First Draft Music Video: YouTube

To help evaluate both the positive and negative aspects of the first draft of our music video, we decided to upload it to global broadcasting website YouTube. This allowed us, with ease, to share it with peers and even the public - giving them the chance to comment their opinions.

Ancillary Tasks: Planning and Preparation

The following pictures are some that we looked at in detail to explore their possibility as pictures for our magazine advertisement.

Firstly, with any picture that we felt could possibly serve as our magazine advertisement, we edited it to make it more appropriate; the before-edit (left) shows details that make the shot less effective; the black curtain can be seen in the background due to its creases and the colour of the photo seems rather bland. After editing however (right), the black curtain is transformed into a solid black background adding a degree of professionalism to the shot in that it makes it look like it could have possibly been taken in a music studio, as opposed to the reality - our schools drama studio. Also the edited effects make the colours more effective - the shine from the metal of the drums and the glare of Joanna's hair colour made more noticable. This shows how invaluable the editing process is; through image-editing software like Adobe PhotoShop we can transform our shots - these nuances adding to the profesionalism of the shot helping us to look more appealing to our target audience.

Development: Images for Ancillary Tasks - Drama Studio

During our first session of filming our 'band shots', we took it as an opportunity to also photograph the band for our ancillary task; below are just some of the many photographs we captured.

Music Video: First Draft - Band Shots

Posted above is our first attempt at filming our music video. We decided to focus on band shots to explore what worked and what didn't; it gave us a chance to practice filming and editing, while experiancing what it is like working as a group.

We used our schools Drama studio as a location; this provided us with our first problem - the mise-en-scene wasn't effective. This was actually an important mistake to make early on in the process; watching the footage we had filmed helped us immediately notice that the conventions of a music video - of the rock-music genre - were not there due to the lack of consideration concerning the mise-en-scene. Indeed, it was visually apparent in the footage that were filming in some sort of studio - the black curtains, wooden floor - and a noticeble lack of mess or theme. This 'decision' to not decorate or thoughtfully choose a suitable location meant the video lacked professionalism - it was inadvertadly subverting the conventions of the music video; 'rockstars' aren't known to film in a school's drama studio. Indeed, we wanted to show as a group how we had thought about the important theories regarding media; thinking about 'genre theory' gave us a constant reminder that we wanted to show we had purposely and with reason either subverted or converted the suspected apsects of a music video. 

In making this mistake, our group realised the importance and potential devasting effect of mise-en-scene; it's an essential part of a music video, one that we were quick to rectify by planning ahead in future filming.

YouTube: Using New Media Technology With Our Product

http://www.youtube.com/user/WhitepalmProduction

Above, is a link for our YouTube channel that our group created so that we had a platform to upload and share our videos. This exploration of using new media technology proved helpful as we could post early drafts and receive feedback from internet users.

Below, is a URL which directs to a YouTube 'playlist' that collects together all of our group's YouTube uploads:

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL94295686228A70C7

Development: Ancillary Task

Here is one of my first drafts for our band's magazine advertisement:

We took countless photos of both the full band and single shots of each member so we had a variety of shots to potentially choose from for our advertisement.

I personally chose this image as a first draft - I liked the mise-en-scene of the shot; conventionally, the lead-singer was the focus of the shot - representing the band by using a single member enforced the importance of the lead-singer. Also, the singer herself is clothed appropriately for the genre; dark colours and usual clothes of the rock genre. The background of the image helps portray to the audience the genre; abstract street-art represents the underground music scene, with the standardised logo of the band - 'Paramore' protruding from the grey concrete, personifying the font as it is attempting to burst out from the page.

(Below) An example of my experimentation of using effects to make the advertisement more engaging and interesting for the target audience.

Planning: Organisation

Over the course of the project so far, my group has had to communicate about different aspects of the filming and to do this we have used several different ways to communicate with each other over a variety of media platforms - such as SmartPhones and social networking sites such as Facebook, shown above.

Development; Preparation for Filming: Video Blog Two

We decided to practice using different shots with a variety of camera equipment. We filmed simple motions captured with different shots, to see what looked effective and what didin't - this also gave us a chance to become more familiar with the camera and equipment itself.

I've listed, in order, the different shots featured in the video:

Mid Shot

High-Angle Two Shot using a Handheld-Jib

High-Angle Shot with Reverse Zoom using a Handheld-Jib

High-Angle Shot with Tilt upwards using a Handheld-Jib

Full-Shot with Tilt upwards using a Handheld-Jib; an example of Gaze Theory

Track and Pan using a Dolly

Track and Pan using a Dolly

Tracking Shot with Zoom using a Dolly

Over-The-Shoulder Shot using Steadi-Cam

Pan into an Extreme Close-Up using Steadi-Cam

Two-Shot with Reverse Zoom using Steadi-Cam

Two-Shot with Reverse Zoom using Steadi-Cam

Mid Shot; an example of using the 'Rule of Thirds' using Steadi-Cam

Canted Angle with a Pan left using Steadi-Cam

Angle-Reverse-Angle Mid Shot using Steadi-Cam