The End!

Today is the day I have finished my Media Studies coursework. I have finished all the posts on my blog, all my products (album artwork and website home page) and the music video to the song Bring Me To Life for the band Forgetting Last Friday.

Overall I have really enjoyed this coursework. I have enjoyed creating the music video as well as the ancillary texts that go with it and of course working with my group, as a team, as ELJAF Productions. I hope that you too enjoy looking through my blog and my groups blog and enjoy watching our music video, Forgetting Last Friday - Bring Me To Life.

Evaluation

Below is the playlist which contains all three parts of my evaluation. In the evaluation I answer these four questions:

1. In what ways does your media porduct use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
 
2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
 
3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?
 
4. How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

The Music Video

Below is the finished, 100% completed, music video for the band Forgetting Last Friday to the song Bring Me To Life. Overall we are extremely happy with what we have created and hope everyone enjoys viewing the music video. I will be going through the video more in my evaluation. We hope that everyone enjoys the video as much as we have making it! :)

The Music Video - Rough Cut 2

Below is the second rough cut of our music video. This cut was shown to our teacher. She watched through this cut and she thought that overall it was very good, very well edited, performed and put together. There were some small issues which she felt were in the video, these are listed below:

• 00:51 - Sitting on the floor - possibly longer
• 01:00 - Centre the shot
• 01:12 - When she is going down the stairs she should progress further
• 01:35 - More of the artist
• 02:00 - Maybe change the shot
• 02:20 - Zoom in closer
• 02:50 - Maybe change the shot
• 02:55 - Zoom in or make the shot longer
• 03:00 - I think this part is slightly out of sync 

Meeting

Today I decided to look through my entire blog and make some changes to some of the posts that either did not make sense or were incorrectly labelled or titled.

One major change I did was to upload how I made the parts of the album cover.

Metting

Today we decided to finish our music video. We managed to get all the clips into place and will put transitions and effects on the clip in tomorrows lesson and after school. We have also planned the evaluation answers for the four questions and will be completing this too tomorrow, in order to met the deadline. Once everything is completed we will upload the video to YouTube in full video and audio quality and embed them onto our own blogs and the group blog.

The Music Video - Rough Cut

Below is our rough cut which we showed to our media class and some other sixth form students. As you can see when watching the video there are some small parts missing and some clips in the wrong place, however these can be easily ironed out and corrected. For example at 3:21 you can see that our main artist laughs during the performance scene, this scene has already been re-filmed and will replace this part of the music video.

Evaluation Of Our Day Of Filming

Earlier today we filmed the performance, however not in the drama studios as planned. Once again the drama studios were busy with GCSE performances and rehearsals. As we only have about a week until the deadline we needed to get the filming finished by the end of the week.

After hearing about drama we decided to look in the main school hall as this too has black curtains and a black flooring on the stage, luckily enough it was free.

We set up the camera and filmed both Faye and Elliot in a number of different shots and was finished in just over an hour. Tomorrow we will import the clips onto the computer, convert them and edit them into our nearly finished music video.

The only issue we had today was that halfway through Elliot's performance the SD card became full as we have been filming in 1080p. We solved this by deleting some of the early clips we have already imported.

Day Of Filming

Straight after the showcase we decided that we would stay behind after school and film some more performance shots as this was the main criticism we received during the showcase. We planned to do the filming in drama as it is all black and fits in very nicely with our genre and song track.

Plus Faye and Elliot had already brought in their performance costumes and I had brought in the microphone.

Showcase!

Today was the showcase! All of what we had created so far was saved and shown to our media class, teachers and some other students within the sixth form. During our showcase we gave every person viewing the music video an evaluation sheet which explained how we wanted people to evaluate and criticize our music video.

The overall response was very good. Almost everybody liked the edits and the sound quality of the music video however some told us that some of the performance shots were too long and needed to be cut into something else.

We have taken all the feedback on board and will be tweaking the music video over the next couple of days to create our final professional looking music video.

Meeting

Today we had planned to film the last little part of the performance in the drama studio however the room was busy and also Elliot was not in. Instead we decided to look through all the performance we have already recorded and look what we could do with the footage we had already. As the deadline for the music video is very soon we didn't want to wait to get the footage, instead we decided to make the most of the footage we already have and if we get a chance to record more of the performance then we will import it.

Meeting

Today we imported the entire performance of the field into the Final Cut Express timeline. We did this to fill in all the gaps in the timeline, we then watched the music video through and noted down where we wanted to add the narrative.

Meeting

Today we planned to finish the performance part of the music video in the drama studios. However Elliott was not in today therefore Faye and I decided that we should convert the forest performance and put them into Final Cut Express, ready to by edited.

Instead we are going to film the rest of the performance on Friday as this is the next available day when we have a media lesson.

Evaluation Of Our Day Of Filming

Earlier today we had planned to film as much of the performance as possible. We had planned to film in the drama studio and field using a wide range of different shots which can be edited together and used in parts of our music video.

However we found out that the drama studio was being used therefore we decided that we would film the field performance today and the studio performance tomorrow. Overall we managed to film the entire song with Faye being the lead singer in a number of different shots. We filmed her from a low angle as this is a convention of music videos and also a mid shot and close up. These shots edited with the drama performance will make the music video look professional and unique.

We were all happy with what we had filmed so transferred and converted the clips into Final Cut Express ready for editing later on in the week.

Day Of Filming

Today we decided that during our two hour media lessons we would film the performance part to the music video. As we only had a two hour time frame to get as much performance as we could we decided that we should stay on the school site to film. Two places we thought would be appropriate would be the drama studio as it has black floors, walls and curtains which fit perfectly with our piece of music and genre, and also the school field as this can represent freedom and getting away from the reality of her life. This also links into the narrative and ties the two together nicely.

Meeting

Today we carried on editing the narrative and have almost finished putting all the clips into place. We decided that tomorrow would be a good time to finish filming the performance side of the music video. Tomorrow we all have a double media lesson which we can use for filming and after school. After tomorrows filming we can convert and put together the rest of music video which we believe will be completed by the end of the week.

Postmodern Album Covers: Katy Perry - Teenage Dream And Will Cotton - Cotton Candy Sky

Katy Perry - Teenage Dream

Above is the album cover for Katy Perry's third studio album. Similar to the Bow Bow Wow's album there is only the main image, one convention of album covers. Katy Perry had said to a magazine that she wanted to only show the art of the album art and not have distractions like the titles and bar codes. The creator of this album artwork is Will Cotton, he is also one of the producers on of the music video 'California Gurls' by Katy Perry. This image is easily recognisable from the scene from the California Gurls music video. 

Will Cotton - Cotton Candy Sky

This is a painting created by Will Cotton. Katy Perry had seen this piece of art and wanted to have a similar piece for her album cover. As both the pieces of art are by the same artist it is not a mockery, the album cover is simply another piece, a celebration of the original piece of art.

Postmodern Album Covers: Bow Wow Wow - See Jungle! See Jungle! Go Join Your Gang, Yeah. City All Over! Go Ape Crazy and Édouard Manet - Le Déjeuner Sur I'herbe

Bow Wow Wow - See Jungle! See Jungle! Go Join Your Gang, Yeah. City All Over! Go Ape Crazy

This is the album cover for Bow Wow Wow. This album cover does not have any of the conventions of album covers except the main image. This album cover does not have any words or barcodes on the album. They want to focus on the art and not the words associated with the band and album. They have also emphasised this by increasing the saturation dramatically of the album cover to draw the audience into the cover.

This album cover has reference to the modern art of Manet's piece - Le Déjeuner Sur I'herbe. I believe this is not a mock of the art, instead a homage, a celebration of Manet's piece.

Édouard Manet - Le Déjeuner Sur I'herbe

In this piece of art we see a woman and two men sitting down in front of a lake with another person in the background washing some clothes in the lake. The woman in this piece of art is naked and is sitting with two dressed men. This imagery is very sexual and an unusual composition at this time in the art period. The woman is also looking directly at the camera which is very provocative and sexual.

In front of the woman is a basket of fruit which   

Postmodern Album Covers: The Clash - London Calling And Elvis Presley - Elvis Presley

In today's media class we continued to talk about postmodernism and how nowadays media texts can be seen as postmodern. Today we were discussing postmodernism in album covers and looking at some postmodern album covers. I thought I would post this to my blog and later I could compare and contrast some of these postmodern covers with my own album artwork. 

The Clash - London Calling

Firstly this album cover is very traditional when looking for the conventions of an album cover. The album art has the typical album name, artist/band name and a main image that you would expect to find on any album cover.

The main image is of a man, the lead artist, smashing a guitar on the floor. This shows a sense of rebelliousness and aggression. It is also a stereotypical image that we associate with the rock genre, smashing instruments and objects to pieces. The shot also looks in action/in motion, we know exactly how the image would turn out if it were a movie still a few seconds later. This shows the energy coming from the image and the blurring effect also adds to the illusion that the image is in motion. The image is also in black and white which gives us that feeling that the album is serious and also not entirely happy, we also feel the conviction and the classic feel to the past from the image not being in colour.

The font is a complete contrast to the image. For a start the font is colourful, bubbly, loud and playful compared to the seriousness of the image. The image and the font together is a juxtaposition. This use of juxtaposition pulls the audience in and holds their attention, once you look at the cover it is difficult to look away from it as it is so involving.

This album cover is different to any album cover I have come across however what makes it postmodern is the fact that it is a homage of Elvis Presley's first album.

Elvis Presley - Elvis Presley

As you can see both album covers are pretty much the same apart from the obvious changes made to the album cover and main image. The reason this is a homage of Elvis Presley's first album is because of the seriousness of the photo and the layout of The Clash's artwork. They are not mocking the original album artwork idea they are simply celebrating the original text.

Further Researching An Artist - Lily Allen

Below is a video that was shown on Sky Arts 1. It is a one-to-one interview with Laurie Taylor about the life of Lily Allen and how she has grown up wanting to be a singer. She also discusses the lyrics in some of her songs and how she uses some of her personal life and issues in some of her lyrics and her music videos.

Half Term

Unfortunately during half term I was away and therefore we did not have the opportunity to film more of the narrative or the performance. Tomorrow we will be discussing what we can next shot and also look back at some of the clips we have already edited and our storyboards.

My Website

Below is a download link if you wish to view my website in it's full multimedia form. I have uploaded it as a .zip file as I was unable to upload the HTML to a proper internet server for a number of reasons.


My website is full of multimedia that I have created myself and uploaded to the website. The process I took to make all the parts of the website can be seen earlier in the blog.

Steps when downloading the website:

• After downloading the file it will be a .zip file
• You will then need to double click this to unzip the folder
• A new folder will be displayed
• To view the website, double click on the PRESS ME.html file

Download My Website!

Putting Together The Website

I knew before I started making the website home page that I wanted to make a multimedia website that takes advantage of all the elements: text, images, videos, and audio. Below are the parts of the website that I have uploaded to the website which you can see live soon.

Above is the video which is in the website. I wanted to add a video to the website to make it much more interesting and eye-catching for the audience.

This is the title that is placed on the top of my website. It fades in and out and also flickers slightly as I believe this makes it a lot more suitable for the website and the whole product set.


I also have a large selection of images that are placed around the website. Plus an MP3 of the song that plays automatically when you enter the site, this also has an option to be turned off and on using a player bar situated underneath a small thumbnail of the album cover.

Editing The Music Video

Today we played about with the narrative clips and video transitions with the audio clip of 'Bring Me To Life'. We looked at the storyboards we have created and placed some of the narrative clips onto the Final Cut Express timeline. Overall we managed to put together approximately 20 seconds of the music video finished with video transitions and speed changes. Video transitions we used were a 'cross dissolve' as we believe it fitted well with the beat of the song and exaggerate the distressing nature of the narrative. We also made some of the clips run at 50% of the speed for the same reasons.

Meeting

Today Elliot was still unwell so both Faye and I decided to continue to convert the MP4 files to MOV in order for them to be ready for editing in Final Cut Express. We wanted to have all the narrative clips converted by the end of the week so we could focus on the filming, converting and editing of the performance clips next week.

Meeting

Today I do not have a media lesson, however I decided to go to media during my free period and start converting some of the narrative clips we had from an MP4 file to a MOV. This needed to be done so the clips will not need to be rendered as often when we edit the footage as a group in Final Cut Express. Tomorrow Faye, Elliot and I will be converting the rest of the narrative clips and also be further planning for the next shooting, the performance, which will be filmed sometime next week.

Meeting

Today we planned to have a meeting, however Faye had to go for drama rehearsals and Elliot was ill. Therefore I have decided that I will organise the clips we currently have and have a look through the storyboards we have created to see how we can use our clips with our plans.

Evaluation Of Our Day Of Filming

Earlier both Elliot and I met Faye at her house and filmed parts of our narrative. We looked through our storyboards and filmed what we needed. We decided to give each clip an extra three seconds either side so we would have more to edit with and if some of our timings in the initial storyboards were not correct we would be penalised when editing all the footage.

Today we managed to film all the house footage and also had time to film the forest scenes as we were very close to Claybury Park.

Some of the video we filmed was the bathroom scene, bedroom scene, receiving the text message and the depression scene. In total we had a lot more footage than we would use. This was purposely done so we had more footage to look through and play with when building the music video.

Filming finished at approximately 6:30. After this I took the footage home and transferred it onto a USB which I will take to school tomorrow and give to both Elliot and Faye so they can have a copy of all the clips.

Overall today was very successful and I believe we should be able to use a lot of the footage we have captured to produce a professional looking and successful music video.

Next we need to plan and shot the performance of the band. We will then use both the performance and narrative footage to create the finished music video using Final Cut Express.

Equipment used:

• Xacti Full HD Camera

Places filmed at:

• Faye's House
• Claybury Park

Day Of Filming

Earlier in the week we decided that Sunday we would film some of the narrative for our music video. Looking back at our storyboards we have decided that we will film the house scenes of the narrative and we would do in Faye's house. We decided to meet at Faye's house at 3:00pm.

BBC Three - Music, Money And Hip-Hop Honeys

Yesterday on BBC Three at 9:00pm was the program called 'Music, Money and Hip-Hop Honeys'. I decided to watch this as I thought it would help me understand the music industry more and maybe learn some more techniques I could use when I come to creating my own music video.

This programs focus was about the controversial world of music videos and about the girls who dream of dancing in them. Them spend time with girls who are on the path to success, but also learns about the dark side of an industry where dancers chasing fame can leave themselves open to financial and sexual exploitation.

I found the program knowledgeable however not entirely helpful for the music video we are creating, however it was very interesting to watch and discover more about the history and behind-the-scenes of music videos and the music industry.

The Impact Of The Internet On The Music Industry

The music industry is contently increasing and changing every year, every month, everyday! And nobody can be certain of what will happen to the industry in the time to come.

One way the internet has had an impact on the music industry is the way people now listen to music. It is no longer large records on record players or CD's in a portable CD Player, instead people are using internet services such as We7 and Spotify to listen to their own music from a very large selection...for free. Of course things which are free have issues, one issue is that people can use free software that records the system sound and record the song as it is being streamed for free across the internet...Money does not need to be spent on music now that the internet has gotten involved!

As well as people getting music via recording, they also download it from peer-to-peer websites and services which offer a wide range of music for no fee. The songs are hosted by real people who then host more, who then host more...the cycle is never ending.

Legal actions are trying to be taken to some of these sites as it breaches Copyrights and other Acts. However seeing that well over half the populations music is illegally obtained it is a very long process to put an official end to illegal file sharing and music pirating.

However the internet has not ruined music completely. When a person likes a song they would want to share it with their friends, before the major increase in the internet and music they would have had to asked the people to meet up in order to listen to the song. Now days you click one button and you can share it with the world using social networking, viral. People on social networking sites such as Facebook receive a notification whenever a friend has posted a song for example on their wall, this friend may then re-post and so on. This is not illegal however works along the same lines as illegal file sharing, once it starts it is almost impossible to stop.

Like I said earlier nobody really knows what is around the next corner however I believe that the relationship between the music industry and the internet is going to increase until the internet will be the only place to get and share music with friends and family.

Storyboards

Below are the storyboards I have made to help guide us when making the music video using Final Cut Express. Storyboards are very important as they make the editing process a lot less time consuming and frustrating.

Ideas For The Costumes In The Music Video

Now that we have a good idea on what will be happening in the music video we decided to think of some of the costumes that maybe used in the music video.

One idea we were certain on was that we will try to keep the colours to a minimal and only use dark colours, preferable black. The reason for this is because the colour black is code for misery and sadness and fits perfectly with our track choice, Bring Me To Life.

We are not going to have very big, outrageous costumes...like Lady Gaga, as we feel it does not fit in well with our music video and the genre. We will have the main artists wearing normal dark clothing, with some jewelery, such as rings and necklaces.

The necklaces and rings would be suitable if they had some kind of gothic symbol on them such as a skull, bones or red roses. When we come to shooting we will insure that we check what every artist is wearing to insure it is appropriate because we want this music video to turn out perfect!

One more thing would be red or black nail varnish as this again is code for misery and a convention of the gothic, rock genre we have chosen.

Ideas For The Performance In The Music Video

Now that we have a rough idea of what will be in our narrative we decided to move on and decide what we will do for the performance side of the music video.

One thing we were all certain on was that we did not want the entire performance in one place or shot using only one particular shot.

We decided that we would film in three different locations:

• On a large open field. This is code for freedom and getting away from reality as we learnt while watching Eminem and Rhianna's music video, Love the way you lie.
• On some steps preferably outside. This will make the performance a lot more interesting because it would not all be shot with the singer standing.
• In a studio, or stage of some sort with a black backdrop. This shows the more professional side of the performance. Also the black colour is code for sadness, misery, upset, coldness and emotion.

Ideas For The Narrative In The Music Video

Before starting on a storyboard and rough sketch of what will be happening in the music video we decided to brain storm some ideas for the narrative of the music video.

We knew the initial concept of the music video and wanted to have a very clear division between the narrative and the performance.

Our initial concept for 'Bring Me To Life' is too base the entire video on one girls journey through her teenage life. We are going to strongly show the bad side of this teenagers life and eventually towards the end of the video we will show her committing suicide, one way or another.

As this is a very intense and emotional music video we need to have strong narrative concepts which would cause this event to happen. Below is a brain storm of the ideas which we did:

Finished Album Artwork

Final Artwork -

Front -

Back -

Spine -

Creating The Album Artwork (Spine)

Above is a video showing exactly how I managed to create the spine of the album artwork. I used the program Photoshop to put the cover together.

Creating The Album Artwork (Back)

Above is a video showing exactly how I managed to create the back cover of the album artwork. I used the program Photoshop to put the cover together.

Creating The Album Artwork (Front)

Above is a video showing exactly how I managed to create the front cover of the album artwork. I used the program Photoshop to put the cover together.