Magazine Advert

I have decided the magazine advert will be half a page for my chosen artist. 

CD Digipak

This is my Digpak that I have created for my chosen song! 

Costumes - Photoshoot

For the photoshoot for the CD Digipak and Magazine Advert I have decided on these ideas for costumes: 

• A dress 
• Winter clothing 

I am going to do a few picture with different costumes, this will mix and match the pictures that I use and they won't all look the same.

These are some inspiration for the outfits I want to use.

Health & Safety - Photoshoot

Woods - 

• When taking pictures we will have to be careful of were we step

Locations - Music Video

For our music video we are using a range of places. 

• Field - We are going to film in the field of the animals following her around and also we are going to film the camp fire scene in the field.

• Lake - We are going to have the model walking around the lake and gazing across it. We want to have her reflection in the water and have the animals appear behind her.

• Empty Bedroom - We want a basic bedroom for the start of the music video and this will introduce the animals to the video. We want the background to then eventually fade to another setting.

Locations - Photoshoot

Photo-shoot:
I have planned where I want the pictures for my CD and magazine advert.

• Woods - I am taking pictures in the a wood by me and I have permission from the farmers to use it. I want to relate the music video and also the digipak to each other.

• Lake - I want to take some pictures by the lake too. I did a test by the lake to give me some inspiration on how I wanted the model to look and how the shot should be taken. 

• Against A Wall - I want a brick wall background to create a different feel from the rest of the other pictures. 

I want my pictures to have a element of fun to them but also in some of the pictures I want to have the people with just the white faces lurking in the background of the image  

Here I have marked out the area's in which I want to take my pictures at.

Change Of Plan

Me and Jack have decided that we are going to change our idea of the animal masks to having the casts have plain white faces.

CD Digipak Practice

I had a practise at designing the CD digipak and I experimented with some of the tools on Photoshop. This has helped me develop an idea for my real CD digipak and how I want it to look like when it comes to creating it.

Analysing Existing Products

Magazine Adverts: 

Kings Of Leon: 

This is a full page magazine advert that the band has used. This magazine advert from Kings Of Leon looks quite basic and simple. The colours are quite interesting because they aren't too bright and overpowering but they do attract the audiences attention. The style of writing goes well with the background image but in the darker colour at the bottom it is a little harder to read so the audience will need to focus more on reading it. This design of this advert relates to the text, since the album is called "Come Around Sundown" it makes sense to use the sunset feel. Because Kings Of Leon are a well known band they have used a full page to advertise their CD because they can afford it. 


Ellie Goulding:
This look has more going on in the advert. The title of the CD has been shown in the image with all the little dots of lights has been spread around and used to make the advertising more interesting and catch the attention of the target audience. This advert has also used quotes from reviews to make the album seem worth while to buy and listen to this album, also having the rating put on also adds to make it sound really good to listen to. 
There isn't a big use of colours in this advert, their is a lot of black used but it makes all the gold colours and the writing stand out clear and makes it easier to read. 




Jessie J: 
This advert is similar to the Ellie Goulding one, the colour scheme of this has stayed to three colours so it doesn't over complicate the picture and also so it doesn't look too busy. Using the black and white background helps the writing stand out clearly and the font of writing works well with the style in which Jessie J's name is in, it all works together. The layout of this is neat and not too much. There isn't much writing on this just a little bit about the album and mentions one song that is included, the website has been used this is used to promote the artist and make you want to look more into what she does. 

Analysing Existing Products

CD Covers: 

How are these covers constructing/maintaining a brand image?

How are they likely to appeal to their target audience?

Jake Bugg:

The cd cover is maintaining the brand image with this cover. Jake Bugg seems to keep the same look throughout all of his cd covers, they all have a negative look about them and they are also shot in a empty estate and also on a street. He has the same type of facial expression on most of his album covers which is a bit of a moody and mysterious look. 

Birdy:
This cd cover of Birdy is also maintaining the indie feel to it as well. Birdy has a different look slightly to Jake Bugg's album cover. Birdy looks much more welcoming and kind of draws you to the album the way she has a look of innocence to her. The water colour background could describe what her music is like to listen to that it will calm you. She has also followed that there isn't much going on in the picture its just her simple standing in front of a wall.


Bombay Bicycle Club:

This picture shows the inside and outside of the CD cover. This is the other version of what some indie artists use for their front covers, this uses more creative looks and uses a lot of imagination. This cover would attract the target audience because it stands out with the wide range of colours but also with the two heads which have lots of colour inside of them. I would like to use some of this creative skill and show it in my CD cover to make it stand out from the crowd and attract my target audience.

How Will The Audience Recognise The Genre Of Music?

The audience will recognise the genre of my music by the way the CD cover looks. From researching existing CD covers by other artists with the same genre as the song I have chosen I have noticed how indie genres tend to have not very much going on in the cover, the band or artist is usually an empty space is the background. In some cases the the CD cover looks a little weird and different from what you would usually see. 

How will you address your particular target audience?
To get this across to my target audience I will follow the typical indie look of CD covers and have the artist in the picture but to add a weird strange look I will add some creepy looking animals into the background that you can see. Possibly hiding behind the singer, this I think will make an interesting looking cover.

Permission To Use Song

This is our email that we sent to ask permission to use the song that we have chosen so we can create a music video for. 

Casting

The person who is going to be the main performer is Emma. 

I think that she will relate more to my target audience since she is in the same age group as them and also has the same interests as them too.

The people that will be wearing the animal masks are Aaran, Chloe, Sophie and Toni. These are two of the cast below.

New Idea!!

Use a fold away bed and put it in a falling down room in the house. Then we can put it outside as a background change and she can be still sat on the bed. 

Shot number - 2 

Time Management

This is our time management line. We will keep updating as time goes by.


  
        

Costumes - Music Video

The costumes will have - 

• A winter feel for the main character to wear something simple.
• The animal masks will be dressed in normal everyday clothing to add to the weird look of seeing people dressed with animal masks. 

Here is some inspiration for the ideas: 

Props

This is our prop list for our music video.

• Guitar - Already sorted
• Animal Masks - Party shop
• Camp fire - Already have a location and supplies from me
• Fireworks - Parents will buy

Health & Safety - Music Video

Fire:

• Because we have decided to have a camp fire scene this is obviously a health and safety risk. To minimise this risk we are making sure that there is a reasonable distance that the cast stay away from the fire. 
• We will have a adult around at all times to keep and eye and also start the fire for us. 
• When we have finished with the fire we will make sure that it is put out properly. An adult will do this for us. 
• Fire extinguishers will be nearby just in case there is a accident that is caused. 

Fireworks:

• To light these fireworks we will have a responsible adult to do this for us.
• The fireworks will be lit from a distance to that if there is any problems they won't be near anybody.

 Lake:

• We will have life safety floats, so if anyone falls in we will have something to throw at them and help get them out. 
• The cast won't be standing near the edge of the lake.

Wires:

• To reduce the risk of people tripping on the wires, we will tape the wires to the floor.

Music Pitch - Feedback

During our pitch everyone wrote down what they thought was positive about and also negative about our idea. 

Positives: 

• They liked the idea of our video. 
• Target audience has been chosen correctly.
• The animal masks they really like and its different.
• Seems realistic.
• They like that we planned our locations.
• Like the animals stalking the main character idea.

Negatives:

• Electricity - Getting the light to the trees, they thought that this would be a problem and we need to think of a way to solve this. 
• Lighting - Issue with filming when it gets dark is to find a place that we can use to power the lights. 
• What time we film - This is because of the light.
• Props could be a bit of a challenge.

Media Pitch

 

                       

This is me and Jack's music video pitch, for each of the slides we gave an idea of what our ideas were and what we used.

Inspiration: 
This shows where we got our inspiration from. We played the song we chose to the group and asked them to draw or write what should happen in the music video. From this we circled ideas that we liked and used them to plan our opening video and also some extra ideas that we think we might add.
Another inspiration for this music video from the film "The Wicker Man".

Mood Board:
Our mood board shows what we want to put in our music video. Some of the pictures represent the autumn/wintery time that we will be filming in. We want fireworks and fire to create a colour and warmth in this video. 

Locations: 
This slide shows where we plan to film parts of our music video. Most of the video will be shot mostly outside. The bedroom we want to create a mostly empty room that doesn't have much in it, the animals will be filmed in the corner of the room, so we feel that this will create a slightly creepy feel to the shot. 

Styling: 
In this video we have shown what we want the people in our video to dress like. We will have one main character which will be a girl and we have planned a simple winter look for her throughout the video. There will be 4 or 5 people dressed in these animal costumes. 

Props: 
These are the props that we have chosen for our music video. We want the smoke machine to be used so we can have the animals appearing behind the girl. The guitar we will have one person playing it and they will be in random shots that you see throughout the video. The fireworks we want to use in the camp fire scene, they will add a little more colour to the video. 

Music Video Idea's 2

1. Have the strange animal masks in the video.
2. Start in a slightly empty bedroom, have have the camera pan round the bed to get a glimpse of the animals sat in the corner. 
3. In most shots we will have the animals lurking somewhere either in the background or close enough to see. 
4. Have the animals following the main character. 

These are just some of the ideas we have come up with so far for out music video.

Music Video Ideas

The Wicker Man - Where we got the ideas for the strange masks from for the video. 

Creativity

Is Creativity A Skill?

If it is a skill..

• We can develop it.
• Although some people may be more skilled then others, we all have the potential to have it.
• We can learn how to be creative.

Does knowledge of culture/art, help us be more creative?

- I think that having this knowledge would help being more creative because these would help inspire you to create something, and these ideas would make it more

easier for you to come up with a design.

 

Does a knowledge of creative "tools" help us be more creative?

- Yes because if you have more knowledge of creative tools then they can help whatever you are thinking happen, for example Photoshop can make a picture look better and more creative and this can help us be more creative. The more you know about tools the more better and creative your work will be.

 

Does media technology inhibit creativity? Are we more "free" without media technology?

- Media technology I think helps with creativity because of all the tools you can use to produce something. I think we are free with media technology and it can help us explore and learn more from it but sometimes we can be just as free without it as well at times.

 

How creative are media producers?

- Media producers I think are quite creative because they have to come up with a whole concept of something and make it work. They come up with some really interesting ideas in which nobody else has thought of before and make it work. They can make music videos seem really different by the use of technology.

 

 

Genre and Auteur Theory

Genre Theory focuses on..

• Generic similarities.
• How texts are determined by historical/social/political contexts.
• How texts emerge as commercial products from any industry.

Auteur Theory focuses on..

• Invidual stylistic features.
• How texts are determined by artists' creativity.
• How texts emerge as part of an artists body of work.

 

Music Video and Auteurs:

 

 Spike Jonez -



Most of Spike Jonez music videos shows the funny side of things, this video is an example of this because he hired some professional dancers and asked them to come up with the worst dance ever, and look like they were no good in which they did. He uses lower production value so he can do more with the video and it also gives off a grainy and amateurish look.

 Michel Gondry -



Michel Gondry music videos tend to use what look like vintage camera and also tends to repeats the visual images of the video. This video looks like it has been inspired from a generation of other music videos and has an interesting look about them all. The videos that Gondry had produced tend to use fixed camera, clever techniques and long takes as well. The video experiments a lot too and tries to create and interesting and something new look.

Green Screen

My Little Nick

 

 

 

I experimented with a green screen and after editing this is how it turned out. 



Stop Motion Animation - Bluetac Men

         

This is the stop motion video I did and this is how it turned out.

Redundancy and Entropy

Redundancy - is that which is predictable or conventional in a message... Redundancy is the result of high predictability. 

Entropy - is unpredictability.

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Taylor Swift Video -
Taylor Swift has a high redundancy because she has the type of video you would expect from an artist from her genre. There always seems to be a boy in most of her videos and if there isn't one she is singing about one, another item she tends to have in her videos is her with her friends which is shown in the video "22".

Yo La Tengo Video - 
 Yo La Tengo videos have more redundancy then entropy because the video I watched which was "Today is the Day" is them surfing, on the beach and also a campfire on the beach, all of this I think is normal and which you do see in some places of the world.

Ok Go Video - 
The video I think has a high entropy because you don't really see running machines lined up with 4 men dancing on the treadmills and pulling random moves. The video is quite quirky which you would expect from a high entropy video.

I think the video in which I will make will be more redundancy then entropy. I might add a little bit of entropy to make the video a little more interesting and slightly different but redundancy does seem more obvious from some of the ideas I have had.

Mulvey's Theory - Notion Of Looking

"There is frequently reference to notion of looking and particularly

voyeuristic treatment of the female body"

1) The gaze of the camera: the camera that looks at the female body

2) The gaze of the male actor: shots of males looking at women and then the shot of the     female body being looked at.

3) The gaze of the audience: what the audience looks at.

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Mulvey's theory is that "videos is produced from the males perspective, and that we as an audience are trained to see ourselves and the world through this "male gaze".
 

A good example of Mulvey's theory of male gaze is in the music video by 50 Cent's Candy Shop. From the start of the video the male gaze is used when you see all the women walking around he house. The camera tracking up the women who is wearing provocative clothing creates the male gaze to look at her. The close up of the women used throughout the video make them seem sexually available. This theme of video seems to run through most hip hop videos.

 

In this video the male look is still used and what the women is wearing throughout the video is still provocative. However, Goodwin's theory of the relationship between the visuals and the lyrics is shown in this video. The line "better go back to mother she'll take care of you" is represented throughout this video, the character in this video is messed up by drinking, doing drugs and starting fights you can tell she needs help. But the male gaze is still strong through out with how she looks.

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However, Mulvey's theory has a flaw she thought that all audiences were passive and couldn't step outside the male gaze. She didn't take into account that the modes of representation are not fixed but shift and evolve over time



Madonna's song Open Your Heart throughout the video uses male gaze but the difference is she purposely uses it in her video. With what she's wearing makes her seem like an sexual object and that she wants to be seen that way. She takes the male gaze to a different level when she actually decided to use it. The way she dances as well creates the male gaze in her video and al the camera zooms in on her and also uses the tracking to follow her hands up her body.




Lady Gaga's video Alejandro contradicts both Mulvey's and Goodwin's theory's in this video. In this video it was the men who were objectified not the women this time and it was aimed more for males who were gay. The camera did behave like a male gaze but towards the men instead. You can clearly tell who this video is aimed at with what the males in this video were wearing throughout this video. You can say however that the male gaze is on Lady Gaga in some parts with how she is dressed but also how she is acting as well.

Andrew Goodwins - The Demands Of Record Labels

"The demands of the record label will include the need for lots of close ups of the artist and the artist may develop motifs which recur across their work (a visual style that reflects their star image/persona)"



        


1) This acknowledges the commercial nature of music videos. Music videos are essentially promotional devices  whose function is to sell the song to its target audience.

-Music videos are mostly commercial and promotional devices, they are not only used to sell and song but also products which the artist might use during the video. An example of this is in the music video the girls show the brand in which they used to dye their hair, this promotes the brand of the hair dye and also helps the brand earn money since some of the people watching this might want the colour themselves and now know which type to use.   

2) Ultimately, stars are commodities that are used to represent values that will be attractive to their target audience. They are a brand. How is this brand identity established through their videos?

- The brand identity of Little Mix is mostly established throughout their videos. First to create a brand you need to like the people, Little Mix are likable because young people can relate to them in some ways, they come off quirky and fun which is the main thing that they need to portray. The brand identity is shown throughout their videos and the sound of their music is what the brand Little Mix is. Also them getting a deal to create a make up range would also show that they are a brand.

3) To appeal to the target audience, record companies will demand that there are close ups of the star so that the audience will identify them. What evidence have you found in this videos you have watched of this star?
- In the Little Mix videos I have noticed how close ups are used when each of the singers sing their invidual parts of the song, when the chorus or other bits when they sing together they still have close up shots of each of the girls. This allows the audience to get see what each of the girls look like, sound like and their invidual styles.

Andrew Goodwin - The Relationship Between Music and Visuals

"There is a relationship between the music and visuals. The tone and 

atmosphere reflects that of the music."

This tends to focus on Cinematography, Misc En Scene, Editing and Sound.

This video shows examples of the relationship between the music and the visuals. The way the two members are showing how youth is today and how everything is revolved around things to do with technology. The editing in this music video is fast as it flicks between the two singers in different rooms of the house. Also at the start the slow down time as the first member jumps onto the sofa but then goes back to normal soon after. The lighting of the video changes through out, at the start when they are singing about the TV programs  they use a lot of studio lighting to represent this, and also when they are in the "Big Brother" chair there is a low key lighting used, from them on it seems that they use natural lighting. 

The misc en scene of this video changes throughout as they film different locations of the video. For example, when they film the lounge scene they have the obvious set up of the sofa, TV and other items that you would see in the lounge. But they also create the set to look like there on Big Brother so they have the dark room with the big chair in it, and then on the Jeremy Kyle set they have the sofa's, camera crew and the background of how the set looks like.  

All in all this music does have an relationship with the visuals and this is shown throughout the whole music video with everything relating to each other.

Andrew Goodwin Analysis Of A Music Video - Rizzle Kicks Lost Generation

"There is a relationship between lyrics and visuals.

 The lyrics are represented with images"

Illustrative: 

There is a direct link between the words of the song and the actions in the video.

Amplifying:

Introduces new meaning, images, actions that do not conflict with the lyrics but that

add or reinforce layers of meaning.

Disjunctive:

There is no direct relationship between the lyrics of the song and the events of the video

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Rizzle Kicks new song "Lost Generation" The music video represents youth and also 
things that influences things around us.. An example of this in the music video is technology.

Illustrative: 
The song is not always linked to what is going on in the video all the time, but there are 
moments when it is directly linked to the video. Also when the chorus says "I'm living in
a lost generation" the video shows young people just walking around on their phones.


Amplifying:
Some scenes in the video it does bring out different meanings which you start to realize as
 the video progresses. The one message the video tends to bring up a lot is about TV and
 how it effects people at times and also how camera's tend to follow people that are 
famous and film everything they do.    

Disjunctive: 
I don't think that there are many disjunctive scenes in this music video, they all seem to
flow and go with the lyrics. Every clip in the video seems to be able to relate to something 
to do with youth. You could say at the start of the video when one of the singers is making 
toast that it has no direct link to the lyrics.

Music Video And Genre

Girl Bands 

Narrative:

The narrative of some girl bands are going out and having fun as friends. Destiny Child and Little Mix followed this by filming the video in a room, whilst Spice Girls were going out and causing chaos. 

Theme: 

The theme to some girl band songs tend to be about 

Location:

The locations of some girl bands are either in rooms or outside. It depends on the type of song for example ballads were outside, whilst up beat songs were filmed in a room or a club set up.

Representations: 

Destiny’s Child and Spice Girls were seen more for male gaze with what they wore in some of the videos, while Little Mix on the other hand are more for the younger generation and don’t wear provocative clothes.

Costumes:

·         Girl bands tend to have their own personal style in what they wear but not too much of a difference to show that their a group. The costumes also depend on the type of song as well. For example, if they are singing a ballad they tend to wear dresses, whilst rock song tends to have a rocky look.

Props:

Girl bands tend to use props that are related to the music video and also the genre style of the song. A living room or bedroom set up is tended to be used  a lot in girl bands music videos but also outdoor set up are used with a wide range of props. 

Busted Video

Evalutation

http://youtu.be/cUNz9IgC2Ak

Introduction: 
For the last couple of weeks we have been re-creating the music video "Busted What I go to school for." Before we started this we had a go and lip sync us singing to another video to prepare us for this by lip syncing to "Bon Jovi Livin' on a prayer." This gave us some of experience of editing the video and making sure the lip syncing works with the audio as well. Our main task though was to re-create the 1 minute and 10 seconds of the video as accurately as we could and then editing all the clips into one video and making it run smoothly and have it all in time with each other. 

Research and Planning: 
Research and planning was one of the most important things because it makes the video easier to shoot if you are more organized and now what your doing. The most useful out of all the planning tasks was the storyboard because we had all the different types of shots so we could follow them and also tick off what shots we had filmed so we didn't get lose track of the shots we had done. The planning that should have been done more would have been the timing because we didn't really organise which shots were being on a certain day, we kind of just did shots from the location we were filming from. During A2 the types of planning we are expected to do is - 

• Health & safety risk assessment. 
• Props, costumes and location
• Schedule
• Shooting script
• Casting

This is some of the planning I think that we will do so then we are all organized for filming our music video.

Production: Digital Technology:
My knowledge of Digital Technology did improve. By editing the video in Adobe Premiership Pro because I wasn't sure how to use it at first but then when I got used to put the clips in and cutting them down to what I needed I started to get used to it. The only problem was trying to make sure that the video audio went with the clip to create the lip synced look. I learnt during this production task was the Adobe Premiership Pro was the item that I learnt the most in this production. For A2 I need all the skills of using Adobe Premiership Pro, camera and editing. All this will help me create a music video.

Production:
From this production task I learnt that there are going to be a lot of stops and re-takes of clips to get the one clip which is good enough to use. Also the planning does help a lot to make sure that all the video runs smoothly. I think the shoot did go well and we managed to get all the clips needed so we had plenty of time to edit it all. We managed to plan the shots and did all the ones we needed to do in the locations we were in and this helped us save a couple of days. I don't think anything went wrong, we did miss a few shots however but I don't think that was enough to say it went wrong. I think if we do this again is to make sure that we don't miss any important shots and that we use all the planning to help us film the video. 

Post production: Digital Technology: 
I think the editing did go well, there was a few times when some of the clips weren't lip synced and didn't go right with the audio. I think what would have helped edit more effectively if the cast did sing at the same time as the song, this would have been easier and you could easily match all the clips up. The tools I used the most when editing was the cutting tool because this helped me cut out the bits of the clips I didn't want to use, also this helped me make everything go together. Also being able to zoom into the clips could help me cut more accurately and get everything together. Also the slow motion tool did help speed up or slow down some parts of the video which I found useful.