Evaluation 4: How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Evaluation 3: What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Evaluation 2: How effective is the combination of your main product and your Ancillary texts?

Evaluation 1: How does your media product use, develop and/or challenge the forms and conventions of real media products?

Script Draft

My evaluation question is to look into how well my main media product ('A Girl Like You' Music Video) and our Ancillary Task ('The Chase' - 'Lotus') combine together.

Our two pieces of work are made to fit into the conventions of a typical Indie Rock Band. A few examples of bands we looked into include
Two Door Cinema Club, The Vaccines or The Wombats. We hoped that through research we could learn how to make our own Indie Rock video and digipak.

Ancillary Task Final Draft

Action Plan - Monday 4th of February

Plan:

5th of February, after school;

- Reshoot panning shots

- Reshoot planning shots

- Photos of girls to hang around D27

7th of February, period 3;

- Shots of Grace

- Phantasmagorical shots of Grace

- Grace's entrance

- Grace winning chess game

7th of February, after school;

- Band shots

- Performance shots

- Guitar and Drum close up shots.

14th of February, after school;

- Grace and George shots of them together

- 'Moment' at the end

- Chess game development and win

- Knock down King

- Eye contact shots

- Remaining photo shots

Reminders;

- Buy a new chess set

- Find a day to edit everything

Order within video;

Section One - Introduce George and Grace

Section Two - Chess game

Section Three - Frustrated

Section Four - Photos

Section Five - Losing game of chess

Section Six - Break Down

Section Seven - Finale

2nd Draft of our Music Video

Working on our 2nd Draft

These are a few shots of our group in the process of shooting for our music video. As you can see we have a very dark set and the only source of light comes from either a white or red stage light. The reason we chose this room is because we could make the entire room dark and change the set around to make it look like a new location; we took advantage of a minimalistic set.

New Shots (Chess Scene Development)

These are a few screenshots from the reshoot that we had started from our music video. The purpose of the reshoot was to add in some of the shots from the improvements given to us from the assessment of our first draft for our music video. We needed to film some shots between the girl and boy in order for them to present a little more of the narrative and concept of our video, the two of them playing a game of chess against one another. Also we need to reshoot because our lead singer has had a haircut and in order for any of the shots to fit together in our video he needs to have a similar look throughout the video.

There is still more reshooting that needs to be done in our video, we still need to get some band shots added in to really show this is an Indie Band rather than an Indie solo artist.

Ancillary Task Draft 2

Advertisement

Digipak Inside

Digipak Outside

This is the second draft of our Ancillary Task and we have made a few changes. We have given ourselves a band name now rather than go with a solo artist since our feedback had shown that people were getting confused by the name 'Alex Zain' and the girl on the front cover.

Working on Ancillary and Music Video

These are a few images of us working on our Ancillary Task and Music Video. To create these things we have to use the programs like Photoshop and Final Cut Express.

Music Video 1st Draft

Ancillary Task Feedback Video

Ancillary Task Draft 1

Outside of Digipak

Inside of Digipak

This is our first draft of the Digipak design for our final product. As a group we have decided to go with a solo artist for our song and the cover of the digipak maintains conventions presented through Indie Rock CD covers.

The concept of this album and the album artwork was a 'Lotus' which is the same name as our album and instead of the artist featured on the front cover a girl is used instead. The idea for 'Lotus' was that something bright, pure and beautiful would grow in an impure and dirty environment and this girl along with her long and colourful hair is meant to symbolise this very flower since lotuses are brightly coloured flowers. Her hair is spread outwards to represent the outstretched lotus leaves and her face is covered to maintain her 'purity'. The back cover of the digipak lists the songs of the album and there are 9 tracks including the song we are using for our Music Video 'A Girl Like You' and the title track 'Lotus'.

For the inside of the Digipak we have images of the artist himself to the left and right and both images are very low key. The centre of the digipak has an image of the female model again and over her face is the outline for the disk placement.

Our improvements for the digipak is to edit some of the inside images, we need to revert back to a band and then include images of a band to the side flaps as this would make it clearer who the band is. By having a band rather than a solo artist it makes it easier for a viewer to understand that the girl featured on the advert and digipak is not 'Alex Zain' as there was some confusion from feedback.

Advertisement Draft 1

This is our first draft of our advertisement towards our Digipak. The advert features the artist name, album name, release date and an image. The advert was sized to the measurements of a NME Magazine full page advert since we found that NME Magazine would have readers much more interested in our Indie Rock music and adverts.

On this advert the artist name 'Alex Zain' has been sized larger than the album name 'Lotus' because for an artist starting out it is important they become known. Through research conducted on artist's such as Twoo Door Cinema Club their first album had larger sized font for their band name compared to their album name since they were starting out and had to get their name out there and recognised. This is the exact thing we have done, especially since the album 'Lotus' was described as our artist's 'Debut' album.

Shot Ideas

For our music video we have tested out some shot ideas towards our music video. As our music video looks at the concept of the girl and boy playing a game of chess against one another we experimented with images of a glass chess set.

Each of the images is supposed to show elements from our music video such as the chess pieces against each other to suggest the girl against the boy, tests with the lighting ideas for our video and pieces knocked over and defeated.

Our group has the creative idea of playing with light and dark lighting and the light and dark together in shots. We only wish to have important elements in light in a frame instead of the subject and all the background too.

Ancillary Design Draft Two

Planning: Peer Assessment

Album Design Draft One

Photo Shoot Plan Schedule

Shooting Schedule

Advert Design Draft One

Locations

This is the email that I sent off requesting permission to use the school locations our group would want to use for filming. It is essential that we get the permission we need in order to film since we will be using someone else's space and can cause disruption and inconvenience by being there. We also need to know when/if the the rooms will be free for us to film in, the person in charge of the room may already be using the room and we will need to know so we can organise a new location to film.

Research Posts: Teacher Assessment

Group Discussions

Storyboard and Animatic Video

Storyboards



Group Animatic Video

Roles

My group role for our music video will be in charge of the technical aspects of work and editing. I will take charge of Photoshop for our Digipaks and editing the music video in whatever way we need to. As a whole group we will take the role of a director, working together to decide what we want to show in the video, the style of it and all the different shots that we want to include.

Technical Tutorials

This is the CD cover we created using Photoshop CS3, this is an experimental cover which allowed us to test out different tools like Gradient, Magic Wand, Text, Crop and more.

Final Song Choices

For our Final Song Choice we needed to choose between two songs, "Cigarettes In The Theatre" by Two Door Cinema Club and "A Girl Like You" by Miles Kane.

The song by Two Door Cinema Club was one of the first choices for a song since we needed to narrow it down as previously we had more than one option for a song but now we have at least 2 songs to decide between. The Two Door Cinema Club song we analysed seemed to give us more of an option for an illustration sort of music video based on the lyrics, some parts of it can be made to be amplified.

However for "A Girl Like You" sung by Miles Kane this leaves more space to become a bit more creative and make an amplification music video. The music video would not particularly fit the Indie Rock genre if it was made an illustration video because of the lyrics, (e.g. "crawling crawling on the floor"). This would not work well if we had filmed it.

In the end we decided to go with the song "A Girl Like You" once all of our group listened to the songs again and compared them to decide which was better.

Initial Group Ideas

 

 

This Mind Map presents the initial ideas our group came up with when we had discussions about what to do for our music video project. Our intial idea was to go with the pop genre and make a music video towards that as pop is the most popular genre today however through further discussions we decided that perhaps Indie Rock would be better. Indie Rock has become increasingly popular lately however it is still not a greatly known or listened to genre so this gives our group a range of different ideas and possibilities for our group to take when planning our videos.

 

Once we had chosen to go with the Indie Rock genre we had to put in research to many different bands from the genre in their style, their performance, their music and videos so we can get a deeper understanding of Indie Rock.

Research Posts: Peer Assessments

Audience Research 2: Results

 

 

This is a slideshow to present graphed results of my Audience Questionnaire. These graphs provide a more visual presentation of the results and have in fact shown me more about what an audience is used to seeing or expects to see.

 

The majority of the survey takers were female with a few males and almost all those who took part in the survey were in their 16 - 20s. This is a good age range to have as this is the sort of age that is more likely to listen to Indie Rock; this is our target audience.

 

 The survey had shown us that most people were aware or familiar with the Indie Rock genre, something that is important because if our genre was not recognised then that tells us that not only will most people be unfamiliar with the music but we would need to concentrate of giving the genre and the artist a lot of exposure in our piece so they become recognised. Most of the people in the survey had stated that they casually listen to Indie Rock music which once again is good as these people will definitely be more familiar with the Indie rock genre and have heard the music rather than just know of the genre.

When asking what the audience expected to see in any music videos they all seemed to want a balance between dancing, costumes, band performances and costumes. However when asking what it was that the audience would want to see in an Indie Music Video they sai they would enjoy the same things as any other video but they wanted to see a lot more shots of the singer. Therefore what our group can take from this is that when we make our music video we need to include not only a narrative, some dancing, costumes and the band but also we need to make sure that the audience gets an eyeful of the singer.

Audience Research 1: Questionnaire

Advertisement Research

Record Label Research

CD Cover Research

The Vaccines: Come of Age (2012)

This is the album cover for The Vaccine's latest album "Come of Age". This would be the second album released by the band. From looking at this album cover related to the name it is immediately clear how they link, though the band consists of 4 adult males they use young girls who represent each of the band members. For anyone who is fans of or at least aware of the band they can make this link to each member. This album colour has been put into black and white minus the bold red font of the band. This band seem to have not included the actual name of the album onto the front cover, perhaps because they wanted the image itself to let the name and the message come across itself about "Come of Age".

 



Two Door Cinema Club: Tourist History (2010)

This is Two Door Cinema Club's first full album named "Tourist History". The colours on this image are quite dull and not very vibrant, it features an image of a cat with extremely large pupils and is mainly hidden behind the exceptionally large font for the band. The band's name is a lot larger than the title of the album as this is their first album it is more important that the band themselves are recognised by their name since not a lot of people will know who they are. Based on the image and the name of their album.

SBTRKT: SBTRKT

 

This is the self titled album by artist SBTRKT. The album cover for this artist is in fact an image of Dj SBTRKT wearing this mask which he always wears in his live performances so this would be something that fans of SBTRKT would recognise to be him. The CD cover does not have any text to say the name of the artist or the album name perhaps because SBTRKT had been releasing singles and EPs since 2007 that by the time he released this full album in 2011 many fans of his would already be aware of who he is. The colours of this album cover seem dull and wash out except for his mask, the mask appears to be the only part in colour and once again it is probably because it is something his fans will recognise most about him.



Genre Research 3: Conventions

Genre Research 2: 5 Music Videos

Genre Research on Prezi

Genre Research 1: Indie Rock

Genre Research: Indie Rock on Prezi

Song and Genre Ideas

The genre that my group are looking into is the Indie Rock Genre. For this we are looking into different bands for songs which would sound good and something we believe we can work with for our music video. These are our initial ideas for songs:

Two Door Cinema Club
• Do You Want It All

Bombay Bicycle Club
• What You Want

The Vaccines
• Under Your Thumb
• Wolf Pack
• All In White

SBTRKT
• Wildfire

Theory 3: Carol Vernallis

Theory 2: Andrew Goodwin

 

Theory 1: Bordwell & Thompson

Conventions of a Music Video

Conventions of a Music Video on Prezi

Analysis of a Rock Music Video 3

Evanescence - "My Immortal"

"My Immortal" Analysis

Analysis of a Rock Music Video 2

My Chemical Romance - "Na Na Na"

"Na Na Na" Analysis

Analysis of a Rock Music Video 1

Linkin Park - "Burn It Down"

"Burn It Down" Analysis

Analysis of a Pop Music Video 3

Nicki Minaj - "Starships"



"Starships" Analysis

Low Budget Video Ideas

Analysis of a Pop Music Video 2

Lady Gaga - "Bad Romance"

"Bad Romance" Analysis

Analysis of a Pop Music Video 1

Analysis of a Pop Video on Prezi

In The Sun Class Project - Nathan Wyatt and Nicole Benyon Edit

A2 Media Studies - Brief

For my A2 Media Studies course I will be looking into Music Videos and to observe and note the conventions of popular and successful music videos across different genres of music.

Lip Sync Homework Task for Bruno Mars "The Lazy Song"

Lip Sync Practice - "Year 3000"