Make up for Digipak

From after doing a lot of drafts for the digipak we came up with a final idea of painting his eyelids and lips to make his features stand out. Here are the pictures from different angles that we are going to use for our magazine advert;

We thought this was a very unusual image to use and would catch the attention of the audience we are targeting. 

Social Media

My Group and I have come up with a way to share our creative ideas and show the progress of our production. Along with this we are using this for advertisement of the single (even though its all hypothetical)

Short Cut Video

This video is our short cut version of music video which contains about 40 seconds of footage - after seeing it however we might have to re shoot some of the footage as it is not strong enough.

Magazine Advert Draft

I have been doing a lot of drafts of different advert designs to use, however I felt this design was my strongest one so I turned it into a digital mock up photo of what it could look like. I think this original picture with the plain background can create a great effect with the bright features on him. Also because the image is quite unusual it draws in potential fans. 

These picture below were my original drafts that I did not have a lot of belief in. However they included the correct material, as in content. Like name, date, single. 

I decided through these drafts that I needed chunky text that would be subtle but stand out against the photo in the background. I have gone through different texts that I would use and my digital graft is the closest reality to it at the moment,

Mood Board

During the creation of my A2 Media video I had a lot of inspiration towards including original album art and the visual techniques during the original video. I found looking at these very helpful because there was obviously an interest in the song which could have been sparked by the advertisement of the album and the video partly. However I also looked at different artists and how they used pictures and art to illustrate their music. 

I also took a lot of interest in mental health topics and researched into it on different bloggers and websites. There are a lot of inspiring pictures of people dealing with mental health issues however, due to this being an upbeat music video, I wanted the video to gather more attention to the issues instead of seeing them as unusual and deathly. The pictures I found also gave me ideas for actions that needed to take place within some of the shots (top, center). 

I also have had a lot of attention towards colours with black and white. The black and white in the photos I saw felt like it reflected the good and bad side of reality. I wanted to add the colours to portray the mental illnesses and that crystal clean life we all see is not so perfect. Also as you can, I have seen inspiration in a photo of a different artists album cover, one guy has had half his face painted. Whilst doing my drafts of mock up magazines adverts, album art and music videos, I was looking at this image. This lightening bolt along his face illustrates crazy, and including this on my music video would be good as it creates a symbol. 

Story Boards

Story Boards

It took our group slightly to draw our story boards because of the flood of ideas we had, going through the process of coming up with a finalized idea was hard but we all our creative input we came up with one.

Audience Research

Filming Performance

We recently filmed our part of our A2 media coursework which was to do with paint and performance. This was very fun and i also think it turned out very well because of the vibrant colours we used the range of angles and shots. 

Above this is some pictures of the set up that we used, it was an infinity wall (the white sheeting) and this is why we also got him to wear a white T-shirt, so it would all blend together. The shadows behind it also created a great effect. In the top photo. you can see what type of actions George is teaching Jamal to do in the video. 

This was the after effect of the paint on Jamal, it gives a very good illustration of 'Crazy' and chaos. I think by doing this we make our video stand out more. Also we can change the effect on the video to make the paints more vibrant and stand out. In the first shot we only had primary colours being green, red and blue but then changed loads of them to show the wide depth of  mental illnesses (represented by different colours). 

'Crazy' by Gnarls Barkley - analysis

I remember when, I remember, I remember when I lost my mind(losing my mind could be related back to a mental illness as this a strong stereotype)
There was something so pleasant about that place.(we are inferring from this that the metnal state people can be in when having a mental illness is almost to hide the other terror in their life)
Even your emotions had an echo
In so much space (so much space to think about having a mental illness and also this could relate to it having quite a variety) 

And when you're out there
Without care,(without caring as in they had no recollection of thought process etc.)
Yeah, I was out of touch (as in no one could help with the mental state he was in)
But it wasn't because I didn't know enough
I just knew too much

Does that make me crazy?
Does that make me crazy?
Does that make me crazy?(crazy is the inappropriate term for mental illness)
Possibly(he is coming to the realisation)

And I hope that you are having the time of your life (don't let stuff you think is making you happy get in the way of your health)
But think twice, that's my only advice

Come on now, who do you, who do you, who do you, who do you think you are,
Ha ha ha bless your soul
You really think you're in control (this could be implied that people aren't in control of their mental illness)

Well, I think you're crazy
I think you're crazy
I think you're crazy
Just like me (he believes that someone else has got a mental illness and he can notice this)

My heroes had the heart to lose their lives out on a limb
And all I remember is thinking, I want to be like them
Ever since I was little, ever since I was little it looked like fun (he believed that the army looked enjoyable)

And it's no coincidence I've come
And I can die when I'm done (when the mental illness gets too much it will be the end for him)

Maybe I'm crazy
Maybe you're crazy
Maybe we're crazy (coming to the realisation that they are both 'crazy' with their mental illnesses)
Probably

Uh, uh

Digipak Designs

These are the digipak designs that I drew for the 'Crazy' by Gnarls Barkley - I think the first one is going to be our chosen idea as it represents the split the best. It helps link up the music video 

Mental Disorders Research

The definition of Mental illness on Google is = psychological disorder or psychiatric disorder, is mental or behavioral pattern that causes either suffering or a poor ability to function in ordinary life. 
Mental Disorder or Illness is a fairly new word, however since it has been more well known it has got more attention then expected. Songs by popular artists including 'Give it all' by Train. 



Since Mental Disorders have been established, there has been very different types of approach to it - here is a comic strip that I found showing awareness of mental disorders but along with how people react to it. They are trying to justify that mental illnesses are just as important as physical. This first comic strip post is about how people react to mental illness, and the second is on physical illness.

Physical illness -

If you would like to see more of this comic strip on how we react to illnesses then click on this link; http://www.buzzfeed.com/kirstenking/have-you-tried-herbal-tea#.pm6Q01MAa

We have chosen specific colours to throw at Jamal to illustrate our meaning and genre =

• Red - this represents anxiety as this is a very common mental illness for this time that could affect everyone. There is also a number of illnesses that can come from anxiety so it is very relevant. However, the thing behind mental illness is that it is not noticeable to the naked eye as it is inside the brain. By us throwing red paint at Jamal we are representing that even if you can't see something, it still exists. 
• Green - this colour portrays the mood of a person, This is because a lot of peoples mental illnesses can shine through using their moods. For example, if people have depression then their mood could come across sad, and if they were to have bipolar, there changes in moods could reflect their mental illness. 
• Blue - Eating is presented by the colour blue. This is because a lot of mental illnesses can revolve around food and eating, this includes anorexia and bulimia. Therefore, I think it is a good reason to include this as this could affect everyone. 

Some research location shots

George, Tom and I went to Henley-on-Thames last Saturday to get some location shots, these are a lot of rough shots however that we will change into more professional looks soon. However we are going to use some of these locations and poses for the digipak and poster. I really like some of these shots as they are quite original and also quite suit the genre of the song as they are quite simplistic. In addition, my favorite shot is the one in the field. This has a calm and relaxed vibe.

Most of these shots were just for varied research of which shot looked best.

Risk Assessment

Hazard	Cast/Crew that may be harmed	Property which may be damaged	Risk controls already in place	RISK ASSESSMENT – low, medium, high, EXTREME	Further action to control risk
Paint being thrown	Jamal (cast) and crew throwing the paint (Bethan and George)	The room we are using which is in college. We do not want to ruin the paint on the wall so therefore using protective sheets.	Testing Jamal with the paint to make sure he is not allergic and not to get it in his eyes because it could affect his eyesight.	High	We will do a patch test on Jamal and the crew to make sure they have no allergic reactions to it.
The Public	The public, cast and crew	We want to make sure that none of our equipment or the public are damaged through our settings or unknowing public.	We are going to make sure we send out a relevant email to staff making them aware of the parts of school we are filming in, this is to make sure we get limited people walking through the scenes, this is to make the shots better and control danger	Medium	Along with the email, we could put up signs to make sure that people are filming.
The River	The cast and crew	We have to enable that none of our cast and crew will fall in the river. Because this would mean possible danger for the person (drowning) but also ruining our filming equipment like cameras and possibly lighting.	Risk controls in place are keeping a certain distance away from the river during filming (2m at all times). This will be kept in place when we are near the river.	Medium	We will inform all of the cast and crew of this rule of not going within two metres to stop danger.
Falling off the bridge	The cast, crew and equipment	The camera and tripod could fall of the bridge as there is holes in the bridge along with not very stable completely cover sides. Along with this we want to make sure the bridge is safe enough for our cast to use when filming on it.	Checking with the groundsmen to make sure it is very safe for our cast and crew to use. I think this will be most effective as we can have their permission as well.	Medium	If we were going to go into depth, we could get the groundsmen or teacher to be present when we are filming on the bridge.
Weather disruption	All of the equipment	This is because we are in autumn season the weather will be very temperamental. Therefore it could rain or be sunny. If it is raining the equipment will be damaged.	Risk control would be to check the weather report and possibly have a plastic bag ready to protect the equipment.	High	Checking the weather report

Shooting Schedule

This is the shooting schedule with all the cast and locations included. I think we have a very reliable cast who are all our close peers whilst being very talented. Also we have built our timings around very reasonable times. Hopefully it will plan out how we want it too. Our equipment is a tripod and a camera, we have made sure they are available to us but along with this, it will not take a long time to set up it all. All of our equipment is basic but I think this is good because we do not have to complicate it. All our locations are very accessible as well. 

Copyright

Today, I sent off a request to Down Town Records company (distributor) for copyright of their song so we can use it for our A2 media coursework. This is because they own the right to the song. I think in this email it was important to be polite and informative of what we are using there music for. My group and I are hoping to get a reply in the next few days to have permission to use it. As you can see, I gave my email for them to reply to me. I have also included Mr Milburn's (my Media teacher) email if they have any more questions or additional information.

Time Lapse #3

This is the third part of the story boards that George drew! More to come soon

Time Lapse #2

This is the story boards that I drew, as I wrote out all the story boards I think i had a good understanding of the visual image I want to see in the video - Story boards to come soon!!

Costumes

Outfits for music video inspiration

These pictures of a white and black outfit our inspiration for our music videos which we have been doing research on; we have used different colours for our different scenes. We have done this because we think it expresses different emotions within our video. The black shows a more dull and harsh feeling whereas the white is a lot more light-hearted and dreamy. I think due to the similarity of the actual clothing style works very well as well as it  makes a clear change between reality and dream, which is our initial idea. 

We chose our colours by choosing complete opposites of colours, I think this contrasts very well especially in the actual filming. I am playing also to use this on the front of the digipack, comparing both colours together. 

Also with the white, the paint will be easily seen on the colour so makes the image look less of perfection. Which is the message we want to give. 

Black Outfit - this will be worn in the reality scenes with extras, to give the harsh reality of life. 

White Outfit - this will be worn in the white room scenes, and hopefully this will give the image of perfection as it is all clean. 

The research I have done into outfits is that in many videos to show a pure look they have featured in more white outfits -

This is a scene of Beyonce in Destinies Child, her previous band, however this song shows her in a very pure light because of the colour of her outfit. She also hasn't got very over powering makeup on which makes her show innocence. This is the same for her hair. In addition, the lyrics in this song are about Jesus, and this white outfit could also present her as song of Angel, or in dreams. 

This is very similar as well, Taylor Swift is wearing white and also giving off the impression is innocent and helpless. I personally think the white gives off this impression as white is linked to children and vulnerable. Which is another impression that I want to give off in the White room scene. 

This black outfit contrasts a lot with the actual background image, along with her pose, This outfit is also very revealing which makes her look darker and evil, Along with this her make up is a lot more powerful with red look which give her a provocative look. 

This is Eminem, he is seen in a lot of videos wearing the colour black because it represents the 'harsh reality of life', and he always sings about current relevant issues. This is another reason why we are showing Jamal in the colour black because mental health is a current issue and this links back to it. He also has a gangster, standard rapper look. This is also a very mainstream popular look at the moment. The global fashion is relating back to black at the moment. 

Therefore these are the reasons I have decided to use costumes like the above. I got a lot of research from music video and magazines adverts as well, as in what stands out when watching a video and looking at a poster. 

Time Lapse

This is the time lapse of my group working during today's lesson! We were completing our shooting schedule.

Time Lapse - Story board

This was a time lapse video by Tom Riches, I had written out the story boards and he followed this by drawing out the scenes and doing a time lapse. This means our story boards are complete and we will be putting them on our blogs soon!

Location shots

Location Shots - 

This is where one of our scenes will happen, it will be used for the establishing shot and scene between Jamal and extra. 

This is the shot from the classroom we are using. We think this had the most classic classroom feel with good lighting. 

Bridge from a different angle with people, showing what the lighting picks up

Classroom from different angle showing lighting on actors

Different angle of bridge 

Close up shot of actors on bridge - shows lighting

Different angle - Classroom

The river near the bridge. Shows the natural lighting and landscape

Treatment Video

I have recently posted my treatment presentation which was done on Prezi, my class presented it earlier this week to the rest of my class. I think this was very good as we got some interesting feedback from our class which has helped us to developed our idea. I think by doing this treatment made it very easy to put down all the relevant information down about our music video ('Crazy' by Gnarls Barkley)

Changing of ideas

So me and my group (George Atkinson and Tom Riches) have decided to change from our original idea. This is because after our audience research and secondary research, we realised that this idea that we had wouldn't fit together, so I suggested we make a video about why we changed it, and here it is.

This is my group music video analysis for 'Trap Queen' by Fetty Wap - I think we chose to analyse this song because it is so popular at the moment and therefore must have some interesting conventions to make it so interesting - Thanks for watching!

Digipak analysis

This is my 6 digipak's that I have analysed! This is just a start but it was really interesting to see how the genre and audience affect the digipak as this is the initial marketing of the music. I think as soul music, my closest representation of this was the 'Miseducation of  Lauryn Hill', however this was unique in itself. My favourite one out the five was the front cover from 'Two Door Cinema Club' however I thought the original digipak for crazy was also very good. It was extremely eye-catching and gave off a good message.

Digipack analysis from Bethan Tinker

Treatment Prezi

This is our treatment for our idea which explains our initial idea and goes into it in slight detail, I did this for my group. We will be presenting this in the next few days to our classmates and hopefully be getting some relevant feed back on it. After doing our first part of audience research, we decided to change our idea because people were expecting something a lot different to what we were suggesting, therefore to make sure we can reach our target audience we needed to readjust.

Audience Research

My group yesterday interview five of our peers for audience research. I have posted the questions earlier on my blog as we had pre-planned. The feedback we got is that the current video for Gnarls Barkley was very different to how people expected it. From also this feedback we have changed our idea for our video, as we had a lot of mixed review. However this will be explained later in another blog post. 

We are currently filming out audience analysis and research, but our group also made a survey monkey questionnaire to get an even larger range of opinions and views - here is the link for the survey monkey.

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/DJDGQW8

This is our video analysis for the video 'Rude' by Magic. I think it was a very good idea doing it on a video using a mind map because we got a range of different ideas from our team.

These are the brief few questions we thought would be effective when asking the public about our video ideas -

Media – Audience Research Video

1.       What is your favourite genre of music?

2.       What is your favourite song?

3.       What do you expect to see in a music video? Performance or narrative?

4.       Listen to this song, do you like it and what do you expect to see in Gnarls Barkley’s music video?  

5.       Watch some of the video, and tell us what you think.

6.       Listen to our idea and please can we have your opinion.

7.       Do you think the performance of Jamal and romance work well together?

This our pre-visualisation task, I drew out the individual scenes and George Atkinson then processed them onto the power point which help makes the scenes a lot more clearly visual, espicially with the key we have added at the bottom. 

Pre visualisation from SirAtko

Analysis of music videos

A2 media song analysis

This video was to give us some experience of making a proper music video -
 

Our deadlines

Here you can see what my group set as their deadlines for work - Tom Riches, George Atkinson and myself. We will be sticking to these to make our media coursework more structured.  

MY  COURSEWORK FROM NOW ON WILL BE A2 MEDIA

Secondary evidence for our genre based film - 

Question 6 evaluation video -

Question 7 – looking back at your preliminary task (the continuity editing task), what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Question 6 - what have you learnt from technologies from the development of your product?

Survey Monkey – Survey Monkey has helped my group and me to enhance our questioning, this is because we have been able to ask specific questions so that we get specific answers. I think this helped because we got detailed audience research about what we actually wanted to know and by having it online we could get a more wide range of people to answer to get a more varied views. This helped us to achieve our final product.

Blogger – Blogger has helped to store all our information in one place, before this none of could use it or even think of using it. It has helped us to organise where all our primary research, secondary research and general updates of our opening was. They have also given us the skill of being able to embed YouTube videos and other methods of sharing onto our blogs using the HTML.

Prezi – We used Prezi to create our treatment video, I think this was very helpful because it was another way we could share all our information and learn how to use new software in the process. I think this was better than using power point as well because it is far more interactive. We not only did this, but some our group used it for evaluation.

Youtube – YouTube helped us to load all of our audience research and our different cuts of our media opening. This was very helpful because we were able to get embedding codes from here to put them on our blogs(using HTML), Also we could use the HTTP link to share they on social media websites like Facebook at we have our own page now.

Scrib – Scrib was used to upload different tasks we were set, I think this was very helpful because once again we were able to embed stuff into our blogs instead of having to click on a link. It was unlimited how many times we could do it so become a very helpful tool when doing tasks on power point, word document etc.

Secondary research – secondary research was very helpful because we used many different websites to get different information on generic horror movies. We also found out how to use these websites very effectively to get precise research and they also had a wide range of music. These websites included Rotten Tomato, and IMDB. I found these very easy to use like the rest of my group and believed that the information we found greatly helped us to achieve our final product.

Box Office Mojo – This could fall into both secondary and primary data but I think helped because it gave statistics, it gave quantitative data instead of detailed information. We also could pick up on what kind of person we were aiming for as a target audience due to the figures of what gender it was more popular with, class and age.

Photoshop – To create the title of the Mark and the Fish Tank logo, I used Photoshop CC. The reason why I used this is because Photoshop gives you a plethora of advanced designing tools which helped me create a professional/detailed title for our film opening and also for the logo of our company Fish Tank Inc.

Final Cut – To edit our film opening I used Final Cut pro, reason being is because Final Cut pro is an extremely advanced video editing software which when used correctly gives you the best possible outcome for your video and you have a hundreds of different effects which you can apply; I took advantage of these effects that Final Cut Pro offered to me and I tried to make our film opening look as horror related as possible.  

Question 5 - How did you attract/address your target audience?

Question 3 -
What kind of media institutions would distribute your product and why?
What kind of media institutions would distribute your product and why?
 

Question 4 Evaluation - who would be the audience for your media?

- Question 2 - how does your Media represent particular social groups?

Question 1 for our Evaluation -

Evaluation

Mise en scene - 

• The imagery pictures evil 
• Iconography associate with the cross and the Anti-Christ
• Basement dingy feel, used in other films: Devil inside and conjuring
• Dark sense of unease, unusual lighting, dark colour scheme: Like The Rite and The Possession, REC 2   

Editing -
The main editing technique we used was cuts, cuts is a very simple technique as it keeps the audience interested as the film is changing from one clip to the other. We used various types of cuts such as jump cuts which is when the camera jumps to a dramatic point in the film opening; and cutting rhythm which determines the speed in which things are cut to emphasise specific points in the opening. The main reason why we used cutting rhythm was to induce an element of surprise, suspense and shock into the audience; so clips that had a longer duration were to emphasise suspense or to focus on a particular point and then the shorter duration shots had the element of surprise and shock. Another editing technique we used in the film opening was the Ken Burns effect which was used to make the audience focus on an important aspect of the scene.

Camera Angles - 
For our film opening we used a variety of camera angles to create the most thrilling atmosphere for our target audience. We used multiple, effective camera angles such as close ups, tracking/panning shots, mid range shots and long shots. One of the main camera angles we used is the tracking/panning shot, we used this because this shot can be used very effectively in horror/thriller movies as it can indicate a moment of suspense and gets the audience wondering what's going to happen next. The other primary shots we used are close ups and long/mid shots, we used close up shots in our opening to see characters reactions and to capture detail in important scenes; mid/long shots were used to establish the setting in which the film was placed.