1st Digipak Photo Shoot- Test Shots

We went to Danson Park on the friday during half term and was able to get some test shots of Megan all around the park. These are some of my favourite shots of the day and the ones i am thinking about using in my Digipak.

Draft of Final Pitch

This is everything we need to include within our group pitch and we have sectioned off parts to do individually and also have bit that we will be doing as a group, as shown above.


Draft of final pitch including mine, Hayley's and Laxmi's work.

2nd Blog Feedback (Digipak)

This is  my second blog feedback, however this feedback is concentrating more on the Digipak side of my course work. From this feedback i realised that i need more of my individual work on my blog and not just my group work.

Start of Storyboarding

We started creating our storyboard today, so first thing we did was sit down and discuss all ideas we had as a group. This was great for the group and the idea as a whole as we then started to realise the locations and types of shots we wanted within the video as well as what the shots will portray and positioning of the actors in the video. The first thing on which we all agreed on was having the most part of the video in black and white which will give the video itself a deeper meaning.

The next thing we decided on was the beginning of our music video before the music starts. What we decided on was it would start with the girl ballet dancer walking onto the stage with a voice over of someone announcing her before she dances. The music will then start however the intro will be a long shot of her which then slowly gets closer zooming in on her face to which then pans left in a circular rotation movement until it stops on a perfect close up of her face, it will then cut to a close up of the artist to which she tilts her head up to start singing the song. This is a technique that would be used by anyone following the theory of Goodwin as its giving the artist more recognition which helps the record label.

Throughout our music video we decided we will be cutting between the artist and the girl in the narrative which will show us her family life as well as the ballet dancing in the music video we will see a bad home life to which shows her parents arguing a lot and just her bad home life to which the ballet dancing becomes her escape. 

Teacher Feedback 1st

Group Digipak Plan

This is the plan for our Digipak of which we have done in our group.

Pop Artist Brainstorm

This a brainstorm of pop artists who are big and could be similar to the artist we are creating.
  Pixie Lott is probably the most similar to my artist out of all of these these because of the petit body shape and the type of artist that she is.

Construction of mood board

Today with the whole group we started creating the mood board. The first thing we did was get a big A3 sheet of black sugar paper, from this we then spoke about what the background of the mood board should be and after a discussion we realised it should be floral to fit the genre of pop and then we decide that pink flowers would be the best idea for the background as she is female and has the identity of someone similar to Pixie Lott. So after completing the background we then decided to stick all the images me and laxmi collected around the edges, as well as on part of the background we created. After this we then put a list of songs on a plain white sheet and stuck that on the other half of the background.

Production log for photo-shoot

Location-


The Drama room

The first location of our photo shoot we looked at was in the schools drama room, with has lots of space and the black backgrounds it very good to use, as well as the great lighting rig and the set-up in the room. This also available to us 5 days a week as it is in the school grounds.








The Gallery

The second location for the photo shoot is the school gallery with plain white walls this is perfect for any photo shoot because we can easily manipulate the background using our Photoshop skills, also it allows up to focus on the artist against the simple white background.






Actor-
We are using an actor within our group for this photo shoot, as they are easily available for us to use and would mean that we would have access to them for when we need them.



Costume/Outfit-
We have not decided on any costume/outfit for the shoot yet however we have ideas of bright floral colours which will help when deciding, however Megan will send any images in a group chat of any clothing she thinks will be suitable for the shoot.

Focus Group Recording- Production log

This is our Focus group recording of us talking about the production log and everything we need for it.  

Artist Font Style

This is the tally chart that we created for artists typography and we asked people within our class to chose the one they like the best.

This is the result for this, however we decided that we didn't actually like any of the fonts and that we could find more and better ones.

This is the result for this tally chart, after we surveyed it around our class.

And this is the result of the final typography for our artist.

Audience Profile pt.2

This is our audience profile powerpoint which we created.



From both the poster and this power point you can see exactly what the profile of our artist and what she is like, you can also see the research into what similar artists like and are represented by.

Track List

For our artists digipak we have decided on the track list that we will be using and putting on the back of the digipak, these songs will be very important to our artist as the album is called Uncovered which basically means she's showing everyone everything she has and owns this album obviously has a very deep meaning which is why we think our target audience will connect so well with it.

1. The Rhythm Of The Night 

2. Wide Awake 

3. Battlefield 

4. Man Down 

5. All about Tonight 

6. Young 
7. 22
8. Cheers 
9. How Long Will I Love You
10. A Year Without Rain
11. If I was a Boy
12. No air 

We have chose these song as we believe they are best suited for this album and all have a similar meaning which connect with our artist.

Green Screen of Analysing a Digipak

Audience profile pt.1

This is our groups audience profile poster which we created, to help create our artist.

Analysing chosen digipaks

These are my chosen digipaks analysis:

Textual Analysis of a music video: Jay Z, 99 Problems

99 Problems- Jay Z

Straight away from the start of the music video we see that it is in black and white, this is probably used because of the racial era at the time so they have used it in the video to help us understand this.


It probably also gives us an understanding of Jay Z's past because he was in America at this time and has probably gone through a lot of racial problems because of the colour of his skin. Also in the video it also shows Jay Z being pulled over by the police and being told that "a lot of them are" holding weapons. So he is also explaining himself.

The whole video itself explains the genre of hip-hop through shots of "typical thug life" such as the graffiti, police and criminality for example there is a shot of some one holding a gun out of the window aiming at someone with that person not even knowing.



There is also other ways in which we can see the genre of the song and music video which is the styling of the people init for example all the baseball caps, chains, big puffy jackets and baggy jeans this shown us the time and era of the music video as well as the genre of it.

Another thing which also tells us that the genre of the music video is the derogatory treatment of women throughout by the use of the word "bitch" and also the images of women which are used create a sense voyeurism throughout the video.  

We can relate it to part of Goodwins theory as there is a strong relationship between the lyrics and the music video throughout but mainly when he mentions the word "bitches" it nearly always reverts back to a picture of half naked girls.




We can see throughout that it is set in Brooklyn which is a bad part of New York for violence and crimes, we see this through the scenery and what else Jay Z is showing us throughout the video from this I can interpret that this was where Jay Z was brought up as a kid. (Picture of Jay Z on Brooklyn Bridge)

Another image within the video which is conventional to the hip-hop genre is a record shop it is a influential place so is used a lot in the identity of any hip-hop song.

Lastly the relationship between the music and the visuals can also be seen through the use of fast cuts which is eventually slowed down towards the end where Jay Z is shot which gives another example of hip-hop songs where someone is shot.

Fredric Jameson

Fredrick Jameson was born on the 14th of april 1934 he is known as an american literary critic and a marxist political theorist. Jameson was able to get a name for him self as he had a keen eye at analysing contemporary cultural trends, this is what helped him become a great theorist and also write a couple of books such as:

"Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism" and "The Political Unconscious"

Jameson described post-modernism as the "Spatialization of culture under the pressure of organised capitalism" I think that what Fredrick Jameson is trying to say is that the cultural new is all organised by the capitalist giants who stand to make more money from every cultural new this is because these companies all own the products which are becoming the cultural new.

What actually is Post-Modernism?

Post-Modernism is taking something old and then making it new by putting a spin on in or just by making it look more modern and updated.

There are three stages of post-modernism the experimental stage is the stage that at which it attempts to find trends and then once they find the trends of popularity they can then go into the Cannon stage at which it changes the trends so that they can fit in our new cultural understanding, and become modern and new through the way we see it and then it changes to the Post-modern stage where the new thing or difference is added so that they can gain a reaction in the audience which then leads back into the experimental stage.

So post-modernism becomes the "new" by referring to the "old", it also invents by basically copying a pre-existing idea. It can also be humorous and/or terrifying but can also be re-inacted by anybody.
An example of this would be the re-enactment of the Beyonce music video 'Single Ladies' by Justin Timberlake.

  
This is a great use of comedic post-modernism as it puts a great funny spin on an already recognised music video. Both examples are below:

There are lots of different examples of post-modernism this is a classic and symbolic one:




- This is Nirvana's symbolic album cover of Nevermind, its a worldwide known image.

- This is the Simpsons using post-modernism to create maybe a little attention towards the show due to how well know the image is to everyone.




It then can also be argued that maybe music videos are the post-modern stage of the evolution of cinema for example:

Intertextuality is also a very big part of Post Modernism, for example there are 3 methods in which intertextuality uses Post-Modernism:

Homage- which is the imitation of something which has already happened.

Pastiche- which is using the imagery of one text to make a comment about another.

Parody- Which is taking the mickey out of something to create comedy.