Weekly Log - 12th December

In todays lesson, we all (Louise, Bijal and Stephanie) contributed to finishing evaluation task 4 -  we added pictures of ourselves from the process of filming and evaluated them. This meant that we finally completed the whole blog, so our teacher reviewed it and came to the conclusion that we had successfully FINISHED!

Evaluation 4

Throughout the process of research, planning, constructing and evaluation stages we used various different media technologies in order to help us create our music video.


We had to start with research and planning:

We used the internet to research for our music video, we looked at other videos to see what conventions pop videos had, this helped us as it gave us ideas for what we needed to put in our music video.
This allowed us to be creative as we could each research the different ideas that we had for the music video and then discuss our separate ideas and combine them.

We also used the internet to plan our music video once we had ideas for music video. We had to research where we wanted to film our video, the internet helped us as it gave us quick access to different website of places where we could film. We could then contact the places in various ways, either emailing or calling them.

To document our entire process of making our music video, we had to make a blog - the blog contains everything we have done separately and in a group from the beginning of the project. 
We all add to the blog, and because it is on the internet, we can all access it from home, this contributes to the final product as we can quickly and easily refer back to the work we have previously done.








Once we had done this we moved onto the production stages of the process. We used different technologies here too:

We used the camera's and tripod in order to film our music video, this contributed to our final product as it helped us film the shots we needed.

Whilst filming in our drama studio the technician gave us a wire which allowed us to use Bijal's iPod from the studio floor when he was up in the technician's room. By doing this is gave us control of the sound, it helped us as we can quickly and easily forward/rewind the song to where we wanted it. This especially helped the actors when it came to lip syncing as they could sing along with the exact song. It also helped us as it made sure the lip syncing was tighter as they sang along to the song.

This is a shot of Evie filming and Louise helping her, we all took turns when filming, as all of us were participating in the video therefore we all filmed. We had to continuously check that the lighting effects that we wanted, came across on the camera. Sometimes we had to turn down the lighting as the actors faces were too bright on the screen. 










After this we had to edit our music video, for this we needed to use the computer again:

 For the editing process of the music video we used iMovie HD, we used this because last year we also used this product and we all knew our way around it, we had the choice of using iMovie HD and iMovie.
Using iMovie allowed us to play around with different cuts and effects to see what looked best and the most professional. We could creatively change around the shots that we had to fit to the song. We didn't stick to the original plan, but since we knew how to use the product it was easy to do.

By making sure we could all use this product it meant that we could come in separately and work on the final music video in order to meet our deadline but overall Louise did the majority of the editing through out the process of making our music video, but she still included all the groups thoughts and ideas. 












Finally the evaluation stages of process:


The final evaluation stages consisted of four different evaluation tasks, for this we we used several different technologies - 

Firstly we used Youtube allowed us to post our media product for everyone to see, in the evaluation tasks we needed to annotate our video and show the conventions we used. 

Pages allowed us to complete evaluation 2, we had to annotate the ancillary task. It was easier to use pages than word and word has restrictions on where we could place certain things, therefore pages was more appropriate to us.

In Evaluation 3 we had to film others and their thoughts on our final music video. For this we used a camera and a tripod, uploaded to youtube and then posted it on our blog. By doing this we could review our music video from not only our point of view, but from others.
















Finally for this last evaluation we used the blog and a camera to take pictures of the processes we have been doing along the way. 

Weekly Log : Friday 9th Dec

Louise:
During fridays lessons Bijal, Stephanie and I finished off task 1 and 2 and also task. We then filmed ourself evaluating the feedback we received from our class mates. It took a few attempts as we kept messing up the script but we eventually managed to complete it. Unfortunately Evie couldn't attend the lesson as she is ill, but she wrote out her own evaluation of the audience feedback. We've planned for mondays lesson to completely finish evaluation task 4 and then we will have completely finished all the evaluation tasks.

Stephanie:

At the beginning of the lesson we looked over the magazine adverts, Bijal suggested that we add the small image of the front of the CD cover to the corner like in the other advert to help advertise. When i first added it I thought it look crowded at the bottom so I moved the star ratings a little bit higher. 

This is the final advert we have decided to use:

Whilst I was doing this Bijal carried on with Task 1 and Louise carried on with Task 3, Bijal then finished what I had started on Task 2. Once we were all finished we had to film ourselves for the second part of task 3 - we had to talk about what we found out, how far we agree and what we would change. Before we started this we thought we should write a script so we didn't get confused on what the other members of the group had said or forgotten to mention anything. It didn't take to long to finish this off, so we uploaded it to youtube and then onto our blog. Now these tasks have been done we just have to start and finish Evaluation Task 4.

Bijal:

In today's lesson we were trying to complete all the evaluation tasks before the deadline which was monday. I focused on finishing evaluation 1, and evaluation 2 while Stephanie worked on finalising everything needed for the ancillary task and Louise worked on completing evaluation 3. By working on things separately it made sure that we got more done as a group as we have a deadline to meet. Once again, we all put input on all the of group tasks to make sure that it was a group effort. Even though Evie is unfortunately unable to attend school, she made sure that she communicated her ideas into the group work.

Final Digi-pak and Magazine Advert

Magazine Advert

Outside of the CD Digi-pak

Inside of the Digi-pak

Evaluation Activity 2

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary tasks?

The combination of our main product and ancillary tasks are very effective - this is because they both compliment each other very well. They all follow the same themes throughout, whether this is colour, or characters, you can see that they are all connected in some way.

They connect with each other as images from the main product are used in the ancillary task, for example the image on the front of our digi-pack is of the main character who is seen throughout our main product, strongly combining the main product and the ancillary task. The back of the digi-pak shows an image of the rolling stones logo, not only does this relate to Mick Jagger, but we also made a backdrop of this for our main product and this image is shown frequently within the music video. The inside left of the digi-pak is also of our main character, and the in side right shows a combination of the peace signs we used as backdrops in our music video. 

The magazine advert, also used our main character to connect the ancillary task to the main product. On the advert it shows a small picture of the digi-pak as a form of promotion. 

This screenshot from the final music video, shows how the music video and ancillary task are connected, the rolling stones flag is shown in the background and then again used in the CD Digi-pak. The colour themes of red, black and white are also shown in this screenshot connecting the three products together.

The screenshot shows our main character in the music video, we also used his face in both our magazine advert and our CD Digi-pak instantly combining the three products together. By using his face in all three it creates a recognisable image for the audience as they can see his face in three product and connect them together. 

Planning for final day of filming

Before the final day of  filming i planned out every shot we needed to do for the Covent garden sequence. I used this method before when planning the Christina sequence and it work really well as the filming session was structured and done quickly and professionally.

Here are the the sheets i used for the planning with the song lyrics and shot types...

Monday 5th December

Bijal was well enough to attend this lesson thankfully as we really needed to start the group evaluation tasks. Evie unfortunately was still ill but we left space in each task to include her input. For this lesson Stephanie started doing evaluation task 2 which entailed explaining how effective the main product and and ancillary task are and if they work well together. bijal started evaluation task 1; she had to find out what do media products use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media forms so she started annotating the video and got related examples. I finished off evaluation task 3 and evaluated it on the blog.

Friday 2nd December

For this lesson only me and Stephanie attended. We decided to finish the evaluation task 3 and to finally upload the music video to youtube. It took 5 attempts to put the video on the internet as the quality wasn't good in a few and we wanted to put the best version we had onto the blog. Stephanie finished the ancillary task  and we also found new pictures for the poster as we didn't like the first attempts we had as they looked childish and a bit cheesy. even though half our group didn't attend this lesson Stephanie and I made a lot of progress and set up tasks for us, and the rest of our group to complete as homework and up coming lessons.

Monday 28th Novemeber

This was the lesson we received all our audience feedback. We let our class watch our video. and they generated the positives of our video, areas of improvement and conventions of a typical music video. The feedback we received was really good, people found our video funny and loved all the costumes and the enthusiasm of the actors. They thought the editing was great and fast paced.

the areas of improvement they pointed out were the lip-syncing was out of time, but we were aware of this. Also some people couldn't understand the narrative in parts, such as the groupie part in covent garden so we all thought that would be an area of improvement.

Some of the conventions that were pointed out include; lip-syncing, fast paced editing, cut to the beat of the song, performance and narrative and all these were included in our music video. which showed that we tended to use the conventions a music video needed to make it recognizable.

The second part of the lesson entailed us recording each groups audience feedback, this was also part 3 of the evaluation task, I went round and filmed different groups answering a series of questions i put to them about our video. Evie and Stephanie had to be filmed by other groups, giving them feedback. After all the feedback was collected I edited it all together so i could put it on the blog.

Last Week Of Editing

As we had some problems at the start with losing footage and having to re-film parts we had to rush the last week as we had a lot of editing to do and so little time. I spend most of my lunch times, free periods and after school editing. As our film was so fast paced we had  a lot of shot fast shots to edit together to make the video work and fit the genre and style of music. We shot so much footage, it was hard to select shots to go into the song so in the end each shot lasted a max of 3 seconds and we normally shot about 10 seconds for each shot. when fitting the shots together parts kept moving around and jumbling up so the lip-syncing was out of time. Unfortunately we didn't completely fit all the lip-syncing in time for the audience feedback so when we showed the video it was slightly out of time and we knew that the audience would comment on this fault. But overall we all really liked the shots we had and the way it was edited. There are a few shots that we would change where they have been held for to long and we would also make the narrative a lot clearer. but all the performance parts are very entertaining and look very effective.

final day of filming

For the final day of filming Me Bijal and Stephanie went up the covent garden with the main character and the dancers to film the ending sequence. We used a back street to film in as it would suit the style of the video, The reason we picked london is because Mick Jagger was from london so we wanted to create links to our music video even if they are minor ones. Some problems that occurred was that it was quite a windy day so the camera kept shaking due to the wind. Also the actors found it very cold at times so were not fully focused to perform but they still did very well. Stephanie and Bijal were performing where as i did all the camera work as i had planned all the shots the night before so i had an idea of the outcome that was needed. Another problem was the public; we didn't anticipate that the street would be so busy so we had to keep stopping or re-filming because people would keep walking past. Another reason we thought covent garden would be good is because of all the street performers, we wanted to feature them in out video as the main character is a performer himself & we wanted shots of him performing and singing with the street performer. Over all it took about 3-4 hours to complete all the filming and we ended up with very good humorous shots, were all very happy with the footage we got.

Evaluation task 3

We interviewed 4 other groups and asked them for feedback on our video. The questions we ask them were;

1. what were the positive parts to our video
2. where are areas of improvement
3. how does it show typical conventions of a music video
4. how professional is our music video in terms of cinematography/editing/mise-en-scene
5. how suited is the style of the video to target audience/style of music/ artist or band
6. how effective if the combination of the main product and ancillary task

The majority of the audience feedback was good apart from the fact that the lip-syncing was out of time but we managed to fix this problem before we posted the video to youtube for our final music video. Also some people couldn't understand the narrative and as a group we can see where we have gone wrong in this sense, it can be unclear to some people as the Covent Garden scenes don't completely link to the begin the way we planned them to. This was because we lost our footage along the process of filming and had to change our ideas. However overall, most people understood the narrative and how it worked with the performance part of the video.




Louise: By getting audience feedback it allowed us as a group to find out the positive parts, and the areas for improvement within our music video
Bijal: In terms of audience feedback i think we can all agree with all of the comments we received. The costumes and characters that we chose for our music video we were very happy with and also feel that they fit with the style of the video. We think that they worked well in order to reach the narrative and attract the target audience. 
Stephanie:The style of our music was a pop genre and therefore the music video had to be fun and lively, the audience feedback showed that they thought we achieved this within our music video.
Louise:The audience feedback showed that overall they thought the video looked quite professional through the use of cinematography, editing and mise-en-scene. We tried our best to make the video look as professional as we could, by filming a whole variety of shots and then cutting the video to fit to the beat of the song.
Stephanie:The audience thought that we needed make our lip syncing tighter, however this was quickly amended as the music video they saw wasn’t the final edit.
Bijal:As a group we would agree that the thing that we would change was to stick to the plan better than we did, we made various changes allow the way of the filming process which ended up making it more complicated for us however we are all happy with the final product.


Evie: Due to still not being in school I was unable to partake in the audience feedback video, however fortunately I was in for the audience feedback lesson so I was able to take notes of how to improve our video and what worked well in our music video;
On Monday 28th November we dedicated our lesson to showing eachother our music video's and giving strengths improvements and the recognisable conventions. Our music video was the second video to get shown, and while watching the video we realised that our video was slightly out of time with the music as we had had difficulty when editing that when putting clips in place then the other clips which were in place would move slightly. This was unfortunate as we had our video perfect and it was definitely noticeable when the lipsyncing was out of place. However, we knew that once we had shown the audience that we would be able to put the clips back in to place.

The feedback we received was very positive which was really good as we wasn't sure how well it would be received, the strengths that the class commented was on was the performance aspect, which was good as  most of our film was based around performance, the performance was our main strength due to our cast as they were very enthusiastic and fitted the roles perfectly. Other strengths that the audience picked up on was the fast paced editing, we really worked hard on making sure we had enough shots so that we could use quick shots to edit in as we were using a fast paced song and the main convention we wanted to follow was the 'cut to the beat.' Another strength was the mise-en-scene elements, such as the costumes and the settings, we were really happy that these were noticed as we worked hard on buying the right outfits and finding the right outfits and also even though we had a couple of troubles with the locations, we overcame these problems and the locations we used was perfect for our type of music video. Also the lighting was commented on with how effective it looked, this was a bonus for us as we were lucky enough to have professional lights in the drama studio to make it look as professional as we could.

Areas for development that was commented on was the lip syncing as some of it was out of time, however we knew that we could fix this in which we did straight away once we received the audience feedback. Also another area for development that was mentioned was the quality of the shots, we used two different cameras from the school however we realised our mistake once we uploaded the footage as the quality was extremely noticeable. However, we were unable to change this as we would have to go back and re-film and it still wouldn't be guaranteed quality.

Stephanie: In today's lesson everybody showed their music videos so we could complete our audience feedback task. We talked a little about our videos before we played them, as Mr Sears asked a few questions, and then we showed them to the rest of the class - they then gave us some feedback. Our feedback was given in three separate categories: strengths, developments/improvements and how it is recognisable as a music video/conventions.

Our group was second to show our music video. The first category the class gave us feedback on was ‘strengths’ – we had a big range of features that people commented on. Our opening received a lot of good comments, as they liked the first few opening shots of the character, this was because it gave a big build up to the start of the song. The class liked the lips whistling to the music at the beginning as well, as they said it was unique and many of them hadn't seen this before.We were told that our settings were very good, especially the Covent Garden scenes - they liked that we had normal people walking around in the background, compared to actual cast; nevertheless everybody seemed to like the drama studio setting, as it had good lighting and created a fun atmosphere. Our casting received good comments, as they thought we picked it very well and that they all had a lot of enthusiasm whilst filming. Editing and framing was also a positive, Mr Sears said he really liked the group shots of the guitarist with all of the girls surrounding him, as it really went with the theme of the song - the pace of the shots was also good as we cut the images to the beat of the song.

Improvements are something that we really listened to, as we would like to improve our work as best as we can. One of the main improvements that kept coming up was lip syncing, this was because in certain places some of the actors weren't in time with the music. As a group we agreed with these comments, from lunch time and in Friday's lesson we added in the last final shots, which put a lot of the lip syncing out of place - after 5 hours of editing, we decided that it was time to go home and try and sort it out on Monday before showing the class. Unfortunately we didn't have enough time to fix all of it, so some parts especially the sections with our lead female singer wasn't in sync - luckily after the audience feedback was finished, we made a few slight changes and got all of the lip syncing back in time. Although the class liked our introduction, some thought that it dragged on for a little to long and was silent for quite a long time - after thinking about it, we realised we could have maybe sped these clips up, but we still liked the original idea. One other point that was brought up from a member of the class was that they didn't understand the narrative - she went on to explain the bits she didn't understand. This was the scenes where 'Mick Jagger' is being chased and caught by the group of girls, this was our fault as we didn't plan this part carefully enough, as it should have been closer to the beginning.

Conventions were the last part to be given feedback on. The class all agreed that our music video followed most conventions, this includes having a performance and narrative, lip syncing and our editing - cutting the clips to the beat of the song.

Overall, the class seemed to like our video as it was comical and light hearted - our strengths definately outweighed our improvements which is a big positive. We took note on our improvements as we all want to make sure our work is at it's best.

Louise:This was the lesson we received all our audience feedback. We let our class watch our video. and they generated the positives of our video, areas of improvement and conventions of a typical music video. The feedback we received was really good, people found our video funny and loved all the costumes and the enthusiasm of the actors. They thought the editing was great and fast paced.

The areas of improvement they pointed out were the lip-syncing was out of time, but we were aware of this. Also some people couldn't understand the narrative in parts, such as the groupie part in covent garden so we all thought that would be an area of improvement.

Some of the conventions that were pointed out include; lip-syncing, fast paced editing, cut to the beat of the song, performance and narrative and all these were included in our music video. which showed that we tended to use the conventions a music video needed to make it recognizable.

The second part of the lesson entailed us recording each groups audience feedback, this was also part 3 of the evaluation task, I went round and filmed different groups answering a series of questions i put to them about our video. Evie and Stephanie had to be filmed by other groups, giving them feedback. After all the feedback was collected I edited it all together so i could put it on the blog.

 Bijal: Unfortunately I missed the lesson when we showed our class our our videos in order to receive audience feedback from them - their thoughts and ideas on our final piece. Luckily we filmed each groups separate feedback in detail (shown above). This allowed me to see what was said in this lesson even though I couldn't actually be there. Feedback was given in three different categories: strengths, developments/improvements and the recognisable music video conventions.

The first category was 'strengths', luckily the class seemed to like t he video as much as we did, and they saw the idea we wanted the video to portray, for example most of the class understood how the narrative worked in the with the performance parts of the video.We had many strengths that people commented on, firstly the beginning, they liked the quick introduction before the song started, as it fit in with the narrative and it gave a good build up to the start of the song. Our settings were one of the features of our music video which received good feedback, the audience liked the drama studio settings, and said it was appropriate for performance scenes and allowed us to create a fun atmosphere, the Covent Garden scenes were liked as they said that our cast in with the general public as it also created a funny atmosphere - which is what we tried to achieve. Another strength the class thought we had was our casting, they thought that we picked an appropriate cast since it fit in with the genre of our music video and they created lots of energy for the music video, their outfits and mise-en-scene also helped to create this effect.

Improvements was the next category of audience feedback - this aspect of the feedback is something we as a group focused on, as we want our video to be the best it could be, and be as professional as we could make it. The main improvement that the class agreed on, was the lip syncing on the video, from a certain point in the video, the lip syncing was slightly off, this is something we spent a long time in editing working on, and we agreed with the comments received from the class, and when we looked at our video in iMovie HD, we realised the exact point that the lip syncing was out, and we quickly made adjustments to make sure the lip syncing was tighter, and fit perfectly with the song. Another part that could have been improved were some clips in the music video dragged on for longer than they should. For a fast paced pop song, the clips should be quick and fit to the beat of the music, most clips did, however the audience thought that some clips could have been shortened, and I agree with this, we could of made the certain clips shorter in order to make the entire video fast paced. 

Finally conventions was the last category, the class in general identified most of the music conventions in our music video, they all agreed that we included conventions such as lip syncing, performance, narrative, that generally our editing was cut to the beat of the music, one person was the main character throughout, different setting, a variety of shots were used and at the end of the music video the song faded out.

Overall the class enjoyed our music video and liked it, they saw the comical, fun, light-hearted effect we were going for and tried hard to create and show through our music video. Our strengths greatly outweighed our improvements and even though we were very grateful of this, we took on the improvements and mentioned and analysed them in our evaluation tasks.

Weekly Log 5/12/11

This week we focused on the evaluation tasks as all our practical work had been edited and uploaded. This lesson, we split up and focused on a different evaluation task each, I focused on taking screenshots from the music video and annotating them showing our ideas and processes towards the entire music video - (evaluation 1). Stephanie focused on perfecting the ancillary tasks, making final adjustments to make sure we were all happy with the final products. Louise worked on editing the footage needed for evaluation 3. Evie unfortunately could not join as in lesson due to an operation which means she cannot attend school. Even though we all did work separately, we all had input on each evaluation task, adding our own parts making sure it was group work.

Weekly Log - 2/12/11

From 2nd December I have been unable to attend lessons due to having an operation (a bilatral osteotomy) and so therefore I am not allowed to return for 6 weeks. This has caused a great inconvenience as I have been unable to complete much work due to a very long recovery process. Fortunately we were able to complete all parts of the practical tasks, however I haven't been able to give my input in to the final decisions of the digipak, however I really like the development and how it is going, before my operation Stephanie showed me some of the potential photographs that could be used for the magazine advert, and I gave my input in to what I thought would work the best. I am communicating through to my group and they know that I will still try to do as much as I can so that I am up to date with what is going on.

Magazine advertisement planning

In a previous post I uploaded some pictures of what we had designed for the Magazine advertisement - our original  idea consisted of our lead character with his guitar. However, in class we came to the conclusion that we didn't like the final pieces as they didn't look professional or fit the 'look' we wanted it to have. We decided that we wanted a new picture to be used, have less writing making it more about the song and our character being the main focus. Taking all of the new idea's into consideration I designed two new ideas;

This first design uses the image that is on our CD didgpak front cover - this helps the same theme flow through and 'fans' could recognise this. It also contains all of the relevant information - when the songs out, who's featured in it, short reviews, where you can buy the CD, website links to the band and also has a smaller image of the actual CD digipak.

This design is complete opposite to the first design, it has a still image of the main character taken from the music video - it also has a 'headlining' banner which you would usually find outside a concert stadium. This design is different to the first for many reasons, it also doesn't contain as much information, however it has the main points - who's featured in the song, the artist, review ratings, links to websites and where you can buy this song.

 

After talking to the rest of the group, we decided that we liked the second design better as it's very unique and not something you would usually see. As I personally thought the design was slightly plain, I went onto develop it slightly - these were the outcomes;

This design is the same as the previous one, but I decided to add the release date to the bottom - I did this because I thought it look a little to plain. Once adding this I was much happier with the overall look of the magazine advert.

This one is also similar to the design above, I have just added the 'OUT NOW' to it - I wasn't sure if it made the bottom look overcrowded but Bijal said she preferred this one.

Even though the overall design is quite dark, it adds a mysterious feel to it - this is what we feel at the beginning of our music video as we can not see our main character all at once, but in parts. It also carries the red, black and white theme, which is used through out our digipak.

Weekly Log 5th December

Me, Louise and Bijal were the only ones in class today as Evie had other commitments. As we only have a few lessons left until the end of term we carried on with the evaluation taks. Once looking over the magazine advert ancillary task we wasn't very happy with it, so I started to create some knew ideas whilst Bijal and Louise went to film the final groups as we had planned in Fridays lesson for the ancillary tasks. After this was done, Louise uploaded the footage and converted it all and Bijal started with evaluation 1 - we stayed on track all lesson so these tasks were completed.

Music Video Pitch

Evaluation Activity 1

Our music video had to fit the conventions of other real music videos, and when we were planning our video, we tried to incorporate as many of the typical music conventions as we could.
Firstly we had one main character, he was the centre of most of the lip syncing and the narrative. 

The style of the video that we aimed for was a fun upbeat music video to fit the genre of the music and the image of the band. This screenshot shows our characters in the music video having fun, dancing around and enjoying themselves which is what we wanted to achieve.

style of music video

In the video, we used a different variety of settings to make sure that the video wasn't boring and kept the audience entertained throughout the whole of the music video. This is a typical convention that many music videos use in order to keep their audiences interested.

the first setting that we used was in the drama studio, we used this setting for most of the performance section as we could use the lighting to the settings we wanted in order to get the best quality to make it seem as professional as we possibly could.

setting 1

The second setting we used was in Covent Garden, this is where we filmed the narrative and some lip syncing, this not only fit in with the narrative, but also kept the audience interested in the music video as they weren't constantly looking at one setting.

setting 2

The costumes are an important part of our music video as they set up the narrative to show that the main character is obsessed with the singer - Mick Jagger. It also fits with the song and the genre of the music.

For the main character we had one constant outfit for him throughout the video, it was important that every time he wore the same outfit in order to maintain consistency in our video. His outfit was carefully selected by us as a group as we had an image in our minds what we wanted him to look like.

Costumes - main character

The second costume that was important was of the co-star of the music video, as the song isn't just of the band Maroon 5 it features the artist  Christina Aguilera. The outfit we wanted for this character we weren't exactly sure of, but when we went out looking for costumes, we came across a dress which we feel fitted perfectly with the genre and the song.

Costumes - co-star

Finally the outfits of the extra's, we had images in our heads, but they weren't as important as the main character and the co star, therefore we just told our extras what type of outfits we were looking for and asked them to bring in their own. The look we wanted them to have was a hippy look or a rock chick look. Eventually we had a big pile of clothes and combined several different outfits to get our final costumes.

Costumes - extras

Editing was a large factor of our music video, in order for our video to fit the typical conventions of a music video he editing had to make sure that the video was cut to the beat of the song. Our song is an upbeat fast paced song and therefore the editing should reflect this. We cut the video making sure that clips weren't generally longer 2 seconds, with a maximum of 3 seconds. Another factor of editing was lip syncing we had to make sure that the lip syncing we recorded fit the song. Lip syncing is a convention that shows how music videos can be easily separated from a short film since the artist sings the lyrics directly to the camera. We used this convention in our music video.

Lip syncing

Performance was a strong part of our music video. The beginning mainly shows performance. Usually music videos combine a combination of performance and narrative, and we used this convention in our music video too. The performance was mostly lip syncing and this was all filmed in the drama studio as this allowed us to control the light settings. Narrative ties the whole video together as it gives the audience a story to follow.

Performance - lip syncing 

Performance

Narrative

Narrative

For our video genre of the song is a large factor of the video. We tried to suggest the genre through the fun lively performance and the light hearted amusing narrative. The fast paced editing also suggest the lively upbeat genre of the track as it was cut to the beat of the song. The dance scenes show the genre the most as they show the characters enjoying themselves and having a good time, keeping the atmosphere of the video upbeat.

Genre

Our video also reflects the research we did in terms of other artists with the same genre of music as we released in order to make a successful pop video it needed to be lively, interesting, colourful and fast paced. We used the typical music conventions in order to do this. For example for research we used an aspect of Cher Lloyd's video for the beginning of our music video, however this screenshot of a pop video that is full of life shown through dancing which is something we also used in our dance parts of the music video:

Cher Lloyd - Swagger Jagger

The artist Maroon 5, their video also reflect the music genre, they are full of colour and liveliness. The narrative is fun and amusing, for example the video for 'Misery' is very amusing meaning that the audience just cannot possibly take the artist seriously. Which is obviously the effect they wanted to go for. We tried to reflect this image that the band created in our music video.

Maroon 5 - Misery

Maroon 5 - Misery

Moves Like Jagger - Final Music Video

Weekly Log - 2nd December

On Fridays lesson, it was just me and Louise as Bijal and Evie couldn't attend class. As it was just the two of us we decided to use our time wisely and start the evaluation tasks. We had already started task 3, so we thought we should carry this on - as we didn't ask all of the relevant questions me and Louise went to film more groups to get some feedback on our ancillary tasks. 
Once we did this we uploaded the video's onto iMovie, but we were experiencing some problems as the computer wasn't opening the programmes properly - this took a lot of time to sort out, so valuable time was wasted. As this took so long, we didn't have enough time to finish the task in the lesson, so we made a plan to finish it on Mondays lesson. 
During the lesson we also printed out our digipak case to see what it would look like in real life - we were very impressed with the results as it look quite professional. The only negative we had was that the inside left page, it look to stretched out, so we drew out a new plan of what we would have liked to see inside.

CD digipak planning

For our digipak we planned to have a set of four instead of six, for the left inside page we decided that we wanted to have our lead singers body as it follows our mysterious theme, from the video. During a day of filming Bijal took the pictures and gave them to me so I could edit them in Photoshop - these were some of the designs I came up with.

 After talking to the others we decided on which idea we liked best - this being the bottom right. After eliminating the two on the right, we were left with the two on the right. The top image looked good however we thought the squares made it look weird, this wasn't the look we wanted it to have. We chose the one on the bottom right as it had a unique look to it, the others didn't really follow the themes that we wanted.                                 

For the page where the CD is placed we decided that we wanted a peace sign to be used - mainly because it's featured in our music video and because it has a round design. Our initial ideas consisted of having a pink peace sign; however we realised it didn't follow the red theme. After thinking about it we decided to use a zebra printed peace sign as it connects to the video and follows the colour themes.

28th November - Audience Feedback

In today's lesson everybody showed their music videos so we could complete our audience feedback task. We talked a little about our videos before we played them, as Mr Sears asked a few questions, and then we showed them to the rest of the class - they then gave us some feedback. Our feedback was given in three separate categories: strengths, developments/improvements and how it is recognisable as a music video/conventions.

Our group was second to show our music video. The first category the class gave us feedback on was ‘strengths’ – we had a big range of features that people commented on. Our opening received a lot of good comments, as they liked the first few opening shots of the character, this was because it gave a big build up to the start of the song. The class liked the lips whistling to the music at the beginning as well, as they said it was unique and many of them hadn't seen this before.We were told that our settings were very good, especially the Covent Garden scenes - they liked that we had normal people walking around in the background, compared to actual cast; nevertheless everybody seemed to like the drama studio setting, as it had good lighting and created a fun atmosphere. Our casting received good comments, as they thought we picked it very well and that they all had a lot of enthusiasm whilst filming. Editing and framing was also a positive, Mr Sears said he really liked the group shots of the guitarist with all of the girls surrounding him, as it really went with the theme of the song - the pace of the shots was also good as we cut the images to the beat of the song.

Improvements are something that we really listened to, as we would like to improve our work as best as we can. One of the main improvements that kept coming up was lip syncing, this was because in certain places some of the actors weren't in time with the music. As a group we agreed with these comments, from lunch time and in Friday's lesson we added in the last final shots, which put a lot of the lip syncing out of place - after 5 hours of editing, we decided that it was time to go home and try and sort it out on Monday before showing the class. Unfortunately we didn't have enough time to fix all of it, so some parts especially the sections with our lead female singer wasn't in sync - luckily after the audience feedback was finished, we made a few slight changes and got all of the lip syncing back in time. Although the class liked our introduction, some thought that it dragged on for a little to long and was silent for quite a long time - after thinking about it, we realised we could have maybe sped these clips up, but we still liked the original idea. One other point that was brought up from a member of the class was that they didn't understand the narrative - she went on to explain the bits she didn't understand. This was the scenes where 'Mick Jagger' is being chased and caught by the group of girls, this was our fault as we didn't plan this part carefully enough, as it should have been closer to the beginning.

Conventions were the last part to be given feedback on. The class all agreed that our music video followed most conventions, this includes having a performance and narrative, lip syncing and our editing - cutting the clips to the beat of the song.

Overall, the class seemed to like our video as it was comical and light hearted - our strenghts definatley outweighted our improvments which is a big positive. We took note on our improvments as we all want to make sure our work is at it's best.

For the rest of the lesson the class was separated into groups - we had to interview and film eachother, telling the other groups what we thought. As Bijal wasn't in, Louise went to film other groups to recieve feedback for our video whilst me and Evie went to be interviewed by other groups so we could give them feedback on their own videos. We then uploaded our footage onto the computer so we could edit it together, ready to be put onto our blog.