed the shots for this songs. As I filmed these shots, I found it was easy as we wasn't focusing on camera angles. We used a close up of Grace's lips and shoulders in this practice shot. Due to this being our first practice we found it very hard to concentrate as it was embarrassing at first. Having time to practice lip syncing before we picked our final song has helped us to become more confident around each other when performing. The editing of this first shot was tricky as the lip movement wouldn't match with the song. From this experience we have learnt to take a number of shots before we actually starting to edit the final music video.
First try -


The second and third tries of lip syncing I chose to perform but we decided to try group lip syncing. Doing this enabled us to gain the skills for a duet song meaning that when picking a song we will know that we have the skills to use one for our final music video. We chose the song 'Love is an open door' from the Disney movie, Frozen. We chose this as we thought that it was more upbeat and would challenge our skills even further. From these tries we found that the change in pace helped us as up beat songs are easier to lip sync. This time around we shot many shots which allowed us to get the lip syncing better than the first time. We found when editing this song it was easier to get our lips completely in sync with the song. As a duet, I found that after a few take I founded myself enjoying performing rather than filming. When filming the real music video, I have now gained skills on lip syncing and would be happy to film and perform as the artist. We also learnt to make the person fit the voice of the singer. For example, Vanessa played a man as there were no males available but in our final music video we will be use to fit the artist and the voice correctly.

Second try (close-up) -

Third try -

Art Form

Made in love - John Legend
Here are some pictures that support the idea of art form within this music video.

Marketing techniques in the music industry

Question 1 - When looking at different forms of marketing, all artists should consider what is best for their reputation in the music industry.
When looking at social media as a time of marketing, there are many benefits to using this. For example, to set up it is free meaning that artists can reach a wider audience with no cost. When looking at Facebook there are over 1.4 billion users meaning that by marketing through this you can easily target your audience. YouTube is the most common use of marketing of a music video as it is free to post videos meaning that artists can use it at no cost.
The amount of newspapers sold nationally each day is 56 million. On Sunday's over 60 million are sold. This means that for an artist to get in the public eye through newspapers and magazine they can easily widen there target audience. Even though newspapers are more commonly bought by older people, the news travels because of people conversing about a particular topic. To be in the news is one of the easiest way for a celebrity or pop star to get talked about and well known, even if the news is not always positive.

Question 2 & 3 - My chosen celebrity to research was Britney Spears. I chose her as she was on of my favourite artists when growing up and due to her popularity and longevity. When looking how she is presented media there have been a series of reports which are good and bad. She is easily found in all types of marketing, from social media to newspapers. This is because of her popularity and her longevity. Through Britney's years as an icon pop star, she has collected a strong fan base meaning that ever her fans help her to market herself and her albums. This is down to word of mouth. The public and fans are the best way to market yourself as they can make information travel easily and to the correct people. In order for Britney to have kept her star status she needed the publicity of good and bad reports as it keep people remembering her.

 I focused on her being presented in the news due to the fact that she is strongly shown in newspapers and magazines. Some news reports were bad but others were good. The most famous news report ever about Britney was when she shaved her hair completely off. Doing this allowed herself to enter nearly every magazine and newspaper worldwide due to the talked about issue. Without these sorts of stories, people would not be as famous as people will forever remember Britney for the wacky things she done as an artist. These stories do not always have a positive effect on artists, as this did cause strong discussions about her between everyone. For example, when she got reported for using drugs this had a damaging effect on her career as people will think that she isn't the person she pretended to me. It can make some fans dislike her for the use of them and the way she is presenting herself to others. For stars to be presented in the media they need to make sure it is for good reasons as bad publicity can be very damaging to there status in the music industry.

Teacher assessment - website analysis

A Level Media Progress Check - Lily
NSE - Teacher
Focus of assessment	Website analysis
Relevant assessment criteria	There is excellent research into similar products and a potential target audience
Evidence of progress/ evidence of meeting criteria	Good clear identification of features across all websites.
Areas to work on next/ ideas to consider	Could you give a final summary of the main conventions across all websites and say what it has taught you.
Additional comments

Analysing Artist's Websites

When looking at artist's websites, I compared artists that focus on different genres. I did this so that I could take into consideration what genre my artist will focus on. I used the website 'a.nnotate' so that I could annotate images of the websites clearly.

Ed Sheeran -Gender - Male
Age - 23
Genre - Pop, Folk, Acoustics
Main features of website - Colour theme throughout to support album, videos and lyrics to supports songs, new page to promote himself as an artist.
Click here for my annotation - an annotation


Slipknot - Band
Genre - Heavy metal, nu metal, alternative metal
Main features of website - Simple design which is supported with links to other sites. For example, social media, itunes and stores. Colour scheme is fitted to genre with darkness. Click here for my annotation - an annotation



Overwerk -Genre - Electro
Main features of website - Very basic only including one image and a video. This could be because of budget but the use of links to social media helps to promote themselves more.
Click here for my annotation - an annotation

Teacher assessment - Goodwin and Mulvey

A Level Media Progress Check - Lily
NSE - Teacher
Focus of assessment	Goodwin and Mulvey
Relevant assessment criteria	There is excellent research into similar products and a potential target audience
Evidence of progress/ evidence of meeting criteria	Clear reflection and identification across theories and how this applies to videos.
Areas to work on next/ ideas to consider	If you could use specific images/sections of the videos to exemplify your points more clearly.
Additional comments

To amend the problems with this presentations, I added to the post on Goodwin & Mulvey. Adding more detail on how they link to the theories and linking my text more to images used in the powerpoint.

Andrew Goodwin - Music Videos

Will Smith - Men In Black
As you can from these two images there are locations, costumes and characters which the audience can make a clear link with the music video and the film. Features like this are used in order to increase the views of both the film and music video but mainly for promotion. The use of a catchy music video which uses parts from the film, makes the movie itself more memorable. Key features which are used in both are shown throughout it, even in the first few seconds you can make a clear indication of which genre and film it can been linked to. For example, the black suits are an iconic costume for the film 'men in black'. This links with Andrew Goodwin's theory of promotion.

Robin Thicke - Blurred Lines
There are elements within this music video which support both Goodwin & Mulvey. For example, Andrew Goodwin looks at promotion of products within music videos. You can see this this within Blurred line through the promotion of Dre Beats. Although this isn't as important compared to the promotion used in Will Smith's music video. This is because the promotion of this song is mainly for the artist but other products are used for companies to join together and promote each other.
Mulvey's theory on Male Gaze is shown massively through this music video. For example, in the first image is a young lady shown in a sexual way. This means that they gets male attention due to the use of costumes and props throughout.

Laura Mulvey - Music Videos

Laura Mulvey - Music Videos
Main Feature of the 'Male Gaze' -
- The representation of women in a sexual fantast and from a heterosexuals male point of view
- Scopophilia - the pleasure involved in looking at other peoples bodies
- Objectification of female characters
- Patriarchal society
- Active male and passive female
- Men - controlling subjects
- Women as an image
- Men do the looking and the women are there to be looked at
- Needs of male ego

Q1 - In what videos can we see the 'Male Gaze' theory? Give examples with explanations
Miley Cyrus - Wrecking ball
When looking at this music video you can see a strong intention for male attention. You can see this from the close ups being used throughout. For example, they are used to show her body parts, such as her lips and legs. The use of stereotypical red lipstick compared to her pale skin and white background draws you in to her. Her music video is highly sexual.
Robin Thicke - Blurred lines
Within this video you can see a even stronger use of male gaze. They did this by having, stereotypically, men in suits dancing with woman hardly dressed. The use of this helps to show how the male gaze can be portrayed. In this music video, the use of red blasts of colours stereotypically indicates sex. Having this makes the 'Male gaze' stand out.

Q2 - Do you believe that women "experience the text's narrative secondarily"? Why?I believe that women do experience the text's narrative secondarily, as they are the ones who are always being watched, judged and talked about by men. I also believe that men can be seen as objects by females too meaning that the male gaze theory may not always be supported.

Q3 - Does this help with continuation of sexism? Does this suggest that the music industry is corrupt and filled with sexism?
I think music is an element of sexism for all ages but mainly the younger generation. This is because they are influenced more easily. I think that the idea of 'male gaze' is not acceptable but due to the viewing numbers constantly increasing it is being seen as okay. I think people do not think that the music industry is filled with sexism as it has become our way of daily life to see each sex portrayed in this way by the media.

Q4 - Do you think women play on this stereotype and why?
I think that in today’s society females do play to males attention. I think this could be influenced by the media but is mainly because they find the attention positive. Having sexualised figures in the lime light means that people are being less confident with the way to look. I think women play to it as it is seen as natural to act in such a way.

Production Diary

July 9th -
This was the first lesson of A2 Media Studies. This is where we looked at what we was going to cover this year and how everything was going to work. We started with an essay on "Music videos have changed drastically over time and are now unrecognisable from their historical counterparts." This allowed us to research music videos from historical times and from now. This allowed us to widen our knowledge and give us a good insight into music videos. From this I learnt that music videos have the same purpose of entertainment but had changed a lot due to technology being improved.

July 10th -

Today was our first lesson of A2. Our first task was given to write an essay on ‘Music videos have changed drastically over time and are now unrecognisable from their historical counterparts.’  Today our task was a project to create a display board of significant music videos from the 1960's to present day. We were split up into groups allowing us to focus on different decades. In this project we explored the music industry at the time and who was popular artists. My group focused on the 90’s. We divided the work equally between the members in the group to make sure we met deadlines. I feel as through this helped us to become very creative in how we displayed our decade. If I was to do this again, I would try to work together more, so we could communicate about what we wanted as a group. 

July 13th -

Today we were set our preliminary task, which was Britney Spears hit me baby one more time. We were then split up into two separate groups. Our group worked really well together, as we started as soon as the task was set. We watched the video as a group and screenshot each shot, and then we worked out the time frame, costume, actors, what shot and the location.

Once this was finished we moved on to filming. Doing the plan before the filming helped us on what we needed to film and allowed our filming process to be quick. The plan helped us with the editing process as well, as we could compare our shots to the planned ones. Our preliminary task was very enjoyable and funny, due to the organisation of our group but also allowed us to widen our knowledge from AS level to now. During the editing process we found that lip syncing was hard to perfect so we kept trying and everybody took turns in order to try our best. I think that the preliminary task helped us to understand music videos further and to gain the experience of making one. 

This week we also got given the task to analyse a music video of the teachers choice. I was given Michael Jackson - Thriller. I was happy with my given music video as I knew that this was a popular music video meaning that I would enjoy my time analysing it. I produced a prezi to make the presentation more eye catching and enjoyable. I think that the next time I analysis a music video, I should ensure that I go into further detail.

September 8th -

This lesson we focused on Star Analysis. This is where we looked at the life of a star and how they have been portrayed in the media at times. We done this by looking at how things changed in their life and elements through all it. I looked at Michael Jackson in more detail. I chose him as I found that it would be interesting to research him further so that I could link this to my music video analysis. 

Today we were set the task of lip syncing. We were told we each had to do a song individually. It took a little while for everyone to pick their song and then we got down to filming. Grace chose to lip sync to Hannah Grace "Broke" at first. I chose to film this time. At first we both found it very embarrassing as it was our first time performing. At first we only filmed our mouths and shoulders as we thought that would be less embarrassing.  From doing this task we have found out that you really need to know all the words to the song and you need to over-pronounce the words for it to look good when it is put together with the music. Making it clear when singing shows that you are more confident. This made us realise how important it is when we start filming the actual music video that we do not mess the words up and we have to stay in character of the singer when we are performing. Next I had a go tried singing a duet to the Frozen song "Love Is An Open Door". We got one of our friends Vanessa involved and she played the man and I played Anna, the girl character. First Grace only filmed our mouths and shoulders, this song took us longer to film as it is longer song and the timing had to be perfect to fit in with the song. We also filmed this of our full face. They also had to make sure they were singing the correct bit of the song, as it is so well known they would often sing each other’s parts, which if we kept in wouldn't look realistic. We found that this sound was actually easier to edit due to the practice we had with the solo lip sync.

September 9th -
This lesson we looked into Laura Mulvey's theory on male gaze, into more detail. We did this to widen our knowledge further from AS meaning that we can now adapt her theory to music videos. Independently, I made a PowerPoint answering questions given by the teacher. 
1) In what videos can we see the 'Male Gaze' theory?
2) Do you believe that women "experience the text's narrative secondarily?" and why?
3) Does this help with the continuation of sexism? Does this suggest that the music idustry is corrupt and fuelled by sexism?
4) Do you think women play on this stereotype? Why?
This task took a lot of time as it required research and adapting this to music videos of my choice.  We also had to research into marketing techniques used in the music industry. This is when we picked an artist and focused on how the use of marketing has helped them grow as an artist. We found how much attention/promotion they get from all areas of marketing such as: Social media, newspapers and even the news. I picked Britney Spears as I knew she was an artist that has been in the public eye for both good and bad reasons. This allowed us to think of ways our own artist will be promoted, for example, the easiest way is through social media as it is free. This was an interesting task as it allowed us to see if being in the public eye can be negative towards an artist’s career.

September 12th -
Artists websites are a main feature which can be used to gain target audience. Analysing artists websites was good as it allowed use to label the key features of a website which promotes there music and themselves as an artist. This helped to see trending features in websites, such as events and even social media tabs. This allowed us to see how we can add key features into our own website in the future.

September 15th/16th -
Today we was set the task of lip syncing. We was told we each had to do a song individually. It took a little while for everyone to pick their song and then we got down to filming. Grace chose to lip sync to Hannah Grace "Broke" at first she found this task very embarrassing as she like being involved in the behind the scenes stuff, like filming and editing, more than performing. At first we only filmed our mouths and shoulders as we thought that would be less embarrassing.  From doing this task we have found out that you really need to know all the words to the song and you need to over-pronounce the words for it to look good when it is put together with the music. This made us realise how important it is when we start filming the actual music video that we do not mess the words up and we have to stay in character of the singer when we are performing. Next I had a go and she wanted to sing a duet to the Frozen song "Love Is An Open Door". One of our friends, Vanessa and she the man and I played Anna, the girl character. First we only filmed their mouths and shoulders, this song took us longer to film as it is longer song and the timing had to be perfect to fit in with the song. We then went on to film full faced. They also had to make sure they were singing the correct bit of the song, as it is so well known they would often sing each other’s parts, which if we kept in wouldn't look realistic.

September 18th -
This lesson we researched song choices for our final chosen song. This was fun as it allowed us to research many different songs of our choice. We research many different genres that could have been used. This allowed us to narrow down our choices and pick a final genre and 3 final songs. We put together a VoiceThread explaining why we liked each song and artist. This allowed us to get feedback from the class of what songs they and don't like.

September 24nd -
Today was a double lesson where we focused on Digipaks. We had to find out what they were and had to create a piece of work analysing existing ones. This was good as it allowed us to see the key features of different genres digipaks. In this lesson we also was set an assessment to compare our AS coursework to A2. I looked at Rihanna and Katy Perry. We had to looked at the following areas and explain what we can do to improve for this year.
- Research and planning
- Following the conventions of real media texts
- Creativity/Originality
From these areas we wrote what we did last year and how we can expand this year and progress. This helped us to look back at our strengths and weaknesses from last year and helped to highlight what can make things better. This allowed us to set ourselves goals and aims for ourselves when creating our coursework this year.
One goal I set myself was to be more creative and original in the genre of our choice.

This allowed me to explore music videos from historical types giving me a wider knowledge of these and how they have changed over time. From this essay I took that music videos still have the same concept but due to technology have been able to be produced at a better standard/quality. After doing this, it allowed me to know that I had widened my knowledge and that planning for a question like this are is important.

September 29th -
Conventions of a music video is an important thing to know when creating your own music video. Due to this I researched into this a lot meaning that I could gain a wide knowledge on this that comes with music videos. After my research I created a VoiceThread with a script that I created. For example, I found that important factors are the same as our film opening conventions. These are mise-en-scene, editing, camera angles and sound. These are very important as they allow us to get emotions across to the target audience. I found this very helpful as it helped me to reach a self-set goal of following the conventions of real media texts. Through researching this is great detail I will be able to apply these conventions to my final music video.

October 1st -
Today I did some self-set work. I found in my spare time that it would be useful to widen my skills of Adobe Premiere Pro. I done this by playing around with speeds of footage. I took some random footage and reserved them and sped them up. This was helpful as it is allowing me to gain more skills and expand on the one I already have from editing last year. I feel that doing this will give us potential ideas for this year meaning that we have more skills within our group.

October 4th -
I explored the conventions of different genre music videos. I put together posters of these genres showing the important factors from their music video. This was useful as it will help me to reflect back if we decide to choose these genres. I did this by putting together a poster on Glogster meaning that I am making sure to make my work interesting and different. I think that one weakness to my posters was that I could have gone into greater detail on the conventions.

October 7th -
I look took the time to create a presentation on newspaper and the way artists are shown within this. This individual piece of research helped me to compare how artists are reported in different ways, such as good reasons and even bad. I done this by taking newspaper cutting and annotating them on how they show the artist. For example, from this I found that the main thing reported in the news was there style and personality. This helped me to understand that when creating our own artist we should focus on these aspects.

October 8th -
During today's lesson and free time, we put together own final song pitch. This is were we explained the choice of song, why we chose it and some ideas for the music video. We done this by filming ourselves talking about these things. Doing this allowed us to explain completely why we chose the song. We also completed some audience response videos. We done this by playing the song to people within our school. We asked them a number of questions so that we could highlight things that will be effective to use in our final music video. This was very important to do as it helped to also highlight the key target audience.

October 9th -
During this lesson I took the time to create some mood boards which link with our chosen song. For example, the first mood board was on the genre; Pop. This helped me to highlight what a pop artist may look like and the conventions that are used within the music videos for this genre. I also created a mood board on the style of Indie. I done this as I felt that this year our artist has to be very unique in order for her to be realistic and get more sales. I done more than one mood board as after looking at my coursework last year, I felt that the mood boards were very important when coming up with new ideas for filming so to create more mood boards will cause us to be creative and individual.

October 10th -
In order to collect more information on our target audiences for our genre and song we created 2 different questionnaires. An online survey and a written questionnaire. The point of this way to find out who our target audience is but also to gain general information about music videos and how much they are wanted. Completing two different questionnaires was helpful as they both found similar responses but from different target audiences. For example, the online survey was completed by more 31+ people, whereas the written questionnaire was completed by more teenagers. This was a good effect as it allowed us to find that both of these groups liked pop music the best and this allowed us to notice our target audience is much wider than we thought. This lesson was very successful and allowed us to gain so much useful information.

In this lesson we also completed a lyric analysis. We done this by sitting in a group researching and all contributing to the analysis. This was an interesting thing to do as we found inner thoughts within the lyrics that may not easily be identified. For example, we found links to other authors and films which the song could be written after. With this piece of work, it means we can now start mapping out storyboards of our ideas for the music video and create a concept or narrative piece to link in with the meaning of the song. Having this deeper meaning at hand is good as it will allow us to be able to play with ideas and editing throughout storyboarding.

October 14th -
Today we completed two tasks within our lesson. Firstly we started by acting on teacher feedback and creating an audience analysis of the lyrics. We did this by asking randomly selected people what they thought they lyrics meant and what ideas/images come to mind when reading the lyrics. By doing this task, we have been able to expand our ideas and work on the deeper means for the lyrics.

Secondly, we completed a mind map on our filming ideas. We done this as a group so that we could expand on these ideas to create our storyboards for the music video. We split the page into narrative and concept. Doing this allowed us to think about how different ideas that can be linked to the lyrics and the deeper meanings of the song.

October 16th -
Today we conducted a short and simple lip sync of our chosen song 'East of Eden'. We choose to spend our time doing this as we felt that it would benefits both us and our artist. From previous practice of lip syncing we found that it can be very difficult to get the song in sync so deciding to practice more than once is key in order to create a successful music video. We shot this a very times in different angles so that we could also play with editing and find what it will be like to create cuts within the lip sync. I feel that this task helped to make the group more confident with filming and editing but also made our artist become much more confident in front of the camera as we feel that she will need it in order to be successful.

October 18th -
We analysed the lyrics to our song further. We done this by spliting up the lyrics into the following: Performance, concept, Narrative & Shot Ideas. This is called our initial shot placement. We done this as we felt that it would help us when coming to film the music video as there are a lot of shots needed and will speed up the process of doing so. We included ideas within this analysis so that we could easily highlight which shots needed and when and where we must film this. This also will help us to create our shooting schedule.

October 19th -
Over the past week, I collected data by using a questionnaire to find out our artists name. I did this by putting together a 3 questioned questionnaire and asked our target audience. I chose to do this as I felt that it was suitable to find out what our target audience would want from our artist. From these questions we concluded that:
- Artists names are very important within the music industry
- Luna Lux will be our chosen artist name
- Indie Pop is the genre of music that she would be producing

October 21st -
I created a presentation showing how we are going to make our artist have her own star image. This was a quick task which was helpful as it allowed us to apply her personality and star image into our work throughout this year. Having a star image will help us to market our artist in a good way.

October 22nd -
Storyboarding is a vital process when making any piece of footage. A storyboard is a graphic organizer in the form of illustrations or images displayed in sequence for the purpose of pre-visualizing a motion picture, animation, motion graphic or interactive media sequence. We done this by writing down all our ideas and as a group, an all storyboarding together. We discussed each shot as a group before drawing them down. Once we had finished our rough storyboard, I then placed images of the storyboards in a interesting presentation to place onto my blog. This is a vital process as without this, filming can become difficult and nearly impossible. 

October 23rd -
Research was our main aim of our lesson today. We took the time to research further into the following things: Locations, costumes, make-up & hair. We done this as we found it is the most important things to research deeply into for our music video. Doing this will help us to create a star image for our artist. For example, making sure that we carry out the research we done throughout the whole of our music video and marketing of our artist. We decided that here style will definitely be boho style, while wearing light clothing. This research has helped us to purchase the correct props that were needed for our music video to become professional.

October 24th -
Shooting Schedules are important within the music industry as it helps use to see if we are on track and keep the group organised. Having our schedule planned before starting our filming helps us to know which props are needed on which day & what location we will all need to be at. I think that this has been organised better than it did last year, as we didnt stick to a schedule last year, whereas this year we are more organised within this group. We also completed a risk assessment for every location. We split this into many different things such as the risk of fire, tripping and even drowning. We done this by putting the risk on a scale of High, Medium & Low. This helped us to make sure that the whole team would be safe while filming and that our risks are reduced to Low. This is very vital as there can be many risks of filming when featuring fire & swimming pools.

October 25th -
Camera Technology is used alot when making a music video so today we decided to research into many different technologies and how we could incorporate these into our music video. For example, we researched lighting, filters and enhancing our image. Doing this research will help to make our music video more professional and likeable to our target audience. We did this by researching it together and then making our own presentation individual. This allowed us to be more creative and make unique pieces of work.

October 27th -
Today was our first filming day. The group all met each other at Stratford at 10, and then we headed to our first location; Regents Park for the nature like shots. From looking at our plans & storyboards was helpful as we got what we needed to have, but from the scenery and the different aspects of the locations gave us new ideas that we could use for our music video. This shows that we didn't just follow our plan but expanded on these due to our location. I think this was a good to have as, we had a plan to guide us we was able to develop the ideas more. We filmed a lot of shots at the park, which will help us look through when we get to editing what lip syncing looks the best and what angle looks the best. We finished there about 2:00pm, where we then headed to Oxford Street. We knew that this street was going to be very busy as it was lunchtime and London workers were having there lunch breaks. We set up all of our equipment on the side so we weren't in any ones way, so when we were ready we could film straight away. The shot that we were about to do was the time lapsing shots. Our artist had to stand there straight faced and not move. This shot was the most difficult, but I think I went quite well, as no one walked in front of the camera. Overall I think that today went really well, as we didn’t have any major problems and we got all the shots that we needed to do.

October 30th -This was our second day of filming where we went to Grace’s house to film. Originally we were going to go to a field near her house to film a tea party but it would be very difficult to get all the equipment and props up there, as a result we stayed in her garden.  She has a line of fur trees which made a really good background. Setting up all the props and the teat party took quite a long time, as we wanted to get everything to look right and fit the artist’s image. As soon as we finished this we got straight to filming. Again we followed all the shots on our plan and more as we came up with different ideas that would look really good. The hardest shot of all was getting the powder paint right. The first time we used it, it was just in the tea cups, but after we filmed it, we saw that it wasn't enough paint for it to actually look good, so the second time came out better, as we used a jug we a lot more powder paint. Over all today went really well, as a group we work really well with each other as we understand what we mean when we come up with ideas.

November 3rd & 5th -

This week we have been focusing on many different things, but as a group we have focused on the starting of our music video. We started by looking back at our storyboards and getting the basis of our music video complete. We noticed that when we started to edit our music video, our starting shoot idea didn't go as planned so we decided as a group for a different option which will make our music video more eye catching. The editing process has been fun, but difficult as it has challenged our editing techniques. As we need to do more filming we have found that some shots are a little too long but getting a basis for our music video with our current shots will help us to improve further. We posted our first edit onto YouTube, on the 5th of November.

November 6th -
Artist Choice - Today I put together a artist profile of why we chose our artist. We chose Mollie to be our artist due to her interests and her appearance. We wanted our artist to be tall and blonde. Mollie fitted this perfectly so we chose her to be Luna Lux.~

November 11th -
Today we posted up a second draft of our music video. By posting these drafts we are able to see the process that is being made throughout the days of our editing. Doing this will help us to highlight what we need to improve and what we have done well. As you can see we have made progress by adding different techniques like filters and also expanding on our music video.

November 19th -
- What you have done to address points from recent assessments?
- When receiving feedback from my teachers I have addressed each assessment differently according to the feedback given. For some of the feedback, I expanded on my posts to make them better, when others I actually went back and edited my work in order to amend each comment.

- What are your current targets to improve?
- I feel that I need to improve on my music video itself. I feel that we need to expand on our music video by fitting in more filming days to make some shots shorter within our music video.

- What do you want us to assess next?
- I feel that I need more guidance on our music video. I think that some feedback on our music video would really help us to improve.

November 26th -
Today I attended the BFI in London were we listened to a talk about 'Making Music Videos'. The talk was held by Pete Fraser, who is a teacher at one of the biggest media centres in the country and has a blog called Media Magazine to help A-Level students. We looked through different music videos starting from Pre-1981 to the present day. He allowed us to gain the knowledge of what made a good music video. For example, they have to be visually memorable and worth repeated viewing. We also got the chance to listen to Jake Wynne who dire4cted and edited music video for the Spice Girls & Robbie Williams. This was very inspiring as it allowed me to get an insight into the industry and he highlighted that a music video should have a clear concept throughout. Overall, I learnt a lot about the general features of a music video, how they have developed over the years.

December 3rd -
We scheduled another shooting day today. We filmed the under water shots in our school pool. We wanted to add these shots to the concept of the artist being different and very flowy. To show this we made her wear a long white dress so that when we filmed it looked very graceful and cool. We are very efficient with the time that we had to film. We got straight into the water and started filming. Due to our small time slot, we had to get straight to filming so we made sure to have each shot planned. We managed to get all the shots that we wanted planned in under an hour. We thought that doing a shorter session was better due to the artist getting tired and cold in the water. We looked back at our footage that night and decided that we are going to go back to film more lip syncing shots to give use a bigger range of performance shots. From this we learn more about different camera that can be used; for example, under water cameras. We found that this gives us a big advantage as we can have a wide range of different shots due to our range of cameras. Overall, it was a very successful filming session.

December 11-12th -Over the last few days, we have been creating our music video title. We used after effects to get a grainy vintage look to the white background of the text. We found this will be a unique feature when it comes to our music video. As her star image is vintage, we sat down and brainstormed that a projector movement created on Adobe After Effects would fit our music video. This look us around 2 hours to create as we were new to the software After Effects. The most challenging part was getting the square frame to move up and down to make it look like it had movement. When achieving this we were able to add a grained effect so that our projector looked vintage. From this, we now need to import it into our music video and receive audience feedback. From this we will be able to see what fits our target audience.

December 16th - Today we made the second title for our music video. This one was a lot quicker/easier for us to create as we had created the first 3 frames already, we just needed to stretch them to fit 'Luna Lux - East of Eden'. This allowed the music video to follow better into the rest of the music video and is more interesting than our beginning title.

December 17th -


December 18th -
We have been continuing editing our music video everyday to try and complete it, while also figuring out what we need to improve. Today we released our seventh draft of our music video. We have added more overlay shots and have taken shots out to replace them with more interesting shots. Not much has changed but we are still continuing to make progress. To further our music video, we need to get some more constructive criticism, because so far all the feedback that we have received is that its good but we want some more things to improve.

January 7th -

 

After this we created a group plan of what we wanted it to look like and this is the plan that we will be going for. All the aspects of the panels link to the music video showing the theme of her album which is a normal convention for artists to do, for example Katy Perry’s album “The Complete Confection” the theme was sweets which went through her music video “California Girls” and her world tour. Next we need to start getting something practices shots of what we want the digipak to look like and practice our skills that we will be using. This will help us when we get to actually taking pictures for it  as we will know exactly what/how we need to do. 

January 10th-13th -From previously planning our digipak, we wanted to start practicing shooting to see the style we are going for. We did this by spending an hour taking practice shots in the main hall. We tried various angles and trying to figure out how we are going to shoot the digipak. This hour was very successful as we could figure out what we were going to do with the artist before we had the actual shooting day. This means we could get straight to what we wanted to do and we knew how we needed to do it. This was also helpful for the artist as she become more confident in front of the camera. This is important as we need to make it look believable as possible and by making her more comfortable, it will look better.
We finally created our digipak plan with actual picture that we could use, this is used to help give the target audience an idea of what it might look like. This is also a good time for us to get feedback on what we have already to ask them what they like and dislike about it. This means we can sort out any problems with the digipak before they occur.

January 22nd -Today we focused on our website, making drastic improvements to our first draft. We focused on making it more interactive for an audience as we feel this is important within the 21st century. We still have a lot to include onto it, for example, the welcome page needs to also be updated so it is more interesting and inviting for an audience.

January 29th -We are still working on our music video. We have been constantly receiving feedback on our video to make more improvements as we go along. Draft 8 is now been uploaded onto YouTube. We are very happy with the response that we have got so far, but as a group we still feel that some parts need tweaking to make sure they fit our target audience.

January 30th -Today was out shooting schedule for taking pictures for our digipak. Before the hour that we planned we bought some real flowers and got the green screen so that we were ready. We started to set up before the artist go there so we could make sure that everything was ready and we could start as soon as she got in. Overall it went alright because the flowers were just right and they went well with our artist.  The problems were, that one of our team member couldn't make it as they were on a trip and the artist was taller than the green screen which meant that she had to kneel to make sure we covered all of the background. Overall we got a lot of photos which was really good as it meant that we had a lot to chose from and pick the best ones out of them where they would then go on to editing. One of these photos that we took today will hopefully be the front cover for our digipak. Most of the pictures that we took were close ups because, from researching other front covers they normally have a close up for their front cover as it helps to establish their star image.

Editing - January 30th - February 3rd -
Today we also focused on editing the photos which we had taken. We spent a lot of time figuring out what works best for each photograph. The software that we have used to edit these photos is Photoshop. This is very different from the previous software that we normally use, which is Fireworks. It took a while to get used to the software and find out where everything is. The problem we had with editing these photos was when we added a background it made it look fake which means that we couldn't make them look professional.      
Below you can see the progress we made with only one session of Photoshop. This shows that over time our skills will develop even further.

February 4th -When we finished the editing of the digipak pictures, we printed them off and went round to our target audience and asked them what pictures they like the best. We 
wanted the audience feedback because, it meant that we could understand what they thought would be the best picture to have as the front cover, as this is a big deal as the front cover will become for what she is recognised for. We got a lot of different feedback. Example 6 and example 11 got the highest vote, which showed to us that the audience really liked the kaleidoscope effect for our artist. This helped us realise that this is what our audience would like from our artist. Over all from this we picked example 6 as it got the most votes and we thought that this would help us really establish the Luna Lux’s star image. Today was really helpful as it showed us what kind of affect the target audience likes, which helped to direct us down this direction for our digipak.

February 12th -At the moment  we are working on the three ancillary texts. We are making tweaks to finalise each part. The music video is pretty much finished, we need to take the names out of the end as we got advice that they wasn't needed. The digipak needs one new photo which we are planning to do next week. When this is done the digipak will be complete. The website is already finished it just needs to be published. After we have done this we can start our evaluation questions.


March 4th - Today the website is finished as we went through every page and we are happy the way that everything and we have got enough audience feedback to know that they are happy with how our website is, as they found it very difficult to come up with any improvements that we could make.

March 6th -The music video has been uploaded to YouTube which means that we are finished with that and we can just focus on the Digipak.

March 19th -
Today we finally finished the digipak. This means that we can finalise all of our ancillary texts, meaning we can put them onto our blogs. We finally added in the last picture,(of our digipak) and got feedback from our target audience saying that they like they way that it has developed from plan to final product. Our audience said that they like the different technical elements we have placed into our digipak.

March 23th -
Today, as a group, we went through the website as we realised there were some other things that could be changed. I added a count down clock to the 'WIN' page as we felt it would add a different aspect to the website. We also added more entries to the website.

March 25th -
We have been working on our evaluation questions. Today, two of us looked at question 4 and started to create a small video to accompany it. This is made up of loads of photographs to make the photographs look like they are moving. In this video, we will display the equipment that has been used throughout the year. This process is time consuming meaning that today we didn't get alot done. I have learnt further skills on making basic media products through making this video.
This video shows the starting point of the video for question 4. I am very happy with it so far due to the short amount of time we had to spend on it and also because we are new to making these types of videos.

 

April 1st -
Today I made final completions to my media blog. I am very happy with the progress that i have made this year throughout the course. I have learn new skills whilst also developing my existing ones. For example, I feel that I am not more experienced and confident in editing media products. From this year, I have not only learnt media skills but also how to work in a team better as we have be able to divide the work up well. I am very proud of our final product and I hope that our consumers will be happy with it too.