Wednesday, 29 October 2014

October 2014

Lesson 1 
This month we had to start thinking more about our song and what we wanted to do with it. I then started to look at Adobe Premiere pro and the effects that I could use. I never really had the chance to experiment with the effects during AS, i only learnt the basic of what to do and how to use it. Through doing this I taught myself how to create some of the effects that I used in my music video. I created this video:





Through doing this I started to understand the software more and more and the techniques that we were using became more advanced and look much more professional.


Lesson 2 
We also had to pitch our final song. We had to state why we wanted to use this song and what we would do with it. We also had to say why we chose this song over our other songs. This was the hardest part because all the songs that we chose had their benefits and could all work with what we wanted to achieve out of our music video. This was done in front of our teacher and our class. This helped us to look at our overall idea and to also gain valuable feedback from what is our target audience (young people). This is where we made slight changes to our idea before we started to produce the real thing.

Lesson 3 
We then went to get audience feedback. We did this in a form of an interview and also in a questionnaire. We filmed the interviews in order to put this on our blog for us to then late use and analyse to make improvements on our final video. The questionnaire enabled us to look at peoples views on paper and make the changes later on to ensure that our video suited our target audience. We asked for feedback on our song and other songs that we could use. the song 'Let Loose' was the song that out target audience was most impressed with and it seemed to be the easiest song to think of effective ideas that would work for our video. 

Lesson 4
This lesson we took our song lyrics and analysed them to suit our video. We had to look for the underlying message in the video. We had to take the lyrics and then plan what shots we wanted to place with the lyrics. This meant looking for the themes related to the song and deciding if the shots from out moodboard fitted with the certain lyrics. Through doing this, it enabled me to understand my song better and this meant that I knew the lyrics when it came to lip-syncing the song during filming. This also meant that we could storyboard the shots that we wanted to use. 

We also created a moodboard to find the best things to add to our video, and to give us inspiration for the shots that we can use.



This enabled us to see the type of shots that we wanted to do for our video. We looked at the pictures and saw what was best suited to our song. 
Lesson 5 
We then analysed the results of our audience questionnaire. It was found that this song came on top due to it being 'more suited to a younger audience'. We then took this feedback and asked our target audience questions about the song lyrics. We wanted our audience to tell us what they thought of the lyrics and what they could imagine for a video when they closed their eyes. Through doing this, it helped us to storyboard our song as our target audience was giving us ideas. These ideas were extremely valuable because they were from the point of view of our target audience.

Lesson 6 
This was the lesson that we started to put our shot list together. This would help us later on when we started the filming for our video. This also enabled us to get an idea of what the finished video would look like. Even though it was a rough sketch it helped us to realise what could be done with our video, also this gave us the opportunity to change what we didn't think fitted with our video.

Lesson 7 - End of October
This was the week that we started to film footage. We went to my friends house to film some of the balloon shots, however we mostly used places that were easy for us to access during school time, and these shots turned out to be effective for our video. 


Wednesday, 15 October 2014

Analysis of Song Lyrics


Our song 'Let Loose' by Bora York, doesn't have very many lyrics so this makes it a challenge for us to think of ideas to match the song lyrics. What I found when analysing the song lyrics was that throughout there are connotations of escape and breaking free. This to me is seen as rebellion and youth breaking the rules. The chorus of the song is repeated through the song 5 times, this means that as a group we will have to think of ideas to differentiate the choruses. The first verse could be seen as more relating to the audience as the use of imperatives and the first line could bee seen as comforting. The last line of the first verse has brief connotations of love. This means that we could incorporate a love story somewhere into our video. Also, the line 'Summer nights under the city lights' this gave me the image of a shot of the skyline of London. Connotations of youth are seen throughout the lyrics and this is what I want the audience to feel when they hear the song as well as a sense of escapism. 'Daring heights' 'As free as eternity' these lyrics all relate to youth and breaking rules and rebellion.

Audience Reactions Chloe and Ryan

Saturday, 11 October 2014

Teacher assessment - general

A Level Media Progress Check - Ryan
NSE - Teacher
Focus of assessment
General
Relevant assessment criteria
Planning and research evidence will be complete and detailed.
Evidence of progress/ evidence of meeting criteria
Good start to your blog. You have some of the key work on there.
Areas to work on next/ ideas to consider
Ensure you have started your production diary, incorporating this feedback. Ensure you complete as much individual research/planning as you can, to show the moderator your individual talent.  Reflect on every single post and ensure you use as many web 2.0 tools as possible.
Additional comments

Teacher assessment - film pitch

A Level Media Progress Check - Ryan
Assessed by
NSE - Teacher
Focus of assessment
Music video pitch
Relevant assessment criteria
There is excellent research into similar products and a potential target audience.
Evidence of progress/ evidence of meeting criteria
Detailed discussion into what song you are pitching for and why.
Areas to work on next/ ideas to consider
If you could identify audience feedback and how this has influenced your choices.
Additional comments