Sunday, 13 December 2009
1st Music Video Attempt
My group consisted of myself and 2 other females. We had the song by Maria Carey "Without You". From the start we listed to the song on the laptop and discussed what would work and what wouldnt in terms of the song's pace. As it is very slow we had to match that with the filming.
One of the girls (girl 1) offered to be "Maria Carey" and mime the words to the video, we agreed and she also said she would do it soon as she is available to do so. Myself and the other girl (girl 2) would help out as much as we could with filming and editing. Also, we wanted to film a kind of scene where someone was leaving, so we encorperated the nearby park and planned to have some editing effects of "disappearing" - by filming something there, then film the same thing in the exact same place where it is not there, and fade the clips together.
We had a lot of problems with getting girl 1 to forfill what she actually said she would do, day after day we still had no filming done, but we was reassured we would get it the next day. However this was not the case. We were promised lots of filming, with different locations and camera angles however what we eventually got was a single continuous shot. To make things worse the lip syncing was extremely hard as I could not see what she was miming so matching it to the song was mostly done on guess work. Due to this problem I myself and girl 2 had to scrap most of the video as it was impossible to work with and also it would just look messy.
Furthermore, due to not having the film until the last minute myself and girl 2 were rushed for time to complete this production to which we made clear and unnecessary errors, including spelling mistakes in the Title and credits and the difference in fonts.
The end result turned out to be dreadful. Myself and girl 2 managed to edit about 1 minute 40, the video is 2 minutes long including credits. Although this turned out to be a disaster, I did learn that you have to have trust in who you work with. Although girl 1 may feel that we offloaded alot of work to her, she clearly and kindly offered from the beggining, we no way forced her to do it, because we were quite happy to find someone else.
The second thing I learnt was that you cannot rush your work, when you rush you make silly errors which can cost you a few marks that could have been for the next grade boundry. You must have enough time to complete the production and be produce it at a comfortable speed.
Sunday, 8 November 2009
Sweded Movie Trailers
After looking at these trailers and taking notes on the comedy aspects but also how they create a trailer from practically nothing - we were given the task to create our own sweded movie trailer.
I partnered with Harry, and ironically we decided to produce Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.
We were going through different movies in our heads such as Saw and Superman, going through different ideas, how comical could we make it or if we had enough materials or the correct sort of enviroment to do so. When we decided with Harry Potter trailer, we both just started coming up with lots of innavative ideas which we could being possible to adapt.
We created story boards and a plan of action for our day's filming. On our next production day we brought in our required elements which where our wizard gowns (or dressing gowns as you may call them) and began to film the key features of the film, Harry finding out he is a wizard, going to Hogwarts, deciding his house, first quiditch and of course about the Stone. We followed our story board but most of the final decisions about the different camera shots where spontaneous.
We enjoyed our time filming and editing as we both felt it was very relaxed and that not every bit of detailed had to be perfect as it was a sweded trailer rather than a proffesional trailer.
We were very pleased with the end result and were proud of our work. We believe it is very entertaining to watch and our classmates voted it as one of the best.
Tuesday, 27 October 2009
Consider the Consequences
I worked in a group along with 4 peers, each of us had a fair input into the production work load.
As a group we planned our video and the different locations that we would set our video in and talking about who was going to be in our video. With all the different ideas and the different views within the group, we had to take some decisions to a vote, but everybody was happy with the decisions made.
After our planning was completed we then went out to find our actors and go through a stage of asking for their permission to leave school from their parents. Although we was only going over the road health and safety was key, we also had 2 staff members with us at all times.
We filmed our video on 1 day because our schedule was very constricted with bad weather and the availability of our actors, I felt that this meant that we rushed the filming as to have enough time to edit it before our deadline. However i still think we had good ideas with good steady camera angles and a wide variety of shots that created different atmosphers.
From doing this video I learnt that you can never rely on the weather and not have a backup if it goes wrong. Also I learnt that you need to be able to chose people in the video who are going to be available when you need them, a lot of our time was wasted because we did not have the right people at the right time. I also feel that 2 many people in one group just cause conflict, as everyone has different ideas and deciding the best one can be difficult, maybe 3 to a group maximum, preferably 2, however this increased the workload per person.
I am pleased to have experienced producing this video because I learnt alot from my mistakes and what to expect and what to adapt in the future when making a video.
Monday, 22 June 2009
PSA
We will be filming a short piece on Women's Rape/Women's Safety. The type of advert this is called is Public Service Announcement. These are done to either educate, entertain or inform the desired audience.
I will be researching into videos and have looked on a few websites and am now going to post the links - I will update this post once I have found some videos that I can put in.
***
Following some research for first hand viewings of PSAs, I found a good video that was used as a public service announcements in 1976. It is about swine flu - here is the link (I will also add it to the 'links I have used') :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9iJLpe1tZl8
I found this video to be quite good as it was informative enough, the music used when the man was talking to inform the audience seemed quite intense, as did his voice. It was informative enough to let the audience know the overall view of swine flu.
I will be researching further and adding links when I find other videos.
The Phone Call
Planning
We continued using groups from a previous task, in which I was absent because I had an A level exam, and there was only two persons present in our group for the planning stage - Daniel and myself. We carefully planned our story board with the timings for each scene, our locations and different shot angles. We discussed the purpose for the phone call and we decided to put an element of mystery and leave dialogue to a minimum. We also wanted to create a fast pace so this is another reason for the limitation of dialogue. Despite these factors we also wanted to make our production believable and use a variety of techniques of which we learnt.
Filming
On the day of filming we had 4 members in total that were present. We had some challenges with our location as it was quite noisy due to lessons that we ongoing and general classroom noise was present in our takes. We decided to continue filming as the noise may make the production seem more realistic. We took into account a variety of different angles and encorporated those from our plan into our filming process. After filming some of the shots we came to realise we could improve it but choosing a different angle and this was easily achieve but I feel we stuck to our plan throughout. The only real change we made to our filming from our planning was the location of character 2, as we planned to film at the back of school, on the day of filming the area was full of people that we could not have forseen. We moved away slightly so that the noise from these people was lost.
Editing
For the editing process our whole group were present however I found myself doing all the editing with no help. I used ImovieHD which at first seemed very confusing but after Mrs Howlett showed me some simple steps I was able to further investigate things such as inputting audio and special effects for slide transitions. I also had to cut some of the clips and rearrange them in order of the production. I used a "Centered Title Tool" and a "Rolling Credits Tool" in which finalised the video we planned, filmed and I edited.
Friday, 24 April 2009
Conclusion

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

My media product represents the gothic social group quite evidently. My colour scheme that I used creates a very dark image for the magazine and this plays excellent alongside the threatening images I used. Goths are seen to stereotyped as always dressed in black with lots of chains, dog collars and sometimes makeup which is normal black. Some say they are aggressive and anti social but they claim to be an independent group of people with their own desires in life and do not involve themselves in everyday life of other people. I feel my magazine represents this social group because the magazine itself appears to be quite threatening and I certainly think that the language and topics interest Goths. Also the name of some of the artists mention such as, Cradle of death, do not sound so friendly.
Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Before this task I had never visited a blog, or a blog website. I knew they existed but I had never experience writing one. At first I thought I knew everything as I thought it wasn’t hard to work out. At first my posts look bland and plain, but soon after researching other blogs and through my own investigations I managed to find out ways in which to add images to my posts, different sizes and different alignments on the post. Furthermore I was able to find out how to add different sections to my blog profile and how to alter my layout to my specific desire. Also added and images section and website links list. Again I started with no experience on blogging and I have learnt so much about keeping my work organised and in a well laid out profile.
What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

How did you attract your audience?

How did you attract your audience?

Who would be the target audience for your media product?

What kinds of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

IPC is a UK only firm that publishes many small magazines. Their main attraction would be NME and NUTS. These are both again very popular magazines that have good circulation. IPC supports more small magazines that Bauer media so this influences me to progress towards them. Also if I was to publish with IPC there is not much competition between the firm for Rock magazines and therefore I may find it easy to get them to agree to publish my magazine.
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

I have used bold headlines such as “TNT are back” which will grab my readers attention. Also I have “free posters” on the front cover which will subconsciously say to the reader that this magazine is a great buy.
Tuesday, 14 April 2009
Saturday, 28 March 2009
Publishers of Magazines
In our lesson we looked at 2 different publishers of media. The first one we looked at was Bauer Media. Here are some facts:
- Europes largest privatley owned publisher
- 230 magazines in 15 countries as well as online, TV and radio station
- January 2008 following aquasition of Emap business's
- Employs 6,400 people and has 2007 turnover of 1.79 billion Euro's.
Their mission statement is - "To connect audiences with excellent content through our broad multitouch brand platforms."
Some of the media published by Bauer are:
- Kiss FM
- Magic FM
- The Box (TV)
- Kerrange magazine
- Heat

IPC MEDIA
Some facts about IPC media are:
-Not alot of music magazines ( A major magazine they have is NME)
- UK only
- Small audience for small magazines
- Magazines only, not online or radio

Both of these media publishers are extremely different. Bauer is international and therefore would be an excellent choice to go with as my magazine could be published all round the world and become more and more popular. However the likelyhood of this happening when the competition between simular genres of my magazine such as Kerrang, are quite minimal. IPC media is UK only and suits many small magazines. It is also only magazines so this is its main focus whereas Bauer media has TV and radio also. My magazine would compete nicely with IPC media as the only real competition would be NME. Although this is a well known and popular magazine, I feel mine would attract a simular audience.
I would have to choose IPC media if i were to write to one of them. This is because although Bauer media has more attributes I feel the sheer size of the business would hide my potentially good magazine and therefore it would be wasted. As IPC media contempts with small magazines it is more likely to be handle with more care and attention.
Friday, 27 March 2009
Preliminary Task - Returned

- Different Font on contents page.
This feedback helped me realise the importance of a house style and the continuity throughout a magazine. I have considered what I would have done differently and I feel i would have corrected all of the above. I would keep the same colour scheme as it is the St.Marks Colours and I believe it fits. I like the images and I would not have done any different editing to them.
Wednesday, 25 March 2009
Photography Editing

This is my orginal photo that I took with my models. After studying the photo on photoshop I decided that I would crop the image to only display the model on the right. I decided this because I thought it was more threatening and was more realistic to be in a rock magazine.
In order to crop the image I placed it in photoshop and used the magetic lasso tool to go around the right hand model. This tool works on find the difference between 2 different coloured pixes and drawing a line through them.
After many minutes and steady hand, I had an outline of the image I wanted. I selected 10 px Feather. This is to erase the image's hard edges and make it more opaque around the edges.

This is my final image that i will use on my front cover. I have made the edges of the image soft using the feathing tool and I have also increased the size of the image so that it will fit onto my A4 design on the front cover.
This image will work well as I have studied other magazines and I feel it suits the rock criteria, scary, out of the ordinary and eye catching.
Wednesday, 11 March 2009
My Models

Because I also studying Performing Arts I had access to the lighting in our school drama studio. From this i was able to add coloured gells into some lanterns and set up as shot as if it was on a stage. I had my models dressed in the typical clothes of that normal rock artist would be, shirts with skinny ties. I had one of the models shape his hair into a wacky but also agressive look.
I was pleased with how my models turned out on the day as they fitted with the shot I took. I arranged some green and red gels shining down on my models. I also borrowed a microphone stand and microphone for one of the models and one of the models brought their own guitar.
The shots I took are what I will be using for my front page, contents page and double page spread. I'm happy with the way they turned out because I do not need to do much editing in photoshop. I feel that the green and red tints in some of the pictures provide a good feeling as to they models are on a stage in a concert.
Saturday, 28 February 2009
The Genre
My target audience is a teenage boy who is highly into gothic music, such as screamo. His interests are going to rock concerts and playing heavy drums. He is active and likes to skateboard. His dress sense is obscene and has many piercings and tattoos. His is not very well educated and has a interest in loud volumed instrumental rock music.
Music Genres
Saturday, 31 January 2009
Photoshop Tutorial

Friday, 30 January 2009
Evolve - George Stephenson High School



As you can see from the images all the pictures are brightly coloured and attract alot of potential readers as they are extremely eye catching. Layout on the pages appears very messy but at another looked it is quite well organised. They have used an obvious house style which is clear from page to page, the black bar along the top.
The content of the magazine has shown me how effective a house style is for a magazine such as this. Also the brightly colours pictures and bold headings, all these items key for their target audience
Thursday, 22 January 2009
Wednesday, 21 January 2009
The Sheaf
After looking at the main aspects of the newspaper such as distribution, purpose and content I came about some ideas that I thought I could use for my magazine and also some that I could not use.
The Sheafis is a weekly newspaper and is available throughout the academic school year. It is available from stands at busy traffic areas. The target audience for my magazine is 6th form students (16-18 years of age). I decided that my magazine will not be weekly but fortnightly because realistically students and teachers do not have alot of spare time within the learning programme to achieve a deadline of a week to produce a magazine and have time to study/teach.
The Sheaf is funded by the students - the students pay at the beggining of the year for the sheaf and then theyare entitled to every copy of the sheaf. This would be very difficult to achieve because 6th form education is free and therefore there is not any fee's to pay. So I decided that the magazine will be sold for £1 and will be available during morning registration from form tutors.
The content of the newspaper had a variety of entertainment and interactive sections for students to write in and express their views. I will take this into account and advertise an opinions page for sixth form students to comment on the upcoming or recent events being advertised. I will also adapted this idea further and have some sort of competition poll which will reveal a selected winner in each issue.
Using The Sheaf as research I know what to incorporate into my magazine which will work and should attract readers and also what does not seem appropriate due to the target audience.
Tuesday, 20 January 2009
Foundation Portfolio Introduction
- The preliminary involves designing a front page and contents page for a school/college magazine. This must include a medium shot of a student.
- The main task includes designing a front page, contents and a double page spread of a new music magazine. Must include a mininmum of 4 orginal images.
- The evaluation must be electronic and can be in the form of a DVD with extras, slideshow, blog, podcast or a mixture of each.
I have chosen to use a blog to present my evaluation. After each lesson i will post on my blog and make notes to the following relevant question:
- In what ways does your product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real mdeia products?
- How effective is the combination of your product and evaluation texts?
- What have you learned from your audience feedback?
- How did you use new media technologies in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages?