Planning Ms Georgiou

Planning

This is our finished music video which has now been published onto you tube below is our finished video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIhNBVvVJ8E

Location.

Firstly the locations in our music video were group decisions which we all encountered as a group. At the start of our music video there is a shot of cars driving past we used the A10 as our location because we knew it was a constantly busy road so therefore we wanted to create a realistic image with the audience by showing that the video was about the artists future and about her past because of the cars driving part very fast but then the cars driving fast whilst the shot is being fast forwarded which created that more effective and more professional image to our video.

We then have the video go into a different location which is of our artist singing and walking down a pathway which is right next to a river by the river we lit candles and set them out across the path which she was walking along which helped create that more elegant and feminine look. The reason for us choosing this location was because we wanted to show to our target audience that our artist was walking into this world which she has been living with her love and then our music video is also ended with this same shot so therefore we wanted to convey to the audience that she is now walking out of this world and has walked away from her relationship with this guy.

Then we have the location of the artists house and bedroom throughout the rest of our music video the reason why me and my group members chose this location was because we wanted it to be realistic and to match the codes and conventions of a reggae music video. Also we wanted the artist to sing and perform in a place where she was most comfortable and where she could express her feelings to her audience and where she could really show her emotions of this little fantasy world she was living in whilst with her boyfriend. For example the shot of her finding a present he had left for her on her dresser and her opening it up and loving the necklace and then she ends up wearing it throughout the video because she is trying to tell the audience that this is all she has left of him. Therfore these locations can appeal to the audience because we was trying to create a relationship between the audience and the artist by making the locations relaistic so for example in her bedroom, on her bed and in a dance studio.



Characters/Actors.

For our music video we only used one character which was the main artist who is a 17 year old young girl who fits in with the stereotype which the audience convey of her and what her image should be. She is very confident , independent , caring but hates to be cheated on and lied too so therefore this helped sow her emotions through her performance in the video.




Concept/Narrative/Performance.

Firstly before we produced our music video me and my group members discussed what we wanted to portray to our target audience through the music video we was going to create. Our music video is mostly very narrative based because we wanted the video to be based on our artist who is singing her story to the audience who wants to make a relationship with her audience and show them exactly how she feels and exactly what she went through with this, and bring them into this fantasy world which she was living in when she was with him. On the other hand we also have a small amount of performance in our music video because right near the end of her story/song our artist starts to dance for the camera and really gets into what she is doing and therefore she is showing that she isn’t hurt at all or a boring person and that she can still go out and have a good time.




Mise en scene.

The mise en scene was mainly controlled by me because I found that this was my strongest point whilst creating the music video. As I was very good friends with the artist we was able to chose her a specific and the correct sort of outfit to wear for certain shots. Also I was in charge of her makeup and hair , with this I wanted to make her look real and genuine and show off her natural beauty. Where as with the props my group member Christina Petrou was in charge of the props because she was very creative and wanted to make sure that the shots we were filming were not missing anything for example she added bright red petals to the bed sheets shot which made it look more girly and elegant and also matched the artists red lipstick. Lastly the lighting was Katie Woodland’s job because she was also filming the music video she knew exactly where the lighting was needed.




Edits.

The edits to our music video were chosen as a group whilst we put our music video together and we think that overall our edits have worked very effectively with our music video and we are very proud of what we have created. We also used many different edits and tried to be a bit more creative and we think it worked very well and made our video flow very well.




Camera Shots And Angles/Length Of Shots.

This part of the music video was mainly all chosen and managed by Katie Woodland who myself and Christina can agree was a good decision because she filmed some very tricky angles but still managed to hold the camera steady and managed to give us the perfect shot which we was trying to aim for.





Organisation Of equipment And Time.


This part of our music video was put together by all of our group members , we all set up the equipment which we needed for filming e.g. the mirrors , TV etc. The times were handled by the artist and myself because we had to agree on times we could all make and we mostly filmed at the weekends when we had 2 to 3 days to film. Also with our river location we made sure that we planned to film on a day were it was very foggy because this way it helped make that camera shot look very effective and as if we used an effect but really it was just the foggy weather.

This aspect was planned clearly so that there was no confusion with times and dates etc. We all decided as a group what days would be best to film and edit and we drew out a filming schedule that made sure we did not forget any dates. The equipment that was used enabled us to keep to our schedule as we took equal responsibility in setting up equipment.

In conclusion to this the planning stage of creating our music video was successful due to the procedures we followed to ensure everything went to plan and on time.

In order to be successful in the planning stage different types of equipment had to be used in order to create the actual music video. These different types of equipment are as follows;

· Tripod
· Camera
· Industrial Light

By having these forms of equipment available to use it has allowed my group and I to have a more professional looking music video. As well as this these elements have made it clearer to identify where lighting for example was needed as where it was not.

Story Board Ms Georgiou

Photoshop Workshop Steps Mrs Fisher

Photoshop

In this section of work I will be going through the different steps I had to follow in order to edit my album cover and magazine advert. In order to know the basics of Photo Shop my class and I had a workshop were a teacher explained to us how to use different aspects of Photo Shop in order to create a professional looking album cover and advert.



Firstly to open up Photo Shop we had to click on the ‘Start’ button this then brought up a number of different programs that are available on the computer. Once Photo Shop was found I then clicked on it in order for Photo Shop to open.

Once this was done, this image on the right allows you to see what a new document looks like without anything opened up on it.


To open up a file I had to go to ‘File’ and then click on ‘Open’. By doing this it would then allow me to open up an image on photo shop so that it is then ready to use for editing. (image below)


This image on the right shows the process I went through in order to choose a file that I wanted to edit and how the software looks like while you are doing this process.


After I selected the image I wanted,
I then double clicked on it for it to open. Following this the image above was shown displaying the image I had chosen and wanted to edit. (image below)



After doing this we were shown how to cut out an image so that it could go on to any background. Here is an image I opened up on the left hand side, on the right side of that image a brick wall image is on display. The image on the left is the image I will be using for my album cover, however the brick wall is just an example displaying how to use Photoshop and how I will be cutting out the image on the left and putting it on to the brick wall.



In order to cut out the image I wanted I had to click on the ‘Quick Mask’ button which is located on the tool bar on the left hand side. Once I clicked this button to highlight the area I wanted it then looked like this. (image below)



This is what the image looks like once it has been highlighted with ‘Quick Mask’. This is only a rough example to show the different procedures I had to follow while creating my final album cover piece.



Following this, I then had to click on the ‘Quick Mask’ button once more which made a dotted line appear around the image I highlighted. While creating my own album cover i will be using ‘Magic Wand’ in order for the editing to look more professional. As this is only an example I only used ‘Quick Mask’ to cut out the image.



As you are able to see the image on the right is the final version with the background cut out from the actual image that I want to keep. I achieved this by clicking on the ‘Edit’ button and going down to the ‘Cut’ button. This then allowed me to cut the background away from the image I wanted so that I can then edit it in other ways so that my CD album cover looks professional.



Once the background image was cut out from the main image I then clicked on 'Quick Selection Tool' which allowed me to highlight the areas I did not want and move them to another layer. By doing this the top layer of the actual image I wanted was on a seperate layer so that I could then move it around on to different backgrounds. This image on the left shows the procedure I went through in order to seperate both of the layers.



I then clicked on the 'Move Tool' which allowed me to drag my final image away from the background and onto another image. The image on the left shows what I had to do and how it looks once it was been dragged over. As you can see in the image on the left the dragged over image was transfered over and was then magnified. In order to make it smaller I had to press 'Ctrl' and 'T' so that I could adjust the size of the image.



This is what the final image looks like however it is not as neat and professional looking as this is only a clear example of the different steps I had to follow in order to cut out an image and understand the basics of Photo Shop.

Music Video Ms Georgiou

Shani - Hold Me

Firstly i think that me and my other group members have produced a very successful music video. I think that our music video is great from start to end because of the way we carefully used the codes and conventions of a media product. Throughout our video we have many different camera shots which help show the artist from a different point of view and this way shows the artist singing the lyrics and showing her emotions , for example we have a camera shot of the artist laying on the bed which is a closeup and because of this shot there is a lot of the narrative shown because of the way the main attention of that shot are her lips.



Also at the beginning and end of the music video we have two long shots of the artist walking by a lake and she is walking towards the camera which betrays the way in which she enters this world which is beyond the camera where she is going to tell her audience the story and then this same shot is shown again at the end of the music video which helps convey that she is walking out of this world and has finished telling the audience her story.



Also throughout our music video we have repeated many of our shots throughout the music video this was because we wanted the song to flow with video and therefore it went really well because the song 'Hold Me' constantly repeats certain verses so this went really well in the music video.




On each of the shots which we put into our music video we tried to make each one different and original so therefore we decided to get creative with the edits and effects and we used effects such as black and white which helped give the audience the idea that this what has happened to the artist in the past. We also used effects such as getting a large filming light and switching it on and off repeatedly which helped create the slow motion effect and helped convey the artists performance (dancing).



We also used an effect which was called the 'dazzle' which gave the background of the shot which was a plain white wall a bit of a sparkle in the corners and also helped shine a light on the artists face. One of the final effects which we used was a cartoon effect which helped bring out the colours in that specific shot and made the artist and the red petals stand out the most.




Finally the artist which we used was a young , pretty , confident and very independent individual person which helped us a lot with trying to get a bond between the artist and the target audience. We dressed our artist very casual and very sensibly because we wanted the audience to understand that she was very young when she fell in love with this guy and she just keeps remembering the good times they had together and whether there was a chance for them to get back together. Overall i think that our music video was very successful and me and my group are very proud of it.





Goodwins Theory

In my music video i think that Goodwin's theory can be seen throughout our video. Firstly because of his first feature which was 'music videos demonstrate genre characteristics' this was shown in our music video because our video was in the reggae genre because of the way we had many different locations and had our artist doing a lot of dancing and singing at the camera.



His second feature was 'There is a relationship between lyrics and visuals' this was shown in our music video because we made our video all about our artist and about her singing the lyrics to the audience and telling them about what she is going through and she showed her emotions whilst singing the song for example when she sings 'grip' and then she grips onto the bedroom , this helps link the lyrics with the video which therefore creates the relationship between the lyrics and the visuals with what they see, this point can also relate to Goodwins third music feature which was 'There is a relationship between music and visuals'.



The fourth feature was 'The demands of the record label will include the need for lots of close ups of the artist and the artist may develop motifs which recur across their work' which was the feature which can mostly and obviously be seen in our music video because throughout the video there are close up shots of the artist singing the lyrics to the target audience.




Goodwins sixth feature was 'There is often inter textual reference' and this is seen in our feature twice, once where the artist opens her present which her love left her and there is a reference of a Tiffany Necklace and also there is another reference near the start of the video of the artist watching her love on YouTube which is an Internet reference and she is looking at her TV which is another reference.





The final feature from Goodwins theory is 'Whether the video is primarily performance based, narrative based or concept based' this is seen in our video because it includes narrative and performance throughout , with the close up of her singing the lyrics mostly through the whole video and also whilst she is singing the narrative to the audience constantly she is also always dancing too which helps the audience see the performance in the video.





Music Channel

I think that our music video would be posted on Channel Flava this is because this music channel plays the latest pre release music videos from the biggest artists and groups around. It also has hours dedicated to playing the most recent requested music. So therefore this is a big advantage for our music video because of 'Shani' not being that well known but because she has made her own version of this song in reply to 'Gyptian' who sang the guys version and Gyptian is a very well known reggae artist and his songs are constantly played on Flava so therefore this way if Flava plays Shani's version of the song it will be played for our target audience because they already watch reggae videos on there due to the evidence that Gyptians version is on the play list for this channel.




Target Audience

My music video appeals to our target audience because of the way we have followed our codes and conventions and because we have also used and followed Goodwins theory.

Bar Charts Ms Georgiou

Barchart Questionnaire Results.