Construction - Day 1 of Editing

Our first day of editing proved to be quite difficult. First of all our footage was stored on 2 different cameras so we had to upload the clips from both cameras on to our PC. The clips that were uploaded onto the PC did not all belong to our group so we then had to delete the files that did not belong to us. However our group faced another problem. The clips on the camera were of MOD format which is not compatible with Adobe Premiere. To overcome this we had to convert all the files to Mpeg format. This proved to be a time consuming process as there were many files to convert. Once this was done the files were ready to import into Adobe Premiere. We successfully imported the files and they were all ready for editing. We then had to retrieve all the files from the other camera. This was done in the same manner as the first camera but again not all the files were needed so we had to go through all the files deleting the ones that were of no use to us. The files on this camera were of a different format than the first camera. These files were of MOV format which are compatible with Adobe Premiere. We imported these files into Adobe Premiere so we were able to start editing. However we experienced a problem with the files on the second camera. We noticed that the footage lagged which would make it hard to sink the lip movements to the mp3. We were not able to find a solution to this problem, so we decided to cancel editing for the day and try to find a solution to the problem. We tried changing the frames per second which proved unsuccessful and changed the preset for the sequence but which also failed. Even though were not able to edit these files the footage from the first camera worked perfectly and we were able to edit some clips. We successfully edited the first 20 seconds of our video successfully. Even though we were successful in editing we did find matching the lip movements and the music tricky and time consuming. We hope to have found a solution to our problem by the second day of editing and work on our lip syncing skills.

-BYRAN FERROL-

Construction - Day 1 of Filming

First Day of Filming

We started filming our music video on Friday 25th November and it proved to go better than we expected. Compared to last year, our first day of filming is a great achievement that our whole group was pleased with. I feel that our first day of filming was good because we knew what we wanted to do before we actually started shooting instead of 'improvising'. Also we made use of the time we were given using every minute that counted which allowed us to finish earlier than the amount of time given.

During the first day of filming we set out to use a piano in the drama studio for Byran to use. The reasoning behind this is because during the beginning of our song, there is an intro with the piano being played that we wanted to implement in our video. However before we could start filming, we had to set up the piano and the scene we wanted to portray, so we set up the piano and dimmed the lights to give a spotlight affect on the piano so that the viewer will only be watching the piano and the person on it.

While Jeremiah was filming Byran lip sync, i played the track in the background in order to help Byran keep in sync and to allow syncing with the actual track easier in adobe premiere when editing. After filming the piano scene, we thought that we would have enough time to film a few more scenes so we went to a field trying various scenes and shots but at around 4 o'clock we deemed that it was too dark to carry on filming and we called it a day.

We learnt from the first day of filming that even though our time management was better than last year, we still needed better judgement to think that we would not have finished filming before it got dark.

-MICHAEL IKEJI-

Construction - Creating the Album Art

Creating the album art

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-Michael Ikeji-

Construction - Production of the Radio Spot

Production of radio spot

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-Michael Ikeji-

Planning - Album Cover Research

In order for our album cover to look professional and suitable for the music industry it is importnat that we research existing album and CD covers so we are able to get an idea of what is important for a CD cover and what makes it an effective one. The CD cover will be the visual representation of our chosen song and will be the first thing a customer will see if they were to buy it in the shops. Therefore it is to be eye catching and aesthetically pleasing making the customer want to pick it up. Below are some of the album and CD covers we researched.

Above is the album cover for B.o.B's album Strange clouds. The cover is dominated by the photograph of the artist and the graphics behind him. It is clear that the images have been manipulated in some way to get the desired effect. This may mean that we will have to use Adobe Photoshop for the creation of our software to also achieve the effects we want. As well as a photograph we may also want to include graphics like this album cover as I believe it gives it an abstract feel making it pleasing to look at. At the very top the artist name and the album name can be seen. An idea that we may well incorporate into our album cover.

I believe it is important that we research CD covers into our chosen artist so we are able to get a feel of the direction that the artist will take in making a CD cover. Below shows Kanye West's 808s & Heartbreak CD cover.


The selling point for this CD cover I believe is the simplicity. A simple image in the middle of the broken heart with the name of the artist at the top and the name of the CD at the bottom. However I don't believe the colour chosen for the writing at the bottom is the most effective as white on light grey makes the writing hard to see therefore hard to read. Seeing this we will be able to diverge away from this and not make this mistake. As a group we liked the idea of the broken heart in the middle and this will be something that we will most definitely include on our CD cover. We also think that we will also match the simplicity as this will match the theme of the song, the sombre tone and the subject of heartbreak.

The last album cover we researched was by a fellow Rap/R'n'B artist, Drake's Take Care. It was important that we looked at other album covers within the same genre so we know what other artists are doing and how we can improve on what they have done. Below is the album cover:


This album cover also proves to be simple. So simple that Drake's name is not even featured on it. The striking feature of the art work is the consistent colour scheme. The gold colour scheme makes it stand out and will definitely catch your eye if placed on a shelf at a store. The group discussed the concept of having a colour scheme for our CD cover to not overwhelm the customer. We were all in favour of this but the specific colour scheme has not yet been decided. Another striking fact about this album cover is that a photograph dominates the entire frame. I believe this is important to the overall feel of the CD cover as it gives it a sense of reality in comparison to using graphics. We believe that this will be something that we will want to incorporate into our music video however ours will serve as a background with maybe graphics layed on top.

-BYRAN FERROL-

Planning - Website Research

One of the media texts which we have to create is a website. For our website to be as good as the real world websites out there today it is important to conduct research into existing websites. This will help us to know what to include in our websites and trends that these websites have that our own one can keep in line with. This will make sure our website is at industry standard and convenient for the world today.

The first website that we researches was Rihanna’s. Rihanna is a very contemporary artist and is currently at the height of her fame meaning her website will be the perfect example of what to include on our own one. Above is a screen shot of the home page. It is very iconic making use of photos and graphics to make it aesthetically pleasing. This will be some to consider for our own website as if it is pleasing to the eye then people would want to come back and visit the website.

On Rihanna’s website was a navigation bar placed at the top of the page. This was common among a number of other music websites that we visited. This will be something that will we have to consider for our website, therefore affecting the outcome. We can also take ideas for what pages we will want to include by looking at this.

Twitter is a very popular social networking site at the moment and on these artists’ website twitter is commonly integrated into them. An idea that has a risen from this is to include a live twitter feed so people that visit the website are able to know the latest news about Kanye West.

Another website that we researched was Eminem’s. This was done as we wanted to research a website that was in the same genre as our chosen artist. In this case the rap genre. Below is a screenshot of the home page.

The photograph on the home page is very dominant, something that we may want to consider for our website. There is a video reel on the right displaying the latest videos uploaded by Eminem so they can be easily accessed by the visitors. This would be great for us as we may want to include our new music video on the home page so people are more likely to watch it. Again there is a navigation bar at the top. Also the artists’ “logo” can be found in the top right hand corner on both Rihanna’s and Eminem’s sites. For our website we may want to create a logo and include it in the same position. The black seems to be the dominant colour scheme of the website maybe due to the genre of music. Seeing as our genre is the same we may want to have black or a similar dark colour as the main colour scheme for our website.

-BYRAN FERROL-



Planning - IT used for project

IT used for Project on Prezi

-BYRAN FERROL-

Planning - Common Motifs for our music video

Common Motifs for our Music Video on Prezi

-MICHAEL IKEJI-

Planning - How to create an effect using Adobe Premiere

How to create an effect on Adobe Premiere

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-MICHAEL IKEJI-

Planning - Lip Sync Video

Planning - How our research will affect our video

Our first piece of research was looking into the history of music video. We looked at different eras of music and saw how the music video industry has become what it is today. The biggest change in music video we noticed was the amount of controversial themes that are used. Music videos have now started to play on contemporary taboos that in the 50s were never even touched on. These controversial themes include such themes as violence, drugs and homosexuality. We have decided to include controversial themes in our music vide mainly domestic violence. This helps greatly in telling the narrative of the video and also keeps to the conventions of modern day music video. Through this research we also learned that women are starting to have more of a role in music videos mainly due to their objectification. Women have now become a sex symbol in the music video usually seen exposing their bodies. Even though this is a convention of music videos we may not include this in ours, as we believe it does not help in telling the narrative for our music video.
Moreover another big change in music videos is the technology. Producers of music videos are now beginning to be more experimental with special effects and narrative technique. Technology that has made an impact on the music industry involves such techniques as black and white, fast/slow motion and animation. This leads to the music video being remembered by the viewer making them want to watch it again. Because this is want we want for our music video we will likely use a number of special effects to help make our video stand out. We are likely to use green screen to create a scene that may not be possible to film directly.

Our research also included interviewing our target audience. We wrote up a set of questions and thought of follow up questions where they may have been needed. Through this research we learned that the target audience like a narrative story in a music video as it is easy to follow. This will lead us to tell a narrative in our music video. This will be a good decision for us as the song itself also tells a narrative. Another big discovery we made is that  our target audience like to view music videos on Youtube. We will use this information by converting our video to a suitable format for us to load on Youtube.
Furthermore most of the people we interviewed liked R’n’B. This lead us to pick an R’n’B artist as we believe this will gain us the most amount of views. We asked our target audience who their favourite artist at this moment in time was. The feedback we received didn't follow a certain trend as the answers were very varied due to preference.
The last piece of research we conducted was our demographic research. We looked into research of our chosen artist which is Kanye West. Kanye west has sold over 15 million albums worldwide. This is good for us as a group because it means that the music video will want to be viewed by a wide range of people. We also learnt that most of Kanye West's fans are male so in our music video we will target this genre specifically by including themes that males like to see so maybe violence or the objectification of women. On the other hand we may still be able to target women as then we will be able to increase Kanye West's female fanbase. Kanye West himself is a very controversial person which can be see through the Taylor Swift incident and his high profile relationships. This will cause us to make our video slightly controversial to keep it in the nature of the artist.
The research we carried out plays a big role in the production of our music video so all these aspects need to be taken into account. We are striving to create music video that keeps to the conventions of R'n'B music but also stands out on it's own.

-BYRAN FERROL-

Planning - Importance of being organised

When working in a group, organisation plays an essential part in reaching objectives, especially in larger groups. There are many implications that may occur if a group is not organised, one being misunderstandings.
If the group is not organised then each member of the group will not be entirely sure of what they are expected to do and wouldn't be aware of their responsibilities and contribution to helping the group reach a task. This will lead to misunderstandings and will halt the group from progressing. In our group we prevent this from happening by making sure that we have assigned a responsibility to a specific member of the group with an expected deadline before leaving lesson. For example, I was assigned to create this blog post and expected to have it done before the deadline. This way we are all contributing in completing our coursework and blog.

When organised it is easy for a group to identify a problem and deal with it immediately. This prevents the problems from escalating and jeopardising our plans, or causing arguments between members of the group.

-BYRAN FERROL-

Planning - Storyboard

-MICHAEL IKEJI-

Planning - Master Catalog

This is the master catalogue we used for the planning of our music video. It shows the different actors, locations, props, cameras etc that we are going to use for our music video. The master catalogue will make sure that we a re fully prepared for the different days of filming as we know exactly what location we are going to use and the different things we need for production of a particular day.

-BYRAN FERROL-

Planning - Calendar: January

This is our calendar for January 2012. We have a number of editing and filming days as the coursework has to be finished by the end of January. Most of these days will include re-filming clips that we believed didn't work. Editing will involve add the finishing touches to our music video tweaking any problems that we might have. We have set our production days around our school hours and what we believed the days in which we will have the most time to film. Editing will take place on Wednesdays and Fridays with the Tuesday being dedicated to write ups and blog posts. We chose Wednesdays and Fridays as these are when our media lessons are so we will be able to use the necessary software in order to edit. Our filming will take place mainly on Saturdays as we do not have school and we will have the maximum time to film. One Thursday in this month we will take advantage of our 3 hour break in which we can also film. We have acknowledged the fact that our deadline is by the end of January so have made a reminder in our calendar that our project should be handed in on the 1st February. This makes sure that our project will be completed by the deadline.

-BYRAN FERROL-

Planning - Calendar: December

This is our calendar for the month of December. During school time we have placed our filming Days on a Saturday as this is when we will have the maximum time to film, taking in to account that it gets dark earlier in the winter. We have left all Sundays free as this will be the day when we have a break from working on our project. During school time is when the Editing will take place as the software we are using is only in school. Editing will mainly take place on Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday as these are the days in which we have Media. However we may also edit on other days in which we don't have media s we can get as much editing done as possible but this is not definite. After we break up for the Christmas holidays we will be able to film on any day that suits the group. From discussion we found that the easiest days to film will be on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. We will not edit during the christmas holidays but wait until the school term starts. We have significantly more days of filming and editing as we learnt from last year that it is best to get all the production out the way so if any problems occur we can easily deal with them before the deadline.

-BYRAN FERROL- 

Planning - Calendar: November

This is our calendar for November. We will start filming on the 25th November towards the end of November. This is our very first month filming so we have decided to film as much as possible on each day. As well as the filming days we have also included a day for editing. This will make sure we are making good progress with the project so we are able to meet the deadline. We also decided to include a day to upload our footage. This makes sure that the clips are ready to edit on the day of editing so we can make the process as efficient as possible. Uploading the footage a day before means we can also troubleshoot any problems before we start editing.

-BYRAN FERROL-

Planning - Lip Sync Tutorial

Lip sync

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-BYRAN FERROL-

Planning - Green Screen Test Video

The following is a video that was filmed with a green screen and edited with adobe after effects.

Planning - Green Screen Tutorial - After Effects

Greeen screen tutorial

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-BYRAN FERROL-

Planning: Proposal Podcast

This pod cast is our proposal for our music video. The written proposal can be viewed in one of our previous blog post under the name 'Music Video Proposal'

Planning - Music Video Proposal

Proposal

We would like to create a music video for Kanye West’s song Blame Game featuring John Legend. Our target audience are teenagers and adults so in our video we will be addressing situations that this demographic can relate to and will be suitable for that age group.

The narrative of the story will be centred around a young couple that are having relationship problems. The girl of the relationship will be having an affair with another man and the music video will explore the demise of the couple’s relationship. The verses will be sung while the narrative is taking place but the chorus will cut away from the main narrative and be sung independently. We have also decided that whole video should be filmed in black and white to add to the depressing tone and slow tempo of the song. We will make use of visual effects by using a number of slow motion shots when violence may be taking place. 

This will add to the tension of the scene and make the viewer focus more on what is happening. The person singing the chorus will not be seen by the main singer but will appear in many of the same scenes The music video will also make use of green screen. We will do this by taking a clip from our video stopping it and having a section of the song being sung. This will make the character feel isolated from the world and will add to the idea that he can not be seen by the main singer.

The song in it’s entirety is 7mins 50secs so we will have to cut it down. We have decided to cut out the last bit as it is a phone call and is not needed to tell the narrative of our story. This section of the song also takes around 2mins so will help drastically in cutting the video down to 5mins.

Filming will mainly take place in Dagenham. We will film some scenes in a house that will act as the couple’s house. The rest of filming will mainly take place outside.

We will mainly address our target audience, as the two main characters will be adolescents. We will also address current scenarios that teenagers and adults encounter in today’s world such as drugs and violence. We will also represent different brands that are popular among teenagers today such as blackberry, Nike and Adidas. The song itself relates to the older audience as it is about relationship issues which a very common among teenagers and adults. The nature of this problems are affairs and violence which is also common today as many relationships end due to domestic violence and adultery.

-BYRAN FERROL-