Prop list

Rule of thirds/ Guide frame

What is the Rule of Thirds?

The basic principle behind the rule of thirds is to imagine breaking an image down into thirds (both horizontally and vertically) so that you have 9 parts. As follows.

As you’re taking an image you would have done this in your mind through your viewfinder or in the LCD display that you use to frame your shot.

With this grid in mind the ‘rule of thirds’ now identifies four important parts of the image that you should consider placing points of interest in as you frame your image.

Not only this – but it also gives you four ‘lines’ that are also useful positions for elements in your photo.

The theory is that if you place points of interest in the intersections or along the lines that your photo becomes more balanced and will enable a viewer of the image to interact with it more naturally. Studies have shown that when viewing images that people’s eyes usually go to one of the intersection points most naturally rather than the center of the shot – using the rule of thirds works with this natural way of viewing an image rather than working against it.

 

 

Decisions .. Decisions

After much discussion and debate, we have finally decided to have one artist and discard  of the group 'The Coralliens'. We thought it would look better visually if there was one artist and her outfit changed rather than the whole person changing. Luckily our decision to change it to a soloist does not affect the storyboard at all. 
All the girls in our group are interested in being the artist so we are going to try and get some audience feedback by filming us all lip syncing individually, showing each clip to our media class and getting them to vote on the most suitable artist ... this will be very funny and helpful. 

Noted!

Our media lesson last week was about the conventions of a music video. 
The most significant thing I learnt was the fact that we should make use of the tempo (pace) of our track. 
Our song is quite fast and has a very prominent beat so our editing must match! 
I am currently trying this out with a song called 'Reckoner' by Radiohead the song has a beat sequence with symbols, I edited footage that I filmed on the weekend to go with this song. 

Intertextuality in our video

Our group were thinking of ways to include intextual elements and decided to expand on the feminist, pro- women attiude in our video.
We thought that our bedroom scene where the artists are sitting in a girly bedroom we could add a close up shot of a WW1 Women poster on the bedroom wall. This will  not only add to our amount of shots but will also make our music video's message clearer.  

Lip syncing

Above is our first attempt at lip syncing. Danielle and I plucked up the courage to finally practice! 
I have edited it so that you can see clips of both of us and put it in time of the track rather than using the sound from our Mac. It took a while to get the clips in time with the music but I thought I did it justice. 

Intertextuality

Intertextuality is the theory that all media texts are interrelated, and can only be defined by their relations with others, it is the shaping of texts' meanings by using other texts. Here are a few examples.

Madonna's - 'What it feels like for a girl' http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYwgG2oyUbA
The track contains a spoken introduction by actress Charlotte Gainsbourg taken from the 1993 film version of the Ian McEwan novel, The Cement Garden.

The song describes the pressure women feel to conform to social norms of politeness and subservience.

Daisy Dares You "Number One Enemy" feat. Chipmunk
The video of this song has an Alice in Wonderland theme running thoughout the video. The quirky elements of Alice in Wonderland suits the Artist 'Daisy Dares You'.

Playing Fields - Opening setting

I took some pictures of my best friend whilst walking through the park where the opening scene of our video is set. When we're filming the trees will be practiaclly bare, I think that will look beautiful.

Andrew Goodwin’s Theory

1. Andrew Goodwin’s Theory (Applied to music videos)
2. How to analyse music videos
   • Andrew Goodwin identifies 5 key aspects of music videos that we the audience should look out for which are:
   • . Thought beats – Seeing the sound
   • . Narrative and Performance
   • . The Star Image
   • . Relation of Visuals to Song
   • . Technical Aspects of Music Video
3. Thought Beats – Seeing the sound in your head
   • First step is to look at the music itself. We must take into account the structure of the song for e.g. Chorus/Verses .
   • Secondly , the voice of the song. The artists voice is extremely unique and can form identification or trademarks that work well with the star image. Roland Barthes theory of the Grain of voice can be related to this. He sees the singing voice as an expressive instrument and therefore able to make associations of its own.
   • Thirdly, Goodwin also points out the artists mode of address. Songs can be seen as stories and the artist the storyteller, making the music video a two communication device, them telling us a story and us listening.
4. • Songs fail to give us the complete narrative!
   • We only tend to get a gist of the meaning of the song and then tend to make up our own idea of what is being told.
   • Goodwin explains that music videos should ignore common narrative. It is important in their role of advertising .
   • Music videos should coherent repeatability . Narrative and performance work hand in hand it makes it easier for the audience to watch over and over without loosing interest.
   • The artist acting as both narrator & participant helps to increase the authenticity however the lip sync and other mimed actions remains the heart of music videos. The audience need to believe this is real.
   Narrative & Performance
5. Star Image The star image is another vital aspect of music videos. Meta narrative which is a big story that describes the development of the star over time, it has an important part to play in the music video production process.
6. Relation of Visuals to Song
   • There are three ways in which music videos work to promote a song
   Music videos can use a set of images to illustrate the meaning of lyrics & genre, this is the most common This is similar to repeatability. Meanings and effects are manipulated and constantly shown through the video and drummed into our vision This is where the meaning of the song is completely ignored
7. Technical Aspects Technical aspects hold the music video together through use of camera work, movement, angle, mise- en -scene editing, sound and special effects. Speed, camera movement, editing , cutting and post production are all forms of use of camera. Lighting and colour help set moods and emphasise key moments of the song for dramatic effect Mise-en-scene, the setting of music videos is vital, it needs to look authentic to attain professionalism . Beats, music videos use cuts to go with the beat or rhythm making the video more entertaining.

Andrew Goodwin's ideas were presented to us on our media trip to RichMix Theatre by Peter Fraser who is executive member of the Media Education Association and a course tutor on MA Creative & Media Education.

Weather Worries

http://news.bbc.co.uk/weather/forecast/4289 &search=enfield&itemsPerPage=10&region=world&area=Enfield


This is a link to BBC weather, Our group os filming some of our music video in an out doors setting and if the weather is anything like today's, we will have some problems ! 

Trip to RichMix Theatre

Band Identity

Our group were trying to figure out the identity of our band ' The Coralliens'. Our video features us individually rather than together performing as a group. Uncertain about our decision to be viewed individually through out the majority of the video, we looked at other girl bands. 


Girls Aloud are filmed together throughout the video, this conforms to the expectations of a girl band. We decided not to fall into a typical girl band image and add a bit of flare by representing different personalities by filming us individually for most of the video. 


'The Spice Girls' maintained this idea of very different characters within a band, though we are not intending to define our personalities as much. 

Storyboard

The Hypodermic Needle Model

The Hypodermic Needle Model was the first attempt to explain how mass audiences might react to mass media. It suggests that audiences passively receive the information transmitted through media texts, without any attempt on their part to process or challenge the data.

The Hypodermic Needle Model suggests that the information from a text passes into the mass consciouness of the audience unmediated, ie the experience, intelligence and opinion of an individual are not relevant to the reception of the text. This theory suggests that, as an audience, we are manipulated by the creators of media texts, and that our behaviour and thinking might be easily changed by media-makers. It assumes that the audience are passive and heterogenous. This theory is still quoted during moral panics by parents, politicians and pressure groups, and is used to explain why certain groups in society should not be exposed to certain media texts (comics in the 1950s, rap music in the 2000s), for fear that they will watch or read sexual or violent behaviour and will then act them out themselves.

2. Two-Step Flow

The Hypodermic model quickly proved too clumsy for media researchers seeking to more precisely explain the relationship between audience and text. As the mass media became an essential part of life in societies around the world and did NOT reduce populations to a mass of unthinking drones, a more sophisticated explanation was sought.

Paul Lazarsfeld, Bernard Berelson, and Hazel Gaudet analysed the voters' decision-making processes during a 1940 presidential election campaign and published their results in a paper called The People's Choice. Their findings suggested that the information does not flow directly from the text into the minds of its audience unmediated but is filtered through "opinion leaders" who then communicate it to their less active associates, over whom they have influence. The audience then mediate the information received directly from the media with the ideas and thoughts expressed by the opinion leaders, thus being influenced not by a direct process, but by a two step flow. This diminished the power of the media in the eyes of researchers, and caused them to conclude that social factors were also important in the way in which audiences interpreted texts. This is sometimes referred to as the limited effects paradigm.

3. Uses & Gratifications

During the 1960s, as the first generation to grow up with television became grown ups, it became increasingly apparent to media theorists that audiences made choices about what they did when consuming texts. Far from being a passive mass, audiences were made up of individuals who actively consumed texts for different reasons and in different ways. In 1948 Lasswell suggested that media texts had the following functions for individuals and society:

• surveillance
• correlation
• entertainment
• cultural transmission

Researchers Blulmer and Katz expanded this theory and published their own in 1974, stating that individuals might choose and use a text for the following purposes (ie uses and gratifications):

• Diversion - escape from everyday problems and routine.
• Personal Relationships - using the media for emotional and other interaction, eg) substituting soap operas for family life
• Personal Identity - finding yourself reflected in texts, learning behaviour and values from texts
• Surveillance - Information which could be useful for living eg) weather reports, financial news, holiday bargains

4. Reception Theory

Extending the concept of an active audience still further, in the 1980s and 1990s a lot of work was done on the way individuals received and interpreted a text, and how their individual circumstances (gender, class, age, ethnicity) affected their reading.

This work was based on Stuart Hall's encoding/decoding model of the relationship between text and audience - the text is encoded by the producer, and decoded by the reader, and there may be major differences between two different readings of the same code. However, by using recognised codes and conventions, and by drawing upon audience expectations relating to aspects such as genre and use of stars, the producers can position the audience and thus create a certain amount of agreement on what the code means. This is known as a preferred reading.

Editing Ideas

We wanted to add a comical, silent scene to end our video, with the four female actors chasing the male actor down a path with all their different props e.g a bunch of flowers or a high heel. We thought it would be interesting to edit this end clip to have a sepia, 'old movie' effect.

Poor Lily !

I feel like I have become attached to Lily Allen as an artist through researching her life and career, I was heart broken to hear the sad news that she had miscarriage. I copy and pasted an article from http://www.guardian.co.uk/ about her unfortunate loss.

Lily Allen suffers second miscarriage

The singer and her boyfriend, Sam Cooper, ask for privacy after losing baby six months into Allen's pregnancy

• Rosie Swash
• guardian.co.uk, Monday 1 November 2010 13.27 GMT
• Article history

 

Lily Allen Photograph: Ian Gavan/Getty Images

The singer Lily Allen has suffered a miscarriage six months into her second pregnancy, her spokesman said today.

She and her partner Sam Cooper have asked for privacy at what her spokesman described as a "deeply distressing time".

It is the second time that Allen has lost a child: the first occurred in 2008 when she was dating Chemical Brothers musician Ed Simons.

Allen's spokesman said: "It is with great sadness that we have to confirm that Lily Allen and Sam Cooper have lost their baby."

Allen has released two best-selling albums, Alright, Still and It's Not Me, It's You, and a number of hit singles including The Fear and Smile.

She announced she was pregnant during the summer after being given the all-clear at her three-month scan.

Futher Audience Research

I have decided to conduct a questionnaire about the expectations and preferences of a music video. I will give the questionnaire to teenagers between ages 12 - 19 as that is our target audience and I want quite specific information.  
Below are the questions:

1. Name two things you would generally expect to see in a 'Pop' music  video.

2. What artist do you think is a true representative of generic pop music?

3. Do you feel it is important for the artist to feature in his/her video?

4. On a scale of 1- 10 how important is the inclusion of attractive actors?

5. Do you prefer a video to be:
    1. Abstract with little links to the song/lyrics
    2. Direct with clear links to the song/lyrics
    3. It's not important

6. On a scale of 1- 10 how important is editing and visual effects in a music video?

7. Do you feel that the music video should represent the artist's style and personality?

8. Looking now at Lily Allen in specific, name three elements you would expect to see in one of her music videos ?

9. Name your favourite Lily Allen music video.

10. What about it did you enjoy?


I tried to obtain qualitative data by asking open ended questions such as number (7), which requires the respondent to elaborate on their opinion. I have only put a few open ended questions as I do not want my respondent to loose interest in the questionnaire. The questionnaire also includes questions that would provide quantitative data such as number (5) which provides the respondent with 3 answer options that they have to chose from. Working at Indiefields (a market research company) where my job description was to carry out questionnaires over the phone, made me realise that questionnaires are not so easy to conduct. They must engage the respondent so that they do not lose interest and drop out of the questionnaire or HANG UP ON YOU! Giving them more multiple choice questions to prompt the accurate answer provides quantitative data but it is easier to obtain, where as qualitative data needs a very willing participant. I have asked questions that can provide me with both types of data.