1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products ? (Part One)

1. a shot that shows a link between lyrics and/or music and visuals

At 1 min.45, the lyrics say 'I'd advise you not to play with those' and the dancers point their fingers like they're telling someone. It is also done to the beat of the music.

2. a shot that typifies the way a record company would want their artist to be represented

At 0.58. Hannah (the atrist) has a glamour effect on her to make her look more like the star. It is a close up and she takes up most of the frame. Slightly looking down on the camera. Good lighting.

3. a shot that illustrates how your video uses music genre

At 0.04. The card shot shows us that this is the sort of song that would be played while people are gambling (like the original Jazz bar idea).

4. a shot that shows an intertextual reference

References to other chair dance routines, such as this one.

5. a shot that demonstrates your use of camera

At o.33. The camera goes from the light to Hannah freehand. It goes with the lyrics as she's leaning forward 'You think that I won't fight'. Also the motion is good for a music video.

6. a shot that demonstrates your use of lighting

At 1.51. Blue light pointing down at Hannah like a spotlight, changes the scene and makes her look glamorous.

7. a shot that demonstrates your use of mise-en-scene

Hannah is in the foreground and the dancers are in the background. This shows that Hannah is more important. The lighing is quite strong on Hannah, and there is the chais as the props.

8/9. Two shots which you feel demonstrate something which shows you have watched other music videos

We got a lot of inspiration from the Diamond Rings video from Chipmunk (here). Including the dressing room scene with the mirrors. (at 0.19 on diamond rings video, at 0.15 on our video).

1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products ? (Part Two)

Taken from real music videos..

1. a shot that shows a link between lyrics and/or music and visuals

This is taken from Tenacious D's Tribute, which can be found here. The lyrics say 'there shined a shiny demon in the middle of the road' and the visuals show it literally.

2. a shot that typifies the way a record company would want their artist to be represented

This is taken from Robbie Williams' Bodies, which can be found here. This frame shows how the record label wants him to look because he takes up most of the frame (so he's important), he looks cool because of the sunglasses and the motorcycle helmet costume and he looks happy. He is also alone in a desert plains type area, which portrays him as unique.

3. a shot that illustrates how your video uses music genre

This is taken from Osasis' The importance of being idle, which can be found here. The band is the Britpop genre, and what is shown is a very British thing to do which is taking milk in from outside.

4. a shot that shows an intertextual reference

Taken from Eminem's We made you found here. This video is full of intertextual references, mainly of various celebrities. Shown here is a referance to the game guitar hero.

5. a shot that demonstrates your use of camera

Taken from Michelle Brance's Everywhere, found here. The camerawork in this video is a part of the narrative, as the character is supposed to be looking down and seeing the other character in various places. It's very important how the camera is set up.

6. a shot that demonstrates your use of lighting

Taken from Lady Gaga's Pokerface, found here. The lighting on the smoke here is really bright, and makes it yellow which contrasts with Lady Gaga's blue costume. this brings the attention onto her.

7. a shot that demonstrates your use of mise-en-scene

Taken from Winter Kings' Black Caravan, found here. There is a lot going on in this frame. The lighing is coming from the outside, emphasising the white curtains. There is the striking red flower prop, a gothy guy in a black costume with someones hands around him in the foreground.Other than the flower everything is pretty much washed out to black and white.

2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

In answer to this question I have taken a few screengrabs from my music video, taken my digipak and poster, and put them all into one photoshop file. Then I looked at them and highlighted the similarities by annotating it.

Similarities between music video and digipak:

- Blues and pinks are used throughout to show a contrast between the warm and cool colours, and the burlesque theme (blue shown here by the blue light cutaway).

- The frame of Hannah walking is on the digipak as the CD. This may not be obvious as it's heavily edited but I think at least on a subconscious level it is noticeable.

Similarities between music video and poster:

- A frame from the music video is used.

- Both try to glamorize Esthero and sell her CD.

Similarities between the Digipak and Poster:

- The font used for 'Esthero' is pink and swirly

- Digipak shown in poster

- The hulahoop pictures are used. It's inverted in the Poster to make the text more readable ofer the top of it, but still the pattern is there.

3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?

At the beginning of the project, we all came up with treatments for different songs, in case we didn't get the one we wanted. I think Louis came up with one for Daisy's 'Number One Enemy', Hannah came up with one for Esthero's 'Wickked Lil' Grrrls' (which is the one we ended up using) and I came up with a treatment for Au Revoir Simone's 'Shadows'.

As the Wikked Lil' Grrrls was the video we actually used the peer and teacher feedback for, I will write the feedback we got for that one.

The first feedback we got was that the location would be hard to find, as we wanted it to be set in a Jazz bar. We had various ideas such as a pub or some nightclubs we had contacts in but ended up using the junction because they are friendly already with the cmdiploma. Also it would have to be short notice in order for us to find an alternative place in time.

We also wanted to have a car driving in to the bar at the start of the video, but we decided not to use this as a car would have to be 50's style (we wanted the classic Jazz bar thing) and Louis's contact who had one died a few months before so he couldn't get hold of it anymore. Everyone seemed to like the burlesque theme but we thought that corsets would look too tacky so kept the style but made it more sparkly and glitter rather than corsets. It also goes very well with the music.

Nick was definately impressed that we planned to use a dance routine, and told us we'd get a lot of extra marks if we manage to pull it off. Generally the feedback for our treatment for Wikked Lil' Grrrls was positive and constructive and helped us progress. We also developped a better working relationship as a group after the feedback because we weren't debating on which song to use.

After the rough cut for our video we got some more feedback on how to improve it. Pete said that the tracking shot that goes up Hannah to show off her costume in the dressing room was good, but needed to show her face otherwise it's pointless. We decided to follow this piece of advice and showed her face. However in order to do this we would have had to either speed up the footage which looks strange or cut out the beginning of the tracking clip. The reason we needed to do this was because we wanted to use the clip of Hannah saying 'Dukes up' because it was a strong shot. We made the decision in the end to lose the shot of Hannah walking on to the stage/ performance area because it was not such a strong shot because of the lighting.

Steve said it would be nice if we had one mid-shot or close up of Hannah that we could keep coming back to, to give the video more continuity. We tried this with a few clips but found that most of them didn't work. However we did manage to find that one close up of Hannah which I think Pete said was the strongest shot in the video and that we should use more of. We added an effect that everyone liked to that clip called 'soft focus'. Nick told us that we needed more of the dance routine to come back. When we told him that we already had used all of the dance routine parts, he showed us that with a change of camera angle and lighting, the same dance move could look unrecognizable in the right place.

Some of the other feedback we got for our roughcut from our peers was:

. Nice Variety of shots . Lighting well presented . The dance routine is very good . Good ending .Cinematography is very good . Good lipsyncing . Nice locations . Good choreography . Good use of cutaways . nice costumes . convincing performance. needs more footage of boys . the card game doesn't fit . lipsync is slightly off.

We noticed that some people say the lipsync is good and others say it was off. This is because where it was off it was only by a few frames, and some people may not have noticed after only watching once. However, we also noticed quite quickly that our lipsync was off, and also made the mistake a few times of not locking the layers, and so stuff got moved.

Pete also said that the fade effect works (I think he meant where it fades from out of focus to in focus) but he said it needs tweaking. He told us to find a way to make some of the shots lighter. We took this advice on the lighting and I found an effect called colour correction which did wonters for the lighting and even made it seem more crisp. The only clip I feel this did not work too well for is the blue lighing one because it becomes grainy, but the effect in general is good, because effects such as brightness and contrast make it much more grainy and makes the blacks in our video look grey.

Feedback for our final video:

Firstly for this video I posted our video on Facebook and got a few comments there. Also the teachers have emailed various film/music video pros to give us feedback.

Film maker Ben Gee - 'nice cuts, professional look; good fades, light used well, very good use of mix shots with big close ups and shared shot on screen; care in filming and edited very well; doubled up shots very nicely done; blur effect good; all good quality, no bad shots; cards at end make it look pro' Facebook feedback-

Then yesterday (Wednesday 17th March), we got peer feedback on Vimeo.

Feedback from others in the class:

I think this is the thing that most people have noted- The cards at the end (the dance routine) and the lighting.

generally a positive comment

'speedy cuts' are mostly towards the beginning, we ran out of cutaways at the end so if we had more time we'd try to maintain this throughout.

4.How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

This is me using the macs at coleridge. It also shows that I used headphones, a mouse, keyboard, USB's, HD camera (and tape) and a tripod.


This picture is just the tripod shown more clearly



And here is all of the equiptment listed above again

This is y LED hula hoop. in order to take this picture I needed my camera, I needed to extend the exposure on it to 4-5 seconds, I needed my brother to take the picture while I hula hoop. I also needed batteries and a dark large space for best effect. Also there is a particualr trick I did with the hula hoop which meant it was spread out not just ging around my waist, this way it isn't just a multicoloured line and more visually interesting.

We used makeup on the performers in our music video.

Here is the lighting we used in the dressing room scenes. We needed to get a technician in to help us with the main lighting for the other setting.

I used this website in my progect to get a stencil image that I was thinking of using for my poster.

I used blogger to post what I was doing in the project as I did it.

I used the software 'ToonBoom' to animate my version of the animatic.

We watched the video Bugsy Malone to get inspiration for our music video- like the jazz bar theme and the children taking over theme.

To get information about Esthero, or to get quotes for my digipak.

Esthero's myspace -Checking for institutional information

Got lyrics of the song from this website. Helped for hannah to learn to sing along as well as possible.

Keynote, we used this to present our treatment.

Safari, used this as an internet browser.

Used itunes to listen to all of the songs before we chose wikked lil' grrls, as they were all in one playlist it was easier to go through.

Our editing software was Final Cut. We already knew a lot about this program but one thing we did learn was how to lipsync properly. We also learnt to use new effects such as the 8-point matte which can be used on any poor shots to ake them useable and still look pro.

Used photoshop throughout the project for the digipak and poster tasks.

Took album tracklist and some institutional information fron the article on the album I created a digipak for.

Searching for any images to get ideas

Searching for websites- most websites here were found through google.

Used as a directory to get to our vimeo/youtube/music video blogs.

Uploading the final videos

Uploading the final videos and searching for inspiration/ looking through other examples.

I also used Facebook to get some feedback from my friends about my music video.

Final video

HANNAH, LOUIS & CHARNA - 'WICKED LITTLE GIRLS' FINAL VIDEO from cmdiploma on Vimeo.

Final Poster

The quote I found on Esthero's website, and is from Toro. The rating I have made up, I got the images of the stars from a google search- All other images here and on my digipak (other than barcode and the Parental stickers) are genuinely taken by me or from our music video. The quote from the times I got from the Times website. The image underneath this is one of the hula hoop pictures inverted and with some blending effects on it. I did this because the audience will unconsciously remember this in a shop and relate it to the album. For a more obvious way to link to the album, I have used an image of what you'll find inside the digipak as well. The date of release (or just 'now') is there and the availability in shops is shown. Then there is an image I took today from our rough cut music video on Vimeo. I didn't use any of the images I had taken screen grabs of because we took them whilst the video was small and so it got pixelated.

Front of digipak

As well as the image shown in the previous post. I am going to also use this for the front cover of the digipak, it'll be holographic so that it catches the eye of any passers of it in a shop:

The text may have moved position because the main file is at home and I'm in college at the moment, but it it's supposed to have stayed in the same position as well as the Parental Advisory sticker. It's just the wavy lines ((hula hoop)) pattern that moves.

Digipak update/ Final digipak

I have now done the last 4 parts of my digipak:

Digipak so far

I decided to stick with the LED design but to drop some of the effects shown on the last post about it. I was away for so much of the digipak task that I think I've let it slip and arise again at the last minute. However, I have given it plenty of thought as to what effects I would like it to have and still would like to go with the holographic idea. So along with the front there will be an alternative front which would also be in the final because it moves.

Here it is so far. Most likely there will be an update in the morning as well. I have also created a new photo album on Facebook just with the hula hoop photos so I can access them in lesson tomorrow. This can be found here and it has been free for everyone to see.

Belleville Rendezvous

I realise this is very late but I realise I haven't blogged yet about this.

One of the first things I thought of when I listened to 'Wikked Lil Grrrls' was that it reminded me of this clip from Belleville Rendezvous ( apologies the sound's a bit low):



Now I realise that the person they got the inspiration from for the main riff of their song was the guy playing the guitar with his foot. Nick told me about this a while ago so forgive me if I have mentioned this before.

Existing digipak

I did some searching online and found the existing album cover for Esthero's Wikked Lil Grrrls album. I'm happy that I did this because otherwise I wouldn't have realised that it needs the Parental Advisory (below) sticker on it. I wondered why I hadn't seen this sticker before and found it's only in America that they use it. However, I think I will include it just in case, and as an extra detail.



Also here's a quote I could use from her:

"What do Jimmy Hoffa, the Loch Ness monster, and Area 51 have in common? You'll have better luck finding them before you get your hands on Esthero's seven-years-in-the-waiting, perpetually rescheduled sophomore album..."

-TORO

Digipak idea

This is one idea I'm thinking of using for my front cover of the digipak. I have a lot of these photos from xmas last year when I got an LED hulahoop and went out to the park and took photographs using a long exposure. By using these I can create a similar theme throughout my digipak and poster.

For the font in this version I selected one from the presets that I liked and went over it on photoshop. This made the lines seem more freestyle which goes with the theme.

Here are some of the other pictures I took: