(POST 24) - Audience Research Video 1

You can find the video here: https://youtu.be/HM6QfsYwuZ8

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(POST 23) - Audience Research

What are you trying to find out?
We want to find out the ways people consumer music videos or feature films, who are film production companies targeting, what people like to watch, what do they watch the film/music video on and finally opinions on our idea including how it can be made better or what would they like to see included in the music video we are producing.


What questions are you going to ask to get these answers?
Do you watch feature films or music videos? If so how often do you consume them in a week?
What do you consider to be the definition of a feature film?
What do you consider to be the definition of a music video?
How do you think production companies promote their products?
Who do you think production companies target when making a music video?
What attracts you into watching a music video?
What do you watch music videos on? TV YouTube etc.
For our media project we have to make a music video and our idea is based around a couple spending the day at the beach doing things including arcades and fun fairs. How do you think we could make the idea better and what would you like to see in the video to gain your interest?


What age bracket are you looking to focus on specifically? Why?
We want to get mostly teens and people of youth age because we think that they are the people that will enjoy our music video the most. We will try and get answers from people of  other ages but we assume that it could be to modern or not of interest to the older generations. Therefore we will try to get a variety but mostly focus our research on people in our target audience of youth and teens.

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(POST 22) - Forms and Coventions

How are you planning to conform to forms and conventions? (consider technical, symbolic, verbal, genre codes) - The idea of our music video thus far is a romantic date between a couple who are in love after the woman had previously saved the mans life. The romantic side of the videos story is quite a generic, love story which follows the supposed laws of a video within this genre code. However, we have added are own twist on it by including the revival of the mans life after meeting the woman. This part of the video is what we think will set us apart from the 'normal' video type within this genre. We wanted to show diversity in the video so we didn't seem to follow the same storyline as every music video. We believe we have achieved this with the changes we have made to the storyline from the original idea we had. We also want to introduce into the music video different cut-away shots from the normal cutting the clips up throughout the whole video. We played around with this when filming the preliminary task to try out some methods. Since then I have worked more on studying different ways to achieve this and have found a lot more methods to try in the final music video we produce. We believe this will help us develop our technical side within the filming process and set us apart from other individuals. When looking into the verbal side of the video we are considering playing around with lip syncing. We are still very unsure as to whether or not we should include lip syncing in the video as we don't want to force something into are video that we think could ruin the look of the final project. Personally, I believe we should film a lip syncing scene and decide on whether or not to include it in the video dependent on how it looks post edit.


Where are you planning to develop on existing forms and conventions? - The song we are using for the music video is 'Cocoon - Catfish and the Bottlemen'. When we first watched the music video we were extremely surprised by what the storyline of the music video was. The music video challenges the norm when it comes to a couples relationship being displayed through a music video. They are two people who meet in a mental asylum home where the carers and patients are all extremely strange in comparison to those of a normal mental asylum. The music video is a complete twist on what you would think it would be when first listening to the song. We want are music video to develop upon the normal storyline but we really do not want to challenge the video as much as the actual video did for the song we have chosen. The camera shots used within the video are all mostly medium range to close up shots with simple cuts breaking up all of the individual clips. We want to challenge the use of camera shots and cutaways we use so that we can break through the safety net when filming our video. We believe if we don't challenge the norm then we are not pushes ourselves as far as we possibly could and could potentially be holding ourselves back.


Have you made a conscious decision to challenge any particular forms and conventions? If so, how? If not, why not? - We want to break the pattern of following the basic 'love' story where a couple fall in love and all is fine. We want to challenge this throughout the first minute of the music video by how the two actually meet. We want the main male character to be in deep trouble at the beginning of the music video. He will be questioning his life and wondering if he'll ever recover. During the entirety of this scene he will be drinking on the beach. This is when the woman featured in the music video will find him passed out on the beach. Then they continue to get to know each other over the coming weeks. In short, the woman turns the mans life around and brings him to release how valuable his life is. They will then continue on to go back to the same beach on a date with each other. This is how we believe we can challenge the normal romantic music video. Hopefully we can clearly show this in the final cut of the music video.


What has inspired you to make your music video? and how are you planning on integrating and therefore demonstrating this inspiration? - Firstly, I was inspired to make a music video due to the effect you can have on someone through retelling the story that the lyrics have set out through video form. When researching, planning and producing the music video you are given such a free role in how to implement the video into the lyrics. You have the power to tell a whole story through a three minute video which gives you the chance to be as creative as possible. When researching through past music videos I was inspired through the ability to retell a story in such a short amount of time. We also felt a lot more confident with producing a music video than we did a short film as we weren't really to sure with what to base the short film video around. Seeing as we are both really interested in music and have been to numerous gigs and festivals we believed producing a music video would be more personal to us. Therefore, we would put a lot more effort into the research, planning and production into a music video than a short film.

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(POST 21) - Independent study into an existing music video director

You can find the documentary I have made here: https://vimeo.com/250414697

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(POST 20) - Final Practice Video Task

We were given the task to create a one minute music video and a video in the style of Wes Anderson using original footage. We were put into groups and given a choice of a number of songs to choose from.



Wes Anderson Video



 Here is a Wes Anderson Music Video we researched into:

Here you can see Wesley has a specific style to his music video. With an Indie or Alternative style of music he uses a abnormal and quirky conventions to match the genre but also create originality and creativity within his style to help with recognition as you can link his style to his name as it stands out more than other styled music videos. He uses one or two characters and also the use of giving objects life form but alternatively only one or two protagonists. More so, the characters get most of the screen time and fill the whole camera angle to show their importance. He Also uses a story line to create purpose but also a mini film which co-insides with the music.

This is the storyboard we made for our Wes Anderson inspired video






























You can see the Wes Anderson Music Video here; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fg3ouVrXsdw








One Take Video


We chose to do a one take music video to She's So Lovely- Scouting For Girls











We did some research into one take music videos. OK Go are a band who are known famously for their one take music videos. We watched a number if their music videos looking for inspiration for ideas and the motivation they have to get everything absolutely perfect in one take. Some of the OK go videos we looked at are:





 OK Go- This Too Shall Pass:










OK Go- Here it Goes Again:












OK Go- Needing/Getting:










This is the storyboard we made for the One Take Video:















































Our groups video for this can be found here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCthBsTBp0g&feature=youtu.be

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(POST 17) - Ancillary Task 2 practice

In groups we were given an existing album cover. We then has to use the remainder of the lesson
to shoot a recreation of the album cover as close as possible to the exact detail.

The album cover we were given was...

• In order to recreate this album cover we then needed a side profile image, I used an existing
• photograph of a model I already had otherwise known as, Emily Rogers. This is the original
• photograph:

I then had to find an image of some trees to double exposure effect layer on top of the model, I used

this image of whittlingham lake.

Screenshot of editing: 

Final product:

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(POST 16) - Ancillary Task Research

You can see the video here: https://youtu.be/P5wtrcXTJqw

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POST 15) - Ancillary Task 1 Practice

For this task we were put into pairs and we were told we have to recreate an existing movie poster within the double lesson we had. We had to get it as close as possible to the original poster as we could with the resources we had in school.

The poster me and Jordan were given was for the film Bridesmaids:


Here is a group selfie of us with the original poster we were given :

• 

The way we decided to go about making the poster was getting a picture of all the characters together, in the poses we needed them in, and then Photoshop the background out and add the relevant text afterwards. We went out and asked other sixth form students if they would pose for us, and in the end we got a group of 6 boys who helped us recreate the picture.

This is the original photo we took to recreate the poses.


We then out this into adobe Photoshop and cut out the background using the magnetic laso and eraser tool. Here is a picture or Jordan doing some of the editing:



Here is the finished poster we created:

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(POST 14) - My plan

What is your idea for the coursework at the moment?

At the moment the idea for the coursework is very vague and will definitely change loads. We haven’t really thought about the song all that much but we have decided that we don’t want to use the grime genre as we believe it would be too hard to work a music video into that genre of music. We have also decided that we will be using a song that we all like so that we can have four different views on how to film the video and what should be included in the video. If someone in the group doesn’t like the song, then they would become less involved and we believe that would reflect badly on the outcome of the whole project. We have been looking at different songs and reading into the lyrics to find a song where we can link both the lyrics and video together. When we decide on a song for the music video I will be shore to update this blog or make a new blog post on how and why we picked the song.

Who are you planning on working with or do you want to work alone?

In are group there are four people. Me (Jordan Rolf), Jordan Hayward, Jack Kirby and Luke Marchant. We decided it would be a good idea to work in this group for multiple reasons. Firstly, we all get on well with each other which means we will put in effort to help each other out with blog posts, filming and editing. We all also have our own special traits which we can contribute together to use in a positive manor.  For example, I have experience in editing and filming which is obviously very useful to use in media as that is what the subject consists of. We all have our own ways of contributing towards the team’s efforts which is exactly what we need to have a successful final outcome which is what we are all hoping for.

Where do you want to film?

Currently we are unaware of a filming location as we are yet to pick a song that we want to use. The location has to be dependent on the type of song we use as that’s part of the story. The location does a huge part in telling the story so it is important that we get that part spot on. I will update this blog post when we are decided on the location of the shoot.

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(POST 13) - Music Video or Short Film?!

We, as a group decided between us, that we would rather choose to create a music video over the production of a film because of our music interest and enjoyment of sharing skills in a music genre we all agreed would be suitable yet a genre we all had interest in. For me personally, I didn’t want to create a film for our coursework due to so many great films around on the media that its just such a high expectation to make it best to help people enjoy it as much as other amazing high quality and expensive films. Due to being amateur and also strict with costs, it causes a lot of stress to be perfect and worthy of the audience taking time out of their lives to watch it. Also, with films, the story lines are very much familiar. A good guy, a bad guy, a pretty girl who needs saving or even happy endings. However, with music videos there is so much more variety and less pressure around creating a good music video as sometimes the simplest and cheapest videos are regarded as the best. The use of lighting, actors and even props help create build a good music video, but in my opinion, As long as the song is good, then the music video does not need to impress that much as it’s the music that the audience is really after. The only negative to music video is music and videos change hype and fashion in the industry rapidly with new artists and technology that you have big competition. However we will adjust accordingly and have plenty of research and enjoy ourselves during the project.

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(POST 12) - Our practise task evaluation

What went well?


When we were filming we had built up a plan prior to the filming date on the shots we wanted so that it made it easier on the date. We decided that this was a step we had to take to set ourselves in the right direction to improve on last year’s coursework. In the previous year we filmed coursework of the back of our hands. We decided that it really wasn’t the right idea to follow that procedure again as it hadn’t worked in the previous year. We felt like the plan would give us more time to focus on the quality of the shots and setting up the equipment and actors instead of actually working the plot out on the day. We also gave ourselves longer to film the project this time round in comparison to the hour we gave ourselves on the last practice task. We really didn’t take it as seriously as we should’ve last year so we have learnt from our mistakes.

What didn’t go well?

In majority the shoot for the film went surprisingly well. We used the equipment we had to the best of our ability and I really took time in the edit to focus on the look of the shots by adjusting all significant sliders to get the best out of the raw/original camera shot. The main issue was organising a day to film the music video on. We were all reasonably busy over the summer with all four of us in the group going away for different periods of time. This gave us very little if any time to film the music video. We decided to shoot on a Sunday in the end as on Saturdays none of us are available. However, the shoot had to take place after midday as we all play football in the mornings. This was the only real issue we ran into during the course of the process.

What will you do/not do next time?

In the next time of filming we will most definitely pick a song that the whole group likes. I feel like this will give us the best chance to produce a music video that we all enjoy. Therefore, the quality and dedication put into the video should transfer into the final product. Next time will we also be more precise on the filming date and organise it earlier on into filming so that we don’t encounter any issues on a final filming date.

Are you looking to develop on this idea for the actual coursework?

With the actual coursework we are looking to find a completely new idea. We believe that with a completely new idea we could form a piece of work that is much better than the preliminary. Seeing as we were set the nursery rhyme theme for this task we think that If we were to use an idea that is new to us we will put more effort into forming the idea and developing it into a well worked coursework piece that will make us proud. We have learnt that it would be in are best interests to work on a song that we all like which will allow us all to contribute ideas to the final piece.

 Were we brave enough, original enough and creative enough?

When asking about the level of braveness we took in terms of filming the coursework I definitely think we were not brave. We didn’t feel the need to take extreme risks and venture into new fields with this specific task due to the fact that it is only the preliminary. We stayed very safe in terms of location, camera shots and props. We left it very basic which in-turn also stops you from being original. We will definitely be prepared to take more advanced and dangerous risks when filming the actual task. We want people to be amazed with are final piece so therefore found there to be no need to go all out on the preliminary. There was also a lack of creativity due to all of the above that I have explained. When you don’t show a level of braveness it would be very hard to then work creativity in. However, like mentioned above I will be sure to push the boundaries of our abilities to get the most out of the shoot on the final piece task.

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