UPDATE ON GROUP'S STATUS

There was a group decision that it'd be best if the group split up due to conflicts of interest, bad communications and just overall incompetent teamwork as whole from everyone. So the group has now split into three, Tyrell and Jasmine are both doing their own music video and Jasmine is carrying on with this current artist.

Because of this, obviously this resulted in myself having to come up with an artist and genre and music idea again, so I chose to pick the rap genre and focus entirely on all Micro-elements in my project ( mise-en-scene, cinematography, editing and sound ). Despite the abrupt group split I thought this was a good choice as its now allowed each individual to reach their full creative potential, including myself.

Digipak Design

This is my final product for the Digipak design I have created for Jazmin's new album. This Digipak contains: the album cover, album track listing, lyrics book, photo gallery and signed posters as well as the CD of the album and a bonus DVD content which shows the album making process and a special interview with Jazmine herself as she lets her fans know how she does it! After receiving feedback from the previous Digipak I designed, I took it upon myself to act on the feedback which was a change of font from calligraphy to simpler font styles and just clean up any rough edges.

← The left panel concludes of Jazmine's actual music CD and the panel to the right is the signed photos and posters. →

↖ The panel to the bottom left is the lyrics book as evidently presented and the panel to the bottom right is the front cover.↗

Also, the top middle panel is the bonus DVD and the bottom middle panel is the track-listing,

This is the correct format for the Digipak to be set out.

Advert for our album

To traditionally promote the album for Jazmine, I created an album cover magazine advert which show important information about instant social media links so fans can hear all the latest news about future songs, albums, or even just gossip Jasmine has to share, as well as key information to the general public about where to find the latest album to download. My magazine advert features: the same album cover as the digipak so that the public can recognise the album straight away, the name of the artist and the album. A bar-code is included so the audience can scan on their mobiles and instantly the song will begin to play and this is especially appealing to the ever evolving streaming world and to our audience due to its convenience.

Our First Music Video Draft

This is the first draft of the 'Love In The Dark' music video. Although the first draft is missing the narrative and still needs more scenes, there will be a survey which will ask our classmates what needs improvements and how well the video is going so far.

Shoot Number Two

For our second music video shoot, yet again myself, Tyrell and Jazmine stayed behind after school to use the same drama room containing stage lights to film so we had consistent backgrounds and continuity. On this day, we captured Jazmine miming/lip-syncing to Adele's, Love In The Dark in various different lighting and situations. We managed to get a variety of close up shots, mid shots, tracking side to side with a combination of dim lighting to exude only Jazmine's face and dim-red lighting to exude Jazmine's physique and hair. I personally felt this use of lighting portrayed to audience that our star was in a dark place at the time of the break-up and was a nice visual Que that she felt as if she was in hell.

Shoot One

Today we began shooting our music video for 'Love In The Dark' by 'Jazmine'. So myself, Tyrell and Jazmine managed to get hold of a dark lit room with access to spotlights, in our schools drama department which allowed us to control any lighting to suit our needs. Today we shot Jazmine doing miming/singing to the track and we did this with multiple takes with different camera shots and angles such as canted, low and high shots, with close ups on her face and mid shots so that we would have a lot to work with when editing happens for the music video. The stage lights worked highly effectively as we could use this to manipulate how dark and how light some of the scenes would look which was an advantage. Tyrell and I both filmed on our cameras. Throughout research we found that the use of a dolly was popular as it revolves around the pop-star, so we applied the same principle in our first shoot.

Narrative Change

After checking and evaluating the narrative of the previous song for our music video 'Hurt' we found that the narrative would essentially be much harder to convey and show through the silhouette scenes and just in general as Jazmine is our only experienced actress/dancer who would be able to portray what we image and she couldn't display the message of her being a child with a broken relationship alone; It simply was too time consuming to try and audition people to help perform in front of the silhouette background, who would be adequate and reliable. So, by changing the song for our music video to 'Love In The Dark', we felt as the narrative of a heartbreak and a break up would be easier to portray with the resources and cast we have.The new narrative for the new music video will revolve around this through the silhouette scenes as Jazmine will be in front of symbolic imagery related to a heartbreak in terms of images of broken love heats, her throwing a hear locket that is given to her by her ex-boyfriend to the floor and other related symbolic imagery of a breakup. The video will still feature Jazmine performing her contemporary dance routine along with miming.

Change of Song Choice

After deciding that Christina Aguilera's song 'Hurt' isn't exactly suitable for the message we were thinking of portraying we collectively decided to change the song to Adele's ballad 'Love In The Dark'. We decided to make this change as we felt as though the narrative of a breakup would be easier with this song instead of the much more challenging idea of a broken relationship with a father. (This version on YouTube is sped up but this isn't the sped up version we will be using).

Final Font Choice

As  a group we decided that this font style would be perfect for our artist as it has the thin , classic and simple thin style but there's a disruption throughout the letters which give it the modern technical disruption look, as we're trying to make our artist modern.

Font Research

Obviously for our research, we had to look into font styles to use for our artist, with thorough searching , these were the fonts that were decided as a group as starting points on the particular style. We felt that the font sizes and kerning was particularly good to our artist as it connotes our artist perfectly, thin and elegant font styling with a classic look to them.

 'TEAM CAPTAIN FONT':

     

  

• 'MIXIVA BOLD FONT':

   

•  'MARKET DECO FONT':

    

• 'BELLEROSE FONT':

Drawn Digipak Designs

As part of our research, we were instructed to research into digipak's and then design our own one as a rough idea as to what our digipak will look like. We had to follow conventions of course which were typical to our genre and as our genre is a sub-genre of pop, I followed the convention of close ups of the artist/star in the cover, CD panel and the lyrics book. The track-list is a mid-shot of our artist and then the remaining house style and DVD slot is a sketch of our artist performing in a big ballet hall, as thats part of our artists lifestyle. The DVD would include special interviews, exclusive to that digipak and performances.

Artists Biography

As a group we created a Prezi presentsyion and this is our artist - 'JAZMINE's' artist biography. Inside this Prezi presentation, it includes the singer's origin story, fashion trends, how she was discover, what she is presently doing and, her present album and song/music video release for 'Hurt'. 

The Silhouette Idea

In our idea for the music video, we had the idea to include a silhouette and the concept for the silhouette scenes for the music video came from the winners of the UK TV show 'Britain's Got Talent'. After watching their silhouette performance, this inspired the group to want to include this into the music video project, This is a clip of their performance.

The Animatic

So these are the animatics for the storyboard for the music video. The ideas were created and thought of by the group, but the groups artist Tyrell took it upon himself to do the drawing of the storyboard and then we created the animatic via Final Cut Pro along with the song 'HURT' being played in the background. This shows the audience where and when certain things will be happening within the video, and what the gernal idea of the video is about, as they don't see what we see in our minds.

Audience Profile

As a group we went through the demographics and psycho-graphics of our audience and compiled them onto an audience profiling. This provides information as to the type of audience and the type of people who would listen to our pop artist: JAZMINE. This includes information about what they like to watch, eat, wear, their annual income and their social grade in life (e.g. A - Quaternary jobs and E- being unemployed/students).

Song Choice

The agreed upon song of choice was 'Hurt' by Christina Aguilera as it's a very iconic pop idol to base our artist from and we felt that this was a perfect fit for our genre choice (contemporary pop) as it still classes as pop but has the slow and emotional kick we're looking for.

Mood Board for our Genre

This is the mood board our group decided to create for the rough basis of what genre to use, but unfortunately I was not part of this creation, so my group mates took it upon themselves to complete this task by themselves. So it was both Tyrell and Jazmine which completed this task creating a mood board for our contemporary Pop artist: 'JAZMINE'. they did this by using a blank A3 piece of black sugar paper and printing off various different images from the internet to form a collage. 

Our POP group

I'm working in a group of three which include Tyrell Bibbiani and Jazmine Sims The 3 of us have deided that the genre in which our music video will be is: POP. After much deliberation, we have come to the conclusion that we would essentially like the fitted genre for our music video to be Pop/contemporary pop (which is a sub-genre from the genre of Pop). We, as a group, have decided upon this decision as we already have an idea as to the theme of our music video being emotional and sad, but the songs that we have been looking to choose for our music video would also fit amongst this theme. 

Theodor and Horkheimer

Theodor Adorno (a philosopher, sociologist and composer) was born in 1903 - 1969 and was a leading member at the Frankfurt School in Germany, along with Max Horkheimer (a philosopher and sociologist) was born in 1895 - 1973 and was also a member of the Frankfurt School of social research.They were both 2 German theorists who fleed German's during World War II in Geneva and thus moved to New York in 1935. The pair created the book 'The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception' in 1944. Within this book, they both accumulated the theory that pop culture essentially is a commodity and that it is mass produced to the mass public. This can include the forms of films, radios, pop music and music videos as certain idelogies and beliefs/messages are put across (sometimes subliminally) within these various formats to convey a message or culture to the mass audiences. The pair both stated that the the culture industry depends upon the most powerful sectors within the industry. In summary, The Culture Industry essentially is the society within the world which is being taken over and drowned by a society of mass pop-culture and industrialisation. But, instead, isn't being encouraged of freedom and individuality within society.

The Famous quotes, theories and statements upon 'The Culture Theory':

• "Enthusiastic obedience to the rhythm of the iron system"
• "The culture industry not so much adapts to the reactions of its customers as it counterfeits them"
• "Presents men with a model of their culture: the false identity of the general and the particular".

Pop Genre

Pop Genre:

-Pop music is a genre of popular music that originated in its modern form in the Western World during the 1950s and 1960s as a softer alternative to Rock and Roll,

-"Pop music" can be used to describe a distinct genre, aimed at a youth market.

-Characteristics of pop music include an aim of appealing to a general audience, rather than to a particular sub-culture or ideology, and an emphasis on craftsmanship rather than formal "artistic" qualities,

-Music scholar Timothy Warner said it typically has an emphasis on recording, production, and technology, rather than live performance; a tendency to reflect existing trends rather than progressive developments; and aims to encourage dancing or uses dance-oriented rhythms,

-The main medium of pop music is the song, often between two and a half and three and a half minutes in length,

-Pop music has been dominated by the American and (from the mid-1960s) British music industries, whose influence has made pop music something of an international monoculture, but most regions and countries have their own form of pop music,

-The Pop music Genre is expressed significantly through key Music Artists such as: Michael Jackson, Ed Sheeran, Beyonce, Taylor Swift, etc...

-There are multiple sub-genres that arise within the pop Genre itself:

Music Genre's and My Brainstrom

Here I have my brainstorm for genres and bands within them who focus on those genre's.
The bands with "[]" surrounding them are the music videos I'm going to focus on for my primary research.
To further my research on genre's, I researched most of the common genre's and their sub-genre's:

Most common Genre's and Their Geographical Location

Source: Time Magazine (2016)

These are the most common places in the world where 'the most common genre' of music is played. As from the image above, you can clearly see that Rap dominates North America and Latin music is most common in South America, showing that cultural differences definitely impact the most popular music. With more technical advanced music like EDM, Rock and the newest rising genre K-POP are mostly played in central Europe and throughout Asia into most oriental areas like Japan, North and South Korea. Pop is still however very dominant in the west too.
The most common genre's are :

• Rap
• Rock
• Pop
• K-pop
• R&B
• Country
• Latin
• EDM

Music Time-line from the 50's - Present

This is my presentation of the history of music from the 50's - present day and I explore development and technological advances throughout history. 

Class notes

Media notes
8/9/2016

Advanced Portfolio:

1. Music video.
2. Digi-Pack.
3. Magazine advert promoting digi-pack.

• Nothing explicit
• Don't rely on found footage/images
• Take special care for cinematography 

Digi-packs has six panels which include: front cover, back cover, track listing, spine and two free panels for design.

Goodwin's Theory

There's a set of rules and conventions for Goodwin's theory of music video's,
These set the boundaries for analysis.

These include:

• A relationship between the song and visuals.
• Intertextuality references.
• Notion of looking.
• Voyeurism.
• Demand of the record label.
• Performance based, narrative based or concept based music video. - Narrative and performance.
• Star Image (protagonist), lots of camera shots making him/her the centre of attention.

Digipaks

Digipaks-

A digipak is a style of package for CD's for artists' singles/albums. There're commonly plastic trays located within the Digipak in order to be able to hold a CD. Particularly in the 2000's, Digipaks were in its most popular phase. In my opinion, I feel as though Digipak's offers something with generic CD's doesn't: exclusivity. This is because it isn't the usual way that CD's are released in today's society. So, the fact that it's different makes it feel much more exclusive when the consumers purchase the albums.

                                        

                                       -Iconic Head-shots-
The iconic head shot is to give the audience an obvious look at who the artist. This is a headshot of Rihanna and it's just a clear indicator to her fan base that this is her album.

 - Graphic design-
A digipak that consists of graphic design usually is just a creation to do with the artists name or an actual illustration of their names meaning. E.g. The XX here, their albums are the letter 'X' and they show their audience who they are and its iconic to them, so it's easily recognisable.

                                               - Iconic image-
An iconic image is literally self-self-explanatory, it's an image of said band/artist and it shows the band/artist(s) on the cover and becomes an iconic image as every cover is original and unique to each band.













- Christina Aguilera

Establishes her name for those potential new fans who don't know of her.
Her trademark is red lipstick which co-ordinates with the colour choice of her name, keeping the theme consistent. The white background allows the iconic head-shot of the artist to stand out more and be the focal point of the cover. There's a warning for parental advisory, which implies there's explicit content within the CD

This album may represent how Aguilera feels about herself having two sides, perhaps her human side and her mechanical side that just produces the music. The machinery could also mean that there's a cross over with genre's, with more modern genre's like electro or house music.

1990's Common Codes and conventions

In the 1990s, a number of technical codes became common:

• Most common form of editing associated with the music promo is fast cut montage 
• Many images impossible to grasp on first viewing thus ensuring multiple viewing
• Spilt screens, colourisation are also commonly used effects
• Non-representation techniques, in which the musical artist is never shown, become more common
• Lack of edits, Long take/steadic also a common experimenaton

Development of Technical Cods

Development of Technical Codes

The key innovation in the development of the modern music video was; video recording and editing processes, along with the development of a number of related effect such as chroma-keypr Green/Blue Screen

The advent of high-quality colour, videotape recorders and portable video camera enabled many pop acts to produce promotional videos, quickly and cheaply in comparison to the relatively high costs of using film.

Technical Terminology

Technical Terminology 

Cinematography

• As with any moving image text, how the camera is used and how images are sequenced will have a significant impact upon meaning.
• Camera movement, angle and shot distance all need to be analysed.
• Camera movement may accompany movement of performers ; (walking, dancing, etc) but it may also be used to create a more dynamic feel to stage performance, by for instance constanly circling the band as they perform on stage.
•  The close up does predominate, as in most Tv, party because of the size of the screen and party because of the desire to create a sense of intimacy of the viewer.
•  It also emphasises half of the commodity on sale not just the sing but the artist, and particularly the voice. 

The Making of Music Video

History of music Video

History of music video, The invention of film and cinema brought about the possibility of combining music and moving images. Advances in technology have turned the music video into what it is today but you might be surprised at where it came from... The early years... 1. Surprisingly, music videos have been around since the 1920s. 2. Many Jazz musicians of the time,such as Bessie Smith,made short films to accompany popular songs.. There are music videos that are not the modern music videos that we know about it now. Bob Dylan 1965: Bob Dylan Films Subterranean Homesick Blues as a segment for D.A. Pennebaker's film, Dont look Back-widely credited as one of the first modern music videos. Music videos was about live performance but this video illustrate the lyrics of the song.

Music Videos Benefits

Music videos have been present since as early as 1894. Over time, music video's have managed to stay with the same consistent goal and objective, which is to help with the idea of promotion for songs within the music industry.

Within the current time period of 2016, music videos have been seen as a way for a musician to try and almost impress the mass audience and public with not just their singing talents, but their other talents in which they display within their videos. A company which decided to take much control and advantage of the idea of music videos was MTV (Music Television Videos) as they were the conglomerate music entertainment industry that monopolised the standards of how future music videos should try and out-do eachother. 

A further purpose of music videos and how they're beneficial would be that they are beneficial towards the artist and their record labels. This is because it brings in and generates revenue for the artist and their record labels due to them being promoted to the mass audience. This can be done through controversy within the music video or, outstanding performance throughout. 

There're a variety of different ways in which music videos are promoted. In today's society, this is simply done through the process of social media sites such as; Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and the internet. Also, televised music channels are also essential as it is another chance for an artist to gain further publicity and promotion. Many believe that the term 'music video's' simply means a music video accompanying a song. However, this isn't necessarily the case. With the inclusion of chat shows and live studio performances, this also counts as a music video. 

Conclusively, music videos are used to reflect the lyrical narrative of the music. Music videos are ideally beneficial for an artist and a record company simply for promotion, marketing purposes and for chances for an artist to display their extended talents apart from singing.

Queen

                     In 1975 Queen released Bohemian Rhapsody which was a ground breaking video. This music video was marked the beginning of the music video era and it set the language for visual effects on music videos. This video is actually considered one of the first videos to use advanced visual effects. Official Music videos use the combination of live performances and set performances. 
1970: the record industry discovers TV-Shows as a great opportunity to promote their artists.
They focus on producing short "Promos", early music videos which started to replace to live performance of the artist on the Tv-stage.

Cross Media Case Study

This is my cross media case study of Knife Party.

Project Brief

Briefs 

When centres choose briefs to offer to candidates, they should be guided by their strengths in terms of resources and expertise. Centres should also bear in mind the key areas: forms and conventions, production contexts, the role of technologies, audiences/users and representations. 
The set briefs are as follows: 

Print 

Preliminary exercise: using DTP and an image manipulation program, produce the front page of a new school/college magazine, featuring a photograph of a student in medium close-up plus some appropriately laid-out text and a masthead. Additionally candidates must produce a DTP mock-up of the layout of the contents page to demonstrate their grasp of the program. 

Main task: the front page, contents and double page spread of a new music magazine (if done as a group task, each member of the group to produce an individual edition of the magazine, following the same house style). Maximum four members to a group. 
All images and text used must be original, produced by the candidate(s), minimum of FOUR images per candidate. 

Video 

Preliminary exercise: Continuity task involving filming and editing a character opening a door, crossing a room and sitting down in a chair opposite another character, with whom she/he then exchanges a couple of lines of dialogue. This task should demonstrate match on action, shot/reverse shot and the 180-degree rule. 

Main task: the titles and opening of a new fiction film, to last a maximum of two minutes. 
All video and audio material must be original, produced by the candidate(s), with the exception of music or audio effects from a copyright-free source. Both preliminary and main tasks may be done individually or as a group. Maximum four members to a group. 

In all cases, candidates should be encouraged to see the evaluation as a creative task and the potential of the format chosen should be exploited through the use of images, audio, video and links to online resources. Marks should be supported by teacher comments and may be supported by other forms such as audio or video presentations.

In the evaluation the following seven questions must be addressed:

• In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real 
  media products? 
• How does your media product represent particular social groups? 
• What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why? 
• Who would be the audience for your media product? 
• How did you attract/address your audience? 

• What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product? 
• Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from 
  it to the full product? 
  
  The production element and presentation of research and planning may be individual or group work (maximum group size is four candidates). Where candidates have worked in a group, the evidence for assessment may be presented collectively but centres will still assess candidates on an individual basis for their contribution to aspects of the work, from planning, research and production to evaluation. 
  
  G321 is marked and internally standardised by the centre and marks are submitted to OCR by a specified date, a sample is then selected for external moderation. The unit is marked out of a total of 100 marks: 20 marks for the presentation of the planning and research; 60 marks for the construction; 20 marks for the evaluation.