Meeting Thirty One

Today I had planned out how I am going to answer the evaluation questions:
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In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
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How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
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What have you learned from your audience feedback?
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How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Music Video evaluation Plan
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? – Use screen shots of music video as evidence
• Link between lyrics and visuals
• Show how the record company wants their artist to be presented
• Shows music genre
• Showed a wide variety of camera experimentation
• Use of lighting
• Mise En Scene
• Two shots that show we have researched into music videos
• Mixture of narrative and performance
• Intertextual reference
• Made a Digipack
• Why we did our covers such as symbolism, genre and to promote new artist
• MySpace page, explain the conventions and why we had used them

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary tasks

• Produce a video to accompany answers
• Name of song, whose it by and where is it taken from
• Where is the artist from, target audience and genre.
• What we wanted to create
• What we researched into
• How we wanted to portray our star
• What is the narrative, performance etc.
• Efforts of members
• How our digipack is linked to the video and why we head those images
• Planning – research into MySpace
• How we presented our MySpace page
• How it links to genre
• What we achieved and how research helped
• Do we think we promoted the artist efficiently? Did we give our artist the correct image?

What have you learned from your audience feedback?
• What went wrong and how we corrected them
• How having feedback has benefitted you
How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
• What technology did you use (if possible include a photo)
• How technology has benefitted our video such as updated technology
• What would happen if we didn’t have technologies such as no effects, no internet, no promotion (Facebook and MySpace, You Tube) expense and quality.
• Include screen shots of YouTube (YouTube allows you to get feedback and possibly get noticed)
• Blogger – shows evidence of research and ordering of producing a music video.
• Lilly Allen’s MySpace page – evidence of research into MySpace pages.

I had also taken various screen shots in our video to use as evidence to use in the answers to the evaluation questions

Meeting Thirty

Again, today consisted of just finishing the tidy up parts for our video and also making sure our blogs are all up to date and are presentable. One factor that we have found that is difficult for us, is getting the lip synching to match the singing on the song. This is what most of our finishing improvements consist of.

Meeting Twenty Nine

Last lesson we created a list of improvements for our music video. We started getting on with them last lesson because we have done everything else such as myspace and our album cover. We were to complete those imporvements today but we have not got the list! So today I am making improvements to my blog and also find any other factors I believe that are faults within the video.

Meeting Twenty Eight

Today is our deadline for completed music videos. We did manage to meet our deadline, also we fully completed our Myspace page. Now we beleive we have everything done, our video, MySpace Page, Album Cover and also our blogs. From here we will be making improvements to all of our work once going through it all. Also making the apearence of our blogs better. We will also be looking at starting our evaluations and commentary's.

Meeting Twenty Seven

Today we cracked on with editing our video. Also I wrote our press release that we put onto our MySpace page. We had also done our album cover, deciding on an album name: Overlook the Truth. From here we are certain to have our video completely edited by our deadline, tomorrow! It will be hard work but all well worth it. We will also check everything such as our MySpace page, just to check that everything is up to standards of a MySpace artist page and make sure all the work we have done is to standard and is appropriate. Then we will be working towards commentaries and our final evaluation.
For our digipack (album cover) We had our arist on the front becuase we are promoting a new artist and want her to be noticed. We also followed the conventions of our genre conutry/pop. Her clothing is "country" floral, denim,simple and she is holding a flower which is found within country. We showed the genre pop by having the focus on the artist. Our back cover is the back of the artist, again folding the flower. This is very characteristic of pop digipacks also staying in line with the element of country from the flower. Her clothing is floaty symbolising innocence which is parrallel to the lyrics of the debute song and love. The inside cover where the CD lies, is a tiled, close up of a rose. The rose is featured in our music video. It symbolises love to which most of the songs on the album have the theme of love, friendship and relationships. It is also linked to our target audience of girls.

Meeting Twenty Six

We got on with editing now that we finished all of our filming. This is our top priority at the moment. We have basically nearly finished our MySpace page. Our storyboard is completed and has been uploaded onto YouTube. Next lesson we are concentrating on getting our video finished and edited. We also planned to create out album cover.

Meeting Twenty Five

Today consisted of capturing the footage we did over the weekend, also starting to fill out sections on our MySpace page.

Meeting Twenty Four

Today we went ahead with our last filming date with fingers crossed that the weather would be good today. The weather was really miserable when we left for Lakeside, but hoped it was different in Thurrock. We did get caught in traffic which caused panic about getting all the footage we wanted in the time we planned to get everything done by. Luck was on our side when we arrived. The sun was shining and Lakeside was busy - just how we needed it for a particular scene. We know wasn't worried about our timing. We believed we had enough time. We started off with filming our most time-consuming scene. The idea is to film our male and female character standing still, facing each other, completely till whilst the crowed people walked passed etc. Then in editing we plan to fast forward this so it symbolises that nothing matters apart from the couple, with everything else speading by. We planned to do this for 20 minutes. At first the actors were very conscious of the shoppers looking and making comments, especially the female having fits of laughter. But then in depseration to get our footage done, they were serious and stood completely still for 20 minutes. We then went to Broadwalk. An outside area of Lakeside where all the nice resturants are and where there is a lake with a giant fountain. We thought this was a very suited picturesque location for our video. We did various scenes here, experimenting with new ideas. Although the sun was shining, just how we wanted, we feared that there would be a glare when we play back the footage. So we ended up doing shots a lot more than we intended to and was really aware of our angles and framing. On a whole, the day was a success.

Meeting Twenty Three

Today was carrying on editing the opening of our video.

Meeting Twenty Two

We spent time today uploading our storyboard. We have exported it correctly but have not yet put it into YouTube due to the song being potentially, taken off. We also went to the Fresh Flowers in Brentwood to do our next bit of filming. We took more than three takes this time (we usually do three takes in different angles with all filming) but this time we took more and experimented more with angles and zoom because we knew this was our only opportunity to use the florist and didnt want to end up with footage we couldnt use. From here we plan to sort out our YouTube problem. Also to meet at at Lakeside to do our last filming that was cancelled due to bad weather conditions.

Meeting Twenty One

Today consisted of checking that everything we had done so far has been put up onto blogger, also research into Mysapce. We also contacted a local florist where we want to do our next piece of filming. They were happy for us to film in alocated hours.

Meeting Twenty

During the week Lilla had taken various photos for a CD cover. We had decided to do a CD cover and a Myspace page. We have plenty of photos also edited versions but due to bad weather once again, there will be more photos taken so we have plenty to options to work with.
For our myspace page, we both plan to do research on a Myspace artsit so we have a better understanding about the conventions of a Myspace artist page. We had created a new email address to use for our myspace page. We signed up for Myspace but didn't realize that you cannot have both a Myspace page and a Myspace artist page. We deleted the normal myspace account but it takes 24 hours to fully delete. We did not have the patience to wait so we created a new email address then signed up to a Myspace artist page. We do not plan to do any work on our page till we have done our research and have better knowledge and understanding of how a myspace artist page would look and how to create it.

Meeting Nineteen

Disaster, disaster, disaster. Having looked at the weather forecast, the weekend looked to be pretty miserable and violent. We kept our hopes up for good weather but it disnt look good. We decided not to film. The wind and rain did not present the characters how we wanted them and it is hard to create a lovable scene with dark and dingy lighting also strong winds and heavy rain. We plan to go back the following weekend and in the mean time we have planned to film the male actors scenes of him on his own during the week.

Meeting Eighteen

We have been using our lesson time to capture our footage and begin to put our begining of the video together. One disadvantage that we have come across was that we didn't actually realize how long the editing process takes. It took us and hour on top of capturing to edit successfully the first 15 seconds of our opening. This may cause our timing to be tight to fit our deadline of hacing our video completed but we have the determination to get it done and carry on putting all our spare time and 100% effort into the last of our filming and editing. From here we plan to film the last of our couple filming at Lakeside in Thurrock on Saturday.

Meeting Seventeen

Today we gathered at Lilla's house to do various shots for the couples scenes. Again we used our time efficiently, doing each shot three times in different angles. The shots were very successful and allowed us to brainstorm for the next filming session. We plan to film the next scenes at the following weekend but untill then we will capture all of our footage and begin the ordering of editing process untill the weekend comes.

Meeting Sixteen

Today we did our filming for our female character's footage of her being alone. We also took today to experiment with angles that we had not yet attempted again, to widened our options to what we use during editing. One problem we had during this filming was that we did not have much battery life on our camera so this limited the amount of time we spent on filming. Although this was a downfall, we got all the shots we wanted and more that we came up with whilst we were in the state of mind of the storyline and panic of not getting worthy footage! Our next plan is to film scenes with both the male and female characters. We have various locations for these shots so the filming next to be done will only be half of the footage completed of the couple being together.

Meeting Fifteen

Today Lilla did her filming once again in Thorndon Park. This time round, the footage was very successful and now we have plently of footage and options to work with. Each shot was filmed at least three times in different angles with costume changes to widen our options. The plan from here on, is to film Louise the female couple on her own in a Cathedral yard.

Meeting Fourteen

Having looked back the footage we have and discussing the complications we would came across from now on (discussed in last meeting), we came to the conclusion that our idea of having school as a location is not very strong and is not very easy on the eyes to watch. We may not completely leave out our school footage but we have now came up with a new narrative which consists of a simplistic storyline parrallel to the lyrics. The story is now about the love of two young couple's and having simply footage of them together in beautiful locations such as a church yard, a lake etc. Then the couple separated and missing eachother. Also having looked over the footage from Thordon park of Lilla our singer, we wanted to go back to get more so we definatley know we have enough to work with.

Meeting Thirteen

Again, today we filmed scenes needed to be filmed in school but came across many difficulties and didnt produce as much film as we would had hoped for. This scene in particular consisted of using a corridor with various scenes where the main female is following the male. We did film what we wanted, but we came to the reaslisation that what we had produced would come away from reality. We want the video to be as realistic as possible but the timing when we film, meant that the corridors are bare and doesn't look like a realistic school scene. We discussed how we were going to over come this. We had the idea of simply filming during a lunch or break time but felt that a minority of pupil'a within this location would not respect us and take advantage of having a camera in there surroundings. Also we have a scene where we use the school canteen and thought this would reoccure during that filming. We discussed possible outcomes of what to do. We came to the conclusion that we would ask a percivic form group to be used as extras during a registration time one morning. From this. no students would miss lessons and there would be a teacher supervising to over come any dissbehaviour. With the school canteen scene, we concluded that there are alot of teachers and adults on supervision during this time and would ask them to control students and isolate an area for us where we can still have background students to keep the realism. From here we will upload the footage we have so far and see if it fits in with the timing on our storyboard.

Meeting Twelve

This was the start of filming our scenes that are located in school. We gathered our actors and dressed them in a school uniform. We then found a classroom that was not in use. We knew what scenes we needed to film with help from our filming schedule but then came to the realisation that we would need varoius school pupil extras sat in the classroom to create an realistic classroom scene. We did eventually find a teacher willing to let us use their pupils for various shots, but this was challenging because this limited out time we had to film because teachers were not willing to let pupils miss parts of their lessons. We did film the scenes needed and believe that we caught worthy shots. From here we will continue to shoot the other scenes needed to be filmed within a school surrounding.