AN - Rough Cut 2 Feedback 22/3/12

Today in class, we managed to obtain some feedback on our second rough cut. Although a new cut is in the works, this feedback was still useful. Here is what our colleagues said:

• Performers need to vocalise.
• Sepia is good.
• Generate a still image at the beginning.
• Cross faded
• More performance sequences needed.
• More dance moves need to be seen.
• Shaky shots in some places
• Cut down on the amount of narrative.
• More slow-motion needs to be used in certain places.
• Get a fixed shot of the rose.
• Edit the video so it fits in with the beat and pacing of the track.
• More variation in footage.
• Split screen technique needs to be used.
• Clumsy use of media language. e.g. shot of member's leg.
• Layer clips
• Cut to beat at points
• Aspect ratio needs changing.
• Change the band member's positioning around at points in the video.

ALL - Penultimate Cut

Here is our penultimate cut for the coursework, it is a complete video for the song. However, we will have to refilm 2 or 3 shots and get footage of the boyfriend's aftermath for the climax of the video, since we plan to implement a split screen effect.

ALL - "Final" Magazine Ad

After many delays and issues, we finally managed to finish the magazine advert thanks to Miss Sophie Dixon,  with some Photoshop advice from me of course. Anyway deconstructing the advert, it is made up of four pictures of the band. The band's clothing denotes the male gaze theory where the audience is shown that women are treated nothing more than seductive objects for male desire. 

Here is an example shown to promote the 360/PS3 title,
 Ninja Gaiden 3 which comes out next week. Yey!

Pink text is used at the top left hand corner of the advert, to attract a female audience towards the digipak since it is the prime colour associated with women. Twitter and Facebook links to the company/band pages can be seen at the bottom left hand corner of the page. This is a common convention seen across different media products from music videos to even video games.

As for what the advert is advertising, it is promoting the upcoming release of the digipak as shown by the release date in silver. Little text is shown to give the advert a mysterious feel with the only piece of information being a date of 15th March.

AN - "Final" Digipak

Here is the final version of my digipak. As shown below, there are 3 main panels which can be folded out.

• On the front cover we have a ripped picture of the band which links in with the break up theme of the video
• Then on the inside we have three panels of the band member's faces shown on a bottle of wine with two glasses. On the first panel they're empty, second they're full and third, one glass has a tiny bit of wine next and the other glass is smashed.
• When you fold out the first panel, a "saucy" picture of the band is seen. This links in with the male gaze theory because of the artists' clothing. Leading to male target audience.
• If you fold the middle inside panel, the credits of the digipak can be seen. Which includes, the roles of the group and links to the company's Twitter and Facebook pages
• The discs come out of two disc sleeves which are part of the two panels on the sides of the middle one.
• Lastly on the back of the digipak we have the track and extras listing. Besides that, we also have a link to the main website, bar and QR codes along with a picture of band members walking away.

AN - Update 13/03/12

With the penultimate deadline coming up this Friday, here are a list of tasks that our group is currently doing to prepare for that deadline.

• Film the aftermath of the girlfriend (final piece of filming) - ALL
• Make the digipaks - ALL
• Make the magazine adverts - SD and KM
• Evaluation post - ALL
• Evaluation podcasts - ALL (separately)

AN - Filming 6/3/12

Today we filmed our penultimate bit of footage during our Rec & Leisure time. In this session, mostly filmed stuff which was based on the feedback we obtained from the previous Rough Cut. This feedback included ongoing continuity errors which had the boyfriend (James) making a dinner for the girlfriend (Katie) at her house, this made no sense to people and because of this, we had to film it that the house belonged to the boyfriend with the girlfriend walking up to the house and walking out to signify the break up has taken place. We used a variety of shots while filming this sequence such a high angle shot of the break up and a low angle shot of the girlfriend's feet walking up to the house.

Besides that we also filmed a close up of the beans on bread for the dinner scene, since people did not understand what was happening during that sequence so by adding shot variety we will give our audience a better idea of what was happening in the situation.

SD - Digipak Example 3: Girl's Aloud The Show

I was surprised how plain the CD design for the Girls Aloud single 'The Show' was. The CD is all black and white (something Asa has been wanting to do our digipak like) there is only one image of a directors cutting device on it which is also in black and white. This is a countertype of what you would expect as the girls a bunch of singers not actresses although this obviously is linked to the name of the album and track one on the track listing, which only contains two songs 'The Show' and the later released single 'Jump' although this is a remix of the original track. The track listing is shown on the cut thing as-well as the date the single was released underneath. In a box next to the image, there is another box containing small font explaining again the full rights go to the distributor and record label which is again, Polydor the same label Hear'say were signed to owned by Universal Music Company. Below this there are four logos; one with an image and then the name GirlsAloud, another saying Aloudsound which is researched and found that it is the name of the official Girls Aloud fan site, Compact disc digital audio (which has been featured on all of my examples), and the last the letters GA inside a triangle which looks like the one which usually contains film age ratings.

This is the front cover of the single 'The Show' it is quite plane for a Girl band's cover but as the band has recently been put together before this, it names the members and is quite 'cutesy' which matches with the idea of putting a fan site in the bottom right corner in the hope that the band would become bigger and more well known. The 'GA' in the traingle sticks with this idea and is quite fun rating themselves as just the band quite a simple idea, the green obviously means suitable for anyone which may imply that the band are trying to appeal to all audiences and arn't marketing themselves specifically or to one core audience although obviously they don't appeal to all audiences.

SD - CD Disc Design: Example Two

I have been looking at the Cd design of the single 'To you I belong' - Bewitched, the design gives off a fantasy genre which may attract audiences interested in fantasy films. The Cd is goldwith silver mirrored stars on the disc, there is small font which goes around the curcumfrance of the cd which explains that all rights are to the producers and record company and that it should not be copied illegally, this is a convention of Cd design as the regularly have mention of these rights of the distributor. The logo reading 'compact disc digital audio' is also on this Cd found on example One. There is a three track list found (like the same as example one) below the centre of the disc, this text is in silver and purple, track times are alos found here next to the song title. Epic records logo is found aswell as the CD number and a weird symbol/logo which probably stands for another record label. The name of the band is at the top of the Cd and the 'e' in Bewitched has been replaced with a gold star, below this is the name of the single 'To You I Belong' which is also the name of track 1.

SD - CD Disc Design: Example One

I have looked at a range of example of how we can design our disc to go into the digipaks, as we're having two (one for the music video we're currently producing and the other featuring other tracks by Desiny's Child) we're going to have more to think about although thetwo discs will be similar in design they will obviously have different description and information shown on the front. Hear'says single Everybody is a white disc with the letters 'R'S' in a bold blue font outlined in darker blue underneath this says Hear'say and lists four featured tracks on the CD, there is then in a very small font information on copyright and Universal Music Company below this there are two logos one Polydor (Polydor is a record company which is owned by Universal Music Group) our will instead feature Columbia Records logo as this is the record label that Destiny's Child were most recently signed to before they split. The other reading compact disc digital audio a feature that has been found on all the examples I've looked at and therefore will be featured on our disc one and two.

This shot of the band inspired a number of shots that me and Katie took during filming. The way in which we used it was to rotate the camera round to each member as their chorus in the song came up which were given to each of them to lip sync before filming.

AN/SD - Target Audience

Our target audience in our music video is 16 to 24 year olds. Being more precise, couples. This is due to the fact that the music video raises awareness of break ups and affairs.

The age of the couple is similar to the age of the audience. As a result the audience will be able to relate to the characters.

The genre is another reason for our choice of target audience. R&B tends to be aimed at a similar target audience to the video's. Also, the video could possibly appeal to a male demographic because of the variety of the genre. However it seems the audience is made up of more women and men.

This means that, the video will mostly aim at a 16 to 24 female target audience who is currently in a relationship or has been in one.
Here are some additional points on target audience:


- General fans of the band and the R&B genre.
- The male gaze aspect would bring in a secondary male audience.
- Our audience may be interested in viewing romantic comedy films rather than indie and horror films.
- They will be interested in mainstream music and genre's such as R&B, Pop and maybe Hip-hop.
- The audience may also read gossip magazine rather than informative newsletters and papers, these may include the ones that target the same age group ie. More, Now & Look
- The uses of gratifications theory is good to use when thinking about the audience you are trying to target, getting a fuller view of what the viewer is interested in will help when making decissions to include within the text itself, magazine advertisment and digipak.
- Destiny's Childs audience is Mainstream but also a Mass audience although because they are a female band in the R&B genre which could be seen as attracting a niche audience.

'Uses of gratifications theory is an approach to understanding why people actively seek out specific media outlets and content for gratification purposes. The theory discusses how users proactively search for media that will not only meet a given need but enhance knowledge, social interactions and diversion.
This theory assumes that members of the audience are not passive but take an active role in interpreting and integrating media into their own lives. The theory also holds that audiences are responsible for choosing media to meet their needs. The approach suggests that people use the media to fulfill specific gratifications. This theory would then imply that the media compete against other information sources for viewers' gratification.'

SD - Beyonce Magazine Ad

We have really struggled to find Destiny's Child magazine advertisements Katie is the only one that has managed to find an actual one found in Rolling Stone magazine. The other ones we've found have been fragrance advertisements released by Beyonce which are much more common. From looking at the ad's we've been able to denote there is often a lot of the colour red used in lips which we already knew is a common convention found in girl band music videos to include the male gaze theory.

The magazine advertisement I have found is a L'oreal lipstick shade (red)

KM/AN - Product Creating Schedule

On Tuesday we filmed a new scene, this was just another scene showing the boyfriend and girlfriend together before the aftermath's take place.
We now need to film the girlfriend's aftermath and re shoot the scene when the meal takes place for the girlfriend and boyfriend because their was a bit of a mix up with the scene itself, so a quick re shoot should fix the problem.
So far with the Digipak and Magazine Ad, we have not spent enough time as we would of hoped but all three of us have either made a prototype or researched on previous Digipaks and Magazine Ad's.
We will have an update soon, and will hopefully have a final rough cut to post up early next week.

Here is our plan to deal with these products and what we have to do.


Filming: 


Girlfriend's aftermath
Girlfriend walking up to the house
Girlfriend leaving house
Close up of beans on toast


We plan on filming this stuff this weekend and edit the items on Monday.


Digipak: 


Implement feedback into Asa's digipak
Sophie and Katie need to learn how to use Photoshop. If they run out of time, Asa's digipak will be the main one.


Magazine Ad:


Research done.
Sophie and Katie will use either Photoshop or Microsoft Publisher to create the advert.


A photoshoot of the band will also take place so that pictures can be obtained for the digipaks. More information coming soon.