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.