reflection on progress blog

Recently my blogs have not been up to date like last year. However, I am now trying my hardest to stay on top of it. Even though like last year timing and lack of resources was an issue, I am now trying to find ways to make time and find places to do all my blogs. hopefully, I can stay up to scratch and not fall too behind. 

Out of 20 I would mark myself 10/20. Comparing this to my progress from before, it is definitely better. 

I need to improve on prioritising my time and place to do my blogs.
I still need to use more and better ICT to present my work. 

Examine the website for the original artist.

The website of the original artist has his brand image (logo) spread across the screen. It is very visible to the audience. 

In the screenshot, you can see that the artist's songs are promoted by having them in capitals, in the middle top of the page. Immediately the audience will see the songs; and that'll be what they listen to and focus on. Next to the songs, a little logo of Itunes is put up to show the audience that it is available; promoting it.   

Skills audit. Thinking back to the research i have conducted for my AS practical work; how have my skills in research developed since then?

Back in my AS year I wasn't so confident on researching for my film practical work. I didn't really know what to research about. However, after researching many times throughout the year, I have grown confident in evaluating my practical work.
I have learnt how to lead a practical session.
I didn't know where to start when researching about camera work or editing. Soon after practising and learning, I now know what type of software and websites to use to conduct my research. Example – Final cut Pro, Murally etc. 

An overview of individual task on costume, setting and location

I used Murally to show my own findings on location and costume. 

Analyse 3 music video that have influenced your final planning decisions

Tine Tempah - 5 minutes
This song has lots of graphic edits and the whole party theme is what has influenced our group into adapting what we see in the original music video, to our own music video. Both this video and 'Example-changed the way you kiss me' are the same. 




Example – Changed the way you kisse me
The whole party theme has influence our decision for our music video. However we can’t have a party in a huge event place, so we have adapted to a house with a limited amount of people. 

Ed Sheeran – Sing                                              
The beat of the song has influenced our planning decision. We have gone for the remix of Ed sheeran’s other song called ‘Don’t’.

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Analysis of the original video for your song choice stating clearly how your video will differ

The remix to this song is more upbeat and therefore we have chosen to go with the party theme idea. The original video consists of a man dancing / intricate body movement throughout the whole video. We will differ from that because we will have lots of people at a house party. The video will be more live and there will be more action. Also the the focus will be on the artist a lot of the time.  

Final song choice with short explanation about why i have chosen it.

Our final song for our music is going to be ‘Ed Sheeran-Don’t’. We decided to choose the remix to this song because we felt that the type of music that it is, is something we’d enjoy filming. We already had some ideas of how we’re going to film this song and so we decided this song choice would be the best. 

Short-list of potential songs

SONG CHOICES 

Rudimental – Waiting all night

Example – Changed the way you kissed me 

Wretch 32 ft Example – Unorthodox

Ed Sheeran - The A team 

Ed Sheeran – Sing 

Synergy activity homework with links and screen shots to illustrate your findings.

Song by Wretch 32 – Don’t Go

The album released promotion video – there's lots of visual action. Black font lyrics and white wall.
It is very graphic & lots of editing

Wretch 32 Album Cover

Music video single – the theme is black&white. There's also lot of people in the video. The location of the video is on the street. Black&white people to represent black and white theme.

Features to create brand identity:
Black and white.
White background
Side profile both in album and the music video. 

Evaluate the success of the lip sync tutorial

Final Cut Pro

In our lip sync tutorial, we were shown different ways to edit a video.
After we were shown what to do, we were left to try out everything we learnt and put together a music video.

I tried to follow Vernallis theory but had very little success. I managed to change the angles/shots of the scenes by using the markers. It was hard at first and I got confused at some points but I got there in the end.

I learnt that base tracks are very important when it comes to music videos. Base track is when you film the whole song in one location. It’s good to have lots of base tracks of one location and different locations in order to make your video the best. When it comes to editing, having base tracks will make things a lot easier – will flow better. 

Brief account of costume, setting and prop activity completed in class

Song: Plan B – She Said

Costume – Suit&Tie

Location – courtroom building & police station
Prop – type writing equipment, paper&pen for drawing in courtroom, judges hammer

This video creates seriousness, which grabs the audience’s attention to watch the video to see what happens in the end. 

A short summary demonstrating what i understand about Mulvey's Theory on representation.

Mulvey's theory of representation helps us understand the concept of how we as the audience view the people presented in videos. 

The ‘male gaze’ is all about the males perspective of women.

Women are looked as if they're objects. 

Here's an example of the 'male gaze' and how women are portrayed as objects. 

Carol Vernallis research

Carol Vernallis studied editing and camera work. She found out that edits in music videos are more frequent than in films.

Examples of Carols observation: the continuity editing is broken in music video. This is to attract the audience to what they are watching.
The edits are obvious to draw attention; e.g special effects.Jump cuts are used. 

Sam Smith – ‘Not the only one’ is a great example of Carol Vernallis’s theory. This video consists slow motion, jump cuts, close up etc. 

A summary of the main points of Andrew Goodwin's theory

Andrew Goodwin's idea of structure in a music video is ‘Verse, Chorus, Verse, Chorus, Bridge, Chorus/outro’. One example is Mark Ronson. In this video clear structure of ‘verse chorus verse chorus…’ is shown.  

Andrew feels that traditional narrative doesn't apply in pop videos. They approach narrative from a different angle.  

Function of music videos

The function of a music video can be for many reasons. One reason would be to promote the artist. The music video would have the artist as the main focus throughout the video; by having the artist the main focus, this will result in a bundle of money for the record label.

Another reason would be for the sheer entertainment of it. One example would be ‘Dupstep’. Dupstep is dance music therefore the artist doesn't have to be in the video. Dupstep is a series of instrumental sound which consists of a lot of beats which is the most important thing. This is purely for the audience’s entertainment.

Another function of a music video would be to make a point about something in particular. It could be about the artist’s personal life. One great example is Adele; a lot of her music videos are about her past relationship that did not work out. Or about other things, such as it could be about the world. All this would lead to another function which is to evoke emotion in the audience. Some music videos does exactly that and Adele does this perfectly. 

Briefly blog about what you have learnt about music videos

Back in June, I don’t really remember much about what I learnt about music videos; however I do remember that our teachers told us music videos were not going to be easy. I learnt that it is going to take a lot of efforts in terms of recording the video and researching about music in order to make it the best it can be. 

I also learnt that music videos have a lot of editing/effects involved when compared to film trailers. A lot of thinking has to go into how we would want our own music video to look like.

Pitch 10 Draft Digipack & Advertisement Rahena Begum

So, in these two pictures you can clearly see 'Dirty Devon' wearing different hats. 

We have decided to use 'hats' as 'dirty devons' main image. 

These pictures is a draft idea of what our album cover will look like. This is my idea of the digipack. 

Our album advert will not be anything too dramatic. I do not know as of yet how our album advert will exactly be like. 

We haven't made a trailer for our video either.

Our album cover mostly likely will be in black and white and the name 'Dirty Devon' will be in 
colour. 

The pose in both the pictures are similar, and it is something that we will be going for in our album cover. 

PITCH 8 - Costume Devon Muller

Dirty Devon will have one costume throughout. This is because our video is based on one night in his life. It is also a narrative, therefore it makes sense to have just one costume throughout.

Dirty Devon's costume will consist of:

Dirty Devon's choice of costume is unique and is not mirrored on anyone. This is done to differenciate him from other artists so he is recognisable.

Mulveys Theory

Mulvey's theory on music videos is based on how the camerawork is dominated by the men, due to the women being objectified as sex objects and how the audience is only concentrated about a females body and sexual activity. Mulvey suggests that audiences only care about the video if the women tend to expose themselves.

For example, the video 'Man of the year' from the Artist Schoolboy Q is a great example of this point as throughout the video the camera is constantly focused on the females body which is representing them as sex objects 

PITCH 20 - Evaluation Devon Muller

 Approaching the Evaluation

• For the evaluation, the use of Prezi would be handy. Using Prezi allows you to clearly show your ideas/answers. 
• In the Prezi, we can highlight what we did well on one slide.
• We could then highligh what we can improve on the next slide.
• Then we can answer, the evaluation questions asked
• we could then conclude with our favourite parts of this whole process.

This will hopefully give us a solid evaluation.

Pitch 13 Industry Rahena Begum

Who would our Artist 'Dirty Devon' be signed to and why? 

We decided to go with 'Sony Music'. The reason for choosing Sony Music is because it is a successful label. 





Which other artists are also signed to Sony Music?

There are a lot of famous artists such as usher, Alicia Keys, John Legend, The script, Taylor Swift, Shakira etc. This shows us how this label has worked with very successful and well known artist. 
Being signed to Sony Music, will get us where we want to be.  

Will our song be available on the internet download?


Yes. So far we have decided to allow our music video to be available on the Internet download. Our song will be available on sound cloud. 

Will our song be signed to a major or independent?
Our song will be signed to an independent company. 

pitch 9 - Synergy Samet Palas

Our Key Element - Devon's Hat 

We have decided to use the key visual element as Devon's hat as he is always going to be wearing it. Also, we have chosen the hat because looking at a variety of music videos and artists we have seen that the key visual element shouldn't be exaggerated but again it should keep the audience thinking and catch their attention. The hat has a symbolic meaning for the artist and throughout the music video we would see how he takes care to keep it with him at all times.  The copy of the hat is going to be sold as merchandise to those who buy the album. 

PITCH 10 - Digipak Devon Muller

 

My idea of the digpak will use this image. the reason for me using this image as the album cover is because it is a cool picture and i am wearing some form of hat which is part of Dirty Devon's image.

There is currently no trailer for the music video...yet.