Saturday 12 March 2011

Creating The Digi Pack

Here are some print screens that I took while I was making the digi pack. 
I don't have much experience with photo shop so I had to have a teacher talk me through how to work it at first. I was then able to work on the photos of me that we took for the digi pack. I was working on the back cover, we had decided that we wanted a track list on the back cover. I chose an image that I was able to add text around with the text being a reasonable size so that you can read it.

 I lightened up the image on photo shop so that it looks clearer and more vibrant.
 CDs that are sold in shops all need to have a bar code on them so that they can be scanned through the till. We wanted to make our digi pack look as realistic and professional as possible so I added in a bar code image that i found off the internet. 


Friday 11 March 2011

Photo Shoot For Digi Pack

We set up the white screen in the studio to allow us to get professional looking photos. Georgia bought in her camera from home, which allowed us to take high quality photos. We also used the extra lighting in the studio to ensure that our shots were well lit and clear.


Ancillary Costume Ideas

We initially wanted to use bright coloured costume for the ancillary to fit in with the pop theme, however when I came across these leggings they reminded me of Jessie J because of the bold print. Aztec pattern clothing is really popular with teenagers at the moment and is in teenage fashions. I thought that these would be good to use as they are fashionable with teens, eye catching and look like something that Jessie would wear.

Ideas

After researching other magazine adverts of other artists I noticed a common theme of a block colour at the bottom of the page with writing over the top. We liked that the band creates a clear space to display information about the album, making it easy to read and set out clearly, because of this we want to include it in our advert.
Another thing that I noticed from my research of both adverts and digi packs was a colour theme, they have a certain colour that runs throughout linking them together. We wanted to have a colour theme run throughout our  digi pack and advert to make a clear link between them. 

Friday 4 March 2011

Ancillary

To go along side our music video we have to do an ancillary task. We have to create a digi pack which must have at least 4 slides in it and a magazine advert, advertising our music video. Both pieces of work must fit along side our video, fitting the pop genre.

Wednesday 2 March 2011

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Tuesday 1 March 2011

Editing


We edited our video using Adobe Premier Editor. These are some print screens from when we were editing...

Monday 28 February 2011

Progress so far...

Today we filmed me doing a narrative scene. We filmed me spinning around with balloons falling down around me. We did this by setting up the camera on a tripod, facing me against a white background, and having tables either side of me out of shot. We got Liv, Georgia and Olivia to stand on the tables and thrown balloons over me. We bought 2 packs of multi coloured balloons and blew them all up to use.

We filmed downstairs in the Cabot Eye, at first we tried throwing the balloons off the edge of the stairs but the background I was stood against wasn't plain so we then tried out using the tables, this looked alot better and was also easier to control the direction that the balloons were falling because it wasn't as high.
Because we had to throw the balloons away once we were done with filming we wanted to make sure that we had enough footage so that we wouldnt have to re-film anything. We filmed it several times and from lots of different angles and also hights of the tripod.
The balloons fell pretty quickly so we will probably put the footage in slow motion when editing.

Sunday 27 February 2011

Progress so far...

Today we focused on filming narrative shots, like planned we came into school out of school hours and stayed for a few hours. We filmed a few scences of me acting angry around the school, multiple shots of me throwing paper off of the balcony, both from above and below angles. We had a problem with the paper not falling properly at first so after a few attempts we found that scrunching the paper slightly and separating the papers they would fall alot better.

We had planned to film me kicking a locker as I walk past but when we came to filming we found a small plastic bin that we also tested with filming me kicking it over, we thoguht that this looked alot better than using the locker. We did several shots of me kicking it over and from different angles.

We asked to borrow a students locker so that we could borrow his key to open it and film me hitting it closed for a different type of shot, we got a few shots of this but we didn't really like the outcome, we will have to look over it when editing to decide if we want to use the footage.

Saturday 26 February 2011

Planning...

We next need to film some narrative shots of me acting angry around the school. We want to film me throwing papers off of the balcony and also me kicking the lockers or a bench in the corridor, this is to add in between performance shots to break it up a bit more. Because we have planned to film in the main busy area of the school we will need to film out of school hours, this is so that we are not disturbed by students and other people. We have planned to stay behind on Thursday as this is a day that we are all free this week, we are going to meet at half 3 once most people have cleared from the school. I will need to bring in my costume and make sure that I have my hair and make-up the way that I had the first time I was filmed for continuety.

Friday 25 February 2011

Progress so far...

Today we have managed to film a large chunk of our performance shots, we filmed Liv in the classroom performing to the camera. We set up the room to make it look like more of an old school traditional classroom, bringing in different coloured chairs and exam style tables and arranged them in rows. Liv made sure that she had her full costume and was prepaired for being filmed and we cleared everyone out of the room and stuck a sign on the door to make sure that we weren't disturbed, this allowed Liv to perform better aswell because she knew it was only us watching in the room.

 It took quite a while to set up the room the way that we wanted it so we made sure that we got a variation of shots so that we have lots of footage for when it comes to editing, which will hopefully mean we dont have to set the room up again to re-do any of the shots! We filmed her from 4 different angles using the tripod and also did a few shots using the dolly moving back and forth in an arc shape around the room.
I am really pleased with how much we got done today, we have got a big chunk of footage out of the way which has made me feel asthough we are on track with the project!

Thursday 24 February 2011

Artist Name

We have named our artist 'Livvi B'. The inspiration behind our artists name was Jessie J, as you can see the names are similar in the way that we have used a nick name and an initial. Livvi is short for Olivia and Jessie is short for Jessica, the 'ie' sounding on the end gives the name a kind friendly feel to it, it is normally the sound at which a nick name ends with. The fact that we feel like its a nick name allows the audience to feel closer to the artist as they are using this name usually used between friends.

Tuesday 22 February 2011

Costume Research

I did some research into what kind of outfits Jessie J normally wears, this was to help us to choose what costumes we should have in our music video. Jessie J is quite well known for wearing wacky and outrageous outfits for performances and in her music videos. She is seen as an outgoing person to many people and this is reflected by the clothing that she wears. As you can see from these pictures she wears alot of bright colours and prints, mostly contrasting eachother which create a bigger impact. She is rarely seen in a plain outfit, however when she is the design of it is far from plain itself. Jessi's image is strong and stands out from the norm. The big bold prints and bright colours she wears suggests that she has a strong personality aswell. She balances appearing sexually provocative with being a strong independant woman, these two images could be seen to contrast with eachother as dressing provocative is usually done for someone else and to catch their attention, whereas an independant person does things themselves and for themselves.


We want to have our Jessie dressed in a bight coloured patterned outfit as this is what she would wear, a floral, leopard or aztec print top would be easy to get hold of as these are currently in fashion at the moment, mostly because of influcenes from people like Jessie! If we choose to show her bottom half, rather than just having her sat at a table, which was our initial idea, then we will have her wearing either patterned trousers/shorts/skirt or maybe just a bright contrasting colour to the top.

Monday 21 February 2011

Prop List

We will be using props throughout the whole of the video, this is a list of the props that we will be needing. We are using these props to help us make our video look more realistic and to aid us in creating certain scenes.

Coloured chairs
Plastic bin
Exam table
Scrunched up paper
Pens
Paper for posters on wall
Balloons

Sunday 20 February 2011

Story boards

Here are some sroty boards that I have drawn up for different scenes in our music video. They will work as a guide when we are filming, allowing us to see what we need to film next and also what type of shots we will be using. The story boards allow our group to all understand and see what we have to do, this makes working together easier as we are all have the same information and understanding about the filming.


Saturday 19 February 2011

Rough Shot list

This is a rough shot list that our group has made up to give us a better idea of what we are doing, it also allows us to picture what and where we will be shooting.

Thursday 17 February 2011

Location Planning

Here I have started to look at the locations we will be looking at using and also when we should use them. This is because the school is a busy place and is constantly in use, we have to make sure that we film at times when no one is around to ensure that we aren't interrupted. 

Performance
  •  The media classroom in the eye, this will have to be during lunch times or after college so that it is empty
  • School theater, this will have to be after college so that we can make sure it is empty and that we aren’t interrupted
  •   School corridor, again this will have to be shot out of school hours.
  • Downstairs in the Cabot eye, I will have to look at what periods this is empty or after school hours to also ensure that there is no noise coming from upstairs in the eye.

Narrative
  •  Corridor, this will also have to be filmed after college to ensure no one walks into our shots as it can be a busy location.
  • The media classroom in the eye, we will film this during lesson time so that we can get the help of other people in our class to be extras to ensure they are there.

Wednesday 16 February 2011

Questionnaire for focus group

I found 30 17 year old students that all said that they liked pop music and asked them a few questions about music videos. This was to help our group get a better understanding at what our target audience want and like in music videos. I purposely chose 15 boys and 15 girls to make the results fair and to prevent it being one sided for a certain gender.


Tuesday 15 February 2011

Hypodermic Syringe Theory

The hypodermic syringe theory is the idea that the mass media can easily influence a large group of people directly by 'injecting' them with information. It suggests that the information from a text passes into the mass consciousness of the audience without them even realizing. 
however this doesn't take into consideration individuals interpreting media texts in different ways, for example older people have a more mature look at things than younger people and boys and girls also look at things differently. 
A modern example of the hypodermic syringe is how a child in America attacked his family because of war games that he had been playing on his games console, he was influenced so much by the games that he wanted to copy the actions of the characters.

Monday 14 February 2011

Andrew Goodwin's Theory

Andrew Goodwin States that there are 5 main aspects to a music video:
Through Beats
This is a way of seeing the song, how you visualize the music in your head. The artists voice is distinctive form the rest in the song. The artist takes the lead of a story teller, telling the story through the narrative in the song.
Narrative and Performance
The song itself doesn't tell the whole of the narrative. The narrative and performance should work together to keep the audience interested so that they don't get bored of the video.the artist acting as both the actor and performer helps to make the video more authentic
Star Image
This is a form of advertising for the artist as it puts their face to the music.artists want to look uniqe so that audiences remember them. Their star image develops over time.
Relation of visuals to the song
Videos are used to promote songs in 3 ways...
Illustrate- the lyrics and genre of the song is illustrated
Amplify- Meanings and effects are constantly manipulated so the viewer will remember them
Disjuncture- Where the song is ignored
Technical aspects
This is the combination of mise en scene, camera work, SFX, editing and sound and how they all hold the video together


Sunday 13 February 2011

Narrative Ideas

We have chose to have a mix of performance and narrative in our video and wanted our video to suit the lyrics. We wanted to capture the lyrics of the song through our narrative.
From my lyric analysation we found out that the song is sending out a negative message about bullying and that bullying doesn't make you come out on top.
At first we had the initial ideas of having a group of girls bullying a girl via the internet. We talked over some ideas for this, thinking about using one of our houses as a setting and also showing some bullying in school
However we went against this idea thinking that it would be more convenient to just use the school as our setting, this is because we all live quite far away from each other and that because of all the lesson time that we have together our time would be more productive if we could film onsite in school.
Deciding on using the school as our setting drew our attention back to the origional video as it is set in a school. After discussing in our group we decided that we are going to recreate the original video. We thought that we would be able to make it more realistic looking because of our resources.

Saturday 12 February 2011

Performance Shot Analysis

Music video analysis of Jessie J

We looked more into the shot types used throughout the video, analysing performance and narrative shots separately to give us a better understanding of what shots are involved. Here we looked at performance shots. We found that a mixture of mid shots and close ups are used to show the singer performing and from a lot of different angles, however the 180 degree rule is still followed. Also the camera is always moving, in all the shots the camera is panning round slowly. Alot of match on action shots are used to fit together all the different angles and shot types used and also all the shots cut to each other.

Friday 11 February 2011

Lyrical Analysis

Here are the lyrics for our song ‘Who’s Laughing Now?’ by Jessie J. The lyrics of the song are about Jessie reflecting on her life about how she used to get bullied when she was younger and no one wanted to know her but now she’s famous those people now show an interest in her as a claim to fame. The lyrics are quite powerful and easy to relate to in the way that bullying is a common thing. The message of the song is that anyone can make it and by saying ‘who’s laughing now?’ is her saying she has come out on top and is stronger than before. In our video we will do a lot of performance shots showing her being bullied as a child, this is to make people feel sympathy for her, involving the audience and also make the song more effective.

Mummy they call me names
They wouldn’t let me play
I’d run home, sit and cry almost every day
‘Hey Jessica, you look like an alien
With green skin you don’t fit in this playpen’
Well they pull my hair
They took away my chair
I keep it in and pretend that I didn’t care
‘Hey Jessica, you’re so funny
You’ve got teeth just like Bugs bunny’
Oh, so you think you know me now
Have you forgotten how
You would make me feel
When you drag my spirit down
But thank you for the pain
It made me raise my game
And I’m still rising, I’m still rising
Yeah
So make your jokes
Go for broke
Blow your smoke
You’re not alone
But who’s laughing now
But who’s laughing now
So raise the bar
Hit me hard
Play your cards
Be a star
But who’s laughing now
But who’s laughing now
Cos I’m in L.A
You think I’ve made my fame
If it makes us friends
When you only really know my name
‘Oh Jessie, we knew you could make it
I’ve got a track and I’d love you to take it’
So now because I’m signed
You think my pockets lined
4 years now and I’m still waiting in the line
‘Oh Jessie, I saw you on youtube
I tagged old photos from when we was at school’
Oh, so you think you know me now
Have you forgotten how
You would make me feel
When you drag my spirit down
But thank you for the pain
It made me raise my game
And I’m still rising, I’m still rising
Yeah
So make your jokes
Go for broke
Blow your smoke
You’re not alone
But who’s laughing now
But who’s laughing now
So raise the bar
Hit me hard
Play your cards
Be a star
But who’s laughing now
But who’s laughing now
Jessie
She broke out of the box
Swallowed your pride
You got that ego cough
Let the haters hate
You’re like way too late
See I got a message from you
‘Hola, I’m proud of you’
‘Oh my god babe your voice is like wow!’
My reply: Who’s laughing now
Oh, so you think you know me now
Have you forgotten how
You would make me feel
When you drag my spirit down
But thank you for the pain
It made me raise my game
And I’m still rising, I’m still rising
Yeah
So make your jokes
Go for broke
Blow your smoke
You’re not alone
But who’s laughing now
But who’s laughing now
So raise the bar
Hit me hard
Play your cards
Be a star
But who’s laughing now
But who’s laughing now
So make your jokes
Go for broke
Blow your smoke
You’re not alone
But who’s laughing now
But who’s laughing now
So raise the bar
Hit me hard
Play your cards
Be a star
But who’s laughing now

Thursday 10 February 2011

Roles In The Group

There is 3 of us working together in our group, me, Georgia and Olivia. to ensure that we complete our project by our deadline date we have shared out roles in between our group. We decided to have me and Olivia as the performers in our video, this is because we are the most confident people in our group, we feel comfortable performing in front of the camera. We decided that Georgia will be the main filmer, this is because she wont be in the video and also because she has some experience with filming and using cameras. For the editing we decided that we will all have an equal share we decided that this would be best as this is the stage where everything comes together and we all need to be happy with it. We also thought that 3 opinions would be better than one.

Wednesday 9 February 2011

Target Audience

Jessie J's target audience is teenagers, she has created a 'role model' image for herself for teenagers everywhere. Her songs give out positive message and she has embraced the role model figure.


"It is important to embrace the limelight, and I know it sounds like a cliché but the kids need me not to let them down."


Her song 'Whos laughing now' sends out a negative message about bullying and her song 'who you are' sends out the message that you should just be happy with yourself, these are two main issues in society that teenagers face today. Meaning that her songs are targeted at this age group of people.


Social networking is integrated with our generation, therefore most teens now use sites such as Facebook and Twitter to socialize with their friends. Jessie J uses social networks to stay in contact with her fans, create a brand for herself and to sell advertise her music. This allows teenagers to feel closer to her and make her music feel more personal to them.




We also chose to have our target audience as teenagers, this because we wanted to make a typical pop genre video and also recreate Jessie's Whos laughing Now video. We wanted to recreate Jessie's video and send the same message out, we thought that it would be the most effective if we kept the same target audience.
We also wanted to use social networks as a way of connecting with our audience. We created a Facebook and Twitter site which allows our friends and other people to access information about our project and see our work. This gives us the opportunity for us to get some feedback and keep in contact with our audience.




Tuesday 8 February 2011

Here is Jessie J's official website, it has all been done professionally and is easy to navigate. You can see that she is trying to appeal to a large range of fans internationally by the way that as soon as you enter the website you are given the option to view it in different languages. This makes the website more personal for everyone as they can view it in their iwn language. Her songs are avalible to buy on the website, it also gives you the option to pay by either pounds or euros, this agin is appealing to her international audience.

The website allows fans to feel more involves with Jessie J as it has her Biography, allowing people to read and get a better insight to about Jessie. It also has an official fourum, giving the fans a chance to interact with each other by setting up open chats with a topic.



Monday 7 February 2011

Permission

Here is a link to an e-mail that we sent to ask for permission to use the song Jessie J- Who's Laughing now, to check that we had the right to use this song and also inform them that we only wanted to use it for our coursework and not for a profitable cause.

Sunday 6 February 2011

After taking a look at these music video openings we decided that 'Jessie J- Who's Laughing Now?' was the best out for the four that we looked at us for us to do. We came to this decision by looking at the actors, characters, narrative story line, setting and props included in the video. After first seeing the video was set in a school immediately made us consider it as this was a setting that is easy for us all to access.

Wednesday 2 February 2011

Researching Genres

After talking about genres, pop was one that stood out to all of us. We decided to research more into it, looking at some existing videos, this is because us as a group are interested in pop music and also from the general analysis of what it involves we thought this sounded the most practical for us. We chose to look at:

Taylor Swift (You Belong With Me)
Jessie J (Who's Laughing Now?)
The Saturdays (Ego)
Pink (Perfect, So What, Stupid Girls)

These are four successful selling pop artists and also are all girls. It was important to choose successful artists as their videos will be well made and they will have made multiple videos and therefore have experience. We also chose to look at all girl artists because our group is all girls, it is more practical and convenient for us to use us in our videos rather than having to find and depend on a boy throughout our whole project.

Tuesday 1 February 2011

Choosing A Genre

To help us decide what genre to choose we analysed a few genres, we brainstormed each genre making note of the common conventions of each one. This will allow us to see what they involved and what we think would be the most effective for us to make ourselves. Also we need to look at what we have the resources to be able to achieve.
Rap
  • Girls/ sexy/ in underwear/ tracksuits/ chavs
  • Alcohol
  • Drugs
  • Money
  • Low budget
  • Locations/ walls covered in graffiti/ subway/ town
  • Dark lighting/ lots of shadows
  • Low angle shots/ intimidation
  • Hoodys

Pop
  • Locations/ Parks/ town/ library/ detention/ bowling alley
  • Romance/ boy and girl
  • Younger people
  • Send out a good message
  • Shot types/ match on action/ split screen/ cuts/ fish eye
  • Bright colours/ glitter/ balloons
  • Energetic
  • Friends

Rock
  • Set on a stage
  • Filmed as though live
  • Spot lights
  • Short duration shots
  • Dark colours
  • Loud
  • Camera always moving/ keeps up with tempo
  • Head banging/ long hair
  • Energetic/ jumping around
  • Low angles/ importance