Logos

Every artist has a logo and this puts across the brand image. As our brand image is feisty, sexy and glamourous we need to design our logo so our brand image is shown but so it isn't too complicated and fussy. Looking at other artists we our hoping to find inspiration and ideas for creating our own logo.

I think this logo works well with Beyonce's brand image as it looks glamorous and i think that the colours  create a sexy look. The font of the logo is simple yet it portrays the brand image well.  The slight reflection of the font is good and I think that this could be a possibility for our logo.

Molly

Artists logos are very important as they instantly show what kind of personality or genre of music they do. For example, this logo of Katy Perry shows all the right connotations of her music. Fun, due to the 'bubble' style font. Girly becuase of the bright pink colour. This straight away attracts the target audience.

 

On the other hand, artists like ACDC, have logos with dark colours black and red that show death and horror. Simple fonts are used that are bold and stand out,with symbols to emphasise the 'agressive' rock band feel. This, straight away tells us what kind of music to expect, therefore is a successful logo.




As a group we have contributed and looked on the website http://www.dafont.com/ and looked throughmany fonts that we think would work with our brand image of fun and fiesty. These are some of the fonts we are thinking of using.

Liv x

album cover ideas

I came across this idea whilst looking for inspiration for our video, this is a clip from the Beyonce video-Sweet Dreams, our group though that this idea would be good for the back of our album cover as we could list the tracks of the album in between the legs. Also, I think that this image will fit with our brand image of: sexy, feisty and glamourous, showing the legs will fit with the sexy part of our brand image and will incorporate the male gaze. 

I like this image as it's black and white and makes the image look very simple however it shows what is needed to create a good overall image. I think they intended to create a sexy look with this image and I think they do just that, with the off the shoulder look with the glamourous feisty jacket and hair.  The plain background highlights the woman and overall creates a good image that would fit into our own brand image. the inspiration that i have gained from this image will come into our brainstorm of our final ideas for our album cover.

 Our group came across this image and though that the double page spread worked very well and was very eye catching, although we are researching for album covers we decided that this type of image would work better for our magazine add. However, we will take inspiration from this to create both our album cover and our magazine add.

Molly

Album covers research

Album covers need to represent the artists image, but they need to be interesting and appealing to the target audience. Album covers have four panels and a list of the tracks on the CD.

We really liked this Rihanna album cover as it portrays her brand image very well. The red hair shows her sexy, feisty image and therefore the album cover is doing what is expected and targeting the audience. I think that the front image for the album is well edited and the colours used flow well throughout the album, and fit with the album name 'Loud'. I think that the type on the front image fits with the image and i don't think that the album would look as good without the type as the image would look very simple even though it is well edited i think that needs to be type on the front image either the title of the album or words linking to the artist. Overall, the album images work well to portray Rihanna's brand image sexy and feisty. 

Molly

Progress-week one

We have captured most of our footage over the last week and now we are narrowing down our footage to cut out the clips we will definitely won't be using then we have the basic content of our music video.

On the day of filming each member of our group brought in the props and costumes so that we could ensure everything we had arranged to do in our planning was able to go ahead. After doing the makeup of our main character we were then able to decide on the first outfit we were using to begin our filming. we used two cameras so that we could set each camera at different angles so that there was a variation of shots. The costumes changes went well and me altered the types of lighting to giver a high lit clip, a clip that was lit from the side and a darker clip. The lighting training enables to know how to use the lights in the studio properly and we tried out new techniques so that there was a lot of variation to make sure our video wouldn't get boring.

Molly

Photographs of props

charlotte

Scanned Storyboards

We created a set of storyboards during the planning process of producing our music video. We needed to do this because that way we had something to look at whilst we were shooting and we knew exactly what kid of shot we needed to get and the location it would be in and then what costume we wanted her to be wearing. The use of storyboards throughout the production process proved to be very helpful because it stopped us from becoming overwhelmed and confused during the shooting. Below are scanned versions of the storyboards that we created.

Charlotte

Risk Assessment

I printed out a risk assessment form from the college website, and filled it out accordingly. Our media teacher Miss McNulty signed it and we were able to begin filming our project. 

Liv x

Ideologies

In all music videos there are ideologies that are put across to the audience in the lyrics and also the  narrative and story line of the video, ideologies are used to appeal to the the target audience. The ideologies will change for every different music video, they change according to the the brand image or the artist. The dominant ideologies that occur in music video are often the same as those that crop up in today's modern day society such as...'consumerism' today's society is almost obsessed with disposable consumer goods. Mainstream media texts follow dominant ideologies they do this so the audiences accept the media texts, as they do not challenge what we believe an what we want to believe.


The ideologies that will occur in our video that 'love conquers all' this ideology crops up at the end of the video as we are planning to end the video with hands all over the girl after the whole video is of her searching for a man and at the end a man finds her.


Molly

Shots during the Video

These are some photos we have taken during our video. The various costume changes throughout the video make it exciting and glamourous. The green screen you can see in the first image will have the image of flames we found on the internet, to tie in with the theme of James Bond. This clip from YouTube shows the image we are attempting to re-create with our own twist. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGPBFvDz_HM Poppy has posted photos of the outfits used in the video which fit our image of our artist. Fashionable and quirky but looks sophisticated. Some of the images we have looked and the lighting gave us ideas for the ancillary tasks. The third photo would look particularly good as a photo on a magazine article. 

 


Liv x

Models used

poppy

Costume and Make-up

This is the first costume for our music video. I've teamed together a sparkly little top with some simple leggings and platform heels to go for a sexy look yet the leggings bring the 'james bond' evident as it isn't extremly girly. I have also put a mac coat together with it so that on the open sequence the model can throw it off.

Wearing leggings again she has

leggings, topshop top

all saints dress

allsaints dress

allsaints











Storyboard

As we wont be filming our video in the order that the final product will look like we need to know exactly what kind of shots we need to be filming and why and where we will be using them, in order to stay organised and not lose track of where we are up to we have created a storyboard to refer to whilst we are filming. Here is a description of the kind of shots we are planning to film...

Shot 1
In the opening scene, we will be filming our artist with the dancers behind her walking towards the camera. We will be shooting this on a white screen in our studio so that we can have excellent lighting facilities to make our shots look sharper and clearer. The dancers will be dressed in a very simple black outfit where our artist will be dressed to fit in with our theme of James Bond, her outfit will also be a representative of her brand image of feisty, sexy and glamorous.

Shot 2
In our second shot of the video we are going to be using a countdown clock, counting down from 10. We will be cross cutting from this shot to the walking scene continuously with the cuts between the shots increasing as the countdown gets lower.

Shot 3
We will film this in a long shot. When the countdown time hits 0:00, our artist will throw off the her mac to reveal her outfit underneath with the gun as a propp to add to our James bond theme. This will also support her brand image of feistiness, sexiness and glamorous. Her hair will be tied up and she will let it down.


Shot 4
We will shoot this in a close up shot of her face, the lyrics will begin and she will sing along to them. We will be using a black background and have just one light shining on her. This will add a sense of mystery about her to the scene.


Shot 5
For this shot we will be filming the dancer separately to our artist because we are going to layer the scene so that the dancers look like they are far away and our artist is closer to the camera.

Shot 6
Quite a large section of our audio track has no lyrics and just the music which means we have to still have something going on to make sure that the viewer doesnt get bored, so in this shot we have decided to split the screen into 4 sections and film each dancer using the green screen.  We will edit it so that the dancers are a silhouette and the background colours will change to the beat of the song. This will be repeated throughout the music video.

Shot 7
In this section of the video, we have decided to include a male gaze, to shoot this we are going to film starting from her feet and then tilt the camera upwards as our artist walks towards the camera. We will then cut to a long shot of her singing the song.

Shot 8
The main narrative of our video is the artist going from bad to good whilst she is searching for the male character. In the middle of the video we have decided to use shots that have high key side lighting in them, this will then show the two sides to her character, the good and the bad. We will need to make sure that the lighting is used effectively and doesnt make our artist look too pale but still making it clear to the viewer that she is slowly changing from bad to good.

Shot 9
We will also be using the green screen to show how the artist is going from bad to good by filming her in a black dress, and then placing the image on a white background, and then again with her in a white dress and edit it to have a black background, we will then split the screen into 3 and have the two outside screens as the footage with the black dress and then the white dress footage in the middle screen. We will show how the badness is leaving her by her being styled in a black outfit.

Shot 10
Our final shot will be of the artist wearing a long flowing white dress, we will edit the footage to make it look like she is floating very glamorously, we will use a fan to make the dress slowly move and make her hair look like it is blowing, this will give it the effect of being outside and we will be using a large light behind her to make her look like she is in the sky.

Charlotte

Shooting schedule

From this week we will be starting to film our music video, wiht our video being all studio based we have had to arrange the different places in college we want to film. Starting on thursday when we are all fre we have previously booked out the theatre for our dancers and long shots, the studio to do our green screening and the dance studio for more dancing and a change of scenery.

Thursday 18th Novemeber

Theatre: 1-2
Dance studio: 2-3
Studio: 3-4:45

We will be arranging for our actors to come in at half past 12 ready for the costumes to be sorted and their makeup to be done, this will also give us time to run through the afternoons filming schedule and explain what exactly they will be doing. We will also arrange within our group who's bring which props and costumes then we are not all bringing the same things.

Molly

Institution

As our music video is of pop genre we have decided that a insitutition such as Sony BMG as it is a large music company and with the pop genre being very competitive we thought that the best option was the biggest institution to get the most coverage and advertisment of our music video. Using Sony BMG will result in use being able to produce a high quality video on a high budget, this will then insure that the video fits in with the current pop genre, allowing the video to compete with other videos and fight for the top spot. With the video being widespread the audience will be broader and have a range of ages and people therefore it will be shinig above those of the indie and lesser known genres with a higher number of viewers.

Molly

Lighting Training

We were shown types of lighting to create different looks, such as fashion lighting we used butterfly lighting, or even mysterious lighting with all the different colour filters to put over the lights ways we could achieve effective lighting for our purpose. Due to our narrative, the appropriate lighting would be soft at the beginning and gradually get darker on her face to show her darker side. We will light the protagonist with high key lighting where needed to make her stand out. These are some shots we took in the studio. By using 'reflectors' we can make the persons face seem more tanned.

 This is an example of the butterfly lighting used for fashion shots to light the object from the top and straight on. This is molly using the still camera to document a few shots.




Liv x

Storyboard animatics

We recorded our images we had drawn for the storyboard and put them all together to create a sequence on Final Cut Express to give us a rough idea of what our music video would look like, and also something to refer to whilst filming.

Liv and Charlotte x

Feedback: 14/11/10

Good research and planning but needs a little more detail - and more focus on media theory needed

much better on branding and brand image! I have added just a few suggestions below...


- Synopsis/Narrative - dont forget to get your narrative theories in here - as you are doing a narrative video
- Keep pushing your theory -
-Target Audience Section:  Include Maslow, Young and Rubicam, Niche groupings (audience theory) how does your product appeal to the audience - fulfil basic human  needs? Also reference the UK Tribes and add one of their videos ( you can find them on Youtube)
-  what ideologies are you pushing? ( e.g. brand identity is included in this? why does this appeal to your target audience?
- Costume photographs - actual props- for your planning?
- Make up tests?
- risk assessment form for your shoots - a template can be found on Moodle.
- Institution: who would be promoting and paying for the video? A British Indie label (Rough Trade etc...) or an international major label like SonyBMG?
- practice shots -video?

- scanned storyboards and animatic
- a scanned filled out audience questionnaire sheet.

Dont forget the work you did in class on music videos and the key concepts - it can be included here!

 Miss McNulty

Location Shots

We have 3 main places in which we will be shooting our music video. The studio, with green screen and white backdrop. We have chosen this because we want our video mainly studio based as we feel it looks more effective, we have access to the studio lighting and this will hopefully enhance our overall product.

The dance studio is another location as we need a large room for the dancers to perform. The large mirrors in the room mean we can get some good shots inspired by the Beyonce 'Sweet Dream' music video.

The theatre gives us space and equipment such as a fog machine and wind machine to create dynamics and good effects for certain shots. We have booked certain times we are all free to use the theatre, monday after college and will begin shooting this week.


Liv x

Green Screen Training

The green screening training has seen us develop knowledge of how to create videos and alter the background image. This is a key skill all of our group need to know as our video will be all studio based. the green screening training also helped us to learn about the lighting available in the studio. With our training we used a image off google as we were only doing a rough video however, creating our actual video we will take our own photographs if it is something were are able to take an image of an use that for our background.

Green screening is used in a lot of music videos and some amazing image are created professionally and successfully such as the the tree background in the cheryl cole- promise this video. I think that image works well as the colours in the mage of the trees ties in with the rest of the video and the other green screened images link to make one excellent green screened video.

Molly

Equipment & Locations List

In order to produce our foundation portfolio we will be using several different technologies and equipment. We will be using the following:

-Video Camera

-Digital Stills Camera
-Final Cut Express
-Adobe Photoshop
-Adobe InDesign
-Green Screen

We will be using different locations to shoot our music video such as:

-Top floor of a car park - to get a good pan shot of the town from a good angle
-College Theatre - this will be the main location of our video
-Studio - to use the green screen

Charlotte

Target Audience- Reflect

Everything has a target audience, from Cars to felt tips. Without a target audience the product wouldn't be marketed or advertised well. The target audience for our Music Video are teen girls, into mainstream music. I devised a questionnaire for teens of all races and genders just to get a feel of where and what music they listen to. Our findings suggest most people listen/watch music videos on their ipods, internet and at home. The most popular genres were Pop, R&B and Indie, this relates to our genre,  Pop with a quirky feel. The most popular video tat was listed as a favourite was Lady Gaga- Bad Romance because its 'visually well composed' and 'she pushes the conventions'. This is something our group would like to do for our Music Video task, to break the typical conventions and create something that could be played several times and the audience not loosing focus or getting bored of the video. Style was important, especially for the female audience, they said they pay attention to the outfits the artist is wearing and if it's something they would wear, the artist would become a 'fashion icon' and they would copy certain key peices of clothing. Overall from our findings, to hit our target audiences' needs we need to create a music video that can be converted to Ipod, therefore they can watch it there. It needs to break conventions so the audience doesn't get bored watching it, and it has to be fashionable for females to aspire to.

Liv x

Our Artist

We have chosen Diana Vickers as our female artist to use for the music of our Video. Coming 4th in the X Factor in 2008 and now with 2 number ones up her sleeve, she has proven she is not a failure! She has done a substantial amount of appearings, from turning Christmas lights on, appearing at shop openings and countless TV shows. Her music is mainly mainstream Pop with a quirky feel about it. Her signature poses, facial expressions and gestures can be noticed throughout her performances which make her unique to the rest of the female Pop stars of today. She writes her own music which shows she is an independent female, and this is something we wanted to incorporate into our artist, for them to be fiesty, but fun.  Diana is originally from Blackburn therefore we have some connections with the singer, we were able to get in contact and through a telephone call and an email she said was pleased to let us use her song. The song we have chosen is 'My Hip'. As a group, we sat down and disscussed the meanings of the songs and the connotations of the lyrics and came up with, that the song is about her trying to find her 'man' again, searching for him and finding him for a short time until he leaves again. We then presume that she finds him but the enigma is unsovled.

'I dream of the day when we find we find ourselves
And we are both together/ we are both together
Speaking your truth you have lost me lost me 
In a place that is so tender, it is so tender

Your hand is back where it belongs
On my hip on my hip
Your voice is sweet and it's singing me a song
Your hand is back where it belongs
On my hip on my hip
Your voice is sweet and you're singing me a song

You touch makes me blind
I don't want to see not now no no not ever oh no not ever
Smiling this way and I wonder could it be forever
Wonder could it be could it be forever

Your hand is back where it belongs
On my hip on my hip
Your voice is sweet and it's singing me a song
Your hand is back where it belongs
On my hip on my hip
Your voice is sweet and you're singing me a song

Your hand is back where it belongs
On my hip on my hip
Your voice is sweet and it's singing me a song
Your hand is back where it belongs
On my hip on my hip
Your voice is sweet and you're singing me a song

I dream of the day when we find we find ourselves
And we are both together/ we are both together
Speaking your truth you have lost me lost me 
In a place that is so tender, it is so tender'

Liv x

Firstly I emailed Diana via her music email address (dianamusic@hotmail.co.uk) but due to her busy schedule she didn't have chance to reply so she gave me a phone call, to get in contact so I did. The email is quite small to see so I shall copy and paste it.

From: Poppy-Bethany Cookson
Sent: 29 October 2010 13:24
To: Annecka Griffiths
Subject: Music Permission 
  
Hey!

I've tried to get hold of Diana via her music email however I have been asked to get through via you. 
I am wondering if I'm able to have permission to use one of Dianas singles to use for my media A level exam.
My work is non-profitable and it will only be seen in my exam and not by the general public. 

Please get back to me, 
Thank-you
Poppy x 

-----Original Message-----
From: Annecka Griffiths <Annecka@modestmanagement.com>
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 2010 12:28:12 
To: <poppycookson@hotmail.co.uk>
Subject: RE: Music Permission

Hi Poppy, 
  
What would you be doing with Diana's single for your exam? I'm sure that wont be a problem. 
  
A x 

-----Original Message-----
From: Poppy-Bethany Cookson 
Sent: 29 October 2010 13:35
To: Annecka Griffiths
Subject: Re: Music Permission

I would be making up my own music video, but its more about the filming on the video itself and how I would go about making one. Its completely non-profitable and for my exam only and won't be publish publicly.

Poppy x
-----Original Message-----
From: Annecka Griffiths <Annecka@modestmanagement.com>
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 2010 12:40:27 
To: <poppycookson@hotmail.co.uk>
Subject: RE: Music Permission

That's totally fine! Good luck : )
Poppy!

Filming schedule

As we are using a few people in our music video we have decided to make up a time table of when everyone is free in and out of college, this will able us to set dates and times when we can film parts of our video.

Monday-All free after college

Charlotte 1 2 5 8 9

Molly 1 2 5 8 9

Poppy 5 8 9

Liv 1 5 8

Tuesday-All free after college

Charlotte 3 4 6 7 8 9

Molly 3 4 7 8 9

Poppy 3 4 7 8 9

Liv 7 8 9

Wednesday

Charlotte 1 2 5 8 9

Molly 1 2 5 8 9

Poppy 3 4 7 8 9

Liv 7 8 9

Thursday-All free after college

Charlotte 1 2 3 4 6 7 8 9

Molly ALL DAY

Poppy ALL DAY

Liv 1 2 3 4 6

Friday

Charlotte 3 4 5

Molly 4 5

Poppy 3 4 5

Liv 3 4

From creating a timetable of when everyones free we have been able to organize our actors to be free when we are so that we can book the studios, although the studios are there for use to use we will have to find a time that then can allocate that all of our group can comply with, however, with our schedule i think think will be easy for us all to work out and then once the stuidos are booked and we have arranged our time we can begin filming.

 

Molly

Props list

Plastic guns- fit with the James Bond theme

Magnifying glass- fit with the detective theme

Fan- to blow the hair and dress of the protagonist

Smoke machine- to create a mysterious effect to the shots

Torches- use for spot lighting and to use for the 'searching' idea

Molly

Synopsis of Video

The theme for our video is along the lines of a detective/James Bond, we have chosen this theme to link with the theme of searching for a man.

The narrative consists of the main character looking for the man who should have his 'hand back where it belongs' searching all through the song to fit with the detective/James Bond theme. the main character will stand out from the 4 dancers with a different appearance and costume. I think the narrative will work well with our artists as her image is feisty, sexy and glamourous which can be represented through the theme we have chosen.

The narrative will be constructed through the media language, as soon as the music starts the feisty and sexy image of the character is portrayed. The colours we will be using in the video will show the contrast between her being single bad and searching for her man being mainly dark colours then throughout the video we will be hinting of the good taking over her and then man coming back into her life, the hints will come through the white props costumes and backdrops coming into the video about half way through. The end of the video will be with just white props and costumes, we have chosen to do this as throughout the film she is searching for her man and not getting any attention but then at the end she has finished her mission and fitting to the song the 'hand' is 'back where it belongs'. Therefore the colours throughout the video will show the good and bad narrative.
The lighting throughout the film will fit with the narrative being bright for the parts where she is good and with limited lighting fitting with her bad side.
The camera shots and the movements will also construct the narrative as the searching theme will consist of fast camera movements along with fast pace editing. as well as creating an interesting narrative I think this will create an interesting music video and won't get boring.

Narrative theories
Propp
Although propps theory conists of 8 main characters and our narrative doesn't the characters in our video do fit in with the  theory.
The hero: Lucy who is our main character as she is out to fins a man because there is a lack of them in her life.The villan in this case is the white colours taking over her bad side and trying to stop what the hero is trying to acheive. There are 2 helpers in our narrative that aid the hero, the 2 helpers being the backing dancers of our video. The princess in our video is the man, this is the main focus for our hero and is her reward in the end. Although our narrative isn't fitting with the 8 character theory we have still ecorparated 4 of the 8 characters.


Todrov
Todrovs theory is that all stories begin with an equilibrium which is a state of balance and normality. the equilibrium is then disrupted by some event which alters things and then there becomes a second equilibrium which is a resolution to the problem caused in the disruption. in our music video the equilibrium will be the single girl searching for men, the disruption is the white colours invading and dragging her into the good side and finally the re-equilibrium is the girl being good again now she has a man.

Levi-Strauss
The binary oppositions that will be created in the video could be:
good vs bad
single vs in a relationship
black vs white
girls vs boys

Barthes
The enigma code theory will appear in our narrative, although only a small amount of enigmas will crop up the questions that might occur could be:
What is she looking for?
Will she find her man?
Who's hand does she want on her hip?

Molly