Thursday, 5 May 2011
Wednesday, 6 April 2011
Planning our evaluation
With final completion of our music video today we decided to start work on our evaluation.
Here is a rough draft of my thoughts to answer the questions
Point 2
Question 3 What have you learned from your audience feedback?
Question 4
Here is a rough draft of my thoughts to answer the questions
Point 1
During the planning of our music video we had to agree what to base our music video on since there music videos are based around either performance, concept and narrative.
After studying Taylor Swift videos we found most of her videos were either narrative or performance.
Therefore, as we were targeting the same demographic as her we used performance and narrative.
Point 2
We studied a theorist called Vernallis, she stared that music video’s include “Quick cutting and editing to the beat”
From the music videos we analysed we found this to be the case therefore during out editing process we followed these conventions by never leaving an edit lasting longer than a few seconds and we always cut to the beat.Point 3
We also kept to the conventions of camera angles and shots.
For example during the performance we use low angle shots; this was used as a code to the adience that the artist was important and also to give the impression she was performing to an audience.
Point 4
We also used numerous dolly shots in our video however they were hand heeld due to the fact we couldn’t get ahold of a camera dolly.
The theorist Verallis said that “More music video’s make such extensive use of the dolly that a static shot seems anomalous”
Dolly shots are used to sustain a songs momentun which is why we decided to feature them.
Point 5
We used jumpcuts, conventions of music videos, it makes the audience its aware of a ext which is a postmodern technique. Its used because we dont want the audience to become lost in the narrative because after all we are supposed to be advertising the song, and jump cuts break the realism of the narrative.
Point 6
We also used another example of postmodernism, intertexuality.
After researching Taylor Swift we found things that were associated with her. For example the she wears number 13 on her hand, as this her lucky number. We made a direct allusion to her as she wears this in her videos so Emma wore the number on her hand in the text too2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
Point 1 For our album cover we stuck to the conventions.
To decide on our album art we first of all researched typical Taylor Swift Album covers.
For example we noticed she was always the main focus on her album art is her. So this is what we did.
However we did slightly challenge her conventions as this song is a contrast to her usual songs, she’s portrayed as a typical teenage sweetheart however this song reflects a darker side to her.
Therefore when usually her albums are bare apart from her with light coloured background to symbolize her innocence instead we opted for a black background with red lights to portray the eviler emotions of anger and hate to parallel the mood and lyrics of the song .
Point 2 Another key feature of album covers is featuring the artist name, this is what Taylor Swift adheres to therefore us to.
We featured our Artist name across the front album cover in big bold graphics so that the audience would familiarize themselves with the artist name. We also kept the lettering white to still portray the innocence that she has, that she’s not completely dark.
We also, like typical album covers, featured the music single name, for the audiences benefit for reorganization of what there looking for.
As our demographic is young girls we decided to advertise on the internet to create a larger fanbase, so in the future we have developed a loyal audience which will always buy her music and go to her shows, buy her merchandise etc.
Point 3 For example we set up a MySpace page for Emma lang. MySpace is a social networking sight that also holds a strong connection to the music industry as part of its site is dedicated to music. The sites main demographic is women under the age of 24 ( our target audience) which consists of 44.4 % of the sites users so hopefully this should prove an effective method of expanding her fanbase.
To take this further we would continually join other social networking sites, possibly even have the artist to have a personal blog to update her fans on her life creating a closer bond between audience and artist thus forming a strong loyalty to her.
As our demogrpahic mostly uses the internet we would then most likely sell our products online, using itunes, napster etc. We’d create our own youtube channel, hopefully being featured on Vevo as they have massive audience views, for example justin Bieber who targets the same demographic as us collecting 509 million views! We’d hope to achieve the same success.
Point 4 - We also used the myspace to create a bigger buzz about the upcoming single and album by uploading stills from the video creating excitement and anticipation for it which in turn would hopefully increase sales.
Question 3 What have you learned from your audience feedback?
When we showcased our video we had mostly positive feedback.
Here’s some of the feedback we received
Love the baseball reaction
- Not sure about "fight"-
The syncing was mostly perfect- Matches the style-
It's INTERESTING
you keep the variety going (which is great because we wanted to stick to Vernallis’s theory “"...the editing in a music video works hard to ensure that no single element ( the narrative, the setting, the performance, the star, the lyrics, the song) gains no upper hand" ) this lets us know we’ve achieved this.
Seems that the style matches Taylor Swift
Performance is really good and convincing- Lighting on the dart board is perfect!
The spinning looks like perfect space
Did people get your narrative?
Emma does evil/disgust well.. !
Like the red lighting when singing into the camera
Most of our faults laid in our acting as our preferred reading wasn’t met as we weren’t convincing enough. However after receiving this we re-filmed some of the scenes to create a better perception.
Question 4
Point 1 The most important technology in our planning was the use of Sony mini DV handycam, when we were filming our preliminary this we had many problems with the quality, it was hard to get a clear image, the images were quite fuzz, it didn’t look very professional. Therefore in our real music video we instead used HD camera’s this was a massive improvement and helped greatly to create a realistic music video otherwise it would look a lot more amateur.
Point 2 Internet was a massive component of our research. Without it we wouldn’t of been able to analyse as many videos on youtube we did or learn certain conventions. Also it’s a key feature in our marketing by using Myspace, and probably any artist these days uses the internet which is the reason you get so many independent labels and artists these days. You don’t need the help of a record company to produce and distribute products.
Point 3 Social networking sites like blogger and facebook were a great aid to our planning.
Blogger was a great use to our planning as we had all our research in one place which was easily accessible between all of us, it probably shortened our planning process by quite a bit instead of hours of us fumbling through pieces of paper.
We used facebook to plan and arrange meetings and filming dates and brainstorm our ideas which was great because It increased the time we had to speak about the project instead of wasting time we could be together in physical form.
Point 4 For our editing process we used final cut express. This was all our first experience at using editing equipment so it took time to get used to it. This helped us with using some of the conventions of music videos for examples jump cuts so we could edit our scenes to achieve them.
We also used the colour correction a lot to help create effects like increasing the saturation on our film because we wanted a more summer time/flashback feeling.
We also experimented with the fast forwarding and slowing down clips. This helped us to fit everything in to the beats so we could cut it at the right time, We also used it to create so the audience could receive the information effectively and to highlight certain actions like drinking the vodka because we wanted to highlight to the audience that she was drinking.
Monday, 4 April 2011
Final Filming session
Today we've planned to film our very last scene. The "prom" scene.
We wanted a day with good weather, however it wasn't very nice at all. But actually rethinking it we decided it was a good thing as the gray clouds and winds represented the mood of the character, all dark and gloomy, unplanned pathetic fallacy.
In this shot we used close ups, long shots and mid shots. We wanted to use the close up to portray the emotions of the characters, Emma had obviously been upset which the audience could tell as part of her costume was the make up all down her face due to crying. Amy was shown as annoyed and Rhys was shown as confused.
We only have to finish the editing for this final thing that we will do tomorrow, and then our film is finished!
We wanted a day with good weather, however it wasn't very nice at all. But actually rethinking it we decided it was a good thing as the gray clouds and winds represented the mood of the character, all dark and gloomy, unplanned pathetic fallacy.
In this shot we used close ups, long shots and mid shots. We wanted to use the close up to portray the emotions of the characters, Emma had obviously been upset which the audience could tell as part of her costume was the make up all down her face due to crying. Amy was shown as annoyed and Rhys was shown as confused.
We only have to finish the editing for this final thing that we will do tomorrow, and then our film is finished!
Friday, 1 April 2011
Wednesday, 30 March 2011
Music video Showcase
Today we held a class showcase so that we could receive feedback for our videos.
We hadn't fully completed our video yet but this was what we showed them :
When we compressed to a lower quality for just the purpose of showing our class its ruined the timing and the quality, thankfully however for a real coursework to be sent off we're keeping it as the same file so that wont be a problem.
Over all we received positive feed back, our teacher seemed to be overall positive about what we had done, heres some of her comments
- Love the baseball reaction
- Not sure about "fight"
- The syncing was mostly perfect
- Matches the style
- It's INTERESTING - you keep the variety going
- Seems that the style matches Taylor Swift
- Performance is really good and convincing
- Lighting on the dart board is perfect!
- The spinning looks like perfect space
- Did people get your narrative?
- Emma does evil/disgust well.. !
- Like the red lighting when singing into the camera
We hadn't fully completed our video yet but this was what we showed them :
When we compressed to a lower quality for just the purpose of showing our class its ruined the timing and the quality, thankfully however for a real coursework to be sent off we're keeping it as the same file so that wont be a problem.
Over all we received positive feed back, our teacher seemed to be overall positive about what we had done, heres some of her comments
- Love the baseball reaction
- Not sure about "fight"
- The syncing was mostly perfect
- Matches the style
- It's INTERESTING - you keep the variety going
- Seems that the style matches Taylor Swift
- Performance is really good and convincing
- Lighting on the dart board is perfect!
- The spinning looks like perfect space
- Did people get your narrative?
- Emma does evil/disgust well.. !
- Like the red lighting when singing into the camera
Its all really great feedback, but we do take the fight comment in to consideration, we've been told before that the perception of it doesnt work well as it looks like Amy's laughing. We will probably resolve this by refilming this particular scene as this opinion was also confirmed by a comment from the audience
"Amy laughs when I push her face in the dirt".
Other positive feedback we recieved was the high rating we got for the lighting, performance, costume as we had a wide variety , a balanced variation between performance and narrative, a strong narrative.
Also we're happy about that on each feedback sheet every person that that they would watch our video again because it was interesting/entertaining.
We did also recieve some constructive criticism aswell
- Some parts were out of sync
- "A form of revenge would be nice to see"
- "Didn't really get the fight"
- Amy laughs when I push her face in the dirt
- Brief black flashes
- Emma's face is a bit too comical at times!
- "wuh-ooh" - cut a bit shorter?
- Emma coming out of the car is odd
- Use more effects
- "A form of revenge would be nice to see"
- "Didn't really get the fight"
- Amy laughs when I push her face in the dirt
- Brief black flashes
- Emma's face is a bit too comical at times!
- "wuh-ooh" - cut a bit shorter?
- Emma coming out of the car is odd
- Use more effects
The black flashes are mostly due to the fact we havn't completed it yet, and most of our out of sync errors were due to the compression of our file but we will go through the final finishing touches soon to cut away any of these errors.
We're not sure if we will use a real form of revenge, we think the build up is most important. We havnt finished our final scenes yet either, but we feel that Taylor Swift is portrayed as sweet and innocent, though this video does alternate from her usual conventions as it is quite a dark song, we think that an actual form of revenge would be to much of a diversion from the conventions that we want to stick to as its what the demographic is used to.
We also havn't gone through all the effects yet but we will be sure to explore more of them to create a more interesting piece.
Monday, 28 March 2011
Unexpected film session 5
Today whilst editing our footage me and Amy were trying to fill in parts of the video, we realised that we hadn't really gotten anything perfect for a certain line that goes "woah".
Therefore leaving Amy to edit some more me and Emma went downstairs to film this line, covering her school clothes with a sparkly scarf to hide our spontaneous actions . We used a close up on this part as we felt that we wanted the audience to recognize the emotions on her face, anger, it also worked well because it even further hid her costume. We filmed this about three times, and we did it once all the way through just in case there was another lipsync we didn't do correctly.
We then went back upstairs to upload the new footage, whilst waiting for the footage to convert we thought this would be a good time to make a Myspace for our artist.
We wanted to use Myspace for several reasons, it mostly focused on our targeted demographic, young women/girls. 44.4 % of Myspace users are women under the age of 24 fitting perfectly in with this. We also wanted to create a Myspace page as it allowed easy access to her and her music which is a great thing for fans, we hoped having a social networking site like Myspace would increase the fanbase and loyalty to secure future sales. Its also a great way to communicate about upcoming events to our audience, for example the new single release, we even uploaded an album dedicated to still's from the filming so the fan's can have a greater knowledge whats going on and a bigger part in the star's life.
Therefore leaving Amy to edit some more me and Emma went downstairs to film this line, covering her school clothes with a sparkly scarf to hide our spontaneous actions . We used a close up on this part as we felt that we wanted the audience to recognize the emotions on her face, anger, it also worked well because it even further hid her costume. We filmed this about three times, and we did it once all the way through just in case there was another lipsync we didn't do correctly.
We then went back upstairs to upload the new footage, whilst waiting for the footage to convert we thought this would be a good time to make a Myspace for our artist.
We wanted to use Myspace for several reasons, it mostly focused on our targeted demographic, young women/girls. 44.4 % of Myspace users are women under the age of 24 fitting perfectly in with this. We also wanted to create a Myspace page as it allowed easy access to her and her music which is a great thing for fans, we hoped having a social networking site like Myspace would increase the fanbase and loyalty to secure future sales. Its also a great way to communicate about upcoming events to our audience, for example the new single release, we even uploaded an album dedicated to still's from the filming so the fan's can have a greater knowledge whats going on and a bigger part in the star's life.
Tuesday, 15 March 2011
Costume during our Production
Our costume fits that of our demographic, young girls.
We don't clad out our artist in the narrative in designer glamorous clothes for a reason we wanted to relate with our audience.
Therefore for our narrative we decided on casual clothes that a young women would wear, for example jeans an a top. We particulary used checked shirts on Emma as we felt it was connotated with Taylor Swift genre, country, which is also why she was wearing the cowboy hat in some of the scenes as we were making a direct reference to the genre of the song (country pop) and Taylor Swift. Nothing that our artist in the narrative wore is particulary hard to come by and would be in a teenagers everyday wardrobe.
Another piece of costume to comment on is her makeup, we particularly focused on this in some scenes as we wanted to make her look like a mess and slightly mad with anger upset, so some scenes are the audience being shown that she's putting her make up on all over her face to reflect the emotional state she is in. When however she is shown during the flashbacks, whilst she was in a romantic relationship the make up is normal of what a teenage girl would wear, not to much.
The costume in the performance is a little different, this is slightly more glamorous as to make a clear contrast to her as a character in the narrative and her as an artist in the performance. We wanted a more glamorous image of her as here we want the audience to look up to her style, as musicians these days are often talked about for their fashion style.
We don't clad out our artist in the narrative in designer glamorous clothes for a reason we wanted to relate with our audience.
Therefore for our narrative we decided on casual clothes that a young women would wear, for example jeans an a top. We particulary used checked shirts on Emma as we felt it was connotated with Taylor Swift genre, country, which is also why she was wearing the cowboy hat in some of the scenes as we were making a direct reference to the genre of the song (country pop) and Taylor Swift. Nothing that our artist in the narrative wore is particulary hard to come by and would be in a teenagers everyday wardrobe.
Another piece of costume to comment on is her makeup, we particularly focused on this in some scenes as we wanted to make her look like a mess and slightly mad with anger upset, so some scenes are the audience being shown that she's putting her make up on all over her face to reflect the emotional state she is in. When however she is shown during the flashbacks, whilst she was in a romantic relationship the make up is normal of what a teenage girl would wear, not to much.
The costume in the performance is a little different, this is slightly more glamorous as to make a clear contrast to her as a character in the narrative and her as an artist in the performance. We wanted a more glamorous image of her as here we want the audience to look up to her style, as musicians these days are often talked about for their fashion style.
Thursday, 10 March 2011
Emma Lang joins Myspace!
http://www.myspace.com/565126799
We decided that this was a brilliant direction for us to go in as it really suited our demographic. Myspace is infamous for advertising artists, and if we were to progress our music career further we'd home to be featured on their homepage where millions of Myspace users would see.
We've even uploaded an album with stills from our upcoming music video to create continuity from our music video to the Myspace so create familiarity and hopefully sales as this is a cheap way of advertising as it creates interest and anticipation for our product.
On our page we not only advertise the new release but however a gig which will also help increase ticket sales as myspace can communicate to the audience upcoming events.
We feature her faces everywhere possible, her profile picture, the background, this will hopefully create recognition for our artist thus a fan base to increase sales on the web or in shops like HMV.
We decided that this was a brilliant direction for us to go in as it really suited our demographic. Myspace is infamous for advertising artists, and if we were to progress our music career further we'd home to be featured on their homepage where millions of Myspace users would see.
We've even uploaded an album with stills from our upcoming music video to create continuity from our music video to the Myspace so create familiarity and hopefully sales as this is a cheap way of advertising as it creates interest and anticipation for our product.
On our page we not only advertise the new release but however a gig which will also help increase ticket sales as myspace can communicate to the audience upcoming events.
We feature her faces everywhere possible, her profile picture, the background, this will hopefully create recognition for our artist thus a fan base to increase sales on the web or in shops like HMV.
Wednesday, 2 March 2011
Filming Session Four
Today we decided to film our live performance, we planned to do our live performance in the drama studio as this gave us the opportunity to control the lighting in our video, which before we havn't had the chance as most of our scenes our outside and it all depends on how the weather is.
We still wanted to encode our performance scenes with the same emotions as during the narrative, hate, anger all the different parts on the concept of revenge, the best way to do this was to use red filters for our lighting as the colour red is strongly connoted with these emotions.
We've been wanting to film in this location for a while now but due to drama exams the drama rooms have been in constant use.
We planned here to go through emma singing the entire song 5 times so we are able to use 5different camera shots so we had a variety of choice when it came to editing. One shot we had definitely in mind was the low angle shot for the performance as this highlights the importance of our artist, it also gave the effect that Emma was singing to an audience, we would of loved to have a real audience however we wouldnt of been able to get enough people in to make it look realistic.
Later on the day Emma also took the initiative to film further after school when she noticed the weather was sunny, however its quite difficult for me to film on short notice outside of school due to where i live. In this scene Emma used a prop, a diary , the diary was to show the plannings of her revenge and obsession with the person who had ruined her life, a little pyschopathic which is why we filmed it around the lines "she think's im pyscho cos i like to rhyme her name with things". Using the lyrics parallel to the video, a common convention of music videos.
We still wanted to encode our performance scenes with the same emotions as during the narrative, hate, anger all the different parts on the concept of revenge, the best way to do this was to use red filters for our lighting as the colour red is strongly connoted with these emotions.
We've been wanting to film in this location for a while now but due to drama exams the drama rooms have been in constant use.
We planned here to go through emma singing the entire song 5 times so we are able to use 5different camera shots so we had a variety of choice when it came to editing. One shot we had definitely in mind was the low angle shot for the performance as this highlights the importance of our artist, it also gave the effect that Emma was singing to an audience, we would of loved to have a real audience however we wouldnt of been able to get enough people in to make it look realistic.
Later on the day Emma also took the initiative to film further after school when she noticed the weather was sunny, however its quite difficult for me to film on short notice outside of school due to where i live. In this scene Emma used a prop, a diary , the diary was to show the plannings of her revenge and obsession with the person who had ruined her life, a little pyschopathic which is why we filmed it around the lines "she think's im pyscho cos i like to rhyme her name with things". Using the lyrics parallel to the video, a common convention of music videos.
Saturday, 26 February 2011
Social networking sites and marketing
Social networking sites are being increasingly used to promote music these days.
On Twitter Taylor Swift has over 4 and a half million views, but what does this actually do to help increase sales?
I found one particular interesting transcript of an interview on the internet to about social network sites and Taylor Swift which is of much importance as our group is targeting the same demographic as she.
HOBSON: I was in Nashville recently, and everybody was talking about Taylor Swift had attracted all these new young fans to country music because she's so well versed in social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook. What do you make of that?
GONZALES: The reason she has that distinction probably more than many in her generation that are coming up now is that she was already active in Myspace when she became popular. So where a lot of industry executives, to put them in one basket, where they were trying to figure out "How this should be used," "When this should be used," "Should we spend any money on it," She was already there using it intuitively.
Our group would be wise to use social networking sites as from this interview we can tell that Taylor Swift's rise to fame of selling over 20 million albums was partly due to the role of these internet sites. Many artists these days are using them, its more difficult to say who isn't using them.
But why does this increase sales?
Well arguably there are numerous reasons. I think the prime reason is due to the fact that being able to look in on the artists worlds excites and attracts our demographic, and this way they are always informed of what albums, music videos, tour dates, singles are going to come out. Encouragement from the artist is a key way of increasing sales.
Another reason is that these social networking sites create a stronger fanbase, espeacilly the bond between artist and audience. This ensures futures sales as the fan becomes loyal to the artist.
Another use of Social networking sites is for viral distribution. Anyone can share music videos these days and by typical word of mouth, transformed in to the use of the 21st century technology has helped advertise by linking potential audiences to the new music.
Another use of Social networking sites is for viral distribution. Anyone can share music videos these days and by typical word of mouth, transformed in to the use of the 21st century technology has helped advertise by linking potential audiences to the new music.
Friday, 11 February 2011
Filming Session Three
This filming session we were able to do a variety of scenes, some of them were random and others were planned.
When we were traveling to our filming sites we decided to take the opportunity to film Emma and Rhys (the love object) together, holding hands, laughing etc typical features of a loved up couple. We did this so we could maybe use the footage in our video to fill in empty spaces or to use as flash backs. We used a hand held tracking shots for these clips so that it gave a sense of the past as it was not planned, not like the revenge she's planning. Hand held shots are also used to give a sense of realism, this we could use to effect because by the realism we can create sympathy for our protagonist when then it switches to shot of the love object with the antagonist.
When it came to editing these bits we increased the saturation to give warmer tones to the footage so that it gave a summer love atmosphere which we want to create when we see shots of the protagonist and the love object together. To fit this in to the video we used jump cuts to show the flashback as we wanted to make the audience aware there are temporal leaps in the text.
The first planned scenes of the day was a situation where in the narrative Emma is walking down the street, she looks of in to the distance where she spots something, we would then in the editing cut to what she's looking at so the audience know what's caught her attention. In the car was Rhys and Amy (the antagonist). We would then cut back to Emma who would walk in to a lamppost because her attention is on the car with Rhys and Amy in it. I attempted some human dolly tracking shots of Rhys and Amy in the car to use in our video, however this proved to be difficult as i'm trying to keeping the camera steady whilst walking fast enough to keep up with a car. We felt this part of the filming had gone well as we got a variety of of shots.
The next scene we needed to film was at a location called Ray lodge park. For this part we recorded Rhys and Emma together acting out their harmonious relationship so we could use a montage of flashbacks.
When we arrived back at school we carried out even more filming, however this time it was quite spontaneous. We saw an old chair and a pile of rubbish and thought it may be useful to film here as the mise-en-scene could be interpreted to reflect the the mood of the character, confused and anger which is reflected in the mess and destruction of the scene. We used Emma to lipsync a few lines here and act in a particularly crazy/mad way to emphasize the preferred reading.
When we were traveling to our filming sites we decided to take the opportunity to film Emma and Rhys (the love object) together, holding hands, laughing etc typical features of a loved up couple. We did this so we could maybe use the footage in our video to fill in empty spaces or to use as flash backs. We used a hand held tracking shots for these clips so that it gave a sense of the past as it was not planned, not like the revenge she's planning. Hand held shots are also used to give a sense of realism, this we could use to effect because by the realism we can create sympathy for our protagonist when then it switches to shot of the love object with the antagonist.
When it came to editing these bits we increased the saturation to give warmer tones to the footage so that it gave a summer love atmosphere which we want to create when we see shots of the protagonist and the love object together. To fit this in to the video we used jump cuts to show the flashback as we wanted to make the audience aware there are temporal leaps in the text.
The first planned scenes of the day was a situation where in the narrative Emma is walking down the street, she looks of in to the distance where she spots something, we would then in the editing cut to what she's looking at so the audience know what's caught her attention. In the car was Rhys and Amy (the antagonist). We would then cut back to Emma who would walk in to a lamppost because her attention is on the car with Rhys and Amy in it. I attempted some human dolly tracking shots of Rhys and Amy in the car to use in our video, however this proved to be difficult as i'm trying to keeping the camera steady whilst walking fast enough to keep up with a car. We felt this part of the filming had gone well as we got a variety of of shots.
The next scene we needed to film was at a location called Ray lodge park. For this part we recorded Rhys and Emma together acting out their harmonious relationship so we could use a montage of flashbacks.
When we arrived back at school we carried out even more filming, however this time it was quite spontaneous. We saw an old chair and a pile of rubbish and thought it may be useful to film here as the mise-en-scene could be interpreted to reflect the the mood of the character, confused and anger which is reflected in the mess and destruction of the scene. We used Emma to lipsync a few lines here and act in a particularly crazy/mad way to emphasize the preferred reading.
Tuesday, 8 February 2011
Second Filming session
For the second filming session we wanted to film outside however the weather on Wednesday was poor and it rained. Therefore we couldn't film that day as we wanted to show a summers day to fit in with the narrative. "The story starts when it was hot and it was summer"
Instead more filming in the bedrooms took place in the bedrooms.
In this scene we filmed Emma (the protagonist) trying on lots of clothes. This fits in with gender stereotypes that females are always changing there clothes. However the preferred reading of this would be that her changing her clothes is her preparation for the "war" thats about to take place or aka "the revenge". To give a post modern feel to our video we used the camera in only one position and used it as if it was Emma's mirror.
The next day we uploaded the footage on to final cut express which took most of the lesson but we we're able to do some editing.
During the editing we had a high frequency in cuts, each beat ( cutting on the beat is a convention of music videos) a new change of clothes, though this isn't a jump cut because we kept the camera in the same position but is a jump in narrative, it disrupts the audiences viewing so they recognize the change of clothes.
Instead more filming in the bedrooms took place in the bedrooms.
In this scene we filmed Emma (the protagonist) trying on lots of clothes. This fits in with gender stereotypes that females are always changing there clothes. However the preferred reading of this would be that her changing her clothes is her preparation for the "war" thats about to take place or aka "the revenge". To give a post modern feel to our video we used the camera in only one position and used it as if it was Emma's mirror.
The next day we uploaded the footage on to final cut express which took most of the lesson but we we're able to do some editing.
During the editing we had a high frequency in cuts, each beat ( cutting on the beat is a convention of music videos) a new change of clothes, though this isn't a jump cut because we kept the camera in the same position but is a jump in narrative, it disrupts the audiences viewing so they recognize the change of clothes.
Friday, 4 February 2011
Final cut express
For out editing we've been learning how to use Final cut express on Mac. Since we've been filming our first few scenes we've already made a start on the editing process so we never waste time waiting to film, we thought that a film edit film edit process would be more efficient than filming then editing it.
This is a clip i found on you tube that turned out to be helpful.
We're all pretty knew to this and had to learn a few things to get us started. First of all converting our files from megaclip so then we can import them in to final cut express.
Another thing we found was difficult was especially cutting the clips where we want them, we learned several things on the timelines to help us do this.
We also learned from another alevel student how to colour correct which is excellent because we need to change the tones in some places.
Its definitely a difficult piece of technology to use however it helps us be precise when matching the clips to the audio for the lipsync, so its great in the aid of trying to create a realistic music video.
This is a clip i found on you tube that turned out to be helpful.
We're all pretty knew to this and had to learn a few things to get us started. First of all converting our files from megaclip so then we can import them in to final cut express.
Another thing we found was difficult was especially cutting the clips where we want them, we learned several things on the timelines to help us do this.
We also learned from another alevel student how to colour correct which is excellent because we need to change the tones in some places.
Its definitely a difficult piece of technology to use however it helps us be precise when matching the clips to the audio for the lipsync, so its great in the aid of trying to create a realistic music video.
Taylor Swift Album designs
Here are three different Taylor Swift Albums designs. For our completed video we will need an albums cover to represent our work, to promote the video. Therefore one of the steps to promoting this is analyzing her previous album art.
One of the main things to notice is that she is the main focus in all of her album art. None of the albums artworks are particularly unrealistic. To make her the main focus there is nothing in the background that particularly draws the audience's eye, for example in the 1st and 4th album cover the background is a plain light colour to keep the attraction on the artist. To draw attention to the Artist she is dressed in an eye catching purple (album cover 4) or in (album cover 1) her golden hair catches the audiences attention from the particular way its displayed and the vibrance of the gold. In album cover 3 this is the only one that varies from the others as its the only one with a bright, different background. This may be because its trying to appeal and attract the target demographic, young girls. Her songs are about natural and realistic experiences, growing up, so the representation of nature, the blue for sea, the dark grassy greens for forests and the little picture of the butterfly that represents metamorphosis in people from girl to women.
In all the album covers to show the importance of the audience the artist is either snapped at a close up ( album cover 2) or a medium shot, again to keep the main focus on the artist.
The demographic is mainly for girls so the graphology is all pretty similar between them she used a classic swirly design for her name, the same style is repeated in all so therefore its become the signature of her name, this is to promote a recognizable signature for her and in turn her fans will be able to recognize her merchandise/work universally which creates a strong fan base as she will become familiar.
All her album artwork are bright and light, the beige and white colours represent her innocence and wisdom, and as her music is aimed at young girls this turns her in to the perfect role model agreeable for both the parents of the listener and agreeable with the young girls. The colour scheme also infers the tone of the majority of her work, light and happy, nothing dark and sinister. She's being represented as Americas sweetheart, the girl next door figure.
In conclusion to create our own album artwork key ideas, which are remarkably easily, the most important being including our artist in our artwork as the main focus, using either a close up or medium shot.
Another is to dress our artist in light colours like white or beige or even bright colours like purple but nothing that could be considered as "edgy" or "dark", however our song is one of Taylor's more edgier songs which shows an aggressive attitude of herself so that may be open to change.
We will most likely decide on a plain,light background to not draw the audiences attention of our artist and off course copying her Taylor swift signature so she is easily recognized.
One of the main things to notice is that she is the main focus in all of her album art. None of the albums artworks are particularly unrealistic. To make her the main focus there is nothing in the background that particularly draws the audience's eye, for example in the 1st and 4th album cover the background is a plain light colour to keep the attraction on the artist. To draw attention to the Artist she is dressed in an eye catching purple (album cover 4) or in (album cover 1) her golden hair catches the audiences attention from the particular way its displayed and the vibrance of the gold. In album cover 3 this is the only one that varies from the others as its the only one with a bright, different background. This may be because its trying to appeal and attract the target demographic, young girls. Her songs are about natural and realistic experiences, growing up, so the representation of nature, the blue for sea, the dark grassy greens for forests and the little picture of the butterfly that represents metamorphosis in people from girl to women.
In all the album covers to show the importance of the audience the artist is either snapped at a close up ( album cover 2) or a medium shot, again to keep the main focus on the artist.
The demographic is mainly for girls so the graphology is all pretty similar between them she used a classic swirly design for her name, the same style is repeated in all so therefore its become the signature of her name, this is to promote a recognizable signature for her and in turn her fans will be able to recognize her merchandise/work universally which creates a strong fan base as she will become familiar.
All her album artwork are bright and light, the beige and white colours represent her innocence and wisdom, and as her music is aimed at young girls this turns her in to the perfect role model agreeable for both the parents of the listener and agreeable with the young girls. The colour scheme also infers the tone of the majority of her work, light and happy, nothing dark and sinister. She's being represented as Americas sweetheart, the girl next door figure.
In conclusion to create our own album artwork key ideas, which are remarkably easily, the most important being including our artist in our artwork as the main focus, using either a close up or medium shot.
Another is to dress our artist in light colours like white or beige or even bright colours like purple but nothing that could be considered as "edgy" or "dark", however our song is one of Taylor's more edgier songs which shows an aggressive attitude of herself so that may be open to change.
We will most likely decide on a plain,light background to not draw the audiences attention of our artist and off course copying her Taylor swift signature so she is easily recognized.
Sunday, 30 January 2011
The Music Industry and technology
Once the music industry was controlled by what is known as the big four.
- Universal music group
- EMI group
- Sony BMG music entertainment
- Warner music group
These big four have had complte power over all the music we listen to until recently, though still account 70% of music sales.However with the introduction of new technology for example hardware like, recording, listening and even more recently downloading anyone can release music and listen to any music all over the world.
With the introduction of MP3's in 1999 and then the release of Napster, a music downloading site downloading music from the internet increased, espeacilly when broadband was introduced in 2001 and Apple launched the ipod and itunes and thus began the online age.
But how does this help our group?
We are an independent label with a low budget, with the introduction of music online we can easily and cheaply distribute music, as there no need for a middle-man distributer like HMV.
For example with Myspace we can distribute our music to our audience, which is rather a common thing now days.
Another website for our group to use would be Youtube, Justin Bieber who now has been signed of to a record company started on youtube to become known. His videos now rake in over 509million views for just one music video.
We have easy access to these sites and i would recommend for us to join one of them to reach our to our demographic audience, for example Myspace would be excellent as 44.4 % of the users on myspace are women under the age of 24 which is our demographic.
Wednesday, 26 January 2011
Filming and Editing
We started our filming and editing process.
As the exams have been on this month we've peculiarly started our video in probably the most not recommend way, however its been the most effective use of our time as we can not work together properly till our exams are over.
So far we've filmed the scenes in the protagonist and antagonist's bedroom, using some over the shoulder shots, close up, medium shots, tracking shots. As these past weeks have been difficult to organize times together we decided to start the editing process on the scenes we do have on Final Cut Express until we are able to have more free time to film the other scenes.
We have cut and edited the scenes we do have to the music video even applying some timing effects to make the audience aware that they are watching a text, a postmodern method.
As the exams have been on this month we've peculiarly started our video in probably the most not recommend way, however its been the most effective use of our time as we can not work together properly till our exams are over.
So far we've filmed the scenes in the protagonist and antagonist's bedroom, using some over the shoulder shots, close up, medium shots, tracking shots. As these past weeks have been difficult to organize times together we decided to start the editing process on the scenes we do have on Final Cut Express until we are able to have more free time to film the other scenes.
We have cut and edited the scenes we do have to the music video even applying some timing effects to make the audience aware that they are watching a text, a postmodern method.
Monday, 10 January 2011
Filming and Editing
We've now completed many of our scenes and have started editing them all.
These have been taking from our first filming session, Amy and Emma filmed in their own rooms for a bedroom setting, one room was used for the Antagonist and the other for the Protagonist.
They focused on the lines:
"I'm just another thing for you to roll your eyes at honey,
You might have him but haven't you heard
...
Do you still feel like you know what you're doing"
To show the the aggression and spitefulness of the antagonist we planned for Amy ( the antagonist) to do certain action to symbolize this. We encoded various things in our text. for example Amy throwing her teddy bear, or grimacing at a phone call before then fake smiling as our preferred reading of this would be for the audience to recognize that she has quite an evil spiteful side to her, how ever we do understand what a theorist Roland Barthos said " The death of the author" which was referencing to the fact the author does not control the meaning of the text as its up to the audiences reading of it. We also used a typical music convention here by matching the lyrics to the visual, for example on the word "roll" is when the teddy bear will be rolling off the bed. Also Amy answers the phone to "Havn't you heard", Amy and Emma were very accurate with this because during the filming they changed the caller ID to the name Guy, which is the male characters name in the narrative.
The antagonist was filmed walking down the stairs and walking out the front door. To do this we used an over the shoulder tracking shot that followed her down the stairs. Doing over the shoulder shots in this scene is good because its reflects the story of the video, it gives a sense of the antagonist being stalked and watched
which she is because the protagonist is preparing for her revenge. We also used a tracking shot as this is common convention in music videos because its reflects the songs momentum.
During the editing process we speeded this up, giving a really jolty messy effect which is a common use in our video as the narrative focuses on revenge and this gives an atmosphere of a psychotic nature. This is a theme we try to convey in the video because its easily connoted with anger witch is a mood we're trying to convey . We did this to fit in time with the music and to speed up the narrative, todays audience are used to receiving information fast.
These have been taking from our first filming session, Amy and Emma filmed in their own rooms for a bedroom setting, one room was used for the Antagonist and the other for the Protagonist.
They focused on the lines:
"I'm just another thing for you to roll your eyes at honey,
You might have him but haven't you heard
...
Do you still feel like you know what you're doing"
To show the the aggression and spitefulness of the antagonist we planned for Amy ( the antagonist) to do certain action to symbolize this. We encoded various things in our text. for example Amy throwing her teddy bear, or grimacing at a phone call before then fake smiling as our preferred reading of this would be for the audience to recognize that she has quite an evil spiteful side to her, how ever we do understand what a theorist Roland Barthos said " The death of the author" which was referencing to the fact the author does not control the meaning of the text as its up to the audiences reading of it. We also used a typical music convention here by matching the lyrics to the visual, for example on the word "roll" is when the teddy bear will be rolling off the bed. Also Amy answers the phone to "Havn't you heard", Amy and Emma were very accurate with this because during the filming they changed the caller ID to the name Guy, which is the male characters name in the narrative.
The antagonist was filmed walking down the stairs and walking out the front door. To do this we used an over the shoulder tracking shot that followed her down the stairs. Doing over the shoulder shots in this scene is good because its reflects the story of the video, it gives a sense of the antagonist being stalked and watched
which she is because the protagonist is preparing for her revenge. We also used a tracking shot as this is common convention in music videos because its reflects the songs momentum.
During the editing process we speeded this up, giving a really jolty messy effect which is a common use in our video as the narrative focuses on revenge and this gives an atmosphere of a psychotic nature. This is a theme we try to convey in the video because its easily connoted with anger witch is a mood we're trying to convey . We did this to fit in time with the music and to speed up the narrative, todays audience are used to receiving information fast.
Sunday, 9 January 2011
Organising our filming
Time in school is quite short and we're mostly all on different timetables so we've come to use Facebook as a place to organise important dates like our first filming sessions. We will probably be doing alot of discussion on this social networking site as we all check it daily and it doesn't cut in to our practical time together when we need to be as efficient as possible.
Thursday, 6 January 2011
Storyboarding.Planning
We finished our storyboard after settling on Taylor Swift - better than revenge for our music video.
We brainstormed certain themes that we could represent in the video after analyzing the lyrics of the song we picked a few main ideas for sets.
We concluded
- The Protagonist (Female) bedroom, who will be played by the artist but also a character in the story line.
- Scenes of the original couple in love, this will serve as a flashback in term
- A Performance
- A school setting to serve the benefits as a way of relating to my demographic, who will most likely still be students them-selfs being able to associate with the artist, and for the purpose of developing the plot in the narrative.
- An opposing girl's (The antagonist's) bedroom
These should create the basis of our of our narrative which the sets feel like they appeal to our demographic as its aimed at teenagers bedrooms and school's will be familiar to them. But a band set also enables the audience to build recognition to the artist which is the start to employing loyalty which is needed for a successful artist.
This is a scanned copy of our initial ideas
We brainstormed certain themes that we could represent in the video after analyzing the lyrics of the song we picked a few main ideas for sets.
We concluded
- The Protagonist (Female) bedroom, who will be played by the artist but also a character in the story line.
- Scenes of the original couple in love, this will serve as a flashback in term
- A Performance
- A school setting to serve the benefits as a way of relating to my demographic, who will most likely still be students them-selfs being able to associate with the artist, and for the purpose of developing the plot in the narrative.
- An opposing girl's (The antagonist's) bedroom
These should create the basis of our of our narrative which the sets feel like they appeal to our demographic as its aimed at teenagers bedrooms and school's will be familiar to them. But a band set also enables the audience to build recognition to the artist which is the start to employing loyalty which is needed for a successful artist.
This is a scanned copy of our initial ideas
Sunday, 2 January 2011
Iconic Taylor Swift

Taylor Swift is a renowned Country Pop singer and her audience has her own iconic connotations to her.
This presented an opportunity to use intertextuality in our music video by using these iconic images to make direct allusions to Taylor Swift.
For example she is commonly associated with acoustic guitars which in itself is connoted to country music.
A more unique allusion we could make is to have our artist to have the number 13 on her hand. Taylor swift is known to have this painted on her hand as its her lucky number.
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