Conventions of a music video in the dance genre - Charlie

Digipak Moodboard - Cameron

My Comments (Charlie):
This is the moodboard that we have created to gain ideas for the creation of our digipak, there is a range of album covers for pop artists and they differ between each of the different music genres. We have tried to be specific with the genre, as most of the artists in the above collage have made some sort of dance themed music, for example - JLS, Calvin Harris, Rihanna and more.

Logo for 'Mission 808' (Chosen Group Name) - Cameron

Comments:

Using the Adobe Fireworks program, we have created our product logo. This was created by inserting a circle and skewing the edges to form this abstract design as seen above. The two circles underneath were more simply created. One was formed with the use of the doughnut shape tool and simply resized, similarly the small circle seen parallel to the doughnut shape was a circle inserted and resized. The colour scheme was created by adding a gradient to the shapes and deciding which colours would fit the theme perfectly. Considering the theme of the product, as a whole is a dance pop theme, we thought the choice of colours should stand out and be noticeable, as it compliments the idea of dancing and having fun, being lively and vibrant. Due to this we decided the colours of this logo should be black and white as these two colours contrast each other but add the effect of standing out to the audience, therefore making the logo a noticeable factor which will eventually be implemented onto our DigiPak and website. The abstract shape we have given the logo also gives the product as a whole a more modern twist, once again relating to the dance pop genre theme, as clubbing and partying is more commonly associated with modern times. It also fits the genredue to the song, which is a modern dance song itself. Overall this logo, which we have created using Adobe Fireworks, serves the purpose of attracting the audience to the product due to its unique shape and colour scheme as it stands out to the target audience.



 

Location, Equipment and Personnel organisation - Charlie

Production meeting notes, December 1st, 2013 - Charlie

The below is all what we have discussed during a scheduled group meeting:

Things we have completed since last meeting:

- Filming for all party locations
- Digipak design and production

Things that still need to be completed:
- Filming of footage from Central London
- Completion of Digipak design itself
- Finish editing the rest of the video once we have filmed the footage from London

Digipak:
- The digipak is now completed, however we still have to upload some extra posts to the blog relating to the digipak.

Website:
- There is only a few minor tweaks that need to made to the website itself, however similarly to the digipak, we still have some extra posts that we still need to upload before it can be fully completed.

We still need to complete our evaluation tasks but this will be completed after christmas.

Website response to brief - Charlie

My Comments (Charlie):
This is the response to brief for the website, similarly to the digipak response to brief i have sketched numerous ideas on what our group would want the website to look like, the 5 circled headings are the ones that i think are most relevant to making our website look good.

Digipak response to brief - Charlie

My Comments (Charlie):
I put together this response to brief for the digipak, before starting this task i thought of the four most important things that would relate to a digipak, and they were the font, the layout, the photo style and the blurb information as well as the blurb style. and have seperated the topics with different colour so it is clearer to read.

Digipak Market Research - Cameron

Audience Feedback: Mid-Project survey results - Charlie

My Comments (Charlie):
I have created this presentation of results because we thought it was be good to see what the audience think of the work we have done so far, when participants were taking the survey, group members were not present in order to prevent ourselves influences answers of the participants. We were very pleased with the results we have recieved and will take the suggested improvements on board.

Digipak ideas - Cameron

My Comments (Charlie):
This is a spider-diagram of our ideas for our digipak, it goes specifically into detail about the style and type of font we would like to use, the blurb info and style we aim to create, our layout ideas and the photo style. This is not the definate idea of what we are going to do but is just a rough plan of what we have discussed as a group, we will sit down and discuss again to narrow down which of our choices we think are the best and decide from there.

Analysis of existing products 5 - Cameron

My Comments (Charlie):
This is another analysis of an existing product, we have analysed a range of existing products so we can try and take the best ideas from each video and put them towards our own.

Analysis of Existing Product 4 (Shot-by-Shot) - 'Russo - Laters, I'm Off' - Charlie

My Comments (Charlie):
This is a shot by shot analysis of a rap/pop video that I have done myself, it is also an analysis of an existing product as it contains elements of what we want to have in our music video (e.g. - the lyrics flashing up on the screen during the song, as this can help embed lyrics into the audience's head) I have picked out what I think are the six most important scenes of the music video and analysed them using the TEAL technique.
T-Technique
E-Evidence
A-Analysis
L-Link to audience theory

Filming: What have we done so far & What we still need to do/Potential Ideas - Charlie

My Comments (Charlie):
I nominated myself to do a write up of what we have done so far and what we still need to do in terms of filming. As you can see in the picture above we have done a large amount of our filming and were only prevented from filming in Brighton due to the terrible weather conditions on the day we had planned to go. We have planned another date to complete this trip and get our footage.

Link to mid-project survey - Charlie

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/9DVK7L8

My Comments (Charlie):
This is the link to our mid-project survey about our blog and the work we have done so far, we hope to get at least three people to view our blogs and give us relevant feedback on what we can do in order to improve our work.

Treatment - Cameron

Treatment of Heads Will Roll (A-Trak Remix)

Characters Involved:
Lauren: One of the main focuses of the video acting as a party goer who enjoys the night life going to parties and having fun with friends.
Shondelle: Another main focus of the video for similar reasons, she also likes partying and having fun with friends going out whose actions will accompany the dance track music.
Cameron: Also present in some scenes of the music video, but not as much as Shondelle and Lauren. When presented, Cameron is also seen to enjoy the nightlife and party atmosphere where present.
Charlie: Similarly to Cameron, Charlie is only present at selected points of the video; he is also seen however in these very few scenes to also enjoy the nightlife, this will further accompany the audio and dance track feeling to add a sense of euphoria to the audience.
Friends and acquaintances: Acting as extras in our dance track video for added effect, to further provoke a sense of euphoria which the audience will want to aspire to.

Genre:
Our chosen music video genre is a dance track genre.

Locations:
Brighton Pier/Fun fairs.
Inside a limo.
House parties involving friends and acquaintances.

Heads Will Roll:
Our chosen song for our music video to be applied to is the A-Trak remix to Heads Will Roll. This as mentioned briefly above is a dance genre song, and we have chosen this due to the fact that we can reflect a sense of euphoria, and an almost feel good emotion which, when viewed by the audience provokes a sense of higher self-esteem for the audience to aspire to. Our video will begin with a few shots to set the scene as the song starts within the first 15 seconds of instrumental playing. This will include a panoramic shot of Brighton mainly focusing on the pier to suggest to the audience that this will be the main focus and body throughout the entire of the video. It will include cut shots of all the characters walking around as the audio starts up. During this time the song title will appear on the screen for a short period of time. From 15 seconds to 45 seconds into the audio, there will once again be cut shots of the characters shopping, on the beach and partaking in other leisurely activities in Brighton, this will be composed using a number of mid-shots and long-shots. This has the effect of making the audience feel as if they want to be there, and make them wish to aspire to do the things presented in this video, which relates to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs in terms of reaching self-actualization. From 45 seconds to 1 minute 12 seconds, shots of parties and other settings will be incorporated gradually becoming more consistent using faster shots for the party as the atmosphere is more electric in these settings. This will be presented through a number of mid-shots and long-shots. Between 1 minute 13 and 1 minute 16, the instrumentals disappear and only dialogue is heard as the song is about to drop into a full scale dance track audio.

During this brief period a single shot of the party is prolonged throughout this time and is slowed down using a time stretch editing technique for added effect. There are jump cuts during this same shot at the same time the person singing says "off". Between 1 minute 16 and 1 minute 45 after the audio drops into a faster paced dance audio beat, shots of Brighton pier fun fair, limo shots and party shots are incorporated using a mixture of long-shots, mid-shots, high/low angle shots in time with the beat using a variety of jump cuts. This further adds to the euphoric feel when viewing the video to get the audience to feel as if they have to aspire to do the things conveyed in the video, simply because it looks like a lot of fun. Between 1 minute 45 and 2 minutes 14, the footage is slowed down in the form of a long shot, and directly after between 2 minutes 14 to 2 minutes 21, this same footage reverses in time with the audio when it appears to reverse as well. This emphasizes the reversing effect as depicted in the audio. From 2 minutes 21 to 2 minutes 51, the audio resumes back to normal again and various shots of the party are shown again through the use of mid-shots and high/low angle shots in time with the beat, this will include a close up smoking shot for added effect. 2 minutes 51 till the end of the video at 3 minutes 25 the audio resumes back to its full scale fast dance track beat. During this period more shots are once again incorporated in time with the beat, mainly mid-shots and long-shots of the parties, limo and Brighton. The video ends the same time as the audio does at 3 minutes 25 with a two shot close up of Shondelle and Lauren walking up to the camera and blowing a kiss before the camera cuts to black at the same time as the audio ends.

The use of the variety of shots to accompany or emphasize the audio links with Andrew Goodwin's theory of amplification in pop videos. This follows the idea that the audio is amplified with the use of a video to accompany it, which in turn has a more euphoric effect on the audience, therefore causing them to want to feel the same happiness presented in the video. This along with the editing effects such as the use of a time stretch effect during some shots further emphasize the euphoric effects conveyed in the video.

My Comments (Charlie):
As you can see this is the treatment for our music video, it has gone into depth and is very detailed, before Cameron typed this up we had discussed the ideas beforehand so that we all could put forward our ideas as to what should be in the treatment.

Analysis of Existing Products 3 - Cameron

My Comments (Charlie):
This is an analysis of an existing product, this video was selected for analysis because it has a lot of dance and party scenes included in it. With this in mind, it was easier to relate the video to what we want to create, LMFAO consistly create videos of this genre because they want to be recognised for the dance music that they create.

Consuming Media - Charlie

My Comments (Charlie):
The above picture includes:
- How often I watch music videos and why I like to watch them.
- The media that I had consumed in one particular day (14/10/2013)
- The types of media that I used on that day

Analysis of Existing Product 2 - Shondell

My Comments (Charlie):
This is a video analysis of the high status artist Rihanna, she is looked up to by many young teenage girls and women, she is often sexualised by the media as you can see in the photo of her above. We wanted to include an analysis of Rihanna because the way that she performs (especially her facial expressions when lip syncing) would be something that members of our group could look at doing when performing in our video.

Moodboard - Lauren

In order to gain a better understanding of what our music video should include to accurately portray the genre; prior to the production I collected a range of images that present the idea of house/dance music and current programmes/films focused on youth for example Skins and Project X. We decided we wanted to play upon the idea that is portrayed in the media as a ‘realistic’representation of today’s youth. The idea that many teens indulge in the exotic party life with drugs, sex and alcohol which are issues often highlighted and sometimes glamorised with in British programmes like Skins and Misfits which is aimed at our target audience. The programmes commonly have group of teens aged 16-20 that relish a wild yet thrilling lifestyle, giving the audience a sense of pleasure and escapism as they desire to live like this. In addition to this the connotations of the genre often reflect these ideas as house/dance is predominately aimed at a younger audience.

I selected a variety of images and logos that present the genre,‘party’ images from existing films as well as pictures from holiday destinations such as Magaluf and Ayia Napa which is also youth orientated and recognised for performances by dance/ house music artists every year. From the images gathered we have a focus and more detailed yet varied representation of what we want to include in our own music video.

My Comments (Charlie):
This moodboard was created by Lauren and it shows the many different forms of media that is inspiring us for our music video, we are looking at all the different aspects of the dance and pop music genre so that we can get as many ideas as possible.

Analysis of Existing Product 1 - Charlie

Macklemore & Ryan Lewis - Thrift Shop

Shooting Script - Group

My Comments (Charlie):
This is the our first shooting script, which is a rough interpretation of the order in which we want to carry out our video, as we continue our research and planning this could change as we think of new and better ideas. This shooting script covers the whole of the length of the video, we have done this so we can make sure we can get more than enough footage of what we would actually need for the video.

Production Meeting Notes, October 4th, 2013 - Charlie

The below is all what we have discussed during a scheduled group meeting:

Things that we have completed so far:
- Filming at three party locations (Rykia, Charlye and Harry party)
- Filming in limo
- Photos that we have taken at the party locations

Things that still need to be completed:
- Filming of individual shots
- More filming at other locations so that we can use the same type of setting but at a different location.
- Website planning and creation
- Digipak planning and creation

Digipak:
- We spoke about possibly making the digipak mostly black and white, with the front cover background being black and having a group picture on the front with the name of the album and the names of two of our big/upcoming songs.
- The insert will also conform to the colour scheme with the black background and white font.
- The CD itself will be black with 'Heads Will Roll' written in white font across the front and a small design if it is possible to fit on there.
- The back cover will be similar to the insert with a black background and a white font - listing all the names of the tracks on the CD, and the barcode and additional information at the bottom.

Website:
- The website will be more colourful than the digipak, this is to conform to the stereotypical representation of a band in the dance genre.
- We also want the website to be where people to go should they need information, so will try to make it as aesthetically pleasing as possible.

Chosen Brand Name - Cameron

Shot by Shot Analysis of a Music Video - Charlie

Calvin Harris ft Ellie Goulding - I Need Your Love

Target Audience Research - Charlie

This is a 9 question survey in which questions were answered by the members of our target audience, this was a really good way of finding out what the needs of our target audience are, for example asking their favourite genre types and favourite musicians. By conducting the survey we were able to get a true representation of the things we need to do to make our video, website and digipak appealing to our target audience. Therefore in the products we are making we will make them vibrant and colourful as this is something that will attract a young audience and help them to remain interested.

Production Scheduling - Charlie

Date	Filming/Photos	Time
08/08/13	Photos and filming at Rykia’s house party	18:00 – 19:30
06/09/13	Photos and filming at Harry’s house party	19:15 – 20:45
20/09/13	Photos and filming at Charlye’s house party	19:00 – 21:00
25/09/13	Photos and filming at Brighton Pier – CANCELLED	CANCELLED
28/09/13	Photos at a South Norwood Lakes park	13:00 – 13:45
12/10/13	Photos at Hyde Park (London)	14:00 – 15:00
06/11/13	Filming of individual facial expression shots	09:15 – 10:30
14/12/13	Photos and filming in Central London	17:00 – 21:30
Comments: This is the production schedule for carrying out the filming of our music video. We had to spread the filming out over the course of a few months. When we came back to sixth form in early September and had chosen to create a video in the dance genre, we remembered we had pictures and footage from Rykia’s house party, so was able to use the good quality shots that we had already filmed. Due to the poor weather conditions, we were forced to cancel our trip to Brighton and were unable to rearrange another date; therefore we used our initiative and came up with the idea to film in Central London where there are many famous landmarks and facilities to use to film, we plan to do this on the 14th December. At the moment (26/09/13), we have managed to stick to the production schedule apart from having to change a location which was something we couldn’t control, and I think we will be able to stick to this schedule throughout the creation of the music video.

Lip Syncing: Ed Sheeran - Drunk - Charlie

Lip Syncing: The Script - Six Degrees of Seperation - Charlie

Target Audience Research Survey Link - Charlie

i have created a survey consisting of 10 questions to help us identify what people think about music videos. Click here to take survey

Music Video theories - Charlie

Permission to Film - By Shondell

Response to Brief - Group

My Comments (Charlie):
These are our ideas that we pitched as a group relating to our options when filming and creating our music video. We thought it was best to carry out this task as a group so that we could put forward all of our ideas at the same time and create one big poster of it.

Shot Testing - Charlie

I have put this picture on my blog because i was testing different ways that i could take pictures and what effects each picture has. For example in this picture i have taken a low angle shot which makes the ball and the grass look a lot bigger than it actually is, this technique is also used by companies that want to promote their products as looking 'bigger' than they actually are.
I think that the sunlight in the background has a good effect on the picture because it shines onto the goal in the background which makes it look further away than it actually is, i also noticed that the background is more blurry because the main focus of the picture is the grass and the ball, this would be effective if this shot was recorded as a video because on professional cameras you could alter the focus to concentrate on either the ball or the background objects while filming.

Summary of Key Theories - Charlie

10 Facts About The History Of Pop Videos - Charlie

The history of pop videos 

Favourite Music Video - Charlie

My favourite music video is called ‘What a night’ by The Loveable Rogues; I like the video because it is an interesting video with lots going on at the same time, the main storyline of the video is that there is a party going on and everyone is just having fun and enjoying themselves, the video starts with the arrival of guests and then proceeds throughout the night until the end. It is very lively and the three musicians Eddie, Sonny and Te all are the main focus of the video, they are also a range of studio shots with them singing . A lot of the shots are taken from a handheld camera to give it the effect of it being as if it was recorded at the party, there are also a lot of party shots where there are no lyrics so the audience can focus on what is on the screen.

The band gained popularity from the TV Talent Show Britain's Got Talent, finishing in 4th position in the live final in 2012. Since then they're song 'Lovesick' that they performed on Britains got talent has become a big hit, along with 'What a night' that reached the top 20 in the charts and 'Nuthouse' which is soon to be released.

The song has elements of rap in it because of the way the lyrics are said to the audience,

 

 

There are a range of shots like the one above that a performed in a darker setting, consisting of just the three artists, in the early stages of the video it is more performance based however towards the end of the song they tend to just jump about and sing rather than play the guitar.