Reflection On My Blog So Far

I have had a peer look at my blog for general feedback so far. the feeback showed that I have a variety of entries, in a multi media format. feedback also showed that my research was satisfactory however. I feel still more is needed for it to be complete.

One thing that was picked out was there is a lack of video feedback with our target audience. I will need to select a particular target audience and reseach into this furthur.

Requesting Permission to Film - part 3

 

\Hgcdom01jstudentIJohnstonVideosVIDEO0042 from Isla Johnston on Vimeo.

Requesting Permission to Film - part 2

 

\Hgcdom01jstudentIJohnstonVideosVIDEO0039 from Isla Johnston on Vimeo.

Requesting Permission to Film - part 1

 

\Hgcdom01jstudentIJohnstonVideosVIDEO0040 from Isla Johnston on Vimeo.

Mock up scene 1& 2

this is again footage of the scene to follow the first. This is again simply a rough mock up to illuistrate how we plan to link the two scenes.

\Hgcdom01jstudentIJohnstonDocumentsMediaSHAKE IT OUTSHAKE IT OUTMOCKSScene 2 and 3. Mock Up from Isla Johnston on Vimeo.

Ancillary Analysis

 

This is the cover of Paramore's  RIOT! the first thing to notice about the cover of the album is the sketchbook like feel to it, which reflect the music and the name of the album. The cover is all black and white, with very little colour.

These are the inserts to the digipak, again they all follow the same theme of the sketch book. it contains the lyrics of the songs, along with images of the same style of the band.

 

This is a album advert for Paramore's single Ignorance. For the advert the image takes up most of the space and is neutral in tone, it does not feature images of the band. The text style is in tone with the image and there is not a number of fonts.

 

Rough mock up

this is a rough mock up of the footage we have collected so far. as  you can see the footage is very rough however this is how we plan the first scene to look like.
\Hgcdom01jstudentIJohnstonDocumentsMediaSHAKE IT OUTSHAKE IT OUTMOCKSScene 2. Mock Up from Isla Johnston on Vimeo.

Filming - Waking up scene.

 we have filmed the waking up scene which was set in town. Although we did have an idea in mind of where we were intending to film, we were able to be flexivble with our  desicsions on where we filmed., in the end we decided to film outside the Old George pub in the centre on Newcastle, this was because it had the correct feel for what we were aiming to achive. On the day, the floor was wet we had to improvise and use a towel for the actor to sit on in the doorway, otherwise the white dress would have been spoiled and very difficult to use for the rest shoot.
 we managed to get a the full scene filmed in one morning as it only took until about 11am, we filmed a total of of 5 scenes within the scene and toon on average about 4 shots of weach scene. This will simply mean that post production will be easier for me as I will have a choce of shots to edit together, enabling for a better quality product.

still shot of a scene taken.

Gaining Access to the Locations

This was an email I sent to Bill Quay Farm, requesting to film on their location.

Bill Quay Rescheduled

Today we were supposed to be filming the scene with red riding hood. Unfortunatley however. after 2 full days of raining it has been made inpossible to film due to the conditions.

Locations

We felt this location had an "oldy worldy" feel to it, the cottages are somewhat old fashioned and have the fairytale feel we were hoping to achieve.

This will be the scene where the main character and Jordan are having a picnic. I felt that teh ring of logs was the perfect set up.

this will be the 'house' in which Jordan proposes to abbie.

this is the forest I have chosen for the shoot. It was chosen because it has a ghostly feel to it.

initial location thoughts

Locations on Prezi

narrative breakdown

Shake it Out Music Video

View more presentations or Upload your own.

Six Week Plan

Week one: finish pre-production and updating the blog.

·        Finish taking photos of locations

·        Arrange to actually shoot at locations

·        Finish updating blog.

Week two: update blog with photographs.

Week three: aid/oversee the filming of town scenes.

Week four:  oversee filming of town scenes

Week five: oversee filming of wood scenes

Week six: oversee filming of house scenes

                   

Target Audience

Role and Responsibilities

my individual role in this project will be set designer and editor, so I will be designing the overall look and feel of the sets of the production, and I am responsible for the post production and the editing of the final product.

Music Video Analysis

Florence and the Machine - Never Let Me Go

The overall feel and tone of this video is established in the first scenes with the lighting and the blurred character, it is not until eight seconds that the singer's face is revealed. Although the tone of the video is myserious, it is essentially a twisted and dark love tale. The video is set in an ice rink which also contains an arcade, although the main focus of the video is Florence Welch, the leading man also plays a major role. As Welch enters the ice rink we see her clearly wearing raggy, torn and worn away dark clothing - also tying in with the mysterious concepts. Throughout the video, it cuts from welch and the main man to show several scenes not relating the the plot or the video - an overflowing sink for example, a floor being mopped, watery footprints on the floor. What looks like dirty water is shown trickling down Welch's face and hands. As Welch and the man walk onto the ice rink we see the love story between them as they kiss, dance and hug.
The editing of this videa uses the beat and tempo of the music to cut between scenes. It has to be noted that the video only uses cuts, no other transition. some of the scenes have been slowed down which adds a dramatic effect to the video. Towards the end of the video, effects are used to distort the shot, again this adds dramatic effect and adds a climax to the entire video.

      

Music Video Analysis.

This video is different to the others I have analyised as it uses a range or transitions. Cross fades are used as well as 'vintage' filter on the footage to give it this effect. The length of the shots vary in length, from a seconds to split seconds however most of the transitions are a cross fade, giving an eery effect to the video. A split screen effect is also used on various occasions, this allows to show a close up, of one of the females and also her full body at the same time. However in the performance scene, it allows to see both Mark Hoppus from  different angles at the same time.
The whole video has a creepy feel with a ghostly figure and closeup of spiders, and two girls kissing.
a fish eye lens has also been used to capute some of the images of the girl dressed with bandages. Overall this is not a conventional music video however is successful in portraying the desired feel and atmosphere of the video

Music Video Analysis

this video uses a contrast between full colour and clack and white as a symbol, between happy memories and the breakup. at the beginning, the cuts are extremely short, and supposed to resemble a film reel as memories. The video cuts from scenes of Danny O'Donoghue alone, to colour of the memories of (I'm assuming) his ex girlfriend. A lot of this video is played in slow motion, this fits in with the tone of the video. the video plays around a lot with natural light, using it to drain the colour of the video, this effect is very pretty.

Brief

For our A2 Project we have chosen to  construct a music video for the song Shake It Out by Florence + the Machine. we have chose to include a two part narrative and also a performance aspect as the song is fairly long (approx. 4 minutes).
       The narrative will be largely based upon the idea of a fairytale world. The main character will be finding objects theat remind her of her past (in the fairytale world). As she picks them us we are able to see flashbacks of her relationship starting and deteriorating as she treats her partner badly.
       For our ancillary tasks we wll be producing a digi pack and promotional poster to promote the single.

Preliminary Task Analysis

This was the preliminary task in which we undertook in preparation for our A2 practical work. The brief we were given was to plan, and construct a chase scene of around two minutes long, and this is our finished project. The genre we were aiming for with this prelim task was initially intended to be thriller however after a mishap the finished product developed into a comedy.
      one majopr flaw which was detrimental to our project was our choice of actor in the project as the quality was not up to the standars we would have liked it to be, as the acting wasn't particularly believeable. The one shot we, as a group were particularly proud of  was the close up of Kayleigh's hand, and this is because of the framing of the shot, and also the audience is able to get a sense of urgency from her acting.
       Over extension of shots in hindsight was something we should have avoided doing however looking back at our project retrospectively we have done it on several occasions. I now know shots only have to last for fractions of seconds to be fully effective, especially in the thriller genre.
       I feel one positive from our prelim was that we learned how effective using a range of shots can be, this was one aspect we took great care to achieve through using points of view shots, close-ups  long shots and extreme close-ups.
     in the framing of a few of our shotsa, the reflection of the camera man can be seen in the car. Although we took great care to try and avoid this happening in the end, it was almost impossibe to get the shot, so we just had to reduce how visible the camera operator was.
     due to the acting, we had to change the ending of the sequence by changing the genre from a thriller to a comedy extremely last minute. due to this, the lighting/quality of the last shot is terrible to say the least. in the final product we will make sure for definite that nothing like that will happen.

Last Year's Practical Work

Final Coursework Pages

what have I learned about technologies during the construction of my media product?

as well as all the things talked about in the video, I also made good use of resources available to me via the internet. websites such as Slideshare, Slideboom have enabled me to present my work in a more interesting format.I am not a blogger myself, however this website has allowed me to show my work in a clear order, it took a while to understand how to operate the website however after overcoming the initial obstacles, I feel my work is presented on here in a clear and effective manner.

what attracts my target audience to my media product?

to be specific, I feel that a multitude of aspects attract my target audience.

• all hooks on the cover draw the audience in, as they all are either an interrogative or a simple declarative.
•  the simple structure of the contents page makes it extremely easy for the reader to understand.
• the pictures on the contents, were pictures i took from thr 2011 Leeds Festival thus, give an authentic festival feel. this will hopefully draw the audience into the magazine and make them feel involved.
• the picture on my article I feel if extremely effective in drawing in my target audience, as Kate is attractive, and also the faces kate is pulling on the end is somewhat seductive. the editing of the photo is very well done, and makes the article more appealing to read.
• the house style clearly reflects the music genre
• use of different fonts keeps the magazine interesting.

Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

I feel that overall my skills have improved dramatically from my preliminary task. The cover of my preliminary task was very two dimensional, and not much from the cover stood out to the reader. I have improved upon this however through editing in magazine I feel I was able to create an eye catching cover on my final task. The model’s eyes on the cover stand out to the reader as I spent time editing them to ensure they were brighter and more colourful so they caught the attention of the reader.

The text/fonts on my initial cover blended in somewhat to the background, however I learned how to make each and every caption on the cover stand out, this Is one major flaw in which I feel I have successfully progressed with.

Another thing I feel I have progressed with is my editing skills. Initially on my preliminary, I was very unsure of Photoshop, especially with cutting people out, however with the second task I gained more confidence, and was then able to define the edge to select the background. This meant I could cut out every piece of hair on the models head, even the little strands.

ther layout was more effective as the main hook stood out compared to the rest. Although the background on both magazines was plain, on my final product this was done to serve a particular purpose, on my preliminary task it was because I had little knowledge of authentic magazines.

I also made use of institutional features for my final product; barcode, price, issue number etc. I feel this added authenticity to my product.

who would be the the audience for your media product?

The main consumer for my product will be males aged 16-25 years of age. this is based on research conducted that showed that this is the main demographic who purchases music magazines and so it made sense to target a magazine towards them, as obviously it is this grouo in which sells the most copies.

what kind of media institution might distribute your product and why?

I feel the most fitting media institution to distribute my product would be IPC media. Although they distribute mass market women magazines, and upper women magazines; they also distribute mens magazines and more specifically, NME magazine. I chose NME to be my style model and also the main target audience are young males. so I feel this is a fitting media institution to distribute my media product.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

the model used on the cover, although covered up is representing sexuality and music genre. The pose the model is doing is fairly "sexy" with the way her body is positioned. her lips are also brightly coloured red. Red is often used to connotate sex. and as research ha been carreied out, one of the few reasons women are placed on the cover of magazine is to sell, as the popular saying "sex sells" and this is the approach I was going for, especially as the main target audience for music magazines are males.
        music genre is represented through the costume the model is wearing as her t-shirt shows a black and white image of John Lennon and Yoko Ono, which are popular icons among the indie community.

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge media conventions?

In what ways does your media product use

View more presentations or Upload your own.

Final Coursework Pages

Magazine Pages in progress

Article



this is the main feature article. it was done by taking three seperate pictures of kate (the model) and then layed them on top of eachother. the main picure of a feature article, in whatever magazine is always eyecatching as it's aim is to entise you to read more. after I merged all the layers together, I decided to blur the grass in the background so kate stood out more than the grass.



this is the article in full, it is common for an article to feature a quote from the featured artist, which is exacttly the convention I have chosen to follow. I encountered a problem that my main feaure photo wasn't A4 size, so this meant  I had to break away from conventions for the layout as I have chosen to position it above the quote, to fill the left hand page. this meant writing is amble to fill the right hand page.



contents page

 

This is my contents page, it has clear resemblence to my Style model (below). I felt the layout of the style model was effective, so I chose to replicate this. I have used the Twitter and Facebook logos as most magazine's nowadays have their own pages on these sites, and therefore this adds to the authenticity of the page.
The two main images used are ones I took at Leeds Festival 2011. I felt that in running a competition of this kind it would encourage reader interacton with the magazine, as well as acting as promotional material.

The two main images used are ones I took at Leeds Festival 2011. I felt that in running a competition of this kind it would encourage reader interacton with the magazine, as well as acting as promotional material./

Magazine cover

This is the finished cover for the magazine. previously it only had a main model, the main story and headmast. from this I have added a website, a barcode (with issue number and prive below it) and other articles which feature in the magazine. I liked the "handwritten" style font on my style model however I didn't want to overuse this feature, so instead I decided to simply feature it on the "of kate Ayers" text. NME magazine (style model) typically has a very plain background, little text and a very striking cover image, and it is this convention I have tried to capture with my cover, I have broke the NME conventions though as I have chosen to use multiple fonts as I felt it would appear uninteresting anongst other magazines on the shelf if it had plain fonts.

unfinished magazine cover



This is the begining of my cover.  as my stlye model is NME I have chosen to follow the conventions that that particular magazine follows such as house style, and a bold cover model.
see NME style model below



as you can see, the main feature of NME covers is the main image, and the main hook and this is the feel I want to create with my own cover. I also like the many "handwritten" fonts that NME have used, and how they've stuck strictly to the house style, this is somethiong I wish to create with my own cover.

Magazine Flatplans

Magazine flatplans

View more presentations from Isla Johnston.

Pictures for my cover

these are the pictures I have chosen not to use on my cover, for various different reasons.

this pose looks too awkward and forced to use for the front cover. 

this picture is not being used as the face sarah is pulling is weird and not suitable for a cover

both these shots are not suitable for a music magazine, as they're more suitable for that of a womans fashion magazine

this picture wasn't used as sarah was not looking at the camera.

Questionnaire Results

Questionnaires Results

View more presentations or Upload your own.

Music Magazine Questionnaire

Male or Female? Please Circle

• Male
• Female

Age?
..........................

what music genres do you listen to?

• Rock
• Indie
• Dance/Techno
• Dubstep
• Rap/hiphop
• Pop
• Urban
• Acoustic
• Other:.....................

Do you buy Music Magazines?

If no, skip to next page

• Yes
• No

How often do you buy music magazines?

• more than once a week
• weekly
• fortnightly
• monthly
• other:....................

How much would you be willing to pay for a magazine?

• £0-99p
• £1-£1.99
• £2-2.99
• £3+

What would attract you to buy a magazine?

• cover stars
• competitions
• freebies
• reviews
• features
• interviews
• other:....................................................

would you be more likely to buy a magazine with a:

• male cover star
• female cover star
• no preference

have you ever downloaded music illigally?

• yes
• no

why?
................................................................................................................................
................................................................................................................................

do you believe this is fair to the industry/artist?
................................................................................................................................
................................................................................................................................

what type of features would you like to appear in a magazine? (interviews, tragedies, big news etc)
................................................................................................................................
................................................................................................................................

do you believe colour schemes can draw an audience to a magazine?

• yes
• no

how?
................................................................................................................................
................................................................................................................................

do you believe what a celebrity says/does can influence the behaviour of others?

• yes
• no

to what extent?
................................................................................................................................
................................................................................................................................

what are your top three favourite bands/artists?

would you be more likely to buy a magazine if any of the above featured in the magazine?

• yes
• no

The Beginning

for this project, I will be producing a music magazine with the following contents:
• A Front Cover
• A Contents Page
• A Double Page Spread

to allow me to produce an authentic looking product I will use existing music magazines as research.


Planning

after researching into existing music magazines such as NME, Kerrang!, Rocksound etc it became apparent that there are a number of things which need to be included in my project in order for it to look authentic, these things include:

• house style
• brand
• masthead
• convincing models
• target audience

Music Magazine Cover Analysis

Magazine cover analysis

View more presentations from IslaJohnston.

Discuss the issues raised by media ownership and exchange of media texts in your chosen media industry

The media industry I have chosen to discuss is the film industry. It is no secret that big American blockbusters have taken over, and leave no room for smaller independant films to be exhibited in both commercial multiplex cinemas, and often smaller independant cinemas such as the Tyneside. Very few purely british films get much recognition in the modern day film indusrty, however Slumdog Millionaire is one exception to that.

British films usually rely on excellent marketing and distribution techniques in order to gain recognition. Viral Marketing plays a major role in this, using convergance with other companies to create marketing for the film, and thus entising a larger audience. For example; Slumdog Millionaire uses flash technology on it's website, to show a series of awards which the film has won, to display video's, pictures, downloads etc. all of these make the audience feel more involved with the film and therefore will be more inclined to go and buy it.

Viral marketing is a very modern way to advertise a film, the british film monsters used the social networking site Foursquare to set up certain infected zones. this allowed audience members using foursquare to become involved in the film, by competing for a prize draw. the psychology behind this is if the audience feel more involved in the film, and thus will be more inclined to go and see it or buy the dvd . this social networking tactic also allowed those with no knowledge of the film to find out about it, also boosting sales, we can start to see a pattern developing in that everything done in terms of the marketing and distribution of a film, is done to boost sales at the boxoffice. Slumdog millionaire, like many other films accross the world released a viral trailer before the actual release date, this meant that it may be passed around social networking sites, blogs and other wibsites to gain a larger audience.

although viral marketing can have a great impact on the films in a positive manner. it can also go in completely the other diection, and ultimately destroy a films reputation. Social networking sties are a perfect example of this; through the use of tweets ans status updates etc, nad reviews of the film can be spread accross the world, to thousands of people in an instant, however word of mouth remains one of the strongest marketing forms, as telling friends not to go and see a film will often discourage people to go and see that particular film. Through the use of websites such as YouTube and other illigal online movie download sites, pirate copies of films can often be viewed resulting in less sales of the dvd, and tickets at the boxoffice as the viewer can get access to the film for free. one example of a film that has had extrememly bad reviwes is The Rum Diary. the reviews of this film were so poor that people simply stopped going to see it due to bad online reviews, and slander form the word of mouth, the Odeon Cinema chain had to result in extra marketing to boost their sales by offering 100 extra loyalty points if yoiu went to see the film.

Piracy is a major issue facing the film indistry, as soon as a film has been released in the cinemas it can be accessed and viewed through sites such as pirate bay, and of course if you can see a film for free you are not going to pay for it. to stop this happening, many film-makers often try to get the film onto dvd and blu-rak disks as quickly as possible, this means audiences will not feel as great a need to download them as they have been released so quickly onto dvd. An example of this is Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland (2010)which caused uproar amongst cinema chains as it was released to dvd only three months sfter its release date.

many smaller independant british film companies continue to struggle to leave their mark on the film indistry, film companies such as Sony are vertically integrated which is extremely beneficial for themselves as this minimises external costs annd this maximises the profit for their own comapny. larger profits mean larger budgets for their own films, which enables special effects, big name actors etc and so have no problem gaining recognition amongst mainstream multiplex cinemas, film companises such as amber film have many external costs and profits for their films are extremely low, resulting in little or no recognition amongst the film industry.