Friday, 10 December 2010

Ancillary Tasks...

We had thought we were going to do a magazine cover and a CD album cover. I had researched the magazines on P!NK for this purpose, but also to help us see which audience was best suited to our project. Today we decided that due to the digital influence in our media project, it would be a better idea to do a webpage as it will also link better with the CD album cover, we can promote the website on the cover. Another benefit is the the distribution of magazines means the magazine cover would only be in circulation for a week or so, with the website it can be developed and continuous, meaning audience numbers will grow and more people are likely to come across it on the web, as they may not choose to buy the particular magazine we design.

Footage....

Today we have FINALLY finished making all our footage black and white and deleting all the audio. We have three lots of footage and it took us around three lessons to make all of it black and white as we had to wait for the mac to render it. We also spent a few lessons editing out the bits of footage that hadn't gone to plan or that we didn't think would be good for us to use. After this lesson (Fri 10/12) we can then spend next week editing our footage into a rough draft for our final piece.

Friday, 3 December 2010

Narrative idea....

We need a solution to link all our individual footage together as we are in danger of it looking eclectic. I have come up with the idea of individual narrative clips for each of our actors. We were always interested in close up of eyes either happy or sad, as this was quite a popular technique in some of the similar music videos we researched. I thought if we filmed a close-up of happy eyes and sad eyes for each actor and this would then coincide with the happy and sad memories of each of their relationships, when the camera zooms out. In between the zoom in and zoom out would be a fade to black. Inspiration for this could be Just a dream - Nelly, which is also a song about relationships.

Thursday, 2 December 2010

What's happening today...

We are making sure our footage is ready to edit into our final piece we need to discuss our final piece in more depth, so we can make a detailed plan and know where we are in the editing process.

Monday, 29 November 2010

More research...

Films:
2000 Ski to the max. (herself)
2002 Rollerball (Rock singer)
2003 Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle (Coal Bowl Promoter)
2007 Catacombs (Carolyn)
2009 Spongebob's Truth or Square (herself: Cameo)
2010 Get him to the Greek (Herself: Cameo)
2011 Happy Feet 2 (Gloria's singing voice)
Albums:
Studio Albums -
2000 Can't take me home
2001 Missundaztood
2003 Try this
2006 I'm not dead
2008 Funhouse
Compilations-
2007 Pink Box
2010 Greatest Hits... So Far!!!
Live Albums- Funhouse Tour, Live in Australia
DVDs:
2006 P!NK: Live in Europe
2007 P!NK: Live from Wembley Arena
2009 P!NK: Live in Australia
Supporting Act for: 'N Sync//Lenny Kravitz//Justin Timberlake

Deadlines....

Today we have been told that by the end of this term we need to have a 'rough draft' in our timeline. This will include all footage complete e.g. filming and stills. We need to have some editing so we know at what point we are at when we come back in the new year.

Monday, 22 November 2010

Magazine research...

Just like her music genre, P!NK swings in and out of many different audiences, this is shown in her promotion and PR as well. P!NK has been on the cover of many different magazines ranging from 'Seventeen' which is aimed mostly at young teenage girls, to 'Rave' magazine aimed at a slightly older audience and both males and females. She is also promoted all over the world, being most popular in the U.S. and the U.K, but also Spain and other countries.      

Saturday, 20 November 2010

I don't believe you....

Wanted to research the background of our song and P!NK herself...





I Don’t Believe You.
The single was released on October 5th 2009 as Pink’s fifth worldwide single on her fifth studio album (Funhouse). It was recorded, under LaFace records, in 2008 and has been included in the soft rock, pop rock and pop music genres. It is 4:36 on the album version and 3:50 on the ‘new radio edit’.  The writer’s were Alecia Moore and Max Martin (who was also producer). Wikipedia: Pink explained on her website that, lyrically, the song is about pleading for reconciliation, and is her favourite song from Funhouse "because it's just so naked. It's like taking a deep breath and saying, 'Here I am. Take me. Take your best shot'.
The music video for "I Don't Believe You", directed by Sophie Muller, was shot in September 2009 in Los Angeles, California. The music video premiered on October 2009. The video is in black and white, it features Pink in the wedding dress she wore to her actual wedding to Carey Hart in 2006, and a diamond encrusted wedding gown as she searches for her lover, to no avail. Scenes include her lying down in the dress, rollerblading around what appears to be the inside of a church (The Los Angeles Theater), singing to an empty wedding dinner room, crying over an empty wedding album and singing to herself in front of the mirror.
The single sold 600,000 worldwide, it had the lowest peak in the UK and failed to reach the Top 40, due to the single being cancelled and the lack of promotion. In the US the track sold 115,000+ in digital downloads; but failed to chart on the Billboard Top 100. It was number 23 in Australia and was the number-one most added track to the radio on its debut week of release. In Europe the single reached Top 40 in most countries. Its highest peak was in Portugal where the song reached number 1.
P!NK
Real name Alecia Beth Moore (Sept. 8. 1979 Pennsylvania US.) is described as a singer-songwriter, musician, acrobat, record producer, and dancer. She became known in 1995 but became famous in 2000. She released her first single "There You Go", on her first album, the R&B-oriented Can't Take Me Home, in 2000 via LaFace Records. Her second studio album ‘Missundaztood’ was a complete change in genre as a pop-rock orientated album, it was released in 2001 and was a huge success worldwide. AS well as vocals she can play guitar, piano, keyboard, and drums. Her labels include LaFace and Arista with the mother company of LaFace being: Sony Music Entertainment.
Pink released her third album, Try This, in November 2003, which although less successful commercially than her previous release, still managed to sell around 3 million copies and earned her a Grammy for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance for the single Trouble. Her fourth album, called "I'm Not Dead", was released in April 2006. The album generated several hit singles, including "Stupid Girls", "U + Ur Hand" and "Who Knew". Both "U + Ur Hand" and "Who Knew" went to #1 on the pop chart. Her fifth album, Funhouse, was released in late October 2008 and was preceded by her first solo number one on the Hot 100, "So What". The album notched three other Top 20 hits: "Sober", "Please Don't Leave Me" and "Glitter in the Air". On November 15, 2010, she released her first compilation, Greatest Hits... So Far!!  According to Billboard, Pink was rated #13 on the list of Artists Of The Decade  and #1 Pop Song Artist of the Decade (2000–2009). She has also scored ten Billboard Hot 100 Top 10 US hits, including eight as a solo artist, and has won two Grammy Awards, 5 MTV Video Music Awards and 2 Brit Awards. The People's Chart, announced through BBC Radio 1, declared Pink as the 11th Most Played Artist on UK Radio of the decade 2000 to 2009. Pink has sold over 34 million albums worldwide.  Forbes Magazine in 2010 named Pink the 27th most powerful celebrity, with $44 million earned between June 2009 and June 2010.
LaFace was founded in 1989 by Antonio Reid and Kenneth Edmonds. Some famous artists under the name are Outkast,  Usher, and Ciara. LaFace is of various genre and its distributors are:  RCA/Jive Label Group (In the US) and RCA Records (Outside the US).

Friday, 19 November 2010

Tutorial...

We spent today's lesson trying to fix the video speed when uploaded to You Tube???!
We had a tutorial today and some of the key points were:
  • Don't forget about the extra tasks.
  • Need more research into institution and audience, with analytical and evaluative points.
  • Could do some background research on the artist.
We seem to be at a good stage in general with our filming and blogs (atm!).

Thursday, 18 November 2010

Today...

Today we managed to get every body's filming rendered and sorted into usable clips, we can now go through and see what works and what we may need to add in terms of footage. We also managed to set up a You Tube account so we can upload our video blogs; as we could not upload them to blogger and some other sites we tried such as  podbean and blogtv. We will make a link on each of our blogs so it is an extra part of different media. We had trouble getting the footage to sync with the sound but should get this sorted next lesson.  

Friday, 12 November 2010

Roland Barthes 5 narrative codes and an example...

 As a group we had to research Barthes 5 narrative codes and find an example we thought represented his theory well, we chose the 'A Team - Ed Sheeran' which i uploaded in a previous post and the power point is uploaded here...










Treatment...

Today we are planning a video presentation to analyse our research to date. It needs to be 2-3 minutes long and explain our research and planning progress. Next lesson, which which will be on Monday 15th November, we will be filming it and hopefully uploading to our blogs, if not we can do this at a later date.

Thursday, 4 November 2010

Video for Barthes Narrative codes...

This is the video we chose to represent Barthes narrative codes, I will upload the powerpoint later when completed.

Media Theory...

Today i did my individual project on a media theorist - David Buckingham. I did a powerpoint presentation and presented this, it included a background and some projects that he had been involved in....






Monday, 25 October 2010

Half term filming...

Today I did my part of the filming. We decided we would share the camera time equally in the half term for three days each. I decided to film a friend along with her boyfriend to focus on more of the positive shots. As well as this I decided to do some close ups of some stereotypical things from a relationship e.g. photos and gifts. I decided to use these as a metaphor, for example I tore up the photos and filmed some dried flowers to represent the ending of a relationship. When I was filming the positive times I decided to use a local park as my setting, it was a sunny day which coincided with the theme and I used the park and maze to film separate shots.

Thursday, 21 October 2010

Practice Task...

As Emily wasn't here, instead of doing a major group work task, me and Katie decided we could get on with the practice task. We decided to do our take on the task set and instead of four faces in one screen, we decided to use the four boxes to make up a face. As the introduction we filmed a sequence of shots, with each one being closer to the face of the actor. We edited this in free periods/lunch.

Monday, 18 October 2010

Monday....

We only have two lessons this week but today we are consolidating ideas and getting a general view of what is happening and what will happen. We have been taking meeting notes every week which will be uploaded soon. We were shown the A2 media studies 'get ahead' blog today and, have decided to think about doing a couple of video blogs, this should be relatively easy on the macs camera and then just uploaded. We have to do a practice sequence this week to remind us of camera techniques and software use. This will be uploaded once we have edited and finished.

We have decided to split the camera time we have in half term equally between us, we are going to film our individual ideas and any inspiration. I am filming in the first 3 days of half term, then Katie and then Emily. Once we have emptied our SD Cards onto the Mac we can go through and decide what we can keep, work on, or lose.

Friday, 15 October 2010

John Legend...

John Legends viseo for 'Ordinary people', was really good inspiration for ideas. The video is a shot on a white background throughout but still keeps the video interesting by having different couples acting out different scenarios. We liked the simplicity and the cinematography, its use of close ups and panning shots etc.

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Wednesday, 13 October 2010

Inspiration we have found while researching...

Although this inspiration may not be relevant to our final video, these were videos that we all liked and could possibly help our ideas, some are contemporary and others a bit older...
Sia - Breathe me, the picture flicking effect using stop-motion, good for memories or ellipsis.
Kesha - Take it off, the fluorescent powder used, good for fighting scenes if appropriate insead of actual violence or emotion in relevant colours e.g. red - love or anger. We were going to use this if we had decided to film Hide and Seek for the representation of dust.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSH7fblcGWM
- Link to Sia -Breathe Me as 'embedding disabled by request.'-

Monday, 11 October 2010

Blogs...

Todays lesson was really just a chance to check our blogs and talk through some ideas. By Friday we hope to have made a decision and hopefully we can start filming ideas from our lyric notes. We still have one more week til half term, and although we are behind, we have given ourselves enough time through that week to discuss and plan for filming and preliminary tasks in half term.

Friday, 8 October 2010

Preliminary task and Friday's lesson...

We decided to include a CD cover and a Magazine advertisement as our preliminary task. We will be able to get pictures while we are filming.
Today we put the audio onto macs and listened to the three seperate tracks that we had. We were not able to use a one of the recordings of Hide and seek as the piano was too loud in comparison to Lara's voice we tried to use software to correct this but couldn't in the end.
We know have to make the decision of whether to use the first few verses of Hide and Seek or use the recording of I don't believe you which has recorded well, we just have the problem of filming ideas etc.
We are behind on our plan but it doesn't matter as we have booked a camera for half term and have each others contacts so once we have done the difficult bit of planning our video and storyboarding, we will be able to film over half term and maybe into the next week, just so long as we have started to edit in that week.

Wednesday, 6 October 2010

Recording, Changes and Decisions!...

We managed to get our recording done today. Although we didn't get a full recording of Hide and Seek, Lara had chosen a song by Pink - I don't believe you that she thought we would like. We decided to research this song on friday and it looks like we may choose this as our final song. Here are some of my ideas.>>

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Monday, 4 October 2010

We decided...


When we looked at each others notes the most popular song was Hometown Glory by Adele, we all agreed it had good imagery and we could do a lot with it. We had also got a lot of inspiration from the original video although we didn't want to copycat it, we preffered it to Hide and Seek.
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Our ideas:



Our other options....

Friday, 1 October 2010

Back up plan....

Just in case the recording plan didn't work, as we also didn't know if the sound quality would be good enough to use in our video, we decided to choose another song and brainstorm it just in case we had to change. We decided on a few:
Hometown Glory - Adele
Sophia - Nerina Pallot
Speeding cars - Imogen Heap.
Over the weekend we decided to print the lyrics out, and note down some ideas for one or all.
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Thursday, 30 September 2010

Research...

We decided to look at the existing video for our song, not only for inspiration (if any) but to see how the artist wanted to represent her song. We didn't like the original video as it seems plain and uninteresting, it is just a series of shots of the singer herself.>>


Imogen Heap - Hide and Seek (Official Music Video). Watch more top selected videos about: Imogen Heap">

Planning Ahead!

We knew getting a recording session would be difficult; we had to think about when a room would be free and if there was any noise outside that would interfer with our recording, when it would be suitable for Lara and if any recording equiptment would be available. We decided to set out a general plan, while we were contacting Lara so we all knew the situation, if it needs to be changed it doesn't matter as it is a guidline to keep us all on track.

Monday, 27 September 2010

Our chosen song...

All of us liked a song by Imogen Heap - Hide and Seek.

We like the lyrics as there is lots of imagery and the music does not distract from the lyrics like some songs that we looked at. We all also thought that a lot could be done to improve the original video. However none of us liked the the fact that the singer has electronically modified her voice, Emily suggested that we ask her friend Lara to record her singing the lyrics with piano as the background music.

We started to make a plan for the up and coming weeks and brainstorming the lyrics along with research for inspiration etc.

Starting out....

Once we had sorted out our groups (Me, Katy and Emily) we started thinking about what sort of song we wanted to base our music video on. We knew the most popular songs would be more up-beat and have changes in tempo etc. We decided to choose songs that had less of a fast pace and instead of being rock or pop etc. we wanted songs that had a slower tempo and beat. Obviously this will affect our theme and mise-en-scene but as with all music videos we will plan this once we have studied the lyrics and music of our chosen song.