September 2014

Theory
This was the start of the year in media. In the first few weeks of September we was introduced to our main task that we would have to produce for the end of the year. 
We started to learn about media theories that relate to music videos and how we will apply them to analysis of music videos that we will have to produce in the next few weeks. We learnt about Laura Mulvey's theory of the Male Gaze, and how that applies to music videos. This was easy as we used Mulvey last year and used this to link to film openings, so it made it easier for me to use this theory and link it to music videos. We also looked at Andrew Goodwin and how his theories link to videos, and how he stated that music videos have three types, concept, performance and narrative. I then looked at music videos and analysed them from this perspective, and decided what type of music video suits them. These theories made it easier for me to analyse music videos as I could see what they were doing from a different perspective.

From this I have learnt how to analyse music videos using media theories to back it up. For example, when looking at videos such as Nicki Minaj's videos, the male gaze is seen by feminists, as the way men look at women, women look at themselves and how other women look at women. Nicki Minaj's videos focus on a woman's figure and a dance move called 'Twerking', where the focal point is mainly on a woman's bottom. This could also be linked to Andrew Goodwin's theory of music video being used for promotional purposes, as Nicki Minaj often promotes products in her videos, for example, Beats speakers. 


Essay task

We was then given an essay task to analyse a music video of our choice. All the points that we had to include were:
- Comparing it to a theory
- The genre of the song
- How does the song fit into the conventions?
- Stereotypes
- Whether it is Narrative, performance or concept
- Analysis of the Lyrics
- Iconography 
- Mise en scene
- Camera work 
- Editing 
- Relation back to the artist
- The main purpose of the video.

I chose to analyse the music video "Girls" by The 1975. I chose this because i am a fan of the band in general and I know that the video includes many shots of girls and this would be effective because I could easily link this back to Mulvey's theory of the Male Gaze. I understood the genre of the song and i could easily determine whether this was narrative, performance or concept, for example this is mainly performance and some concept.. Analysing the camera work and editing was easier as we had looked at that in the previous year so I just had to apply that knowledge to this year. 
To improve, I would have liked to have gone more in depth with linking it back to the theory or pick a song where i could link one or two theories to the song. 

Star Image

The focus of the lesson was on Star Image and artists that have been in the spotlight for many years, for example, The Killers or Beyonce. We saw how artists grow and how they develop characteristics that make them a star. 
For example they have to be popular, talented, influential, over the top, charismatic and have their own appearance.

We was given a task to make a presentation on the artists life and how they rose to fame. This was interesting to see many different artists lives and the differences in how they rose to fame. 

Lip Syncing

We was given the task of lip syncing. This meant that we had to find a song and lip sync to the song and put that onto our blogs. We had to do a solo song and a group lip sync. I chose to do Nelly - Ride Wit Me. This is one of my favourite songs and I fortunately knew all the words to sing to. I found this embarrassing at first to lip sync in front of the camera, as i suddenly became very aware of what I was doing, however with practise this became easier and easier. I found it a lot easier if you went more over the top, this makes it look like you are singing it! Our group lip sync was a little less embarrassing as we was all doing it together. We did mess up the words at first as the song that we chose we are doing for our final piece and we didn't seem to know all the words at this stage. This showed us that we need to learn the song back to front and really study the lyrics. We done the lip sync together to make us look like a band for the final video. When we watched the lip sync back we saw that the song had harmonies that we missed, this taught us that we have to learn where the harmonies are and lip sync them to make it look like we ar singing.

The hardest part is editing the lip sync over the base song. Early on, we came across the challenges of editing the lip sync and the song together. This was helpful as we learnt in the very early stages how to overcome these issues and got the practice of matching them up.

Choosing a song

We then had the opportunity to research what songs we could do for out final piece. Initially, we looked at songs that were already in the charts and we realised that they already have music videos made for them and also using the song would be copyright. We started to then find songs that weren't well known that would work for a music video. We found a song called Let Loose, by Bora York. As a group, we really liked this song as it was upbeat and lively. We had to chose between three songs to choose from and this one came out on top. We had to story board the three songs as it was hard for us to pick the right song. We had storyboarded each song and we decided that Let Loose was the best song for us to do as we were passionate about what we could create about the song. 


We decided what song we wanted to do, we then had to email the artist to request permission to make a music video for the song. Fortunately, the artist got back to us very quickly and gave us the permission we needed for the video as long as we send them a copy of the video once we have finished.

Digipaks

In lesson, we was given a task to research digipaks and the typical conventions that a digipak follows, and then recreate the digipak. We found a simple digipak for us to understand the whole concept, and then this would help us to follow the typical conventions of digipaks. I researched what the typical things you would find in digipaks for example, messages from the artists, track lists etc. This helped me to understand the layout of a digipak.  We chose to re-create the Kings of Leon digipak. This mainly consists of close ups and extreme close ups. We also had to tint the shots green, as this is the dominant colour of the digipak. We had to tweak some aspects as we couldn't get the exact shots that replicated the digipak, but we chose shots that followed the same concept of the band. Through recreating a digipak this helped me to make my own digipak from scratch and deciding what we wanted ours to look like. We had to think about our digipak in relation to our target audience, children and teenagers. We want to make our digipak colourful and more attractive to the younger audience. 

Conventions of Music Videos 

Independently, I took the time to research the conventions of music videos in relation to my genre. I looked at videos that had a similar genre to mine, such as The 1975, The Killers and Gotye. They all fall under the alternative rock genre. Looking at these videos helped me to understand the genre that our final product was going to be. 

Assessment 

It was assessment week at school, and during this we was given an essay to reflect on what we did at AS level and how we could apply what we have learnt to our A2 coursework.  This used my analytical skills to evaluate what i done at AS and realise my mistakes and what inprovments that i could make to make my coursework the best it could be. This also showed me what I done well and what was very effective in terms of editing and effects. Although a music video and a film opening are very different, through doing this task it helped me to understand what techniques, such as camera angles and edting effects, I used to make my AS coursework appeal to my target audience.