MAGAZINE ADVERT

The magazine advert features the cage as it is a signature part to the video and is featured on the front of the album cover, it shows the connection to the band and the advert. The writing is very simple and to the point. Having our main singer in a hot point attracts attention. Most of the poster is dark but having our lead singer wearing white immediately draws your eye towards the poster and your eye is the lead round and to the singer from the tour dates that create vertical and horizontal lines down the page. The red writing saying, ‘book now’ also draws your eye toward the poster and as it is on a hot point it is one of the first things that you notice and that catches your eye.

DIGI PACK

Our Digi pack was created to be very simple but have a lot of symbolism and underpinning meaning. We added smoke to add to the ethereal feel of our song and set the atmosphere of the type of singer that she is. It is a very simple and plain front cover as we wanted it to have mystery and not give too much away. The cage is empty and surrounded by nothing as this makes it look very lonely which is a theme that is echoed throughout the video. The title of the band is also in very simple lettering as it again creates a sense of mysteriousness as it then makes it difficult for the audience to see what kind of band they might be and it leaves them eager to find out. The lighting is also low and it creates shadows around the cage, reinforcing a sense of mystetry and the feeling of entrapment.





The Inside of our album cover is a lot more stylised with intricate detail in comparison to our two outer covers. The lyrics are printed to the song of our music video all along the inside. Our main singer is also featured as she then gives the song a bigger selling point, she looks very vulnerable yet simple and this gives off the idea that she is very relatable to and not threatening. Her face also appears in the bottom left hand corner in a very faded and out of focus form which also echoes the diffused glow that we used in our pop video. The inside is more detailed yet it is very clear much like our other two covers. Her face is on the two hot points of the rule of thirds stressing her importance to the band. And the lines of the lyrics lead your eye across the page. The colours of the layout are also quite muted and monochromatic so as to enforce the simple feel of the album cover, they also do not distract your eye and it creates a very un-chaotic out come even with all the detail of the lyrics and music.




The back cover is very similar to the front cover as it is simple and has the empty cage on it which gives the idea of emptiness or loneliness which is what a lot of our video portrays. The names of the songs on the album are also featured which gives the viewers more insight into the band and what their style is. The record label is featured with the title on the hot points to enforce their important ness and the layout is simple so as not to distract from the main image. The lighting is very dark and the cover is 30% black and it in forces the ideas that something is being hidden, and this is what most the song is about, secrets and underlying things which are not said.

BLOG TASK ONE . IN WHAT WAYS DO YOUR MEDIA PRODUCTS USE, DEVELOP OR CHALLENGE FORMS AND CONVENTIONS OF REAL MEDIA PRODUCTS?

Two videos that have many of the similar conventions and ideas as mine do are Pink’s video, ‘please don’t leave me’ and Priscilla Ahn's video ‘Dream’. These both have very non naturalistic elements to them and have a very dream like quality to them. They each create their own world and play on the psyche of the audience, much like our video does. They all follow the convention to disregard realism. Both the videos, ‘please don’t leave me’ and ‘dream’ have subverted many ordinary conventions, like cutting a few seconds after the beat and keep the camera on an obscure angle creating a unique pop video. Another convention these video's follow much like our video is the Repetition of reoccurring thematic elements and generically specific iconography throughout the video. Both of these video's also have specific lighting that creates mood and atmosphere much like ours does. We also used after effects to create a diffused glow to add to the mystical atmosphere of our video, as the other two video's do to.

For our pop video we researched and analysed the major conventions of a pop video in order to gain more knowledge on pop video conventions we researched Keith Negus pop video conventions which are.
-The explicit and unashamed promotion of the artist’s “image” (aesthetic/generic/ideological) as a specific product with a brand identity, ready for mass consumption
-The featuring of the artist (almost without exception)
-A wide and extensive use of shot types, camera angles and movement
-Repetition of reoccurring thematic elements and generically specific iconography (one key element often being dominant and providing the skeletal structure for the promo)
-A possible narrative structure
-A possible performance element
-The flexibility to disregard Realism!
-Shots cut tightly to the beat of the track
-Use of special effects (lighting, animation, CGIs, in-camera effects)
-A carefully constructed Mise en Scene appropriate to the content and tone of the track
-High impact instantly! (Don’t forget that competition for airplay on the main music channel outlets is intense)
Each of these began to influence our pop video in some way. We also followed Barthes theory of Plasir where we looked to imitate conventions in order to give the audience expected pleasure. We also began to subvert conventions in order to give jouissance, which as Barthes explains is the unexpected for the audience, and when the two are together they create the perfect balance in a pop video.

We also explored variouse pop videos by bands and singer who had ethereal songs or images similar to our band. These included Beyonce's 'Halo', the early Bjork videos and 'Yellow Submarine' and variouse other Beatles short films that go with their psychedelic songs.

The message in our song can be portrayed in many different ways. It can be seen as a video all about guilt and secrets as the lyrics clearly state in the song, the cage also may be seen as what is caging her in, her seacrets. She is unable to escape or break free from them, they are caging her in. The bird cage may also be seen as an extended metaphor of the girl’s psyche, as she does not sing for the first part of the song it gives the impression that it may all be going on inside her head. It lets the audience into her thoughts. It has many different interpretations. The cage may also be seen as the society that we live in, which she has been trapped or caged in by and she is trying to break free from. The cage also gives us the idea that she is constantly being observed by someone or something as people will watch an animal in a cage.The image and brand of singer has a sense of mystery and a dreamlike quality to it. Our singer seems lost or struggling and this gives off a very vulnerable feel to her although she is trying to break out toward the end, it also begins to create an air of frustration and strength to her. The ethereal atmosphere that surrounds her creates the mood of our singer and what the reset of the song may entail. The opening shot of our video is an abnormal one which subverts many conventions, this immediately shows us what type of singer she is. It is also a high angled shot and so we are introduced to her from an angle that makes her look inferior, again, making her look vulnerable, her clothes and her appearance also make her look rather innocent and this adds a certain attraction to her and the song.


Negus’s conventions are easily displayed throughout our video in many different ways. We either imatate or subvert them but never ignore them. His convention to have ‘The flexibility to disregard Realism’ is what most of our video is surrounded by as it has a very dreamlike and non naturalistic quality to it.
This image portrays that convention as not only is our lead singer in a giant bird cage but the fact that she is not singing gives us the idea that the images are all being played out in her head and we are almost part of her imagination. When the feathers begin to fall it also asks the question whether it is an act of naturalism, if she has killed the bird and its feathers are falling or if they are all in her imagination. Each one of these shots disregards realism.





The opening shot subverts many of Negus’s conventions as it gives the audience the unexpected because often a video will start by establishing the band or singer in a powerful way and let the audience know what is still to come for the rest of the pop video. But this image subverts the expected, as it begins with high angled shot which makes her look vulnerable. She is also on a spinning swing which could also be used as a metaphor for her life, it is spinning out of control and she is unable to stop it, or gain control of it.



Our Digi pack was created to be very simple but have a lot of symbolism and underpinning meaning.We added smoke to add to the ethereal feel of our song and set the atmosphere of the type of singer that she is. It is a very simple and plain front cover as we wanted it to have mystery and not give too much away. The cage is empty and surrounded by nothing as this makes it look very lonely which is a theme that is echoed throughout the video. The title of the band is also in very simple lettering as it again creates a sense of mysteriousness as it then makes it difficult for the audience to see what kind of band they might be. The digi pack, like the magazine advert, follows the rule of thirds by having the key words on the first hot point and the mysetery of the empty swing on the fourth hot point. We also use the idea of black and white connoting art to build up the idea of ouor singer as an artist not just a pop star.

TASK 4: A DIRECTOR’S COMMENTARY ON HOW I USED NEW MEDIA THECHNOLOGY IN THE CONSTRUCTION AND RESEARCH, PLANNING AND EVALUATION STAGES

Throughout each stage in the shooting of our pop video, from research and development to distribution and evaluation we have used many different forms of new media technology or digital technology.
We use digital technology because it has at least three times better and clearer quality than analogue technology. The sound is 100 times better and the picture is 50 times better and it has the ability to pick up fine detail and is also a lot faster, cheaper and easier to use. When using analogue technology it is not only more complicated to use but it takes up a lot of your filming time as you need to re adjust the lighting to perfection each time something changes in a scene or shot, this can take a long time and waste precious filming time. But if you use new media technology even if the lighting is not perfect throughout filming, you would be able to adjust the lights during the editing using after effects or other editing formats. A whole film can now be saved using new media technology. It also really helped us on our shoot day as with the camera we were using we were able to re watch a lot of our footage throughout filming which helped us to see what shots we still needed and what was working and what still needed to be done.

Digital technology is New Media Technology, where the technology is based on digital storage and communication of data, using Binary 0 and 1 code to compress the data into tiny packets. The media theorist Negroponte argues that digital technology gives greater speed and ease of production, better quality and huge amounts more of storage space for data in a small piece of equipment.

We used new media technology when doing our research and development by using the internet to research the music industry, our locations, our target audience and the other competition that we were up against. All this helped us to understand what other products were out there and how we could better our video and what market it needed to fit into.
Digital technology played a big part in the planning of our pop video too, as we used it to make our electronic storyboards which were a very key part in the planning of our video, as it then enabled us to see what the possible outcome of our video might be. We also used a digital camera to do our camera tests and this helped us cast our video and see who would work well on camera, fit the part well and be a good advertisement for our video.

The construction or the shoot of our video was made a lot easier by the new media technology we used like the camera which was a JCV500 HD camera. This gave us really high quality in our film and made the whole process faster and easier it also had a high ration which then gave us better visual quality. New media technology also made green/blue screen possible for us. We were then given the opportunity to use but we eventually decided not to film on green screen as our time in the studio was limited and we did not want to rush the rest of the filming.
In the post production of our film new media technology made ‘Adobe after affects’ possible for us which became very necessary and helped us to complete our video in order to get the best outcome.

Without the use of internet we would also be unable to show people our video as there would be no other way publishing or accessing it. With digital technology we were able to make a digi pack in order to promote our band and publicise the song and set up various other forms of advertising using the internet. This is why new media technology is so important to the distribution and evaluation of our video. It lets the public view our video and we are also able to advertise it through various sites on the internet. Such as youtube which is world widely accessed so it immediately gives out video the opportunity to be viewed by the public. We also published our video on Facebook which is a site that has more than 500 million active users, so our video will easily be viewed on the site by people all over the world. These sites also give us the opportunity to get feedback on our video so we can constantly better it.

EDITING OUR POP VIDEO

Assessable link to pop videos:
http://www.youtube.com/user/hurtwoodhousemedia

Our pop has been through a huge editing process. Something that started out very simply became quite complicated. We began editing using Final Cut Pro by putting the whole song filmed in a wide shot down and then we began to add different shots in throughout working around our original wide angle that ran the whole way through. We edited the fast bits of the song by cutting each quick shot to the beat in order to create movement and excitement throughout these bits of the song. These bits worked really well and had a great visual effect but the begging did not work so well, we changed the wide angle shot to mid shots of her with pans, but we then came to realise that it was not necessary for her to be lip singing in the begging and as we had so many beautiful slow motion shots from different angles in different styles we decided to use the slow motion shots throughout all the slow bits as this gave the video another layer and more meaning. It allows the audience into the lead singers world a lot more as they feel that because she is not singing the song seems like a thought process of hers and they feel as they are almost in her head and they are being let into her world and her thoughts.


We were quite careful with continuity and discontinuity in our video. At times we wanted discontinuity as it subverted the expectations of a normal video and it also added to the pace and uniqueness of the song and the singer. Our video also does not have a narrative so it was not to vital to have perfect continuity throughout. But we were very careful with some visual elements of continuity as we wanted to make sure that things like her hair were the same from shot to shot as we were constantly cutting shots and it would look like a mistake at times if we were not careful.


We used Adobe After affects in order to give our video a diffused glow around the edges of our shots and we wanted to create a sense of mystery and a dreamlike subconscious quality to our video.

SHOOT DAY

We arrived on the set of our shoot day with a rather vague idea of what we were going to do that day. We knew what we wanted to achieve but we knew we had a tough job to do in order to get there. We all arrived at 9 O’clock and we began to dress our band and do hair and makeup. We then began putting all our set together and making sure we had everything in order. We set up the swing inside our bird cage and we dressed the swing with vines and flowers in order to make our set more atmospheric. We then began setting up our camera and our lights. We then all began deciding on what roles we would each be apart of throughout the day, we decided to alternate all the different roles throughout like who was on play back, camera, lights and costume. As we all got on well within our group it showed us just how important this is in order to work well together.


We then began shooting, we began with a wide shot of the cage but this then led us to realise that the floor of the studio was effecting our shot and was not very attractive on screen, so we went to the theatre to get black material to cover the floor so it would not cause a distraction on screen. We then tried again and we started using the dry ice machine which then led to other problems, the fan was not working properly and the smoke began to fill the camera and it soon became very difficult to see what was happening we also then set off the smoke alarm all of this led to more delays. Once we had sorted out the smoke alarm and the floor we started again. We began shooting and then came to realise that the lighting was not right at all as it was causing shadows across Karis, our lead singers face. It was also too dark when she swung to the back of the cage and the too bright or too shadowed when she moved forward. We finally got everything sorted out and we began our shoot day for the third time hoping we had everything sorted out. It was now 10:30 and as we started so late it led to other problems with time management later on.


Once we had sorted out all our technical problems this gave us the freedom to continue filming and be creative with our ideas in the video. We began filming a few full wide shots, then mid shots and the close ups to make sure we had all the basics of what we need. And then we began shooting a few slow motion close ups on things such as Karis’ face her clothes and other things like her eyes or hands. Once we had a good amount of simple and slow motion shots we then began to introduce the feathers into a later part of our song. We had a cherry picker and a ladder on either side of the cage with people standing on it holding a XXXX filled with feathers, we had a person standing in front of the camera dropping feathers and then three people holding up fans and throwing the feathers in front of them making them all blow into the cage. We had to shoot this part over and over again as we had to get the feathers just right as they all had to begin to fall at the same time. This became difficult as we had so many feathers and they had been blown everywhere but all of this effort, although also very time consuming was worth it as it had a very vital and atmospheric effect on the outcome of our video.


We then began to film the rest of the band, we moved away the bird cage and set up the green screen but as we had lost a lot of vital time earlier in the day we did not have much time to film the band, we also did not have enough time to get all our green screen prepared so we decided to film the band on a black background with the same black floor as the bird cage. We only needed a few good shots of the band as we were going to inter cut the shots of the band very quickly with the bird cage sequences. But we also need the feathers so fall at the same point in the song as it had before. We had four band members, a guitarist, a drummer, a harpist and then our lead singer. We set up the band in a triangle like shape so that our lead singer was at the top of the triangle and the focus on the screen with the rest of the band members on the hot spots on the rule of thirds. We had a few good shots of our band members with the feathers and a few close ups of their instruments but as we had wasted a lot of time in the morning we had to stop filming in order to let the group that were filming in the studio the next day set up for their shoot. So we began to pack up our things and take our footage up to the edit suite. We then had to tidy up all our mess and pick up every single feather we had used, this took almost as long as our whole shoot day had!


We filmed our whole pop video using a JCV500 HD camera which gave us the best opportunity to have a very high quality video. We also used the cherry picker at times throughout our video, we used it in order to make the feathers fall from above and we used it to film a birds eye view shot from inside the cage. We knew that we wanted to use tracks in our filming as we originally wanted to start our video with a close up on Karis’ face and then track back to reveal the cage into a wide shot. We set track around the cage in order to get a 180 pan of the cage from left to right and right to left this had a good effect on a lot of our shots as it let the audience feel intermit with the shot and feel apart of the scene.


I had many shots that I loved from our shoot day but my two favourite were two of the slow motion shots we did. The first one being the shot we filmed using the cherry picker form above the cage. The shot began above Karis on the swing and it began to zoom in to her face as she spun round on the swing looking up into the camera. It was all filmed in slow motion and I think this shot really worked as it is not a normal over used shot, it is unique and I think it will keep audiences interested. The other shot that I think really worked was another slow motion shot that we filmed right at the end. This shot was a tight close up on Karis’ face with feathers blowing towards her as she moved closer to the camera and closer to the bars. This shot really works as it lets the audience feel intermit with the singer as she connects to the camera staring straight into it.
Some shots that we have come to realise that do not work are some of the close ups of the band members playing their instruments as many of them were unsure of the song or how to play the instruments. Our close ups of the instruments did not look realistic as they were not playing the same notes as the notes in the song. And this is why they do not work with the rest of our video, and as we were running out of time towards the end of the day we did not have the time we needed to perfect the filming of the band.


Overall our day went really well. Although we got off to a slow start after having wasted a lot of time sorting out some of the technical problems in the morning. Once we had got going we all worked really well and the atmosphere throughout the day was positive and energetic and I really enjoyed the whole experience as well as the bad as I have learnt from it. I think that together we have created a really good video different from anyone else’s with some really good visuals and that we all balanced each other out really well throughout the day alternating our roles as cameramen directors and everything else that needed top be done.

POP VIDEO PERMISSIONS LETTER

Head of Copyright and Legal Affairs
Universal Island Records Ltd.
22 St Peter Square
London
W6 9NW September 30th 2010


Dear Sir or Madam

We are a group of A Level students working on an A Level project for a qualification in Media Studies. We are writing to request permission to use the following track as part of this project:

‘Bird Song’ by Florence and the Machine

With your permission the track would be used as the accompaniment to a short form video that is made purely for assessment purposes and will have no commercial usage. Only members of the school community and the assessor of the examination board will view the video.

The artist and the copyright holder will of course be fully recognized in the pre-production and evaluation material that accompanies the project. We can also include a full copyright notice if required both in the planning material and on the video itself.

Yours sincerely

Sophie Evans
Hurtwood House School

An image of Amy Winewhouse, an Island Records star.