1st Music Video Attempt

In our last media lesson we were given the task to create a music video. Our teacher arranged the groups that we worked in and also gave us each a different song.

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.

Sweded Movie Trailers

In our recent media lessons we have been looking at different movie trailers that have been sweded. The most popular one, and favourited of the class was Batman (link is opposite). Although the budget was far from spectacular, the group managed to create a effective movie trailer that displays all the correct and indulging properties of the original movie Batman movie trailer. This is the newest batman film out also, so the trailer was going to be more advanced and developed than the previous batman films.

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.

Consider the Consequences

For our media Task we had to created a video, showing the consequences of underage drinking. Our target audience was 13-18 year.

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.

PSA

In our lesson today we were briefed on a new piece of work we have to do, but first we have to research.
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

On monday the 15th June we was set a task of planning, filming and editing a short video called "The phone call". We was given a list of instructions which displayed what the shot had to be i.e "Close up of phone" and as a group was enabled the freedom to decide the location of the shots and the meaning on the phonecall itself. We had to be creative with different angles and meaning of the scene.


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.

Conclusion

In conclusion I am very pleased with how final portfolio has turned out. I feel that I planned very carefully each of the design processes and created a magazine which will attract my target audience and represent a specific social group in which they can relate to. I would not do anything differently as I think I have learnt a lot through the different technologies I used and I got my skills to a good standard to create a realistic and competitive music magazine. I found the preliminary task extremely useful as it gave me the best possible insight into what I needed to do in order to achieve high marks. Hopefully I followed the advice given to me correctly and my final product is worth the amount of time and effort I put into creating it, not to mention the stress and technical difficulties that I came across.

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?

From my preliminary contents page to my main task contents page I see a big jump from the level of understanding and research into a music magazine. I feel it is clear that I have researched different music magazines of the same genre and have applied the knowledge in which I gained. I learnt a lot from doing my preliminary task to my main task, not only about Photoshop but through my research. When looking at the current rock music magazines I looked at their content and their images. After studying them I interpreted my own version of what a magazine that I would buy would look like. For my preliminary I didn’t do as much research which I think is evident as it very bland.

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

As you can see this slide demonstrates the difference in appearance, knowledge and understanding between my preliminary task (front page) and my final task. I feel that my biggest weakness was the fact that I didn’t have enough experience with Photoshop for my preliminary. This is shown through the use of text styles and image editing which looks like a poster rather than a magazine. Although my magazine’s front cover for my final task, I personally feel it looks similar to a magazine cover you would find in a shop. This is because my understanding of Photoshop and its tools became more obvious the more I practised. My preliminary task helped me a lot by showing me how I needed to improve my skills in order to make a decent competitive music magazine. From the feedback I received I was able to look for new ideas and paths I could take by achieving my ideal music magazine. I was adamant to insure I created a house style throughout my magazine using the same masthead, fonts and borders throughout. I think my planning worked well in junction with the final product that I created.

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?

Before I started this task I had never used Photoshop and I soon got to grips with it. I started off very timid and didn’t experiment with different tools; instead I just stuck to the basics of what I was taught during my Photoshop tutorial. After practise I did look at other ways to edit images to create different effects. Also I looked for shortcuts in the process as I didn’t want to spend ages and ages cropping something if I could do it in 3 easy steps. The more time I spent working on Photoshop the more I got to grips with its different features. I look on www.youtube.com for tutorials for advanced editing but when it actually came to it, I didn’t need anything from it. I learnt that you didn’t need to be and expert at it or need to use the most advanced techniques to get good quality images because the basics will get you to where you want to. So from no experience what so ever, I can now crop, resize, reshape, filter, add effects to images and text, alter colour, saturation and depth of images and I understand the use of layers. This simple but effect strategies aided me 100%

How did you attract your audience?

Furthermore I have used the continuous masthead through the magazine as this is my magazines house style and also the colour scheme is quite Goth like. The large image on the right shows the lead guitarist in action. His clothes, body language and facial expression all show the relevance to gothic music. This will certainly attract my readers as it displays and idol in which they can look up to and be like. Also I have a brief interview that is exclusive which will persuade readers to find out about the artist himself and not just what the media have to say about him.

How did you attract your audience?

I have attracted my reader by using bold headlines which have relevance to their interests, such as upcoming events and bands that are featuring in the magazine. The very distinctive masthead will certain grab the reader’s attention and hopefully over time it will be a good brand image, such as Kerrang. The large image on the front cover will certainly be eye catching as this is the lead singer of a very famous gothic band called TNT. The image appears very threatening and of course matches the typical stereotype of an everyday Goth, weird and scary. I have used colour schemes such as black on white and white on black that will create a dark and scary effect. I feel these give more of a gothic feel to it as many Goths dress in black with white accessories. In places I have used the colour red to make key point stand out and for an eye catching effect.

Who would be the target audience for your media product?

My target audience for my magazine would be teenage males who are obviously interested in gothic rock music. My target audience is a teenage boy who is going through a stage of heavy gothic culture. They are trying to be like Marilyn Manson as they are their idol. They are interested in heavy screamo music and very uneducated. They most probably dropped out of school and are smoking, taking drugs and get involved in anti social behaviour. They hate the world and do not believe in God or the Bible. It’s unlikely they have a job so their only source of income would be their parents therefore the magazine is aimed at working class. Also the informal language is used to better communicate with the uneducated reader.

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

In this slide are two media publishers of which I could choose one of them if necessary to write to and ask to publish my magazine. Both firms are different and have key advantages and disadvantages. Bauer media is well established and is internationally recognised. It holds the rights for many of the popular magazines in today’s market, such as Kerrang and ZOO. Also Bauer media publishes Radio and TV channels. Bauer Media is such a large company I feel my magazine may get lost amongst the big competitors.

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 this slide I am comparing my double page spread and how it uses, develops and challenges the form and conventions of real media products. It does this by the continuation of the house style, the tag line at the top and the white masthead. I have used the same font for the main story as the text on the front page and contents page. Again this will continue the house style throughout the magazine. I have used large tag lines from the text to advertise the special things there are being said. I have used a large image of the artist in which the article is about, this will be a get attraction in which readers will look at and stop to read the story. My text is informal as my target audience will be teenagers and will not be upper class.

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

In this slide I am comparing my contents page to Kerrang’s contents page. Like Kerrang I have a bold headline clearly stating that it is the contents page. One of the challenges I face is that I used text to influence my main story rather than a large image. I have used small images which again have borders around them to continue the house style I created. The headline I used for the main story stands out from other articles which will entice readers to look at it. I have designed my contents page stylistically to compete with magazines in the same genre. I chose subjects such as reviews and albums to cover, as these relate to the important features of a music magazine. I have used attractive subheadings and a well organised layout to create a professional magazine.

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

The way in which my media product challenges the forms and conventions of real media products is by my significant house style. Many magazines such as Kerrang and NME have a noticeable house style. My house style is the white masthead with the black space above that creates room for an attractive tag line. I have put borders round my images to give it a more organised and professional look. Whilst looking at the design to similar magazines I noticed that Kerrang’s front page has a sort of messy look about it yet still remains to look professional. I have aligned my images so they are neat but not too neat as this is a rock magazine so I feel everything has to be a bit wacky.
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.

Final Main Task

Final Main Task

1) Front cover
2) Contents page
3) Double page spread

Publishers of Magazines

BAUER MEDIA

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.

Preliminary Task - Returned

I recieved my preliminary task back with feedback from my teacher.

The feedback I received was as follows

- Mast head needs to be more separate.

- Keep the boxed images throughout.

- Cineworld coupon looks like a caption.

- No continuity with contents and cover.

- Different Mast head on contents page.

- Different Borders used on contents page.
- 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.

My contents page looked good when i was designing it however again after studying it all the flaws started appearing. I would probably completely scrap this page and start again if I had to. I would make sure that the house style is kept from the front page. I would insure the logo and masthead were in the same places and also borders around the images. I am happy with the images and the content but completely rearrange the layout.

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.

My Models

I spoke with my models today and thankfully they agreed to assist me in my photoshoot. I had to speak to various other people so I could could organise the location and props I would need in order to make the shots look realistic.


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.

The Genre

I have learnt about different features of Rock magazines and I have decided to based my music magazine around the Rock Genre. I will go for the more Gothic Rock as I feel I would better suit creating a dark magazine rather than a high profile vibrant coloured pop magazine.

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

The week beginning 23rd February we looked at different music genres. We got together in groups and created spider diagrams in relation to Pop, Hip Hop, Dance and Rock. We discussed and identified what we as a group thought related to these genres. As the week progressed we looked at our spider diagrams in relation to what the music magazines actually consisted off, such as the language, images and layout, comparing how accurate or different we were.

As you can see these magazine are extremely different in style, layout and colour. Each target audience is different as the magazines have different content which relate the their readers.

My groups main focus was Rock. We looked at different aspects that a typical rock magazine would involved and we came up with many ideas, such as dark colours, threatening images and quite often harsh language. These stylistic features are key to a successful rock magazine as they stereotype a rock magazine.

From this research into the different genres of music I can see the differences and simularies between them. Through class discussion the knowledge about the other genres was revealed and persuaded me on which genre I would choose for my Final Task.

Photoshop Tutorial

On Friday 30th January in our media lesson we was taught the basics on how to use photoshop effectively. Our ICT technician appeared in front of the class and showed the "obvious" things such as creating layers and feathering images for different effects. He explained also how to create and alter canvas size and changing the size of images. Furthmore he demonstrated manipulating images to alter the brightness and contrast giving very different effects which may be useful when creating our task.

I learnt alot from this lesson but many of these techniques will need to be put into practise before they are mastered. I will experiment during my Preliminary task to take full advantage of Adobe Photoshop.

Evolve - George Stephenson High School

Whilst researching a student magazine I found Evolve. Evolve is a student run magazine for George Stephenson High School. In the latest issue which I have linked, there are loads of different sections, school events, entertainment and sports.

I feel the audience of the magazine is for all age groups within the school. There are picuturesrelating to Sixth form students and also young year groups such as year 7. Also there are different colours that attract attention and give it an informal appearance. This appearance is carried forward with the different fonts and images.

The first few pages after the contents page are about the school. The current art work being produced by students and the next page is a report on "Just the two of us". This is a singing competition held by the school which 16 duets are competting against each other and the verdict decided by a panel of 3 judges. The language throughout this article is very informal and there are jokey coments that are deliberately inserted for entertainment.

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

The Sheaf Cover

http://www.thesheaf.com/

The Sheaf

In today's media lesson I did my first piece of research. As a class we looked at the University of Saskatchewan's student newspaper. This newspaper is written, edited and published by students for students. It has been the U o S's newspaper since 1912 and is the largest of its kind in the province.

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.

Foundation Portfolio Introduction

I have been set a foundation portfolio for my A/S Media assignment. This includes a preliminary task, a main task and a presentation of my evaluation:

• 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:

1. In what ways does your product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real mdeia products?
2. How effective is the combination of your product and evaluation texts?
3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?
4. How did you use new media technologies in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages?

In yesterdays lesson, 19th January 2009, we talked about how we should be preparing for our preliminary task. We looked at different ways in which to keep records of each lesson. As this presentation must be all electronic I decided to write a blog, and I will also be adding videos and a podcast. Further more I will make a powerpoint presentation to evaluate my assignments.