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

Research

For my research i decided to look into music videos of all genres and by loads of different directors. This enabled me to gain an insight into how my video should look and also gave me an image of the video i wanted at the end. I looked into different artists and then i did a case study into Cheryl Cole and her videos and another artist i looked at a lot in class and out of class was Madonna, and how her videos changed over time. I then did a case study on a director called Michel Gondry and the videos that he has directed.

Whilst looking into these videos i tried to pick up on as many of the codes and conventions that i could so i could gives these ideas to the rest of the group and maybe include them into our own music video. As a class we looked at Andrew Goodwins theory about music videos and wanted to follow this theory as closely as i could.

I then decided to look at a range of different digi paks ranging in size and genre. Whilst doing this i took notes on what I though was a good idea to include into my own digi pak, for example, a booklet of lyrics and photos. After looking into these i created a rough draft on A3 paper and wrote other ideas down on the paper for when it came to actually creating it.

Planning

Once Miss had handed out the briefs to the class me and my group thoroughly went through them and worked out what we thought we could do well and what we thought we would struggle with being a group of four girls. After we had chosen to do Lucy Star, Girls Just Wanna Have Fun me Lauren and Kirstie created a mood board and cut out things from magazines we wanted to include in our video. this included colours, images of wags, etc. From this we decided to brainstorm ideas that we thought as a group we could create and that we could create to a good standard.

We then had to create an audience profile for our artist Lucy Star. Our audience profile consisted of teenage/young adult girls. We felt this was right as we wanted our video to be girlie and upbeat. We also choose this as in the brief it said Lucy Star had made it to the judges houses on the x factor which is a show that appeals more to females.

Once we had our initial idea we created our story board which we then took photos of and turned into an anamatic. These moving images gave us n idea of what the final piece would look like. The next thing we needed to plan is where and when we was going to film and where or how we would get the props needed. Throughout this process i kept a journal on my blog so that we could look back and see the process coming together. However, after shooting and editing we felt that the video was not to a good enough standard and was very confusing to follow, this is also what our feedback had said. Due to this we decided to reshoot the whole film and crate a whole new idea.

Production

I personally felt that this was the most rewarding and satisfying part of the whole process. This is because after all the hard work we had put in over the past months we could finally start to see our project coming together. As a group we enjoyed this part of the process and luckily there was no arguments or disagreements although some people was more out spoken than others.

when filming in the different locations we came across some troubles like the fact that once the tripod was up in the costume room there was then little room to move and dance about. Also at Lauren's house for the split screen we had to think about where to place the camera so we was all in the same position. However. as a group we sorted out any minor problems that we had and overall worked well through them. We used the song for us three to lip sync to which helped alot and during the dancing scene Lauren was dancing around behind the camera helping us which we all felt helped.

Whilst we was editing the first time none of us really knew how to use final cut pro so we just used i movie and its what we felt comfortable using. However, the second time round Me Lauren and Kirstie had been shown how to edit in final cut pro so we used that instead to gain a better quality. We also managed to add some effects, for example, we included two split screens and we had the titles on the video. we also had to slow down and speed up some parts as i was "applying" my mascara quicker than the other was doing their hair. All of this added to the quality of our music video and we felt alot happier with how it was looking.

When I was creating my digi pak and poster i used adobe photoshop. I already knew how to use photoshop as i had studied media for three previous years, this helped me with my digi pak and poster as i knew how to do a lot of things on there. Once i had made the adjustments to my digi pak and poster i posted them onto my blog along with work that i had created along the way.

Evaluation

Overall i am pleased with how we worked as a group and i enjoyed working with them on this video. I feel that there are certain things we could have done better for example being more equal and not having one dominant person within the group. I personally feel that I delayed alot of the process due to having a few days of due to illness, but the girls tried their hardest to work around that. I don't think that i would change anything as i have enjoyed this process and enjoyed working with the girls. If i had to change one thing it would be to never have thought of the run way idea, so that we would have had more time working on the sleepover idea which i enjoyed more and felt is much better quality.

3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?

When we got our feedback from the first video we realised that it just didn’t work and that the only way forward was to re shoot the whole video. People had said that Kathryn wasn’t enthusiastic enough to play the part of Lucy star as she had created a character nothing like lucy. The final video that we have shot portrays lucy star alot better now and the music video its self flows alot better and you can understand what we are trying to do.

We got rid of the cat walk scene and replaced it with a sleepover scene which portrays girls having fun in a different light and it works alot better. The feedback i got of my digi pak and poster was that the text didn’t work so i changed all the text to make it less girlie and that is not what lucy star is like.

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

When I planned for my digi pak i already knew i wanted bold bright colours to fit the image of Lucy star. I also knew that i wanted a shot of Lucy (kirstie) messing around and not being serious for the front cover. So we managed to get some good action shots of kirsties performance, which came out really nice. We also had to create a poster which included the release date for the single.

I wanted the poster to follow the same theme as the digi pak keeping in line with the video we had already created. We looked through many different digi paks in class, different sizes and different genres of music. I decided to create a 6 squared digi pak, so that it could include a dvd and a booklet. I used the same image on the front of the digi pak for the poster so that Lucy Stars audience can relate to the image. I used purple and pink to go with lucy stars character profile. I feel that the ancillary texts work well together and compliment the music video.

Thursday, 24 February 20114. How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

When creating any form of media you have to take into consideration the original codes and conventions of the product regardless of whether you intend to use them. So before I even started to plan my music video I looked up exactly what the codes and conventions where for this media type. There are many different codes and conventions of a music video and some of these seemed more important than others to continue to use through my own music video. However, before we could choose which codes and conventions are more important than others, we (as a group) had to sit down and discuss each others ideas and get a clear understanding between the group of which type of video we wanted to create.

As a group we sat down with all the briefs in front of us and immediately ruled out the ones of which we had no interest in. so when we saw the singer Lucy Star and saw the song Girls Just Wanna Have Fun we all looked at each other and knew this was right for us as a group as we are all bubbly upbeat girls. Now we had the song we created a mood board of everything that we wanted to include into our video. We wanted an upbeat video with lots of energy to portray the image of Lucy Star, we wanted lots of colour, and lots of dancing.

After watching loads of pop music videos we began noticing things that kept occurring we took note of these and we tried to include as many of these as we could.

We wanted more then one location to shot in to give us enough footage to pick and choose what worked well and what didn’t. so we decided to shot in the drama studio and in the drama costume room. Once we shot the whole video and edited it we all agreed and the class agreed that it didn’t portray our character Lucy Star very well. So we went back to the start and re thought our idea, this time even though we are still suing the drama costume room we will use Laurens house as well.

Whilst filming we wanted to make sure there was enough energy going into the dancing and the messing around so make it look like it was a natural environment. To do this as we had the music playing our camerawomen (Lauren) joined in with the dancing behind the camera.

One of the most important codes and conventions of a music video is to have the first line of the song sung. This code and convention we decided to use in our own music video, this included Kirtsie lip syncing to “I come home in the morning light my mother says when you gonna live your life right”. This is the first of the many codes and convention which we decided to include into our own music video.

Overall I feel that our music video followed most of the codes and conventions of a pop music video. It very fresh and upbeat and would make people want to sing along. However, I feel that I if I could change one thing it would be the amount of close up shots of our main star Lucy (kirstie) as i feel throughout or video there is a lack of close up shots. I also feel that we made a good decision in re shooting our video as the first one was very boring and there was no enthusiasm which totally contradicted our song “girls just wanna have fun”.

print screening

tuesday 15th Febrauary 2011

We Are Done !!

Today me and the group edited the restof our music video so it is now complete and flows. we are pleased with the outcome the only thing we as a group and Miss feels it lacks is close up shots of Lucy Star during the video. We asked jack if we could edit some in and he said we could but it would make the quality of the image alot lower, becuase of this as a group we decided not to mess around with it as we was happy with the final piece.

We added the titles on which took a while to work out due to using final cut pro so now all we have to do is upload the video to you tube then post it on our blogs so we can get some feedback from you guys!