Filming Day 5

Within this day of filming we did another lip syncing session in a dfferent outfit and location.
We had the singer dressed in a sexier costume, with a bra top and silky skirt. This was filmed on the stairs of the house as the deep red of the carpet made the peachness of the skirt really stand out and framed the artist nicely.

Filming Day 4

This was a quick filming day as we didnt have much time so we decided to do the close up shots of the crying eyes and the lips singing along to the song.
The eyes were all black make up running down like she had been crying to show the idea of sadness within the video as she has lost a friend.
The lips were inspired by Jessie J's use of lip art within her other videos so we dcided to try and make the lips sand out using bright lip colour and try to use some jewels.

Magazine Advertisement

This is an advertisement for Janet Jackson's album in Virgin Magazine. 

The main focus of the advert is the picture of Janet herself, she is centred in the middle so all the attention is drawn towards her. By having this picture so large it is very eye catching and will make a person reading the magazine stop and take a look. The clothing she is wearing is very sexualised at shows that she is focused on the male audience. The colours used are very calming and sexual and complements janet. The background being a waves matches to the colours being calm. This may give a hint of what type of music Janet may have in her album. 

The large font in the background saying 'JANET' makes the viewer know straight away what artist it is, it makes it very clear that she is the main focus and it is her album she is selling. 

On the right hand side it shows the dates of when her album 20Y.O comes on sale, 9.26.06. This is very important as it makes sure that everyone who sees this ad know when her album comes on sale. This may influence her sale rates as it makes people more aware of her sale dates, instead of just true fans who would have known anyway. 

Under neither this it shows her album cover, this is useful as it allows people to know what to look for when they are in the shops. The album cover links into the advert theme of relaxed and calm, she has her hair loose and looks relaxed. It makes her whole theme link into one. 

On the left bottom corner it has the magazines logo, website and Janet's website. This is key information to give to people if they want to research more into it. 

CD Advert Analysis

This advert was chosen as Madonna is a major pop music artist.

The main image focuses on the artist and is also the cover of the album its promoting.

The image is clearly inspired by Andy Worhol’s pop art images but it’s replaced with her image. This helps portray the generic conventions as both aspects of pop – music and art – are combined for the woman who is one of the biggest names within the genre.

Her look is also based on the original image of Marilyn Monroe, hence the beauty mark and hair style. This is because Marilyn is an icon among many women and as women and girls are Madonna’s main audience, they will be drawn to this image as they could feel that the artist could inspire them and become a modern icon.

The artist’s name is clearly stated in black and white capitals along the top of the advert, this is one of the main parts that viewers’ eyes will be drawn to as it states, in an obvious way, who’s album its promoting.

Her expression looks to be sad or tired, this could be taken to show that she is empty and there’s nothing behind the art itself. This is controversial as pop artists seem to show a happy expression alongside their cheerful/light-hearted lyrics.

The writing on the advert almost frames the face, further portraying the idea that the album is a ‘work of art.’

The common colours being bright, yellow, pink, blue and red show the conventions of pop as bright colours are fun to look at, tend to give a happy emotion and are extremely eye-catching.

It advertises the CD to be purchased in a variety of ways. It shows that the hard copy of the CD can be purchased as well as the downloadable version on iTunes as this is the most popular way of buying music recently. It finally says that the album is available on 2 DVDs so that audiences can view and hear the album in a completely different way.

At the bottom, in smaller print, it stated the songs that are included on the CD. These are her most popular songs and ones that will be well known by a majority of people. These are placed on the advert to be a main selling point of the album instead of the artist herself.

Filming Day 3

On this filming day we wanted to introduce the other characters so we decided to film the scene when there is a violinist and the mime that copies her.
for this we decided to dress the violinist in all black, long elegant clothes so she would to fit into a chorus of classical insturments and the black makes the viewers focus on the music rather than the outfit. Her make-up was more extravagant to modernise the look with darker cheeks and highlighted features.
The mime was dressed in black and white top under a black jacket as these are the common colours worn by mimes. The make up on him was white face paint with black tears coming down his face as we wanted to show different emotions in obvious ways in the video to further show the twisted idea of it.
The colours worn by the characters consisting of black and white works well against the background of the bright green of the hedge and really makes the characters stand out so the audeince are only looking at the characters.

Pictures

Born This Way Album Analysis

CD Cover Analysis: Pixie Lott – Turn It Up

The artist is clearly the central focus of the cover as she is placed in the most eye-catching place – centred, close up of her face. This is because the star is the main selling point of the album to fans.

The name of the artist is written in bold lettering and in white to make it stand out against the image. This font also gives an idea about the pop genre of the music as it shows to be fun and looks almost handwritten to show that the album is personal to the artist and to those buying it.

The album follows basic generic conventions of the pop genre. This is because the cover holds the main image of the artist in a glamorous head shot alongside the name in large font.

The name of the album is not featured on the front cover but on the left of the case.

The note in the corner lists the singles that the artist has already brought out and that have possibly done well in the charts.

The pose of the artist herself is almost dazed and looking off to the corner. This is a typical feminine pose as it highlights her eyes making them a main focus point. Her make-up and hair look quite natural, this is because the artist is a role model to many young girls and she is trying to be her real self.

The left inside image is another shot of the artist.  The image is filled with her head and hair.

This is a more glamorous picture of the artist, her hair and make-up are done perfectly and in a more modern way.

It also follows the conventions of the front cover as she is placed in a neutral way, not sexually or threatening.

The splash of blue on her nails add colour to the image as well as it being a modern nail colour worn by young girls of this generation that her music speaks to.

The inside cover that holds the CD holds another image of the star.

The white background draws the eye directly to the image of her.

This picture differs from the others as you can firstly see her whole body.

The position she is placed in on the chair seems to be slightly more provocative and sexual to show variety in her style.

This is the same outfit as she wears in the other inside cover.

The spine of the CD contains the artist’s name and album title. This is because on a shelf the CD can be identified.

The back cover also contains the general conventions of the back of a CD such as; the track names in their running order, an image/logo and production details.

The image is again of the artist as the central focus. Her positioning is, again, slightly provocative and her elbow almost creates an arrow pointing towards the tracks to move the eye along to the track names.

Both the front cover and back are from the same shoot as she is in the same costume. They seem to show different sides of her and her personality, one side being girly and pretty and the other being more sensual and suggestive with her hand placement and seductive emotion on her face.

The font is in block capitals and consistent, this makes them readable and neat which follow the generic conventions of a pop CD case as the font is easy to read for variant ages.

The silvery background compliments Pixie’s outfit nicely and the faint fading to white in the middle draws the eye to the middle of the image where the most important information is held.

The artist’s name and album name are placed again on the back.

At the bottom is the artist’s web address where fans can go for further information about her and the album.

There are also instructions on how to get bonus content from the album if the CD is placed in a PC.

In small print at the bottom is legal information about production details.

Analysing CD Covers

Second Filming Day

On Monday 28th November we continued our filming process.
We decided to film the balcony scene which consisted of the main singer performing on the balcony in different positions.
We dressed her in the snake-skin leggings paired with a lace top and Dr Martin black boots to show a modern look that is still edgy as well as being feminine.
The lighting for this look was dark sky but we had artificial lighting to highlight her and the house and greenery around her.
We filmed her in different positions on the balcony and from diffrent angles and close ups and long shots to get a variety of shots and as many as we can in a short space of time.

Pictures

First filming session

Our first filming session we decided to shoot on Saturday 26th November was at our chosen location of the Victorian house. We chose the bedroom with the smallest chair as we thought this would reflect the idea of childhood as she is sitting in a chair that is too small and seems more fit for a child or dolls.

We also chose this one first as its a comfortable setting for the main singer of the video to get used to lip syncing and performing the song.

The outfit we chose was a bright red, edgy/military style dress that we thought would be a good contrast of colour against the pale colours of the bedroom and chair.

The make up we chose was very harsh with dark eyes, lips and defined cheekbones.

We were able to get hold of artificial lighting which we found made a big difference on the quality of the picture on the camera.
We also filmed the start of the song when the artist is revealed and comes up from the floor using the underground garage the house has. For this the lighting was dark night with artificial lighting behind the girl creating a silhouette of her.

Planned outfit for filming in first location 

Make up and prep for filming

 

FILMINGLighting and camera set up in first location

Overall, we found that the actual preparation for the scene took the most time; getting Aisha in costume and make up took longer than the actual filming itself because we had to think a great deal into how we wanted Aisha's/ Jessie J's image and persona to be seen in this music video. I think as a group, we were successful in showing the performer as an outspoken, confident person who likes to stand out in a crowd

Animatic Storyboard

As part of our planning exercises, we created a storyboard using post-it notes so that we can always move the shots around.

Once we had a final idea of the shots and order of them within our video, we put the pictures we created onto the computer and then onto final cut.

Using the skills developed from the Key Frames exercise, using effects for still images, we created a rough, animatic version of the music video in order to get a proper image of what our final video may eventually look like.

Meeting 9

Within our meeting we discussed properly what costumes we wanted to use for particular scenes and physically match them together.
For the chair scene we wanted to contrast the pale colours of the chair and room with a bright, bold colour so we chose a bright red dress with padded sholders to create an angular dress that was eye-catching. This was paired with black shoe boots with a high heel as the block colouring also makes a statement to the piece. The only accessories used with this outfit was a ring that said "LOVE".
For the opening part with the garage when she comes up from underground, we wanted to focus on the silhouette of the singer as it gives a first impression to viewers making them want more. For this we decided to dress her simply in leggings and a plain top with a leather jacket to show that she is modern as well. We gave her heels to wear as well as this will magnify her look making her legs apear longer and giving her a more seductive silhouette.
For the balcony scene we wanted to go for something different but trendy. We will dress her in snake-skin leggings with a black lace top to show elegance as well as edgyness. This will be paired with black Dr Martins to contradict the elegance and show harshness and boldness to the character.
The scene with the violinist and the mime - the mime will be dressed in simple black and white - perhaps a suit with sad mime make-up. The girl violinist will wear a maroon red dress with high heels to show she is better than the mime as he is just copying her. The dress will show a clear silhouette and the deep maroon colour will contrast nicely with the bright green of the archway behind.
When the girl is singing in the destroyed forest we decided to dress her in a white satin night dress to almost signify that she could be dreamng, also the purity and cleanliness of the white will contradict with the dirt and mud that is in her surroundings. This will be paired with the black Dr Martins also as it gives the character an edge which is the main look we are going for with the modern pop song.
The shot of the ballerina in the forest will be dressed with the ballet dancer in typical ballet uniform, again to show purity and innocence.


Pictures - outfit examples

Storyboard pictures

Group Meeting 8

We have produced an animatic story board, so we get a visual idea of how we would like our music video to look. We have created this by making drawing on posit notes and scanning them onto the computer. From this we uploaded the images onto final cut and put the track behind it. Using markers and blade we have cut and edited the images into how we would like our story board to look.
From this we are now fully prepared to shot on the saturday.

We have decide what shots we are going to take, these are:
Small chair guest bedroom
Garage
Mime Scene

The clothing we are using are:
Red Dress
Snake leggins
Floaty Dress
Heels

Props:
Make-up
Cameras
Lighting
Laptop

We have booked our location and made sure our actors can performer on the saturday.

Audience Profile

Male/Female: Female 

Name: Chloe Piper 

Age: 17

Hobbies: Shopping, Make-up, Gym, 

Favourite musical artists: Jessie J, Beyonce, Rihanna, The Saturdays

Education/Employment: College, Office the shoe shop

Favourite tv shows: Friends, The Hills

Loves: Fashion, Clothing, her friends, concerts

Hates: Spiders, Mosh Pits,

Musically hates: Enter Shikari, Slipknot 

Favourite magazine: Heat, Look, Grazia, Cosmoplitan

Favourite music video channel: MTV Hits, 4Music 

Favurite possession: Mac Make-up, blackberry and iPod



During her spare time she likes to socialise and go on social networking site such as twitter where she can follow her favourite musical artists. 


A typical day in the life of Chloe Piper...
Chloe will wake up every morning at 7am. Her alarm is KISS radio and she listens to this while she's getting ready.
On her walk to college - where she is studying A Levels in Media, English Literature and Psychology - she will be listening to music on her iPod touch. Her most played artists are Jessie J, Beyonce, The Wanted and Christina Aguilera.
When she has a free lesson she is in the common room mostly reading Look magazine, talking to her friends or tweeting on her BlackBerry. 
She gets a lift home from her mum where she turns the radio on full blast Capital and her and her mum sing along to all the words.
After doing her assignments at home, Chloe likes to unwind in front of the TV or her laptop. She will mostly watch MTV reality shows or american sitcoms on E4 or Comedy Central.
She loves to go to concerts with her friends, she recently saw Rihanna and has previously seen Girls Aloud and Lady GaGa. 
Chloe is easily influenced in terms of her fashion sense, she will wear what she sees in magazines and what is worn by her celebrity icons.

Media Trip

Media Trip

MTV TO YOUTUBE

What is a music video?

A music video is a visual to illustrate a track. It is usually the length of the song or longer, it may feature the artist itself but however does not have to. The director may chose to have professional actors instead. The music video may have a strong narrative and tell a story, however this does not have to happen. But the main feature to a music video is that it had to be memorable. Something different and new to make it have a higher viewing audience, therefore more views more money and a higher popularity for the artist.

History of Music Videos

1930:

In 1930 is when people first started to experiment with the use of images over a piece of music. Len Lye was the first to do this; he was funded by GPA to create a clip to promote cheaper posting. This was called colour box.  It used images of small dots of a variety of colours creating shapes and patterns. Words were added to this clip to help promote cheaper posting.

1940:

In the late 1940’s soundies were first in use in small diners. There were only 4,000 sold worldwide and they soon died out. Soundies are small jukeboxes that show short promo videos of the artist. A famous one used was Nat Nick Kole- Nick Nak. He used the typical male gaze shot of a lady sitting on a chair; this image shows the audience he was aiming at, men.

These sexual images were the cause of the so undies to die out; many people disagreed with provocative images being shown. Therefore making the company have to close down.

1960:

In the 1960’s is when scorpions flourished; they were most popular in France in cafes.  Scorpions were similar to so undies, they were jukeboxes that showed a visual image to a popular song, this time in colour.

Artist created short stories to their songs on a low budget; many of these stories had dancing in it and were also rather provocative.

In the late 1960’s bands started to create more and more short promo videos to their songs. These videos were mostly used for when bands were away on tour and could still be popular in areas in which they were not playing live.

A classic promo video is The Beatles, Cant buy me Love. They used clips from their feature film Hard days Night to create a video for this song.  Classic camera shots that were used were speeding up the footage and slowing it down, using a helicopter for a bird’s eye view. 

Another famous promo video, now one of the most influence ones to date, Bob Dylan, substaraiana home sick blues. They used the simple ides of using cards with the lyrics on being shown when Dylan sings the song, It is a very simple yet affective visual, which is still well known today. It has been used on YouTube; thousands of re-makes as well as a Simpsons spin off.

1970:

1970 is when one of the most famous music video was created, Queens Bohiemenrapsidy. It is iconic.

1981:

In 1981 is when people started to realise that money could be made from music videos. This was when MTV was born. At first it was just all-British artists with the majority of the acts being male. A classic music video was Madness- Our house; it was a very commercial video that people were always excited to watch. Madness then became well known for their wacky and boundary pushing videos.

All of the music videos that were shown on MTV for several years were all white British males, however Madonna changed this.  She was the first female from the USA to create such a popular music video.

She used well-known movie directors on a big budget to create a high concept theatrical music video. From this change it really highlighted the impact a music video can have to an artist and their career. She was won awards being named break through female as well as the directors she worked with winning awards for their work on her videos.

Not only this but Madonna saw even more money to be made, and created compilation videotape, which had all of her music videos on. This was sold in high demand and created a large sum of money.
At this period of time there were no black artist, however Michael Jackson was the first black male to hit MTV's screen. His first music video to hit MTV was Thriller, now one of the most iconic music videos to date. It is also one of the most expensive videos made, having spent several millions on it.

From black artist slowly making there way on to MTV, the producers realised there was a certain audience that viewed these videos, called the Black Market. This is where MTV BASE was made, it played artists such as Jay Z, 50 Cent and other well known black artists.
These artists music videos are very recognisable and in some ways stereotypical, using the female gaze, showing off their wealth via cars, money, 'bling'.  However one very unusual and different music video was Jay Z's 99 Problems, the style is one that would be most recognisable in a rock video. Quick cuts, fast paced editing, black and white, raw images. It is one of the most controversial black music videos, the controversy of it was one of the many reason it became so popular and from this word of mouth spread.

YouTube

MASH UP

This is where people create a mash up song of artist, one famous one is Jay Z and The Beatles, called Grey Album.  Its a way for everyday people to be able to create their own music video using some of their favourite artists and mixing them into one unique song. 

RE-MADE

This when music videos are re-made into a different version, such as using Lady Gaga, Telephone, and making it as a Sims 2 version.

RICHMIX

As we are making music videos for our coursework, we went to a music video talk at Rich Mix in brick lane called From MTV to YouTube. The day was split into two with the first session including a talk by Pete Fraser who spoke about the history of music videos, codes and conventions as well as top tips for us when making our music videos. The afternoon session was a talk with Producer Liz Kessler who told us about working in the industry and all about producing videos. There was also a Q&A with music video director, Corin Hardy, who told us his experience in the industry.


Pete Fraser first spoke about the history of music videos. He began with 'What is a music video?' and explained to us that they tell a story and are ways of promoting the artist and their song.
He spoke about how music videos began long before MTV was created. He showed us a video from the 1930s which is a piece of music that an artist has put against different paintings and would follow the rhythm of the music, these "music videos" would generally include text that would advertise products.
He then spoke about the 1940s and 'Soundies'
Soundies were like jukeboxes that included black and white picture videos with music, he showed us a Nat King Cole example. However, these videos were soon banned for containing too much sexual images that were considered inappropriate at the time.
He then explained how the music video developed in the 60s with colour film. In France, Scriptones came about which were the coloured, better quality version of Soundies. The music videos shown in the scriptones included many of the characteristics that we would find in today's music videos.




Also in the 1960s, before proper music videos, artists such as Elvis and The Beatles would have done promo films in which would include songs of the artist and a montage to go with it. As an example he showed us a Beatles example for Money Can't Buy Me Love from the film A Hard Days Night.



In the 70s it became more popular to accompany a song with a music video in order to entertain viewers in live shows when the artists weren't able to perform. The example Pete Fraser gave us was Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody.
Finally MTV came about in 1981, the channel began showing mostly British acts. Soon enough it became almost an unwritten rule in order to obtain a chart hit you must have an accompanying music video. The videos on this new channel ranged from low to high budget, bands like Madness would have conventionally low budgeted videos such as the 'Our House' video whereas bands sucha as Duran Duran would spend much more on their videos. When the American artists began to spread on the channel, budgets began rising.
MTV would be dominantly male singers until Madonna became popular and brought the women to the channel.
The black market for music was rarely shown on TV until the likes of Michael Jackson with the music video to Thriller became a massive hit and changed the music television industry for life.
From then on, black artists have begun to dominate music industry with there even now being whole music channels dedicated to showing typically music of black origin including rap, hip hop and R&B music.


Videos including  50 Cent's Candy Shop show the typical conventions of a rap artist's music video with the flash cars and clothes, a big mansion and the representation of woman in minimal clothing performing and dancing in a heavily sexual way. 

However, not all black music artists follow these typical conventions of a hip hop video, Jay Z teamed up with director Mark Romamek to produce a music video to his rap song "99 Problems" that looked more like a rock music video. Boundaries are pushed greatly in music videos these days and there are so many of them that all differ in many ways.


Pete Fraser then went on to talk about developments in technology over the years and spoke mostly about YouTube and how easy it is now to view music videos and to create your own video on any budget at all. He spoke about trends and how people can make fun of or play around with in order to make their own version of a music video that already exists.




Lastly, he gave us lots of tips to use when making our music videos.

• limber up - practice with all your equipment. Learn to lip sync well etc.
• Choose an appropriate track and keep it short.
• create a pitch for your music video and get feedback on your ideas
• have a clear concept
• PLAN EVERYTHING
• keep every idea and new thing on a blog
• shoot more than necessary
• prepare to write an analysis of your music video using Goodwin's Analysis as well as variant theories.

At the end of this session we were all played a song. We were told to go off at lunch in our groups and come up with a basic idea for a music video for that song. It was a song none of us had heard before, nor were we familiar with the video which was good in order to let us start from scratch. At the beginning of the second section we each pitched our ideas to Liz and Corin in order to get the opinion of a producer and a director in terms of the idea itself but also budgeting and so on.

The trip was very useful as it helped us get an understanding of video making in the real world. I also really enjoyed finding out about the history of something that is so popular in today' s society.