HannahJane A2 Media: First half of my evaluation

A2 media Portfolio Evaluation

At the beginning of the year I was given a choice of 7 briefs to use for my advanced portfolio in my second year of my media course. I chose to promote a package for the release of an album, to include a music promo video, together with a cover for its release as part of a digipak and a magazine advertisement. I wasn’t too sure which genre to choose from alongside a song to create my own video. I spent a few days analysing music videos and songs, most of which were the genres of music that I listen to. I then stumbled across an artist (James Morrison) who I was familiar with. He doesn’t base his music around one genre, but two, of which I am not particularly interested in, but was intrigued to learn about.

This had similarities to the set brief in the foundation portfolio in media. In my AS year, I had a choice of creating a media text relating to the music industry but this only required one media production not three. I was asked to create a music magazine which consisted of a front cover, contents page and a double page spread. I had to invent my own artist(s), (a similarity to my A2 brief) taking original images of my artists and uploading them on to Photoshop ready to create and finish the final product of my magazine. This did not include collecting video footage.

For both of my portfolios, I had to recognise the codes and conventions of different genres of music. From there I was then able to research and collect information on the music industry itself. Whilst putting together my -research, planning, creating my product, and writing my evaluation, I had to make sure that all my work was being posted on to my online blog. In my foundation and advanced portfolio I used Adobe Photoshop, editing my images and creating headlines for my magazine in my AS year. From the work I had done in my foundation portfolio and skills I had developed from my AS media year, it helped me create my ancillary texts (magazine advertisement and digipak) at A2.

At the end of my AS year, I was introduced to a program called Adobe Premier Pro CS3. I would be using this in my A2 advanced portfolio, editing my video footage on the editing suite. I was also shown how to use a HD camera, I know that I had to develop the skills and the knowledge to video the footage I needed to create my main product, my music video. The research that I needed to do for my advanced portfolio needed to be in-depth with much more detail due to the 3 different types of media texts. This meant I had a lot more work ahead of me.

I asked three of my very close friends, Danny Barley, Lucy Clark and Iona Gladwin to be my artists and main focus for my music video. I had decided on a song ‘UP’, by James Morrison. This song also featured a female artist Jessie J. The song was split into two different genres: Adult contemporary and Pop. I had little knowledge about the song and the genres that it was categorised into, but was looking forward to challenges of making my music video. I stuck with the idea of just two artists, and having one of my friends portraying the narrative structure to my music video.

However due to other commitments and problems that occurred throughout the year, my cast list changed, and as a consequence of this my ideas for the music video.

I was able to upload and get access to other music videos on the web2.0 by using the website ‘Youtube’. This was helpful as I was able to watch music videos from other genres: Adult contemporary and Pop.

From research, I found out that music videos are conventionally performance, narrative and abstract media texts. Following my research, I could see that there was a combined mix of performance and narrative used in both genres. One of the music videos I watched from my research- Michael Buble ‘Cry me a river’ inspired me for one of my locations for my mis-en scene and how I wanted to structure my performance for my video. I know that I wanted to base the style for my video around the 60’s, a look of vintage a different approach to the original music video.

I wanted my artists in my performance to be smart and elegant, Danny in a formal suit with either a bowtie or tie, Iona in a vintage dress with subtle colouring with unique patterns. Whereas my character (Lucy) in my narrative I wanted her look very simple, everyday clothing with significance to the 60’s.

(Images)

For Iona and Lucy’s hair and make up I’d decided upon two different style of the 60’s, creating two contrasting looks. I wanted Iona to have a small similarity to the female artist (Jessie J) in the original video but included my set style. With the subtle colouring of her dress, and unique patterns, I wanted to create a similarity to ‘Marylin Monroe’ with the seductive red lipstick and the floorless 60’s natural eye makeup.

Whereas with Lucy I wanted to portray a character who is very petite, sweet and naive, as if being a young girl in her own little world. However, this all changed when I started to re-think my ideas, and changed my cast list.

From doing some background research into my chosen song and analysing the lyrics I found out that the narrative was about life, being entrapped in ones mind and death. The word ‘Groundhog day’ really stuck out to me as an important word and knew that it was going to be a major feature of my video. I also realised whilst watching the original video that a lot of the footage, and narrative was being repeated and that they where trying to find away out the building, emphasising on the word and title of the song ‘Up'.

When planning my music video I knew that I wanted my narrative to reflect the meaning of the song by having various materials repeated creating the feel of entrapment. My performance on the other hand would be telling the story.

From my ideas I was able to choose three locations for my video: The theatre in my college, and two woodland walks, both locations near to where I live. I went to all three locations which helped towards the starting product of my hand drawn storyboard.

I stored all my pre-production, production and post production coursework onto a free, easy to use blog website: www.blogger.com, from which I had already set up a ‘Google Account’ for my AS foundation portfolio to publish all my progressing work. The site allowed me to publish and update all my work instantly for my teachers and other students to view and access. It was also an easy way to get my teachers, students and my target audience to give me constructive criticism of my work and how they thought I could continuo to develop it further. Because Blogger is an online blogging system, it meant that all my work could never be lost or accidently deleted as it is stored securely on the internet where only I can access it. Another Web2.0 site that I used to publish my work on is Prezi- www.prezi.com. This website is also free, and easy to use and stored all my work securely. Once finishing a prezi, I copied the HTML links and published them on to my online blog. It was a more compact way of producing all my research.

Other websites such as Wikipedia- www.wikipedia.com an online encyclopaedia allowed me collect my research on various parts of my foundation and advanced portfolios.

In the course of the pre-production stages of my music video, I analysed the lyrics of my chosen song ‘Up’ to outline and understand key features of the narrative. Through listening to the song many times, it brought across the feelings of the artist and to whom he wrote the song about. This helped me to develop my ideas further to start my hand drawn storyboard.

My first story board consisted of 27 shots most of which I would be repeating to emphasis on the idea of a ‘groundhog day’. The idea of the story board was to plan out what shots to use when filming and how long each one should last. By creating the story board it helped me plan out how I would use my mis-en scene and what props I would be using for each location. I was able to use a scanner at home and college to scan each hand drawn image on my storyboard on to a computer or USB stick and saving them as a JPB file. This made it accessible to upload all my images onto my blog. I was then able to use each JPG file to create an animatic (a series of still images edited together and displayed in sequence with a sound track). This gave me an idea of how the scene of my video will reflect the narrative. It also gave me an idea of how long each shot would last, and whether I needed to go through and take a few seconds off each shot. I created my animatic on a program called Movie Maker. This was easily available in the media suits in college. I kept each hand drawn story board with me whilst I was in the editing suit and whilst filming so I know exactly what I needed to do.

I then decided on the look that I wanted for each of my artists and props which I may consider using when filming. I decided on trying to combine each artists look upon both genres, and the set style that I had chosen, 60’s vintage, and kept the props to the minimum. When researching the set out for a performance, I looked upon using a traditional microphone from the 60’s period. But it was unlikely to be able to get hold of such a microphone, so instead I looked upon using a traditional microphone from modern day. Doing research into Adult Contemporary and Pop, I have been able to outline each look/style of artist within that genre. Adult contemporary is very elegant and chic. Male artists wearing; grey, white or black suits, Formal but sophisticated. Whereas the female artist are featured in long gowns, evening dresses and cocktail dresses, an image and style which a lot of females love to wear.

The hairstyles are also very smart and formal an ideal look for my music video.

Pop on the other hand is completely different, and possibly not the image I am looking to set my music video on. The clothing is very bold, makes the artist standout for its genre, something which I am not looking for.

But perhaps I can merge both iconic styles together?

One of the first thoughts that came to my mind was what hairstyles could I have to separate each of my cast as their own character?

I did some research into female artists ranging from the 60's, to modern day music.

Watching my chosen music video 'Up', I considered to how the team had dressed both James Morrison and Jessie J. Trying to link ideas I would like to carry through to the production of my music video with the original.

After editing footage from the narrative, I watched the sequence back analysing each section of the music video. The footage was clear apart from one small section. The performance was acted and performed the way I’d planned on my storyboard. My narrative reflected on the lyrics ‘groundhog day’ and ‘up’. But it wasn’t right. It didn’t flow like my animatic. I know it was the wrong portrayal of the song. Starting with a new complete fresh look had come to my thoughts. Speaking to my media teacher, he advised me on starting from scratch; he also mentioned keeping my selected locations, styles and cast, as I only had a few months left before the work was due.

Analysing the lyrics again, pin pointing specific phrasing and words, linking and growing an idea for a new hand drawn storyboard. I also did some more research into the meaning of the song and found out that James Morrison had written it based on his late fathers alcoholic dependency. He spoke about the on going battle which was fought but never won. He also wrote about his own feelings towards being entrapped and claustrophobic in the world he was living.

An idea sprung to mind about a dark room/hall with a spot light in the middle. Through this, I was able to develop the idea by creating my second 9 shot, 9 page hand drawn storyboard.

The locations were winded down to one- The college Theatre which was available for the last three weeks before the February half term. However, one of my cast members ‘Iona Gladwin’ told me that she could no longer commit to finishing my video due to work commitments. But that wasn’t the only problem I encountered. After coming back after the half term brake trying to book the theatre was non existent. The only night available was a Friday 4pm-5pm.

I was however, able to solve one problem. Lucy Clark has a sister twin sister Katy Clark who appointed to me that the narrative of my music video could work with the fact that they are identical, minus the different hair colour but once the filming started, it added to the effect of the contrasting mind of my character.

Another issue occurred after one night of filming on the 23^rd March. Every lesson which I was able to commit time to was booked due to up coming exams. Also every night after college was booked due to rehearsals and performances for a college production. The only times available to me was before college; 7am-9am. This caused a lot of problems with Katy and Lucy because the hours given was hours they couldn’t commit.

Because I’d already collected a small section of the footage with Katy and Lucy, I’d decided to upload the footage onto the editing suit using Adobe Premier Pro CS3. I roughly had the first minute of footage, from here I uploaded the video onto my blog. This showed the progressive stages of the development for the music video. Iona Gladwin came and spoke to me about filming for my video, alongside another friend Emily Hallett. They were able to commit to the two hours in the morning before college. Knowing this booking the theatre was no problem. I booked it for Wednesday 6^th March and Thursday 7^th March. Collecting all the footage I needed, I was able to start editing with my new footage, then being able to upload each stage of development of the music video. At this point, I hadn’t started editing the brightness and contrast, or adding special effects. But I needed to re-shoot some shots for my finished production of my video.

I introduced one of my artists (Emily) at the beginning of the music video using various medium/ medium long shots of her sitting in a chair with a spot, casting a shadow in the mirror at the back of the theatre making her the main focus of the music video. From this I used a long shot introducing my next artist into the video (Danny). My video mainly consists of medium shots and long shots of the artists in the video. I have also included close ups of each artists at relevant times in the video, this is so the artists can be recognised in order to sell albums.

The long shot of the artists in the spot light reflects on the lyrics ‘As it all falls down’ as Danny falls to his knees. I repeat this sequence in the music video reflecting on the lyric ‘Groundhog day’. This is conventional for music videos which (I think) helps to move the narrative along. In the second verse of the song, the female artist (Iona) appears for the first time in the video. I use a tracking shot, and panning shot of Emily walking slowly into the spot light where Iona is already standing. Here I am trying to reflect the image of someone’s mind, reflecting the emotions of loneliness and entrapment of the narrative character. I edited each camera shot to the drum pattern in the song creating an uncertainty to the video. This is again conventional for music videos linking back to the meaning of the song. Towards the final few shots of the video, each artists(Iona and Danny) leaves the spot lighting leaving Emily alone. She shows pure emotion as she portrays the final structure of the narrative of the song- death. I use across fade of an empty chair in Emily’s place, creating the true meaning of life and death.

I started my pre- production work for my digipak by analysing other digipaks from multiple genres. During this research I considered things like the use of media language, audience, ideology, institution and representations. Through this I was able to recognise the conventions of digipaks. I’d started planning and hand drawing a digipak,

(illustrated by the image captured). But however, due to the lack of time I decided on changing my brief by designing a webpage for my group and sticking with the magazine advertisement. Starting on the webpage, I looked at the my chosen artists webpage ‘James Morrison’ (http://www.jamesmorrisonmusic.com/) for inspiration.

From this I was able to structure, illustrate and design my own webpage. I was recommended a website by my teacher- Wix (a free and easy to use online site.) http://www.wix.com/. It gave a standard tutorial through each section of the development of your webpage. It also featured different webpage layouts of which you could use for our own. I found this very helpful as it gave you different webpage layouts for specific genres. Such as; music, businesses, fashion etc.

Here are some screen shots of my final website;

Home page

I edited the images on photoshop and saved them as a JPEG. This abled me to upload them on to wix and illustrated the images carefully round the page. I also featured facebook, twitter and googlemail links

News Page

Again I used photoshop to edit the images for my news feed page. By uploading the my music video on to youtube, I was able to embed and upload it onto my webpage.