Evaluation Questions 1-4

   

Evaluation Question One - In what ways does your music video and digipak use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media texts?

 

Our music video uses, develops and challanges forms and conventions of real media products. However, our main focus and aim was to challange forms and conventions of real media products in order to make our final product a little different.

As a girl duet styling was very important as traditionally, girls are exploited to sell. A classic example of how women are exploited in music videos is Madonna's - Open Your Heart video as she performs in a very promiscuous way and is dressed provocatively for the male audience. However, we did not want to conform to the idea of exploiting.

This element is also important in order to present us to appeal to our target audience of teenage girls and young women. Before we decided on a particular style we conducted a lot of research into fashion followed by artists in our genre of music (electropop) and also did some broad research into the style we thought would work well and suit us best.

Below is a slideshow I created of the styles of clothing we looked and researched into. The slideshow includes photos of artists such as Dev and Kesha who are from the electropop genre. We also looked at many other artists styles such as Lady Gaga, Jessie J, La Roux etc.

We wanted to present ourselves as feminine but at the same time still empowering. We also wanted to present the genre of the song through our image, clothing, make-up, hair and other visual signifiers. Therefore we decided to use some of the typical electropop style but also decided to add our own elements to our image in order to make it more realistic rather than completely done up. We both added our own personal styles into our clothing and kept it natural looking as we did not want to look staged or intentionally done up.

After doing some research into gender representation we decided to challange the representation of women in our music video by showing two strong female vocalists, without any male actors. We also wanted to make females appear powerful and more dominant than men. One way  in which we made women look dominant than men is in the scene where I'm holding a photo of my 'boyfriend' and am scribbling over his face which he has no control over. Also we aren't dressed in ways that show off our bodies or make us look like sexual objects for the opposite gender to watch. Another way in which we appear more powerful than men is in the close up shot of Andrea's 'red' lips which could be seen as a tease. However, we have complete control over our bodies and no male figure around telling us what to do or appearing as the dominating one.

An example of another music video that has a dominating female artist in it is Cher Llyod's - Want U Back video. Although their are two male characters that take part in the video she is still represented as the dominant one as she is in control of herself and all the other characters.



A very clear example of how we did not want to represent ourselves is the way Natasha Bedingfield represents herself in her 'I Wanna Have Your Babies' music video and the previous example of how Madonna represents herself in her music videos through style of dress, performance etc.



Originally we planned to include a stop animation in our music video and so we did some reserach in to existing examples such as the one below which is from the indie alternative genre. We believe that this is another way we have challeneged existing forms and conventions of real media texts as we did not see stop animations used in any of the electropop genre music videos we watched. We wanted our music video to be quirky, fun, interesting and creative so we decided to stretch the genre a little by  bringing a new element to it.



Below is a short video of our stop animtion:

Before creating my own digipak i did some research into existing digipaks in order to have an idea of the forms and conventions already used in the electropop and other genres.

                                                         
I chose to analyse Michael Jackson's 'This Is It' digipak as Michael Jackson's music does not belong to a certain genre, but incorporates a wide variety of genres. Our music video and our overall style doesn't apply to one genre in particular either as we chose to stretch the electropop genre by incorporating various styles. This is why i thought it was a good idea to have a close look at MJ's style. 

As well as looking at a variety of different forms and convetions used in various genres I also did some research into digipak's from the electropop genre as it is the genre of our song. I decided to use and develop the forms and conventions used on digipaks in the electropop genre. For example, I used bold colours, quirky font and photos of us as the artists on the front cover.


Evaluation Question Two- How effective is the combination of your music video and your ancillary texts? 

We wanted our music video to promote both our digipaks and magazine adverts making the audience want to buy and visit both ancilliary texts. For this reason we thought it would be important to present a consistent brand image across all products.

Before creating our band logo we brainstormed some ideas and thought about the style of our logo carefully. We wanted it to represent us, our genre and song so we had to bear these aspects in mind when developing our ideas. We decided on a colour scheme of mainly pinks, purples and black which we included in our music video through clothes, make-up,  props etc.

The photo on the left is our original band logo. As our style is girly and feminine we decided to go for a girly but still mature font. In order to make it more unique I decided to add some different elements such as the fairies, hearts and butterflies. I created our band logo using Photoshop as it allowed me to be more creative. However, after I completed making our first band logo I was then inspired with a different idea which was to maybe add some colour to the text instead of keeping it black and white as this will fit in better with our music video and our colouful, fun style. 

The logo on the left is now our final band logo and what it now looks like compared to our original. We both preffered this logo better than the first but just to make sure that we made the right decision we asked our families for their opinions and also got some audience feedback from students in school. Our feedback showed that we had made the right decision. We then repeated the logo on our digipak, in the opening credits of our video and on our magazine adverts.

We derived the name of the band from the old time favourite film Romeo & Juliet, The Capulets and The Montegues. We chose to be The Capulets as they were the good ones and also because the film is about love, relationships and working things out as is our chosen song. We thought this was a clever way of linking it to our song and also thought that it would work well. However, before we came to a final decision of choosing this name for our band we made a list of other possible band names and made sure we asked an audience in order to get some feedback and see what they thoought would work. We made a tally next to each name and counted up the results luckily most people also thought that the name we chose was clever and would work better than the rest.

Our logo is seen on all products and is the first thing you see in the opening few seconds of our music video. The photo on the left is a screen shot of what it looks like at the start of our video.

Here is a screen shot of the thumbnails to the photos we took for our digipak and magazine covers. We set up the photography room with a white back drop, lights, tripod and my Nikon D7000 camera. One of our friends kindly volunteered to take the photographs which we then used on our products.




















This was my first digipak cover in progress. I made annotations on it to share what my ideas were at the time.

After some more research I ended up with my next design. The top half of my digipak design is everything that will be seen on the outside when unfolded and the bottom row is what the inside of my digipak looks like. Starting from the top left image which is the front cover of my digipak here I decided to go against the normal idea of having a photo of the artists on the front cover because most artists seem to do that in order to be recongnised by their face and to become more familiar with audiences. However, I didn't want to do what is already really common and expected as most girl groups always tend to have a photo of themselves on the front cover, so do the artists we're looking at 'Aly&Aj'.

As you can see all I've put on my front cover is our band name/logo as this is what I would like everyone to recognise us by. Another reason to why I decided to keep my front cover logo based is because our logo is quite colourful and bold so i didn't want anything to take the attention away from that and didn't want it to look extremely busy. I also wrote 'Deluxe Edition' on the front to make it look and feel more professional and official.

  

I liked the idea of featuring us as the artists on the front and back cover of my digipak so that people can identify us in our music video and also remember us from our band name. I used Adobe Photoshop to create my digipaks as the programme allows me to be more creative and also allows me to create work of a higher and more professional looking standard. I started off on a blank white canvas then opened up our band logo as a seperate file and dragged it across. I then opened up all of the photos of Andrea and I which are from our times out together. I decided to use these photographs instead of our studio ones as I wanted it to have a more laid back and natural feel like our music video and also to help represent our personalities more. Another reason to why I chose to do this is because I thought that it would appeal to our target audience of young girls more. I then added more colour  to my digipak cover by adding a pink spray effect on to a black background that I selected and painted in order to make it look more bold and so that it stands out. I also added a colour gradient effect to the photos and a quirky film camera boarder in order to make it look more creative and scrap book style. I also chose to add a triangular boarder shape in the middle to make it look abstract and to conform to the forms and convetions of the electropop genre as music videos in thie genre tend to have a lot of shapes, graphics and bold colours in them.

I used similar tools and effects for my bacck cover and created a film strip effect on the back using our studio photos. I chose to put these on the back cover as I wanted people to get a more laid back feel of us on our front cover as it is the first side they will see and look at. I think that by adding the gradient effect on the studio photos we look less staged and serious. I used a very girly font on the back for our song names to keep up with our overal theme and style. I also added elements that make it personal to us and our audience such as our band signiture at the bottom 'Signed: The Capulets'. I also took a screenshot of part of our stop animation and used it as a logo for our productions company 'Ivory Key Entertainment' which links in with our quirky style and our music video. I also added fan pages such as a Facebook link, Myspace link and a fanpage website link for our audiences to follow us on.

For the inside left of my digipak I decided to include a 'book of lyrics & photos' section which would be a little book that you'd pull out with the lyrics of the songs on our CD and some photos of the artists. I chose to do this to make it more personal and because I have come across lyric books in digipaks before which i quite like. I tried to keep my digipak consistent with it's black and pink themed background. I added the same airbrush effect to the background by creating a messy zig zaggy look. I then added the photo of me that was taken whilst I was setting up the studio for our photoshoot. I was actually holding the blank board when the photo was taken, I did not add that in myself. I added a semi circle to the top of the board to make it look like a slot and also added the text on the front using a feminine font.

This is the CD design I created for my first digipak. I chose to keep this the same as I believe that it fits in with my final digipak just as well.

On the left is my first draft and attempt at creating a magazine advert.

Image: I decided to have a photo of Andrea and I (The Capulets) on my magazine advert as I thought this is most appropriate for our style as we both perform in our music video and we are also on the cover of my digipak which is why I wanted to keep the continuous style. Also if we were to be a real band audiences would most probably recognise us by our image the most.

Font: Although I created a band logo for my group previously I didn't want to have it on my magazine advert as I thought it made it look a little over the top. Also I did some research into whether or not artists used a constant style for their name/band name and noticed at the end of my research that very few artists did so which is why I decided to change the style of our logo for my advert.

However, I chose to write our band name in a girly font as our original is very feminine and this is what I thought looked best. The rest of the font is just normal, I chose to use a more simpler font for the rest of the text on my advert in order to make it all clear and easy to read as the font I used for my logo was barely readable as it all got squashed up when I tried to make the font smaller.

Colour: Andrea and I decided to do the opposite and go for a more colour in our music video, digipaks and magazine advert. Our colour scheme is in our band logo which consists of mainly, black, purple, pink and white. I stuck to this colour scheme when creating all of my ancilliary texts. However, I decided to carry a little bit of the original artists theme by keeping black and white in all my products and adding my own twist to them to make them personal to The Capulets and not Aly&Aj.

On the left is my second magazine advert that I also created by using Photoshop in order to help develop my skills in using various different programs. I chose to create both my magazine adverts on Photoshop as it allowed me to use a variety of tools such as the 'lasso' tool which allows me to cut around the parts of a photo I like and take them out to create a new photo with a different background, positioning etc. Also the various tools allowed me to experiment and develop my skills more than programs such as 'paint' as this is a very basic editing program whereas Photoshop allows me to make my work look far more professional looking. 

Image: The image I used on my magazine advert isn't really a photograph but a screen shot from my music video. The photo on my first magazine advert looks more staged and studio like so I wanted to go for a more fun, unplanned and natural image which will represent our group better. I chose to print screen and use this particular image because we are both smiling/laughing in the snow representing fun and our bubbly characters. I also like the way the snows in my hair and on my face as it shows that we may have been having a snow fight also a representation of having fun. I prefer this photo as I think it not only says a lot about us and our characters but it also looks more suitable and fits in with our idea of being quirky, fun, girly and also links in better with our music video.

Font: Just like my first magazine advert I chose to go for a girly font for my band name as it is for a girl duet and the original band logo I made is very girly also. I wanted to tone it down a bit but still keep a similar font to my original logo. For the rest of the information I chose an edgy but clear font so it's easy to read. I've also wrote nearly everything in capitals mainly the information to show that it is important and to make it stand out more.

Colour: I used a lot of pink on this magazine advert as the colour pink is a very girly colour and stereotypically symbolises girls. Using this colour sends the audience a clear girly representation and fits in well with our overal style and theme. The pink also matches the colour of our lipstick and also the pinks that are used on my digipak covers. I believe that this magazine advert links in better with my latest digipak design.

I believe that my music video and anciliary texts make a good combination as I have tried to use elements that represent our music video on my products such as the photo on my second magazine advert which is a screen shot I took from our music video, the production company logo I chose to use is also a screen shot of our stop animation from our music video and also all of the colours used on my anciliary texts are in our music video too.

Here is my third and final magazine advert. I also created this using Photoshop, I chose to create another magazine advert that would fit better with my final digipak and also because I didn't use our original band logo on the other two. I thought it would be a good idea to create one with our original band logo on it as we've kept it consistent in all products. The photo on my magazine advert was taken by us whilst filming the studio scene for our music video. I decided to use this because it links in with our music video, we look happy, it looks fun and people would understand that the advert has something to do with music without reading the text.

Evaluation Question Three- How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research and planning stages of your music video?


In addition to our regular group meetings we also stayed in touch through a number of different platforms in order to share ideas with eachother throughout the project. We used text messaging, WhatsApp, Facebook, Ipods, our blogs etc.

Before making our final product we created a practice music video to Lily Allen's video for Smile. This allowed us to experiment with the equipment and helped us learn more about camera angles and shots. Making this before hand also helped us practice and develop our skills using iMovie.

Once we were happy with our song choice we watched countless amounts of music videos on YouTube and i watched some at home on music channels such as MTV to help inspire some creative ideas that we could incorporate in our own music video and play on some clever ideas. We watched music videos that were in the genre of the song we had chosen in order to have an idea of the specific codes and conventions that were being used and to have some of these convetions in our music video. However, we also watched music videos that belonged to different genre's as we wanted to stretch the genre we were working with and bring new ideas and techniques in order to make our video different to our songs original video and also to do something unexpected.

In order to brainstorm ideas for costumes and styling we browsed some fashion clothing websites to help inspire ideas such as LookBook, high street fashion clothing sites such as Riverisland and Topshop and also a website called weheartit all of which are popular amongst teenagers. We also used the internet to buy some of the props we needed such as the dried rose petals using my eBay account. 





Originally Andrea and I planned on using rose petals in our music video to help represent different seasons of the year and also because we thought it would look really pretty. After we had planned our idea I found this video on YouTube which then inspired us to definitely try this idea out.

We also used websites such as wordle to create fun, colourful notes on, Prezi to create more dynamic presentations and Photoshop when creating our products.










At the beginning of our project Andrea and I created a Prezi which we presented to the class. This helpes us plan out our ideas and research into our genre.

In the constructions stages of our music video we took out the Panasonic SD90 HD camera the school provided us with which helped us get clear, high definition footage allowing us to achieve work of a more professional quality. We also carried around the HD Flip camera with us to film outtakes, any opportunities to film and just incase the battery on the Panasonic camera ran out as it did at Southend for example whilst we were filming the last few seconds of our music video. luckily, we had the Flip camera with us. I also brought my digital SLR Nikon D7000 camera out with me as it allowed me to take high definition photographs and also allowed me to film in high definition with its clear camera. We filmed half of our music video on my slr camera and i also took photographs whilst out on location filming and preparing props for our music video.

Here is a short video Andrea and I made after editing the studio scene of our music video. This is just a short explanation of what we did using imovie that day.

Evaluation Question Four - What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

Our target audience was predominantly teenage girls to young adults around the ages of 14 to early 20s who would associate with our band as well as finding them aspirational. We employed a multiplatform strategy in order to promote our video and gain feedback from our traget audience and a wider range of fans and friends. Facebook posts, shares and likes, YouTube views and data and questionnaired that I created by using surveymonkey.com.

Below is the link to my survey:

Click here to take survey

Pros -

• Consistent colour scheme
• Lots of images of artists - clear brand
• Theme of romance - cupid, hearts

Cons -

• Artists not on the front cover



Pros -

• Unqiue
• Like polaroid theme
• Artists featured on front and back
• More playful images and natural than 1
• Person for fans

Here are my list of song ideas for my didgipak, Andrea also came up with some ideas. We both wanted to use the same song titles in order to make our digipaks look more professional. We had a discussion about both our ideas and then also decided to collect some audience feedback which we did by walking around school reading our song title choices out to people and creating a tally next to each one.

Live Laugh Love
Dear karma
Keep on wondering
Like the rest
Those were yesterdays feelings
Todays your day
What we love
Just wanna have fun
Only a matter of  time
We're young, wild & free
I'm done, have fun
Dream big
Nothing to lose
Come alive in the night time
Born to love

Below are the ones we came to the decision of using after collecting some audience feedback from students in our media class and around the school, the evidence from our tally chart showed that the following titles were the best out of the ones we had come up with:

The Potential Breakup Song
Smile For Me
Stay Away Cupid
Those WereYesterday's Feelings
Dear Karma
We're Young Wild & Free
You're the Sun on a Cloudy Day
Live Laugh Love
Green Eye Envy
Watched Me Walk Away
Cross Your Heart
Born to Love

Pros -

• More modern
• Bright & eye catching
• Central framing of artists - portrait makes it more like a magazine advert
• Bold text
• Colour scheme - black, pink & white

Pros -

• Endearing image
• Informal
• Natural image
• Black & pink colour scheme
• Girly - makes girl band image more clear
• Consistent colours - text, border and photo



Richmix Trip

I found going on this particular trip extremelly helpful, informative and worthwhile as the chef examiner Pete Fraser went through all of the relevant topics and gave us a lot of exam help.

Below is the slideshow Pete Fraser talked through on the trip:

G325 exam

View more presentations from petefrasers

Analysis of own music video

Unfortunately i was not well enough to attend school yesterday which means i missed yesterdays lesson. I went on Andreas blog to see what she had done in the lesson, we had basically finished our music video a week ago but spent last friday tweaking small parts, Andrea went over our music video in the lesson and made sure everything was still in place and tweaked the little bits that needed fixing.
Although i missed the lesson yesterday i did however write up a detailed analysis of my music video in order to help me get used to using media terms and to become more familiar in structuring an analysis.

Below is our latest music video and my analysis:



Mise-en-scene

Setting:
Our music video is mainly set out on location e.g Sothend beach, Park (snow), Arcade etc however, we manipulated some of our locations to create the look we wanted for example, we set up our 'studio' scene with the use of musical equipment such as microphones, speakers etc at the back of Andreas kitchen to make it look like we were in a studio environment. We also set up my petal scene in my bedroom and tried to make it look like we were out on location with the dried rose petals and natural lighting. We chose to create this scene indoors in order to keep the petals in place as it was a windy day and would have been hard for us to keep everything in place.
Most of the colours we chose to use in our music video are quite bright and lively in order to convey fun and our quirky personalities. A good example of a colourful fun scene is when we are messing around at the arcade and the shots of the fair. Our music video is quite realist with our choice of locations, narrative and the use of our out take shots in our music video makes our product look more natural and real. However, it can aslo been seen as a little bizzare because of the editing we have done to our music video to create different effects.
I think that the style we have gone for is quite unexpected for the song we have chosen as the song is about a break-up so audiences would most probably expect the music video to be full of sadness, anger and the stereotypical heart broken girl and break-up story. We decided to do the complete opposite to what would be expected by the audience so we went for a fun, up-beat, quirky and girly style instead.

Costume & make-up:
Our colourful, stylish, quirky costume, make-up and image construct a fun representation of us, our personalities and our music video as a whole. We've used a lot of girly colours such as pink to appeal to our target audience of mid teens to young adult females.

Magazine Advert

On the left is my first draft and attempt at creating a magazine advert.

Image: I decided to have a photo of Andrea and I (The Capulets) on my magazine advert as I thought this is most appropriate for our style as we both perform in our music video and we are also on the cover of my digipak which is why i wanted to keep the continuous style. Also if we were to be a real band audiences would most probably recognise us by our image the most.

Font: Although i created a band logo for my group previously i didn't want to have it on my magazine advert as i thought it made it look a little over the top. Also i done some research into whether or not artists used a constant style for their name/band name and noticed at the end of my research that very few artists did so which is why i decided to change the style of our logo for my advert.

However, i chose to write our band name in a girly font as our original is very feminine and this is what i thought looked best. The rest of the font is just normal, i chose to use a more simpler font for the rest of the text on my advert in order to make it all clear and easy to read as the font i used for my logo was barely readable as it all got squashed up when i tried to make the font smaller.

Colour: Andrea and I decided to do the opposite and go for a more colour in our music video, digipaks and magazine advert. Our colour scheme is in our band logo which consists of mainly, black, purple, pink and white. I stuck to this colour scheme when creating all of my ancilliary texts. However, I decided to carry a little bit of the original artists theme by keeping black and white in all my products and adding my own twist to them to make them personal to The Capulets and not Aly&Aj.

Below is a larger sized version of my magazine advert:

 On the left is my second magazine advert that i also created using Photoshop in order to help develop my skills in using various different programs. I chose to create both my magazine adverts on Photoshop as it allows me to use a variety of tools such as the 'lasso' tool which allows me to cut around the parts of a photo i like and take them out to create a new photo with a different background, positioning etc. Also the various tools allow me to experiment and develop my skills more than programs such as 'paint' as this is a very basic editing program whereas Photoshop allows me to make my work look far more 

professional looking.

Image: The image i used on my magazine advert isn't really a photograph but a screen shot from my music video. The photo on my first magazine advert looks more staged and studio like so i wanted to go for a more fun, unplanned and natural image which will represent our group better. I chose to print screen and use this particular image because we are both smiling/laughing in the snow representing fun and our bubbly characters. I also like the way the snows in my hair and on my face as it shows that we may have been having a snow fight also a representation of having fun. I prefer this photo as i think it not only says a lot about us and our characters but it also looks more suitable and fits in with our idea of being quirky, fun, girly and also links in better with our music video.

Font: Just like my first magazine advert i have chosen to go for a girly font for my band name as it is for a girl duet and the original band logo i made is very girly also. I wanted to tone it down a bit but still keep a similar font to my original logo. For the rest of the information i chose an edgy but clear font so it's easy to read. I've also written nearly everything in capitals mainly the information to show that it is important and to make it stand out more.

Colour: I used a lot of pink on this magazine advert as the colour pink is a very girly colour and stereotypically symbolises girls. Using this colour sends the audience a clear girly representation and fits in well with our overal style and theme. The pink also matches the colour of our lipstick and also the pinks that are used on my digipak covers. I believe that this magazine advert links in better with my latest digipak design.

First Final Draft

In yesterday's lesson Andrea and I continued editing our music video by adding and changing shots. We also worked through lunch and met up in our study period and spent the whole day editing. The only part left for us to do was the last verse as we had completed all the rest of it however, we watched the video over a couple of times and tweeked a few parts that we thought needed changing. Our music video is now basically finished but we may change of tweek a few more parts if we think it needs more editing. I have uploaded our first final draft below for you to watch, enjoy!

The Capulets - Draft 4

On Monday we spent half the lesson and the rest of the school day editing our music video. So far it's all complete up to 1:50 the gootage after it is not in order yet but its some of the clips we will use in our music video. We are really happy with all the effort we have put into filming all of this as we have so much more footage than we actually need which is good as it allows us to choose different footage. Andrea and I will also be meeting up on Wednesday in our study period to get some more editing done.

Magazine Adverts

Last lesson we were set our coursework ancillary task two which is to design a  magazine advertisement for our music video promo. I've been doing some research into other magazine adverts from my genre (electropop) and came across the ones below which i thought are good examples to upload on to my blog which will help inspire some ideas and allow me to analyse into the different magazine adverts in my genre.

Whilst doing some research into magazine adverts in the electropop genre I came across one of Jessie J's and thought this was a perfect example to upload onto my blog as not only is it from the genre I have been creating a music video to but it also fits in well with the theme i went for when creating my digipak with its quirky bold style.

Framing: You could say that the image of the artist is boxed however, i do think that it covers most of the poster and because the image is at the top of the poster and consists of bold colours it draws the audience's attention to the artist before the text. Jessie J looks quite dominant, bold and loud in the photo reflecting the album title in a way and giving the audience an idea of what the songs may be like.

Font: Gold coloured fancy font used for the artists name which is also in bold and is the largest sized font on the whole advertisement. This is to show the importance of the artist and also to represent dominance and power with the gold which is seen as luxurious.



Filmimg at Southend

On Monday Andrea and I went up to Southend to finish off our filming as Southend is one of the main locations in our music video. We have now finished all of our filming which means we can now focus on editing our music video and spending time getting all the lip syncing to fit in time with our chosen song.

Before we made our way up to Southend we went into Enfield Town to get some balloons for our 'Don't let me go' scence which is where we let the balloons go as we walk by the sea. We bought two packets of balloons one pack blue and the other pink but we only got eight of them blown up with hellium which meant that we had two trys at filming them.

When we got to Southend we put our wellies on amd took all our equipment and set up by the sea. We shot our balloon scene first in order to get that out of the way. First we set the camera up as we were both in this scene and then we filmed the balloons drifting off. I also filmed Andrea sitting on the rocks by the sea with the bubble machine on which looked really cool.

When we previously filmed in the snow we drew a heart in the snow but when it came to filming it we didn't really like the look of it as it doesn't stand out enough so we tried this at Southend which was our original idea. We drew the heart in the sand and waited for the sea to wash it away and luckily we managed to get a couple of shots of it and I think it looks much better and more interesting than our previous snow attempt.

After we finished filming everything by the sea we went for a stroll down Southend to see what else there was for us to take advantage of. As we were walking down we came across lots of arcades and thought it would be a good idea to go in get some shots as our music video is about having fun so we thought that an arcade would be a good place for us to express this. We went in and got some shots of different games, funky lights, shots of us messing around etc.

We also came across an area of little fountains which we also took advantage of. We set up the camera and just messed around for a bit, ran through the fountains and just filmed us having some fun.

I also got some shots of funky shop signs such as 'Adventure Island', we did this to express fun and also to show what we've been up to and how we may be going through a break up but this won't bring us down whcih is what our song is basically about.

We managed to film loads of different shots and are happy with the amount of footage we managed to film. Now we are excited and can't wait to upload everything onto our MAC and get editing.

Below is one of my favourite songs but i never really took notice of the music video and as i was watching today i noticed the shots of the shop signs so i thought i'd put it on my blog as it is something similar to what we done at Southend.

Filming Day

Today I am going over to Andreas house to do some more filming for our music video. We're going to be filming a studio shot as Andrea's parents have the equipment for us to do so. Our songs original music video has a studio shot in it already and I think it works well with the lyrics, we're going to play on this idea and come up with something maybe in a similar style but with different and more interesting elements.

R.I.P

Whitney Elizabeth Houston, pop singer, born 9 August 1963; died February 11, 2012.

Although an official Whitney Houston cause of death has not yet been released by the Los Angeles Coroner’s office, sources allegedly close to the family reportedly say the singer probably died of a mix of drugs and alcohol. Whitney Houston was found dead on Saturday in the bathtub of the Beverly Hilton Hotel. Despite reports that the pop icon was found underwater, she allegedly did not die of drowning.

Whitney Houston died on Saturday, just one day before the 54th annual Grammy Awards, where Jennifer Hudson paid tribute to the fallen singer with an emotional performance of “I Will Always Love You.” Houston had been scheduled to attend and sing at a pre-Grammy Awards part hosted by music mogul Clive Davis on Saturday night.
Houston was reportedly found partially underwater in the bathtub by her aunt, Mary Jones, according to various media reports. Some earlier reports had indicated the singer was found by her bodyguard. Jones allegedly laid out a dress for Whitney Houston to wear and then left the singer alone in the bath for approximately half an hour. When Houston did not come out of the bathroom as expected, Jones entered and found her partially underwater and unresponsive. Jones reportedly pulled Houston from the tub and began CPR as a 911 call was put in. This led to speculation that the Whitney Houston cause of death might have been an accidental drowning.
Sadly, it was already too late to revive Houston and by the time emergency personnel arrived, she could not be resuscitated. An autopsy on the singer was allegedly inconclusive, but put under a security hold at the request of investigators. Toxicology tests are still pending and will not be complete for four to six weeks.
Sources close to the family have allegedly stated that she probably died of a drug and alcohol mixture, not from drowning. According to TMZ.com, Houston’s family has told by the Los Angeles Coroner’s office that there was too little water in the singer’s lungs to indicate she drowned. Family sources are allegedly reporting that the Whitney Houston cause of death was more than likely due to a combination of prescription drugs mixed with alcohol.
Houston had reportedly been acting erratically in the days leading up to her death and allegedly consuming large amounts of alcohol. The “Waiting to Exhale” actress also reportedly had a habit of taking the anti-anxiety drug Xanax on days that she was scheduled to perform. A combination of too much alcohol and Xanax, with the possibility of other drugs also in combination, could have very well been lethal. Xanax, along with several other prescription medications, were allegedly found in Houston’s hotel room.

On Sunday Andrea and I got some great footage, we filmed more than we needed to so that we have a lot to work with and choose from. First, we done our petal scene which goes with the second verse of our song, Andrea done the first verse so this time i done the second verse as we are taking things mainly in order. The petals look really pretty and we're glad that we chose to buy real petals rather than fake ones because this may have looked a little tacky and unprofessional.

After we completed filming our petal scene using different camera angles and shots so we have a vartiey we can work with we had a break whilst my camera charged and then we took my camera and tripod outside so we could get some shots in the snow. We filmed eachother and also set up the camera so we were both in the shot so we could get some scenes together. We particularly like the footage we got in the snow because it's natural and not staged like the first and second verse. This is good because it's the look we wanted in our chorus. Our chorus is about us having fun, being silly, girly and natural and the footage is exactly that.

In yesterdays lesson we uploaded all of our footage onto our iMAC with my camera SD card. It didn't take extremelly long to upload so we were able to play around with some of our footage in our Final Cut Express tutorial lesson. The main skill we wanted to learn was how to create a split screen effect. The visitor who came in talked us through how to use the software to create this effect. Andrea and I both experimented with the software and finally we managed to create an even split screen.

After the lesson we both stayed in the media room because we were really excited about our new footage and wanted to get some more editing done. We stayed through our frees and managed to get quite a lot done which we're really happy about. I think it looks really good so far!

I will be uploading our video so far on to YouTube in Friday's lesson after we show our teacher what we've done so far so we can redo or fix anything we haven't done.

SNOW!

Today Andrea will be coming round mine so we can do some more filming for our music video. We were hoping that it would snow and luckily it has so after we get our second verse (petal scene) done we will be going outside as i live right by a forest/park to do some filming in the snow! This will look really good in our choruses and also in the verses where we were hoping to film at a forest.

All we are going to need for our second verse are some petals which i already bought off eBay (dried rose petals to make it look more realistic), my camera and tripod and also a white sheet to use as the background. Four our choruses we are going to set up the camrea so that we are both in the shots and have a snow fight, build a snowman and try out different things that will look good and fun for us to use as part of our music video.

I will also be taking some photographs throughout the day to show you what we've been up to!

Last lesson Andrea and I were preparing for our next filming day by making a plan of what we need and what day we will be available to film. We decided to get all our small scenes out of the way so we can concentrate  on the larger parts of our music video. Next, we are going to film our second verse which is supposed to be an overhead shot on a white background. So, we will be spreading a white sheet on the floor and spreading our dried rose petals around the artist (me). Last lesson i ordered the dried rose petals so i'm hoping i'll recieve them sometime this week so we can film on sunday.

The petal idea was inspired by the American Beauty rose petal scene, we were planning on just having the petals spread around but i really like the idea of having them falling so we migh have to try both and see which works best for us.

Here's the video:

Andrea and I have been discussing when we are available to go out and do the main part of our filmimg which will be located at southend. We both came to the agreement that sundays are good for us to spend the whole day on filming as this will allow us to get more footage because we'll both be free and won't need to rush. We have arranged to meet up next sunday in order to get some more footage to start editing as we have practically finished our introduction and first verse. We will also be arranging days and times we are both available to stay behind after school to do some editing once we have got further footage.

Presenting Our Digipaks

In Friday's lesson we all had to present our digipaks to the class and talk about how we created it and how everything linked in with our music video. After presenting my digipak to the class i got some audience feedback from my class mates to see what they thought of it. One of my class mates pointed out the fact that i used 'Aly&Aj' in my links rather than 'The Capulets'. I'm glad that she pointed this out because I had not noticed this myself. Apart from that everything else seemed to be fine.

I had a close look at my previous digipak and decided that i wasn't so sure about whether i was happy with it so i created a new one from scratch using PhotoShop. I'm happy with how it looks and prefer it better to my previous design as i think my new one looks more professional and fits in better with our theme.

For my front cover I decided to use more laid back photos that we had taken on our days/nights out which fits in with our natural look. My previous digipak had photos of us which we had taken in the studio we had set up which didn't really go with our music video and the way we wanted to represent ourselves. I believe that this digipak design works better than the previous one because it's bold, more colourful

I decided to put our studio photos on the back cover and added a film strip effect with a gradient colour over them to make it look more quirky and fun. I didn't want to put these photos on the front cover of my digipak because they are more staged and not very natural looking compared to the ones on my front cover.

I've kept the same production company logo as before and have added fan page links for Facebook, Myspace and our music website all named TheCapulets. I've also used a girly font for our song titles in keeping with our feminine theme.

I decided to keep the CD design i previously made for my first digipak as I believe that it fits in well with my final digipak design and follows the same colour scheme.

For the inside left of my digipak I decided to include a 'book of lyrics & photos' section which would be a little book that you'd pull out with the lyrics of the songs on our CD and some photos of the artists. I chose to do this to make it more personal and because I have come across lyric books in digipaks before which i quite like. I tried to keep my digipak consistent with it's black and pink themed background. I added the same airbrush effect to the background by creating a messy zig zaggy look. I then added the photo of me that was taken whilst I was setting up the studio for our photoshoot. I was actually holding the blank board when the photo was taken, I did not add that in myself. I added a semi circle to the top of the board to make it look like a slot and also added the text on the front using a feminine font.

Finished Digipak

Here is my completed digipak

The top half of my digipak design is everything that will be seen on the outside when unfolded and the bottom row is what the inside of my digipak looks like. Starting from the top left image which is the front cover of my digipak, i decided to go against the normal idea of having a photo of the artists on the front cover because most artists seem to do that in order to be recongnised by their face and to become more familiar with audiences. However, I didn't want to do what is already really common and expected as most girl groups always tend to have a photo of themselves on the front cover, so do the artists we're looking at 'Aly&Aj'.

As you can see all I've put on my front cover is our band name/logo as this is what I would like everyone to recognise us by. Another reason to why I decided to keep my front cover logo based is because our logo is quite colourful and bold so i didn't want anything to take the attention away from that and didn't want it to look extremely busy. I also wrote 'Deluxe Edition' on the front to make it look and feel more professional and official.

This was my first digipak template and a rough idea of the look i was going for. But after i went back on it several times i came up with new ideas and decided to change/add different things to it. Below you will see the step by step development and changes of my digipak ideas.

List Of Song Ideas

Here are my list of song ideas for my didgipak, Andrea also came up with some ideas that are on her blog. We both want to use the same song titles to make it look more professional and make it feel like a real digipak. We will be having a discussion about both our ideas and will pick our favourites.

Live Laugh Love
Dear karma
Keep on wondering
Like the rest
Those were yesterdays feelings
Todays your day
What we love
Just wanna have fun
Only a matter of  time
We're young, wild & free
I'm done, have fun
Dream big
Nothing to lose
Come alive in the night time
Born to love

Below are the ones we came to the decision of using after collecting some audience feedback from students in our media class:

The Potential Breakup Song
Smile For Me
Stay Away Cupid
Those WereYesterday's Feelings
Dear Karma
We're Young Wild & Free
You're the Sun on a Cloudy Day
Live Laugh Love
Green Eye Envy
Watched Me Walk Away
Cross Your Heart
Born to Love

Digipak Photos

Andrea and I spent Monday's lesson taking photos for our digipaks. I asked my photography teacher if he'd give us permission to use the room to set up the studio and take some photos for our media and thankfully he did. So we set up the white roll background, got out the lights, tripod and we used my camera. As we both needed to be in the photos together one of our friends kindly took some photos for us.

The whole purpose of these photos were to look professional and done in a studio and i think we managed to achieve this look. The theme for the day was black and white, I wanted to use black and white themed photos for my digipak because I want the colourful elements such as our logo etc to stand out.

Below is a sneak peak!

Digipak Wordle

Rather than writing a plain list of ideas i created a wordle to make it more interesting and fun to look at and read. I've used specific colours to represent the main colours you will find on my digipak.

Music Video so far

Here is our music video so far, we added in our animation in today's lesson and also done some more editing. I think we've nearly finished editing our opening but we may have to go back over it when we add in new footage. Andrea and I are both very proud of what we have put together so far and we are hoping to meet up on monday to take some studio photos for our digipaks and also meet up next sunday to go up to Southend to do some more filming for our chorus'
How the animation was made:
Andrea and I both done research together to find some examples of stop animations and to have an idea of what an animation needs to include. We then came up with the idea of having an image that represents the concept of our music video. On Wednesday we decided to prepare our animation. Andrea drew the images over and over again then realised that the pictures won't all look the same so she drew one and when we were happy with it we got it photocopied about 20 times. She then added on the speech bubbles, letters and hearts. We then took some photos on her camera in order to practice and have an idea of what it might look like in the video. We both really liked the idea and the way it looked so in todays lesson Andrea brought along the pictures, we set up the camera and then I filmed it as Andrea changed the sheets. I filmed each sheet for about 4 seconds and paused in between each shot. We then had plenty of time to upload our footage to our mac and start editing!
I think it looks really cute and fits in well with the message in our chosen song. I made some of my family members watch our music video so far and everyone seems to really like what we've managed to put together. Everyone also pointed out the animation and think it looks really good which must mean so far so good!

I've listened to this song before but I had never watched or seen the music video to it until it came up on a music channel that I was watching on TV. I deciced to upload the video to my blog as it is from the electropop genre and so is the song we have chosen to produce a music video to. I think that it represents the electropop genre well through the style of dress, make-up, patterns, colour, graphics and editing techniques.

The Woman In Black

I recently saw the trailer to The Woman In Black appear on TV and since then I have been wanting to go and watch it at the cinema. I have been following cinema film times closely and release dates. I'm hoping the film doesn't let me down because by the looks of the trailer it looks like a really good film. One thing that I think is a little strange is the viewing age of the film, it has been classified as a 12 but looks far more scarier, I was expecting it to at least be classified as a 15. I'm hopefully going to go and watch it soon and if so I will post up an analysis of it to tell you what I think.

Below is the trailer:

Music Video...

Today Andrea and I have had a very eventful day, we not only managed to edit the opening of our music video we also did some more filming for our clock scene. We've had a lot of fun working on our music video so far and I think we're keeping on track well. Furthermore we have also added a date to our schedule of when we will next be meeting up which will be on Friday 13th to take some studio photos for our digipaks.

Below is the footage from our music video, enjoy...

Popular Music

Music is part of our everyday lives, whether its from film music, music in shopping centres, poluphonic ringtones on your mobile phone, MP3 players, ipods, video games, we are actually surrounded by music all day. The music industry and the media in general constantly improves and changes in order to achieve new goals such as to maintain and develop audiences. Marketing is another element that needs to work towards improvement as music artists, especially in the recent years have realised that they must move from 'band to brand' in order to survive cause thats what audiences tend to go for.

Development of pop music

Music and technology have always been closely linked. I found out that historically, music was all live performance by the musicians or singers. I also found out in my research that as silent films took off there'd be a pianist playing live in the cinema to create mood and atmosphere for the audience. With the invention of the mass-produced record came pop music, the most significant thing about this was the invention of the 'teenager'. The 'teenager' was a cultural label created to define a particular kind of adolescent rebellion. the identity of the teenager was defined first by the fact that they listened to pop music and secondly by the clothes they wore to show that they belonged to this music culture. To me this sounds like a stereotypical explanataion.
Subcultural groups developed as pop music became more popular. Each group were subdivided by style of music and also style of dress. Hence the pitched battles between Mods and Rockers in the 1960s. Today the 'music scene' is considerably broader and there are countless amounts of ways of recieving and accessing music from various different sources.

New technologies and pop music

Technological development continues to influence the ways in which music is recieved and therefore affects the cultural structures around this consumption, e.g.
Technological developments have enabled far more artists to reach a wider audience. Whereas once, recording studios were not as developed as today, now artists and many other people have top quality recordinbg studois to work in even in their homes. Easy and quick access allows artists to produce their own music. In many cases they are also able to ditribute it without needing recording companies at all.

A paticular web page called Napster raised many debartes about the morality of sharing music on the internet for others to download. When Napster was first operating it was the first network that allowed people to download files for free. Napster was soon stopped as they were accused by the record comapnies who said that Napster was losing them money, insisting that it was depriving them of audiences who might buy the music. I understand  and agree with the record companies because it does make sense and its true that a large amount of audiences won't buy the music mainly because it costs and its much easier to just download music off the internet and the fact that it was free was an advantage.

As a result of realising the popularity of downloading music from the internet, many of the record companies now have this facility and some artists allow some of their music to be downloaded for free as they think this will gain them more audiences.